Club Book

Club Book Episode 203 Daniel H. Wilson

Fri, 29 May 2026 20:25:07 +0000

Daniel H. Wilson is a frequent New York Times bestseller with a long bibliography that spans speculative fiction, techno-thrillers, and science satire. Wilson’s work is informed by his education and research background, including a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. Early standouts include How to Survive a Robot Uprising (2005) and How to Build a Robot Army (2007), humorous but fact-based guides about the dangers of robotics and AI. Wilson may be best known to many for his documentary-style doomsday novel Robopocalypse (2011) and its sequel Robogenesis (2014). Subsequent work includes The Clockwork Dynasty (2017), an historical fantasy about a secret, immortal race of biological automatons whose existence has quietly shaped human history, and The Andromeda Evolution (2019), an authorized sequel to the Michael Crichton classic The Andromeda Strain. Wilson’s latest novel, Hole in the Sky, is an alien encounter story inspired by the author’s own Cherokee background. Notes The Seattle Times: “Wilson reimagines first contact through an Indigenous lens, fusing Cherokee cosmology with cutting-edge science and creeping cosmic horror.”

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Club Book Episode 202 Cleyvis Natera

Fri, 29 May 2026 20:14:46 +0000

Cleyvis Natera is a Dominican-American novelist and a poignant chronicler of the modern immigrant experience. Her award-winning literary debut, Neruda on the Park (2023), follows a grassroots push to stop gentrification in a predominantly Dominican neighborhood of New York City. Community organizer Eusebia’s campaign is made more complicated when her daughter, Luz, becomes romantically involved with a handsome developer at the company her family so vehemently opposes. Neruda on the Park earned Natera an International Latino Book Award and was selected by Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai for her Literati Book Club. Themes of home, identify, immigration, and inequality also feature heavily in Natera’s literary follow up. The Grand Paloma Resort (2025) is a thriller set at a tony Dominican resort for the ultra-rich. National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela praises: “The Grand Paloma Resort is a literary ‘The White Lotus.’ … Natera has written a sexy, sinister, and intricate tale that serves as an indictment of the ‘haves’ at the expense of the ‘have-nots’.”

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Club Book Episode 201 Sara Hashem

Fri, 29 May 2026 19:54:19 +0000

Sara Hashem is best known to readers for the chart-topping The Scorched Throne romantasy series, an Egyptian-inspired duology comprising The Jasad Heir (2023) and The Jasad Crown (2025). The Jasad Heir is set a decade after a devastating war between the militaristic nation of Nizahl and Jasad, a kingdom of magic and prosperity obliterated by the Nizahli after a treacherous betrayal. Sylvia, fugitive queen of the lost realm, lives in hiding – until a chance encounter forces her to reveal her survival to Arin, the Nizahl heir apparent. Paste Magazine praised the book as “A summer fantasy banger… A compelling fantasy saga that’s one part political treatise, one part slow-burn ‘enemies-to-lovers’ romance, and one part survival competition.” It charted high on both the USA Today and Sunday Times bestseller lists. Hashem’s latest, Where No Shadow Stays, is her first foray into young adult fiction. After a visit to her family’s ancestral mansion in El Agamy, Egypt, high schooler Mina returns to her California home with an unwelcome souvenir: a sinister entity bent on claiming a generational blood debt.

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Club Book Episode 200 Tessa Bailey

Fri, 29 May 2026 19:29:23 +0000

With more than 60 books to her name, Tessa Bailey is one of the most prolific and best loved names in contemporary romance. Bailey has a book for every lover of the genre, with series focusing on law enforcement (Line of Duty), artists (Broke and Beautiful), factory workers (Made in Jersey), construction contractors (Hot and Hammered), lifeguards (Beach Kingdom), and of course sexy vampires (Phenomenal Fate). She solidified her standing in the modern romance canon in 2021 with It Happened One Summer. A juggernaut #1 New York Times bestseller often likened to Schitt’s Creek, this first entry in the Bellinger Sister duology brings together a gruff fisherman and fun-loving socialite. Bailey’s current series, Big Shots, turns the spotlight to professional sports. The fifth and latest entry hits shelves in January. Catch Her If You Can is a play on the “marriage for convenience” trope and pairs New York Yankees pitcher Madden Donahue with high school friend Eve Mitchell – whose vocation as a burlesque club owner is sure to do nothing for Madden’s professional prospects.

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Club Book Episode 199 Carley Fortune

Fri, 29 May 2026 19:20:40 +0000

In five short years Carley Fortune has established herself as a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist and a leading light in fiction’s international romance boom. Her four books have been translated into 30 languages and sold more than three million copies. Fortune’s first novel, Every Summer After (2022), is a nostalgic tale of love and life choices told over the course of six years. Set in the picturesque Ontario hamlet of Barry’s Bay, this chart-topping literary debut introduced readers to Fortune’s hallmark: the magic of Canadian cottage country and lake life’s unique ability to foster second-chance romance. Fortune’s follow-ups, Meet Me at the Lake (2023) and This Summer Will Be Different (2024), perfected the model. Fortune’s latest novel, One Golden Summer (2025), returns to Barry’s Bay and centers Charlie Floek, a fan-favorite side character from Every Summer After. In a glowing review, E! News summarized: “Fans have been begging [Fortune] to give Charlie his happily ever after for years—and she’s fully delivered with a sweet, summer love story.”

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Club Book Episode 198 Nathan Harris

Fri, 29 May 2026 19:11:44 +0000

Literary wunderkind Nathan Harris is the author behind the instant New York Times bestseller The Sweetness of Water (2021), “a historical page-turner about social friction so powerful it ignites a whole town” (NPR). Set in the waning days of the U.S. Civil War and turbulent aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation, Harris’s debut follows the unlikely partnership and budding friendship between eccentric homesteader George Walker and newly freed Prentiss and Landry. The Sweetness of Water became an Oprah’s Book Club selection and was longlisted for both the Mann Booker Prize and Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction – a rare of honors for any writer, particularly a first-time author still in his twenties. Harris’s anticipated follow-up returns to the Reconstruction era and a South determined to return its Black citizens to bondage. In Amity, Louisiana freedman Coleman treks to Mexico in pursuit of his sister and their former enslaver. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews commends Amity as “a smartly imagined Western with a different sort of hero… with twists and turns from beginning to end.”

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Club Book Episode 197 Lee Hawkins

Fri, 29 May 2026 18:46:47 +0000

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Hawkins is an acclaimed journalist, memoirist, and podcaster. Over nearly two decades with The Wall Street Journal, Hawkins honed his skill and voice as an investigative journalist, news editor, and on-camera reporter. He gained a following with The Business of Celebrity with Lee Hawkins, a recurring series with Hollywood superstars, sports icons, and business legends that explored the entrepreneurial and financial aspects of fame. Later in his career, Hawkins pivoted to coverage of race, equity, and education, with strong emphasis on the enduring impacts of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. These are subjects with deep personal resonance for him. Hawkins explores centuries of oppression and trauma in his own lineage in I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free. I Am Nobody’s Slave is a potent blend of memoir, history, social commentary, investigative reporting, and cutting-edge genealogical science. In a glowing review, Forbes summarizes: “Hawkins confronts the lingering effects of intergenerational trauma, showing that healing is an act of defiance in itself.”

