WYPL Book Talk

 

 

Stephen Usery interviews Isabel Wilkerson about her critically-acclaimed and commercially- successful first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wilkerson contends that the movement of African-Americans from the South to other parts of the United States from World War I to the early 1970s is the most under-reported stories in our country's history. She follows the lives of three people examining the different social and economic reasons for leaving the South and Jim Crow behind.

Stephen Usery interviews Kevin Brockmeier about his new novel, The Illumination.
It's the story of six people and how they respond to a strange, new development around the world when human pain begins to manifest itself as visible light. It investigates the philosophical, religious, artistic, and emotional ramifications of not being to hide one's pain or ignore another's.

Stephen Usery interviews Philip Stephens about his debut novel Miss Me When I'm Gone. It's the story of a folk singer who returns home to Apogee, Missouri in the Ozarks Mountains when his mother falls ill. The town has changed much over the years, in no small part because his brother's real estate development business, and everyone is on edge when an ex-con drifts into town.

Stephen Usery interviews best-selling author Mary Jane Clark about the first book in her new mystery series, To Have and to Kill, which introduces us to Piper Donovan, a down on her luck actress who moves back in with her parents and gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to make a wedding cake for her soap opera star friend.

Stephen Usery interviews former health insurance executive Wendell Potter about his book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. Potter is a former Memphis Press Scimitar reporter who worked his way up the corporate health care ladder until their practices finally burdened his conscience enough for him to quit and blow the whistle.

Stephen Usery interviews CNN news anchor and special correspondent Soledad O'Brien about her new memoir The Next Big Story: My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities. It follows O'Brien from her growing up in her interracial, immigrant family, attending Harvard, and working her way up the ladder in the competitive field of television news.

Stephen Usery interviews Marshall Chapman about her new book, They Came to Nashville. In addition to her own story, Chapman talks to several country music performers and songwriters, including Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, about why they moved to Nashville and their earliest experiences when getting to town.

Stephen Usery interviews University of Memphis instructor Sonja Livingston, about her memoir, Ghostbread. Now in paperback, this winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Non-Fiction is an impressionistic take on Livingston's childhood in the Rust Belt area of western New York.

Stephen Usery interviews Nancy Pearl about her newest guide about what to read next with Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers. Not a listing of guide books, Book Lust to Go looks at travel memoirs, novels that evoke a strong sense of place, epic histories, and mysteries that get to the nitty-gritty of some of the world's most fascinating places.

 

Stephen Usery interviews Ian Frazier about his new book Travels in Siberia, which details several trips to this vast land after the fall of communism. Frazier is a writer and columnist for the New Yorker who is known for his keen wit, as well as his serious non-fiction works like On the Rez and Great Plains.

Stephen Usery interviews Lee Sandlin about his book Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild. It's an interesting and sometimes funny look at the Big Muddy between the Louisiana purchase and the end of the Civil War, including close looks at crime on the river, the New Madrid earthquakes, and the Sultana riverboat disaster.

Stephen Usery interviews Mark Greaney about his the second book in his Gray Man series, On Target. Burned CIA operative Court Gentry is recovering from his previous adventures and injuries and jumps back into the world of black ops by heading to Somalia and getting in the middle of the Darfur conflict, where more than a few players have an active interest.

Usery interviews best-selling author Karen Essex about her new book Dracula in Love. Straying away from her usual epic historical novels, Essex has reworked Bram Stoker's Dracula and told it from Mina Harker's point of view, and things are very different indeed.

 

Stephen Usery interviews New York Times best-selling author James Swanson. Following his 2006 hit Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Kiler, Swanson has just published Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Linclon's Corpse about the chaotic final days of the Confederacy and the unprecedented period of morning for the assassinated President of the United States of America. .

Tune into Book Talk this Saturday evening as Stephen Usery interviews Tom Franklin about his new novel Crooked Letter Crooked Letter. It's the story of two men in southeast Mississippi whose lives intersected as children, when interracial friendships were frowned upon, and now as adults, when one is the local constable and the other comes under suspicion when a teenage girl disappears. Tom Franklin on this week's Book Talk, Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. on FM89.3 WYPL.

Tune into Book Talk this Saturday evening as Stephen Usery interviews Lauren Kate, the author of the best-selling young adult Fallen series. Torment is the second novel and our heroine Lucinda is just becoming accustomed to the concept of fallen angles and demons on Earth, when she changes schools and meets a different kind of supernatural being. Lauren Kate on this week's Book Talk, Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. on FM89.3 WYPL Memphis.

 

Stephen Usery interviews Laura Lippman about her new stand-alone crime novel, I'd Know You Anywhere. It's deeply-compelling psychological tale of Eliza Benedict, the only surviving victim of a serial rapist and killer and what happens when the killer contacts her just prior to his execution. Laura Lippman on this week's Book Talk, Saturday evening at 6:00 on FM 89.3 WYPL Memphis.

Stephen Usery interviews Matt Dellinger about his new book, Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway. It's about more than concrete and asphalt; it's about the people and communities who have supported and opposed this highway that is supposed to run from the Mexican to the Canadian borders through Houston, Shreveport, Memphis, and Indianapolis.

Tune into Book talk this week as Stephen Usery interviews Heather Brewer about her best-selling young adult series of novels, The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. She's just published the fifth and final installment in the series, Twelfth Grade Kills about teenager Vlad Tod who is half-vampire, half-human and completely conflicted. Heather Brewer this week on Book Talk, Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. on FM89.3 WYPL Memphis.

Stephen Usery interviews Mona Simpson about her new novel, My Hollywood. It's the story of two women, one an Anglo-American, who along with her husband employ the other, a Filipino national, to be the nanny for their young son. Told from each woman's point of view, it investigates familial and professional obligations, as well as social class, racial perceptions, and national identity.