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Club Book Episode 196 Thomas Maltman

Fri, 29 May 2026 18:31:41 +0000

Thomas Maltman defies genre classification, but the award-winning author’s four novels to date each offer a grounded, unflinching look at rural and small-town life in the Upper Midwest. His first, The Night Birds, vividly captures the devastating U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 as seen through the eyes and reminiscences of German immigrants who lived alongside the Wahpekute Dakota. It amassed top literary honors from sources as varied as the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and the Western Writers of America. Maltman’s follow ups, Little Wolves (2013) and The Land (2020), return to the sweeping Minnesota prairie and cement the author’s reputation as a master of the Midwestern Gothic. His latest, Ashes to Ashes, is a worthy addition to this corpus. In it, the sleepy town of Andwhen is rocked by two impossible mysteries. At the local Ash Wednesday service, ashes applied to parishioners’ foreheads refuse to rub off. Equally baffling, local teens uncover the centuries-old remains of a Viking explorer improbably buried in a nearby meadow.

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Club Book Episode 195 Oyinkan Braithwaite

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 19:59:53 +0000

Nigerian-British novelist Oyinkan Braithwaite burst onto the literary scene in 2018 with her propulsive debut thriller My Sister, the Serial Killer. Ayoola, the book’s title character, is beautiful and charming but impulsive and ruthless – as evidenced by a string of murdered boyfriends. Dutiful older sibling Korede is an expert at cleaning up Ayoola’s messes – until both set their sights on the same handsome young doctor. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called My Sister, the Serial Killer “bitingly funny and brilliantly executed, with not a single word out of place.” It garnered Braithwaite the 2019 Anthony Award for Best First Novel and a coveted spot on TIME’s 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time, among other high honors. It has since been translated into more than 30 languages. Braithwaite’s highly anticipated follow-up, family saga Cursed Daughters, hits shelves November 4. Seemingly fated for tragedy from birth, Eniiyi is encumbered by both a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin.

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Club Book Episode 194 Marjan Kamali

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 19:57:05 +0000

Historical fiction heavyweight Marjan Kamali is a leading figure within the flourishing Iranian-American literary tradition. Her novels spotlight the lives and irrepressible spirit of Iranian women across generations, both in their native country and the global diaspora. Kamali’s maiden novel, Together Tea, follows a mismatched mother and daughter pair who emigrate to America but, despite their contrasting natures, each feels drawn back to Iran. Her follow-up, international bestseller The Stationery Shop, is a saga of love and loss set against the backdrop of the 1953 coup d’etat that overthrew Iran’s democratic government. Kamali returns to that tumultuous period in her latest book, The Lion Women of Tehran. Inseparable as children, friends Ellie and Homa are pulled apart by political upheaval and personal betrayal. Later in life, a haunted Ellie seeks out her childhood companion to confront and atone for her checkered past. Bookreporter calls The Lion Women of Tehran “a beautifully crafted and subtle exploration of love, family, friendship, ambition, betrayal, and redemption in a socio-political powder keg.”

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Club Book Episode 193 Elle Cosimano

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 19:53:54 +0000

Elle Cosimano is the pen behind the chart-topping Finlay Donovan series, madcap mysteries unlike any other. Cosimano first introduced her domestic antihero, a single parent and strung-out thriller novelist, in Finlay Donovan is Killing It (2021). In this debut outing, described by reviewers as “part screwball comedy, part morality tale,” a wronged wife mistakes Finlay for a contract killer after overhearing her outline the plot of her latest book to a literary agent. Readers have enjoyed the further adventures of Cosimano’s writer-turned-sleuth at the steady pace of a book a year. Her latest, out in March, is Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave. When a dead body turns up in their elderly neighbor’s backyard, Finlay and her best friend Vero must unravel neighborhood secrets to stay ahead of a police investigation that soon zeroes in on Finlay’s own ex-husband, Steven. Shelf Awareness praises the book – and the series as a whole – as “a celebration of female friendship and a comical exploration of what happens when life keeps imitating art.”

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Club Book Episode 192 Joshua Moehling

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 19:51:07 +0000

Minnesota’s own Joshua Moehling is a unique voice and rising star in the crowded mystery and thriller landscape. He introduced fans to Deputy Sheriff Ben Packard and the seemingly idyllic town of Sandy Lake in 2023. Notes the Associated Press: “Moehling’s debut, And There He Kept Her, plays out like something on TV, resembling Yellowstone in its small-town setting and larger-than-life drama set against captivatingly detailed scenery… It’s a great opportunity to get into a new detective series at the ground level.” Many readers did exactly that. Both And There He Kept Her and Packard’s sophomore outing, Where the Dead Sleep (2024), were contenders for the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ+ Mystery. Moehling’s latest thriller, A Long Time Gone, hinges around the haunting disappearance of Packard’s own brother – a cold case that cracks wide open after decades of questions and speculation. First Clue Reviews raves: “The third in the series is far and away the best… It’s amazing how Moehling keeps all these narrative balls in the air, but even more amazing is how they eventually come together.”

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Club Book Episode 191 Jon Hickey

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:51:27 +0000

Jon Hickey is a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Chippewa Indians (Anishinaabe) and author behind the 2025 literary breakout Big Chief. Set on the fictional Passage Rouge Reservation in northern Wisconsin, Big Chief follows Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, as he attempts to clinch reelection for Tribal President Mack Beck. Political control of the Nation, and with it the lucrative Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel, is contested by a group of intrepid activists that include campaign manager Layla – Mitch’s estranged sister and Mack’s former love interest. Hickey’s themes and tone have earned favorable comparisons to modern classics like The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich and There, There by Tommy Orange. Among a host of glowing early reviews, fellow novelist David Heska Wanbli Weiden opines: “We’ve been waiting for the great Native American political novel, and here it is.” Rare for a debut release, Big Chief charted high on Most Anticipated Books of 2025 lists for publications as varied as The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to LitHub.

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Club Book Episode 190 Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:27:39 +0000

New York Times bestselling author Silvia Moreno-Garcia masterfully blends elements of horror, fantasy, noir, and historical fiction. Her distinctive style gained a wide audience with Mexican Gothic, winner of the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel in 2021 and one of TIME’s 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time. Moreno-Garcia’s follow ups include The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022), a reimagining of the H.G. Wells classic set in Yucatán, and The Seventh Veil of Salome (2024), a dual-timeline story that interweaves the biblical story of Salome with that of a Mexican actress playing her in a big-budget Hollywood film. Moreno-Garcia’s latest novel hit shelves in July. The Bewitching is a multigenerational saga about the primordial evil forces that have inspired witches in popular fiction. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly raves: “With this equally spooky and sophisticated horror novel, bestseller Moreno-Garcia proves she’s as adept playing in the tropes of dark academia as any of the other subgenres she’s tried on… It’s as unsettling as it is unputdownable.”

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Club Book Episode 189 Nickolas Butler

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:17:00 +0000

Nickolas Butler is the internationally bestselling author of critically acclaimed novels like The Hearts of Men (2017) and Little Faith (2019). His breakout debut, Shotgun Lovesongs (2014), remains among his most enduring works to date. It centers around five lifelong friends who take wildly diverging paths in life but remain indelibly linked both to one another and to the small Wisconsin community they called home. Butler’s two most recent novels build on the author’s literary fiction bona fides with elements of suspense and romance, respectively. Godspeed (2021) follows three struggling construction partners who agree to build a lavish mansion for a mysterious client on an impossible deadline. The Financial Times calls it “an effective blend of rural fable and snow-lashed Rocky Mountain noir… The set-up is pure Hitchcock.” Butler’s latest, A Forty Year Kiss, is a poignant story of second chances and rekindled love. In a glowing review, Library Journal opines: “This is a love story, not only between Charlie and Vivian but also between the novel and the Midwest.”

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Club Book Episode 188 Hanif Abdurraqib

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 18:40:17 +0000

Hanif Abdurraqib is an incisive poet, accomplished essayist, and versatile cultural critic. His acclaimed poetry collections include The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (2016), a raw meditation on the dangers of being young and Black in the American Midwest, and A Fortune for Your Disaster (2019), which explores the themes of loss and rebuilding after heartbreak. Music aficionados may know Abdurraqib best for his essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, a modern cultural touchstone that led NPR to herald him as “one of the most essential voices of his generation.” His follow-ups include Go Ahead in the Rain (2019), an homage to the seminal rap group A Tribe Called Quest, and National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance (2021). His latest book, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, straddles and defies literary genres. Publishers Weekly lauds: “The narrative works as if by alchemy, forging personal anecdotes, sports history, and cultural analysis into a bracing contemplation of the relationship between sports teams and their communities.”

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Club Book Episode 187 Jesse Q. Sutanto

Thu, 22 May 2025 15:46:43 +0000

Internationally acclaimed author Jesse Q. Sutanto writes across genres and for all ages. Her fiction to date includes the middle grade Theo Tan series and several young adult novels. The latter include revenge-thriller The Obsession (2021), campus mystery The New Girl (2022), and laugh-out-loud rom com Well That Was Unexpected (2022). All draw inspiration from the author’s own Chinese-Indonesian heritage and life spent between Jakarta and Singapore. Adult readers may know Sutanto best for break-the-mold detective stories like Dial A for Aunties and Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, both of which have been optioned for screen adaptations by major studios. Sutanto and her Chinese shopkeeper-turned-sleuth Vera Wong won the Edgar Award for Best Original Paperback and Audie Award for Mystery in 2024. Wong will be back this April in Sutanto’s newest release, Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man). The Seattle Times raves: “Sutanto proves once again that no crime — or nosy auntie — is too big to handle.”

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Club Book Episode 186 David Housewright

Wed, 21 May 2025 15:36:48 +0000

David Housewright is one of Minnesota’s best-known and most prolific mystery writers. His breakout debut, Penance, marks its thirtieth anniversary in 2025. Penance introduced readers to private investigator Holland Taylor, the first of Housewright’s indelible detective heroes, and won Housewright the Mystery Writers of America’s prestigious Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1996. Practice to Deceive (1997), the sophomore outing for Holland Taylor, garnered Housewright his first Minnesota Book Award. Housewright is also the pen behind Rushmore “Mac” McKenzie, a Saint Paul cop-turned-investigator with an acerbic wit and an independent fortune which allows him to pursue cases out of a sense of justice, rather than financial gain. Two installments in the ongoing Mac McKenzie series, Jelly’s Gold (2009) and Curse of the Jade Lily (2012), also won the Minnesota Book Award. Housewright’s latest page-turners include Man in the Water (2024), a whodunit that picks up with a body but no crime scene, motive, or suspects – and in fact, no proof of murder at all.

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Club Book Episode 185 Alison Espach

Tue, 20 May 2025 22:04:55 +0000

Fiction phenom Alison Espach is the author behind The Wedding People, a genre-straddling novel which holds company with the most anticipated and bestselling books of 2024. When newly minted divorcée Phoebe Stone arrives alone to the posh Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, she finds herself an accidental wedding crasher. Surprise follows surprise as Phoebe strikes up a unique rapport with bride Lila, who needs a confidante every bit as much as her last-minute bridesmaid. People calls it “a feel-good testament to the life-altering magic of chance meetings.” Early honors for The Wedding People included selection as a TODAY Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club pick, as a Barnes and Noble Book Club Pick, and as the #1 Indie Next Pick for August 2024. It has been published in more than 20 countries to date. Alison Espach’s prior novels include Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, a Chicago Tribune and NPR “Best Book of 2022,” as well as The Adults (2011), a New York Times Editor’s Choice.

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Club Book Episode 184 Ann Napolitano

Tue, 20 May 2025 21:56:06 +0000

Chart-topping novelist Ann Napolitano is the author behind some of the decade’s best contemporary fiction. Early career standouts include Within Arm’s Reach (2004), her first in a succession of poignant family dramas, as well as A Good Hard Look (2011), a fictionalized biography of Southern icon Flannery O’Connor. Napolitano reached a still wider audience with Dear Edward (2020), an instant New York Times bestseller and TODAY Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club pick. It was included on best books of the year lists from publications as varied as The Washington Post, Woman’s World, and LibraryReads. Centered on Edward Adler, the sole survivor of a plane crash, Dear Edward is the basis for an Apple TV+ drama of the same name. Napolitano’s follow-up, Hello Beautiful, is “a family drama with echoes of classics like Little Women but characters that are distinctly written.” This loving homage to Louisa May Alcott’s magnus opus is a must-read exploration of sisterhood, betrayal, and the ties that bind us. Hello Beautiful holds a unique distinction as Oprah’s 100th Book Club pick.

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Club Book Episode 183 Mai Corland

Tue, 20 May 2025 21:47:51 +0000

Mai Corland is a Korean American author, born in Seoul and adopted in New York. She is a Rollins College and University of Miami School of Law alumna. Her debut adult romantasy novel Five Broken Blades, the first of a trilogy from Red Tower Books, was a USA Today, Indie Booksellers List, Sunday Times, and instant New York Times bestseller. It was also the May pick for Book of the Month; an Amazon, Indigo, and Apple Books Best Book of 2024; a Book Page honoree; and a Goodreads Choice finalist for favorite 2024 fantasy. Her follow up, Four Ruined Realms, hit shelves in January 2025, with the series finale Three Shattered Souls expected later this year. Mai also writes award-winning children’s and young adult books under the name Meredith Ireland. She resides in New York with her children, partner, and a county fair goldfish who will probably outlive them all.

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Club Book Episode 182 Samantha Irby

Tue, 20 May 2025 21:26:04 +0000

Samantha Irby is a comedian and a New York Times bestselling essayist and memoirist. Her fresh, honest brand of humor first came to the attention of readers through her immensely popular blog Bitches Gotta Eat. Irby’s first essay collection, Meaty, adapted and expanded her most popular blog entries – and added some new ones, to boot. Topics truly run the gamut: from personal reflections on the author’s failed relationships and on being black in America, to a ribald take on her struggles with Crohn’s disease, to an ode to tacos. Irby’s follow-ups, We Are Never Meeting In Real Life (2017) and Lambda Literary Award winner Wow, No Thank You (2020), cemented her reputation as a comedic voice like no other. Irby’s latest collection is Quietly Hostile (2023). In the words of Chicago Reader, “the Midwest’s most loveable misanthrope triumphantly returns” with essays that are equal parts raw and sidesplitting. Subjects range from her childhood traumas and adulthood anxieties to pop culture obsessions and her own failed TV pilot.

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Club Book Episode 181 Alafair Burke

Tue, 20 May 2025 21:20:52 +0000

Fans and critics alike credit Alafair Burke with some of the most believable psychological thrillers and police procedurals in modern fiction. Her hallmark authenticity draws heavily from Burke’s professional background as a professor of law and former deputy district attorney in Portland. Her literary debut, Judgment Calls (2003), introduced mystery aficionados to Samantha Kincaid – a lawyer in Multnomah County, Oregon’s drug and vice division with bona fides markedly similar to Burke’s own. Burke’s impressive backlist also includes the five-entry NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher series, which the New York Post calls “perfect for Law & Order fanatics who want some ripped-from-the-headlines intrigue.” Burke is also co-author – alongside mystery titan Mary Higgins Clark – of the Under Suspicion series. Over the past decade Alafair Burke has also devoted considerable time to standalone thrillers. Her latest, The Note, follows three friends on a Hamptons beach vacation that goes terribly wrong. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews raves: “Engrossing… Burke builds an intricate structure of secrets layered within secrets, revealed for maximum suspense.”

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Club Book Episode 180 Sujata Massey

Tue, 20 May 2025 21:17:42 +0000

Sujata Massey is an undisputed master of both mystery and historical fiction. In the words of fellow mystery heavyweight Janet Evanovich, Massey “blasted her way into fiction with The Salaryman’s Wife, a cross-cultural mystery of manners with a decidedly sexy edge.” Her literary debut won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel in 1997 and introduced a legion of readers to the first of her two indomitable heroines. Japanese American twenty-something Rei Shimura is an English teacher and antiques dealer by day – and an amateur sleuth by night. Her unique background provides valuable linguistic and cultural insights which allow her to find clues and crack cases that stump Japanese authorities. Shimura has appeared across eleven novels to date. Sujata Massey is also the pen behind the popular Perveen Mistry series. Modeled on a historic Parsi attorney who practiced law in the 1920s, Mistry is the first female lawyer in cosmopolitan Mumbai – and one of the first ever in India. The Mistress of Bhatia House (2023), the fourth and latest installment, garnered Massey her third Agatha Award.

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Club Book Episode 179 Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:54:56 +0000

National Book Award finalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the author behind the acclaimed 2020 exposé The Undocumented Americans. Born in Ecuador and raised in New York, Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing career began while a senior at Harvard, where she was soon to be among the first undocumented students to graduate from the elite university. During the national debate around the DREAM Act, she penned an anonymous essay in The Daily Beast titled “DREAM Act: I’m an Illegal Immigrant at Harvard.” This vulnerable, vital, and ultimately viral piece directly inspired The Undocumented Americans. In this eye-opening book, described as a blend of memoir and reporting, Cornejo Villavicencio travels the nation to profile a diverse cross-section of her fellow undocumented Americans. The author’s anticipated follow-up, Catalina, is a work of fiction – at least in part. Catalina is an undocumented student from Queens who gains admittance to Harvard. With it comes entry into a new, complex world of prestigious internships, posh parties, and secret societies.

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Club Book Episode 178 Lisa See

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:53:18 +0000

Lisa See is best known for her poignant historical fiction, much of which spotlights the experiences of Chinese immigrants who are so often relegated to the margins. Book club favorites include Shanghai Girls and its sequel Dreams of Joy, which debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list. USA Today praised the duology for “exploring the bonds of sisterhood while powerfully evoking the often nightmarish American immigrant experience.” See’s fictive scenarios in these and other novels are more than matched by the harrowing saga she recounts in her deeply personal memoir On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family. Lisa See’s latest novel, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, recreates the trailblazing career of Tan Yunxian, a 15th-century female physician who defied the odds – and societal norms – to become one of the Ming Dynasty’s foremost medical practitioners. Simon & Schuster re-released See’s latest chart-topper in paperback in June 2024.

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Club Book Episode 177 Stephen Graham Jones

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:50:10 +0000

Stephen Graham Jones is one of speculative fiction’s bestselling authors and is beloved for his unique, potent blend of horror and cutting social commentary. His chart-topping novels to date include the modern classic The Only Good Indians, which tracks four childhood friends stalked by a sinister secret – and something else – on a Blackfeet reservation in Montana. (Jones is himself an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe.) Both The Only Good Indians and Jones’ novella Night of the Mannequins, released the same year, received the Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award in their respective categories. His latest novels include I Was A Teenage Slasher, an homage to horror tropes where the killer takes center stage, as well as the thrilling finale to his The Indian Lake Trilogy. The Angel of Indian Lake concludes the saga started with My Heart is a Chainsaw and continued in Don’t Fear the Reaper. Paste Magazine praises it as “a determinedly feminist reexamination of horror’s Final Girl.”

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Club Book Episode 176 Yangsze Choo

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:48:13 +0000

Yangsze Choo is the author behind some of this decade’s most original historical fantasy. Her work is often inspired by folklore and infused with the paranormal. Such is the case with her 2013 debut, The Ghost Bride. Publishers Weekly praised: “Choo’s clear and charming style creates an alternate reality where the stakes are just as high as in the real world, combining grounded period storytelling with the supernatural.” The Ghost Bride is the basis for Netflix’s acclaimed Taiwanese-Malaysian drama of the same name. Choo’s follow-up, The Night Tiger, is set in 1930s colonial Malaysia. In it, apprentice dressmaker Ji Lin and orphan boy Ren become tangled in a mystery involving weretigers, terrifying beasts who wear the skin of humans. Reese Witherspoon selected The Night Tiger as the April 2019 pick for her popular Reese’s Book Club. Shapeshifters of a different kind loom large in Choo’s latest release, The Fox Wife. In a glowing review, Time recommended the book as “an enchanting tale of murder, revenge, and the power of a mother’s love.”

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Club Book Episode 175 Jayne Anne Phillips

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:57:49 +0000

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jayne Anne Phillips has been a defining voice in American literature for nearly half a century. A recent review lauded her 1979 debut, Black Tickets, as “a short story collection that remains so compellingly singular that it ought to function as a handbook for short story writers.” It won the inaugural and prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Phillips’ later work cemented her legacy as a writer who uses fiction as a tool to give voice to the downtrodden, marginalized, and forgotten. Works of special note include first novel Machine Dreams (1984), Shelter (1994), National Book Award finalist Lark and Termite (2009), and Quiet Dell (2013). All are period pieces set in the author’s native West Virginia. Her latest novel, Night Watch, exhibits these and other trademarks of Phillips’ craft. Set in a backwoods asylum in the bleak, near-apocalyptic aftermath of the Civil War, Night Watch garnered a host of literary honors, including the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Club Book Episode 174 Matt Goldman

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:55:22 +0000

Mystery novelist Matt Goldman started his writing career as an Emmy Award winning screenwriter and producer. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld handpicked Goldman as a founding member of the creative team behind sitcom juggernaut Seinfeld. Goldman’s later television credits include work on Ellen and The New Adventures of Old Christine. Goldman published his first novel, Gone to Dust, in 2017. It launched the Minnesota-set and New York Times bestselling Nils Shapiro series. The fourth and latest installment, Dead West, shifts locales to Hollywood and makes gainful use of the author’s first-hand knowledge of the larger-than-life characters drawn to the limelight of show business. Goldman’s newest mystery, Still Waters, is a standalone story. In it, estranged siblings Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom return to their family-run resort on Leech Lake to investigate a relative’s suspicious death. Publishers Weekly notes: “Goldman’s fans will eat this up. Three-dimensional characters and authentic dialogue elevate the mystery premise.”

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Club Book Episode 173 Jasmine Guillory

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:50:23 +0000

Rom-com queen Jasmine Guillory burst onto the romance scene in 2018 with The Wedding Date, the first installment in her loosely connected book series of the same name. Reese Witherspoon selected Guillory’s follow-up, The Proposal, as the February 2019 read for Reese’s Book Club. After third book hit shelves, Cosmopolitan declared: “Everything Jasmine Guillory touches turns to gold, and The Wedding Party is no exception.” Guillory’s more recent releases include By the Book, part of Penguin Random House’s fairytale-inspired Meant to Be series, which features the talents of Guillory alongside fellow romance favorites like Christina Lauren and Zoraida Córdova. By the Book offers a modern spin on Beauty and the Beast. Her latest novel, Drunk on Love, is set in California wine country. This steamy story pairs work-to-live winery manager Margot with Luke, a Silicon Valley dropout who has just returned home to Napa. Booklist opines: “Suffused with tenderness and delight, this is Guillory’s best book yet.”

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Club Book Episode 172 Emiko Jean

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:30:47 +0000

Emiko Jean is an accomplished young adult writer, best known for the New York Times bestselling Tokyo Ever After and its sequel Tokyo Dreaming. Described as The Princess Diaries for a new generation, Jean’s series follows Japanese-American teenager Izumi Tanaka, a self-professed outsider who discovers that her long-absent father is the Crown Prince of Japan. Reese Witherspoon selected Tokyo Ever After as a Reese’s Book Club pick in 2021. Jean’s adult debut, Mika in Real Life, centers around a directionless, down-on-her-luck woman who is unexpectedly contacted by the daughter she gave up for adoption. Marie Claire calls it “a truly poignant coming-of-age story that deals with race, adoption, and bodily autonomy.” Mika in Real Life was a Good Morning America Book Club selection in August 2022. Jean’s follow-up is a psychological thriller, The Return of Ellie Black. Detective Chelsey Calhoun is often tasked with finding missing girls but is thunderstruck when young Ellie turns up mysteriously in the woods – a full two years after her sudden disappearance.

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Club Book Episode 171 Melanie Benjamin

Fri, 10 May 2024 01:46:50 +0000

Melanie Benjamin is an acknowledged master of historical fiction, not to mention one of the genre’s bestselling authors. Benjamin’s growing collection of work profiles topics ranging from the Nazi occupation of Paris, to silent movie starlet Mary Pickford, to the real-life inspiration behind Alice in Wonderland. Her most popular novels to date include The Aviator’s Wife (2012), the story of the aviatrix spouse of Charles Lindbergh; The Swans of Fifth Avenue (2016), about the headline-making relationship between famed author Truman Capote and a New York socialite; and The Children’s Blizzard (2021), which breathes new life into an infamous 1888 blizzard that still holds distinction as one of the most deadly natural disasters to ever hit the Great Plains. Her latest, California Golden, turns the spotlight to Malibu in the 1960s – and the formative but factious genesis of California surf culture. Booklist touts: “Benjamin’s novel shows what the sun-kissed highlight reels so often missed.”

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Club Book Episode 170 Alice Winn

Fri, 10 May 2024 01:44:03 +0000

Alice Winn is the pen behind one of 2023’s most talked about literary debuts. In Memoriam is a moving story of first love set against the cataclysmic backdrop of World War I. When young Henry Gaunt enlists in the British Army to dispel rumors of his family’s pro-German leanings, boarding school classmate Sidney Ellwood is quick to follow him to the front line. Harrowing experiences in the trenches nurture a forbidden love. In a starred review, Booklist raves that: “Winn’s finely accomplished debut novel is a rare thing: an intoxicating romance and an impossible-to-put-down war story in one. She captures the war as it looked, sounded, and smelled; but the ultimate death-defying acts here are in literature, breathtaking bravery, and love.” Among other high honors, In Memoriam received the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize in 2022 and the Waterstones Novel of the Year Award in 2023.

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Club Book Episode 169 Kiley Reid

Thu, 09 May 2024 02:13:27 +0000

Kiley Reid burst onto the literary scene in 2020 with Such a Fun Age, a fast-paced social satire about privilege in America. The New York Times bestselling debut hinges on the layered relationship between newly minted college graduate Emira Tucker and Alix Chamberlain, a wealthy businesswoman who hires Emira as a babysitter. Such a Fun Age was longlisted for the Booker Prize, selected as a Reese’s Book Club Pick, and charted high on Best Book of the Year lists from sources as varied as The Washington Post and Good Housekeeping. Reid’s “masterful, nuanced take on racial biases and class divides” (Entertainment Weekly) is on display once again in Come and Get It. Her sardonic sophomore work follows enterprising writing professor Agatha Paul and dormitory assistant Millie Cousins. In service to an unusual, clandestine writing project, Millie allows Agatha to eavesdrop on her wards through a hole in the dormitory walls. Notes Publisher’s Weekly: “In this blistering send-up of academia… every page sparkles with sharp analysis of [Reid’s] characters.” It hit shelves in January.

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Club Book Episode 168 Cristina Henríquez

Wed, 08 May 2024 21:21:16 +0000

Cristina Henríquez is best known to many as the author behind the modern classic The Book of Unknown Americans (2014). In it, Mexican teenager Maribel suffers a traumatic brain injury, forcing the Rivera family to move to the United States to secure medical care. A budding relationship with a neighbor boy, Panamanian immigrant Mayor Toro, sets in motion a series of events with profound repercussions for all involved. The Washington Post lauds The Book of Unknown Americans as “a ringing paean to love in general: to the love between man and wife, parent and child, outsider and newcomer, pilgrims and promised land.” Henríquez’s own Panamanian heritage and experiences also loom large in much of the author’s other work, including the short story collection Come Together, Fall Apart (2007) and novel The World in Half (2010). Her latest, The Great Divide, hits shelves in March 2024. It centers around the decade-long construction of the Panama Canal and the unsung workers who made this herculean feat of engineering possible.

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Club Book Episode 167 Nita Prose

Wed, 08 May 2024 15:38:16 +0000

Fiction phenom Nita Prose is the author behind the #1 New York Times bestselling mystery The Maid. Readers and critics alike praise Prose’s mastery of plot and place, but reserve greatest acclaim for her memorable protagonist, “realistically different heroine” Molly Gray (NPR). Molly is neurodivergent. Her unique lens on the world proves invaluable for the young maid when a real estate magnate turns up dead at her five-star hotel – and Molly herself becomes a prime suspect. The Maid won Prose the prestigious Anthony and Barry awards for debut novel, among many other industry honors. It also holds distinction as a Good Morning America Book Club pick and as one of only a handful of mystery debuts from the past decade to sell more than one million copies worldwide. Oscar nominee Florence Pugh is set to star soon in a much-anticipated screen treatment. Nita Prose – and Molly Gray – returned in November 2023 with The Mystery Guest.

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Club Book Episode 166 John Scalzi

Wed, 08 May 2024 03:24:33 +0000

Science fiction superstar John Scalzi has gained a large and loyal following through what Kirkus Reviews calls his “insufferably good, trademark brand of fun yet think-y sci-fi adventure.” His debut, Old Man’s War (2005), won Scalzi speculative fiction’s Astounding (formerly John W. Campbell) Award for Best New Writer and launched the New York Times bestselling series of the same name. Scalzi also penned the Locus Award winning Interdependency trilogy and a host of popular standalone novels. The latter includes Redshirts, winner of the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and The Kaiju Preservation Society, winner of the 2023 Locus Award and other high science fiction honors. Scalzi’s latest novel, Starter Villain, centers on an unassuming substitute teacher who unexpectedly inherits a long-lost uncle’s supervillain business – complete with island volcano lair. Publishers Weekly raves that Starter Villain is “a breezy and highly entertaining genre send-up [which] subverts classic supervillain tropes with equal measures of tongue-in-cheek humor and common sense.”

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Club Book Episode 165 Tommy Orange

Wed, 08 May 2024 02:06:19 +0000

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Club Book Episode 164 ReShonda Tate

Tue, 07 May 2024 20:35:22 +0000

ReShonda Tate is as versatile as she is prolific. In total, the bestselling author has published more than 50 books to date. Tate runs a wide gamut from contemporary romance, to teen fiction, to nonfiction, and even poetry. Standouts include her sophomore novel Let the Church Say Amen, which was adapted for the screen by producer Queen Latifah and actor-turned-director Regina King. Tate turns her prodigious talents to historical fiction in 2024 with The Queen of Sugar Hill, which spotlights the largely unknown story of Hollywood actress Hattie McDaniel. Best known for her portrayal of “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind, McDaniel holds notable distinction as the first African American woman to win an Academy Award. Unfortunately for her, that historic Oscar would put her in the crosshairs of controversy for the rest of her life. In an early review, historical fiction mainstay Jillian Cantor raves that “The Queen of Sugar Hill is an impeccably researched biographical novel… brimming with heart, heartbreak, and resilience.”

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Club Book Episode 163 Tracy K. Smith

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 19:59:57 +0000

Tracy K. Smith has published five well-received poetry collections to date and served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-2019. Her sophomore release, Duende, received the coveted James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Smith cemented her growing reputation with Life on Mars, which “blends pop culture, history, elegy, anecdote, and sociopolitical commentary to illustrate the weirdness of contemporary living” (Publishers Weekly). It won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Smith branched into memoir in 2015 with National Book Award finalist Ordinary Light. Her latest project is To Free The Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. Based on scholarship and the author’s own experience and earnest soul-searching, Smith’s latest “etches a portrait of where we find ourselves as a society four hundred years into the American experiment” and offers a blueprint for “fulfilling our duties to each other and to the future” (Knopf Doubleday). It debuts November 7, 2023.

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Club Book Episode 162 Elizabeth Acevedo

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 19:53:57 +0000

Elizabeth Acevedo is a Dominican-American author and spoken word artist. She is best known for her 2018 young adult novel-in-verse The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Acevedo’s follow-ups, With the Fire on High (2019) and Clap When You Land (2020), solidified Acevedo’s standing as one of the foremost YA writers of her generation. She also holds distinction as the Young People’s Poet Laureate for 2022-2023, a National Poetry Slam champion, and a frequent TED Talk presenter. Family Lore, the author’s first novel for adults, hits shelves in August. Flor Marte has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. When she asks her family to schedule a wake – a wake without a death – Flor’s three sisters are left to wonder if the clairvoyant has seen her own death or is driven by other motives. Spanning the three days prior to this most unusual family gathering, Family Lore traces the lives (and uncovers the long-held secrets) of all four Marte sisters.

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Club Book Episode 161 Fiona Davis

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 19:50:46 +0000

Fiona Davis is a historical fiction mainstay beloved by readers for her “winning formula of showcasing the stories behind New York City landmarks” (USA Today). Her seven bestselling novels to date include Good Morning America Book Club pick The Lions of Fifth Avenue, a “delightful mystery delving into the history of New York Public Library” (Publishers Weekly). The Magnolia Palace spotlights Gilded Age mansions and the secrets held within their walls. The Masterpiece breathes new life into a defunct and now all-but-forgotten art school once housed improbably within Grand Central Terminal. In her latest novel, The Spectacular, Davis turns her attention to the equally iconic Radio City Music Hall. Nineteen-year-old ingénue Marion Brooks seeks a coveted position with world-famous precision dance troupe The Rockettes, unaware that her ambitions will pull her in the middle of a city-wide dragnet to capture an elusive terrorist. The Spectacular hit shelves in June.

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Club Book Episode 160 Curtis Chin

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 18:18:28 +0000

Curtis Chin is an award-winning filmmaker and activist. He also holds distinction as the co-founder and first executive director behind New York’s prestigious Asian American Writers’ Workshop. His anticipated debut memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, hits shelves this October. Chin’s family restaurant, Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, occupied a special niche in 1980s Detroit. During this tumultuous period Chung’s clientele reflected the growing diversity of the Motor City – all seeking a safe oasis and the simple pleasure of sitting down to a home-cooked meal. Chung’s also looms large in Chin’s own coming-of-age narrative. In a rave review, novelist Jamie Ford summarizes: “Coming out and coming of age are hard enough for the average teen, but when they’re in a Chinese American family, in a city in conflict with itself, it becomes an epic journey of self-discovery.”

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Club Book Episode 159 Nicole Chung

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 16:38:09 +0000

Nicole Chung grew up as a transracial adoptee – and one of the few people of color in her Oregon hometown. Her lifelong journey of self-discovery and poignant, candid writing on the subject have positioned Chung as a singular voice in memoir. In her 2018 debut, All You Can Ever Know, Chung shares her search for her biological family – a quest she undertook while starting a family of her own. Chung’s follow-up, A Living Remedy, focuses on the author’s relationships with her adoptive parents, her upbringing in their working-class family, and her attempts to care for her mother and father from afar while also parenting her own children. After her father died young from diabetes and kidney disease, followed by her mother from cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chung gained a new perspective on the wealth disparities and healthcare inequities entrenched in our society. Notes The Washington Post: “Chung explores this difficult emotional terrain while delivering a powerful social commentary posing vital questions around access to medical care and the meaning of home and family.”

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Club Book Episode 158 Jacqueline Holland

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 16:15:30 +0000

Jacqueline Holland is the pen behind the chart-topping novel The God of Endings. Publications as many and varied as Book Riot, B&N Reads, LitHub, Polygon, Library Journal and E! singled out this literary debut as one of the most anticipated fiction titles of 2023. The God of Endings follows Collette LeSange, headmistress of an elite fine arts school in upstate New York. She is talented, affable and – unbeknownst to her students and colleagues – immortal. Collette has kept her nature a secret (and a growing bloodlust at bay) for 150 years, until the arrival of a gifted student from a troubled home threatens to reveal all. NPR praises The God of Endings as a refreshing take on the vampire genre: “an atmospheric vampire tale that wrestles with existential questions of being and philosophy, rather than bloodlust and gore.” It became an instant favorite with fans of Anne Rice and V.E. Schwab.

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Club Book Episode 157 Sadeqa Johnson

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 15:53:08 +0000

Book club phenom Sadeqa Johnson has authored five novels to date. Her early books, including Love in a Carry-on Bag and And Then There Was Me, won the Phyllis Wheatley Award and National Book Club honors, among other distinctions. Johnson branched out from contemporary fiction and reached a still wider audience with Yellow Wife, lauded by Publishers Weekly as “a powerful, unflinching account of determination in the face of oppression.” Born into slavery, light-skinned Pheby Delores Brown is forced to bear children to and manage a slave dealer’s household. This precarious position pits Pheby’s hunger for freedom against the maternal drive to stay with and protect her children. Johnson’s newest novel, The House of Eve, tells the interconnected stories of two ambitious Black women who struggle with the consequences of unplanned pregnancies in 1950s America. It was an instant bestseller and February 2023 selection for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club.

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Club Book Episode 156 Rebecca F. Kuang

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 02:51:36 +0000

Speculative fiction superstar Rebecca F. Kuang is the author behind the #1 New York Times bestselling The Poppy War trilogy. Described by Publishers Weekly as “an ambitious fantasy reimagining of Asian history populated by martial artists, philosopher-generals, and gods,” Kuang’s early masterwork spans three installments: The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic, and The Burning God. Kuang’s first standalone, Babel, debuted to a warm reception in 2022. Set in an alternate universe version of Victorian England, Babel envisions a British Empire fueled by a unique form of alchemy. A specially trained corps of linguists harnesses the innate magic of language and translation to power everything from medicine to transportation. According to the Oxford Review of Books, “the true magic of Kuang’s novel lies in its ability to be both rigorously academic and consistently welcoming to the reader.” In addition to her skyrocketing fiction career, Kuang is an accomplished translator and scholar pursuing a Ph.D. from Yale University.

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Club Book Episode 155 Joshua Bennett

Wed, 31 May 2023 20:57:01 +0000

Joshua Bennett, PhD, is a prize-winning poet and spoken word artist. He gained critical acclaim in 2016 with The Sobbing School, winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Bennett’s follow-ups, Owed (2020) and The Study of Human Life (2022), solidified his standing as one of his generation’s most resonant and needed poetic voices. In a starred review for Owed, Publisher’s Weekly raves “these powerful, crisp poems celebrate the complexity, joy, and heartbreak of the Black experience in America.” Bennett’s newest release is Spoken Word: A Cultural History. In it, he tracks the origins and broad impact of a resilient art form that has long centered voices and experiences outside the dominant cultural narrative. In addition to his writing, Bennett is a professor at Dartmouth College and founding editor of Minor Notes, a Penguin Classics book series dedicated to the rediscovery of underappreciated Black poets from the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Club Book Episode 154 Alka Joshi

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 17:01:03 +0000

Alka Joshi moved to the United States at age nine, but the author’s native Rajasthan, India looms large in her chart-topping historical fiction. Many readers know her best for The Henna Artist (2020), the first entry in The Jaipur Trilogy. It follows dye artisan and herbal healer Lakshmi Shastri, who flees an abusive marriage and attempts to earn a livelihood in the vibrant city of Jaipur. Set in the unsettled decade after the country’s independence, “The Henna Artist is a fabulous glimpse into Indian culture of the 1950s… rich in detail and bright with tastes and textures” (Bookpage). Reese Witherspoon selected Joshi’s debut for her Hello Sunshine Book Club, and the book will soon have a second life as a Netflix original series. The Perfumist of Paris, Joshi’s much-anticipated conclusion to The Jaipur Trilogy, hit shelves in March. In an early review, historical fiction mainstay Kate Quinn raves: “Evoking India and France with equal beauty, this is Alka Joshi’s best book yet!”

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Club Book Episode 153 Ali Hazelwood

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 17:53:36 +0000

Ali Hazelwood holds a doctorate in neuroscience and a faculty position at a prestigious university. She also moonlights as one of the most popular romance authors writing today. Hazelwood’s distinctive brand centers on women in STEM fields and academia. She burst onto the literary scene in 2021 with The Love Hypothesis. Fellow romance writer Christina Lauren calls Hazelwood’s debut “contemporary romance’s unicorn – the elusive marriage of deeply brainy and delightfully escapist.” The Love Hypothesis has already been optioned for a screen treatment. Hazelwood’s next release, Love on the Brain (2022), became an instant New York Times bestseller, Indie Next Pick, and #1 LibraryReads selection. In a starred review, Booklist praised: “Snappy dialogue with witty zingers makes this tender enemies-to-lovers story, set at NASA, an unforgettable follow-up.” Hazelwood’s latest book, Loathe to Love You, collects three ‘STEMinist’ novellas released separately in 2022: Under One Roof, Stuck with You, and Below Zero.

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Club Book Episode 152 Oscar Hokeah

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 22:26:17 +0000

Oscar Hokeah is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. He also proudly claims Mexican ancestry on his father’s side. Hokeah’s award-winning fiction explores intertribal identity and multicultural heritage. He honed his craft at the prestigious Institute of American Indian Arts, and his prose can be found in American Short Fiction, World Literature Today, and Literary Hub. Algonquin Books released Hokeah’s first novel, Calling For a Blanket Dance, to wide acclaim in July 2022. Like the author himself, intrepid protagonist Ever Geimausaddle comes from a family that is part Native American, part Mexican. “Drawing on a wealth of Indigenous tradition, Calling For a Blanket Dance underscores the quiet strength that arises when a family is true to its identity – and the too-common tragedy that results when identity is suppressed” (The Millions). In addition to his burgeoning literary career, Hokeah works with Cherokee Nation Indian Child Welfare in his hometown of Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

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Club Book Episode 151 Janie Chang

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 21:42:49 +0000

Janie Chang’s bestselling historical fiction is inspired by her Chinese ancestry, as well as that culture’s rich folkloric traditions. She gained a loyal following with Three Souls (2013) and Dragon Springs Road (2017), and reached a still wider audience with the 2020 release of The Library of Legends. Set against the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, this book club favorite centers on a group of student refugees who flee Nanjing with a priceless treasure: a 500-year-old compendium of ancient myths known as The Library of Legends. Chang’s newest novel, The Porcelain Moon, is set in France in the waning days of World War I. It spotlights the untold story of 140,000 Chinese workers brought to Europe as non-combatant labor during The Great War. Fellow historical fiction writer Kate Quinn lauds: “The Porcelain Moon exhibits Chang’s signature trademarks – lyrical prose, deftly-drawn characters, and skillful excavation of little-known history – to give us a rare jewel in a sea of wartime fiction.”

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Club Book Episode 150 Will Schwalbe

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 20:38:46 +0000

Will Schwalbe is an acclaimed memoirist and entrepreneur. Amateur chefs may know him best as the mind behind Cookstr, the world’s largest free recipe database. Cookstr is owned today by Macmillan Publishing, where Schwalbe is now executive vice president of editorial development and content innovation. Schwalbe’s authorial debut, Send: Why People Email So Badly and How To Do It Better, first hit shelves in 2007 and is considered a modern classic among business professionals. However, most fans first encountered Schwalbe through The End of Your Life Book Club. In this intensely personal but widely relatable memoir, Schwalbe chronicles his mother’s cancer diagnosis, treatment, and death – and how shared reading experiences allowed them to enjoy a deep connection in dark times. Schwalbe’s new book is We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship. As the name suggests, this latest memoir tracks an improbable but life-changing “geek and jock” college friendship over the course of four decades.

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Club Book Episode 149 Nick Hornby

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 20:08:05 +0000

According to a poll conducted by the BCC, novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby ranks as one of most influential people in British culture. Hornby is best known to American readers for his chart-topping novels High Fidelity (1995), About a Boy (1998), and Juliet, Naked (2009) – each of which has been adapted for the screen. Hornby’s beloved memoir Fever Pitch (1992), centered around the author’s sports fanaticism, likewise spawned two feature films of the same name. Hornby’s equally impressive screenplay credits include recent Oscar contenders An Education (2009), Wild (2014), and Brooklyn (2015). In addition to Best Picture nominations, An Education and Brooklyn put Hornby in contention for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His latest book offers fans something of a departure. Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius explores the creative styles and unlikely similarities between a world-famous Victorian novelist and Minnesota’s homegrown music superstar, Prince.

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Club Book Episode 148 Marie Myung-Ok Lee

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 22:49:21 +0000

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a treasured voice in Korean American literature. Her latest novel, The Evening Hero, follows the trials and travails of Korean obstetrician Dr. Yungman Kwak. In the wake of the Korean War, Kwak left his family and village to pursue the American Dream in rural Minnesota. Lee’s poignant, time-jumping narrative encompasses “rural hospital closures, anti-Asian racism, and how war trauma seeps into everyday life for an immigrant – themes that have become suddenly more urgent and topical” (Simon & Schuster). Lee is also an accomplished YA writer. Her groundbreaking Finding My Voice, first published in 1992, is thought to be the first contemporary-set young adult novel written by an Asian American author and featuring Asian American protagonists. It was rereleased in 2021. In addition to her own writing, Lee is co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and director of the Asian American Diasporic Writers series at Columbia University.

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Club Book Episode 147 Leila Mottley

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 20:08:05 +0000

Leila Mottley is the pen behind Nightcrawling, one of the most-anticipated and best-reviewed fiction releases of 2022. Set in the author’s native Oakland, California, this searing debut welcomes readers into the world of 17-year-old Kiara Johnson. After her rent skyrockets, Kiara turns to sex work to stave off homelessness. She soon finds herself in the crosshairs of a far-reaching scandal and active investigation into the conduct of the Oakland Police Department. In a rave review, The New Yorker lauds: “Careful not to portray Kiara as a victim, Mottley shows us the pleasures of family, friendship, and love. The result is an intimate portrait of a young Black woman searching for autonomy and fulfillment in a society designed to deny her both.” Oprah Winfrey named Nightcrawling the latest pick for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, and the instant New York Times bestseller has also been nominated for the 2022 Booker Prize. Mottley accomplished all this as a debut author who published her first novel before the age of 20.

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Club Book Episode 146 Kristin Harmel

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 18:27:22 +0000

Historical fiction phenom Kristin Harmel is the #1 international bestselling author behind book club favorites The Sweetness of Forgetting (2012) and The Winemaker’s Wife (2019). She reached a still wider audience with the publication of The Book of Lost Names in 2020. Inspired by a true story of WWII heroism, The Book of Lost Names tells the tale of a talented forger who uses her gifts to help Jewish children escape the tightening noose of Nazi oppression. Harmel’s latest novel, The Forest of Vanishing Stars, breathes life into another little-known chapter of The War in Europe. During the Holocaust, hundreds of Jewish people escaped from ghettos and banded together in isolated forest settlements to survive both genocide and an unforgiving wilderness. In a rave review, Bookpage says: “The bestselling author’s research contributes richness and authenticity to this captivating tale.” Kristin Harmel is also co-founder of Friends & Fiction, a popular weekly web show and podcast hosted by Harmel and fellow New York Times bestselling writers Mary Kay Andrews, Patti Callahan Henry, and Kristy Woodson Harvey.

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Club Book Episode 145 Mohsin Hamid

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 19:51:31 +0000

British Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid’s international bestsellers have been translated into an astounding forty languages. They include The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Exit West (2017), two novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), which won the Tiziano Terzani International Literary Prize. Hamid is also an in-demand journalist and op ed contributor, with a byline readily recognizable to readers of The Guardian and The New York Times. Hamid’s latest book, The Last White Man, is a reimagining of Franz Kafka’s classic novella The Metamorphosis. Anders, a white American, wakes up to discover that his skin has inexplicably turned “a deep and undeniable brown.” What’s more: He’s not alone. In a starred review, Kirkus calls The Last White Man “a brilliantly realized allegory of racial transformation… speaking to a more equitable future.” Sources as varied as Time, Entertainment Weekly, and Elle named it one of the best books of Summer 2022.

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Club Book Episode 144 Jamie Ford

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 18:44:07 +0000

Jamie Ford made waves in 2009 with the publication of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which charted on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than two years. It also won Ford the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His follow ups, Songs of Willow Frost (2013) and Love and Other Consolation Prizes (2017), solidified the author’s standing as one of historical fiction’s foremost chroniclers of the Chinese American experience. Ford’s newest novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, is “an enthralling, centuries-spanning, masterful saga… exploring the bonds that transcend physical space” (Bookpage). After seeking an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy Moy gains a novel and intimate connection to seven generations of Chinese ancestors. They include Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman known to set foot in North America. Among other honors, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy was selected by the Today Show for its popular #ReadWithJenna Book Club.

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Club Book Episode 143 Peng Shepherd

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 17:47:41 +0000

Speculative fiction writer Peng Shepherd burst onto the literary scene in 2019 with The Book of M. In this critically acclaimed debut, people all across the globe are mysteriously shedding their shadows – and a few days later, losing their memories as well. Booklist praises the premise as “existential apocalypse that is eerie, dark, and compelling.” The Book of M won Shepherd the coveted Neukom Institute Award for Debut Speculative Fiction. Her anticipated follow-up, The Cartographers, hit shelves in March 2022. It centers around Nell Young, a budding scholar born to renowned map expert Dr. Daniel Young. When her estranged and enigmatic father dies under mysterious circumstances, Nell comes into possession of an old highway map. It looks unremarkable, but harbors fantastical and dangerous secrets. In a rave review, Bookpage says: “The Cartographers is wildly imaginative and totally mind-bending in the best possible way. Shepherd has crafted a juicy mystery masquerading as a grown-up scavenger hunt.”

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Club Book Episode 142 Boyah J. Farah

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 14:29:00 +0000

Acclaimed essayist and poet Boyah J. Farah immigrated to the United States in the mid-1990s as part of the Somali diaspora, when thousands of families fled the war-torn Horn of Africa. Instead of finding safety and freedom, Farah quickly learned that his adoptive country is plagued by deep-seated issues of its own. Systemic injustices against Black people run a wide gamut, from widespread police prejudice to countless microaggressions in workplace and social settings. Boyah’s memoir, America Made Me a Black Man, is one of the first-ever book-length examinations of American racism written from an African emigrant’s perspective. Notes Publishers Weekly: “With a singular poetic voice brimming with imagery, Boyah challenges us to face difficult truths about the destructive forces that threaten Black lives.” In addition to his writing career, Farah is founder of the Abaadi School in Garowe, Somalia, which teaches STEM skills to boys and girls aged 13-24.

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Club Book Episode 141 Rebecca Roanhorse

Fri, 13 May 2022 17:23:38 +0000

Rebecca Roanhorse is among a small cohort of “Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror, and fantasy – genres in which Native writers have long been overlooked” (The New York Times). Roanhorse’s speculative fiction, much of which is informed by her Navajo heritage, has earned the genre’s coveted Nebula, Hugo, Campbell, and Locus awards. Titles of note include Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts, the first two installments of The Sixth World young adult series. Roanhorse is also among a handful of writers invited to contribute to the perennially popular Star Wars expanded universe. Her bestselling Star Wars: Resistance Reborn is a canon prequel to the 2019 blockbuster film The Rise of Skywalker. Roanhorse’s latest is the critically acclaimed Between Earth and Sky trilogy. Inspired by the pre-Columbian civilizations of America, the series offers a page-turning blend of political intrigue, celestial prophecies, and forbidden magic. Booklist calls it “perfect for those who love George R. R. Martin’s series but crave more diverse worlds.” Fevered Star, the latest installment, hits shelves on April 19.

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Club Book Episode 140 Tia Williams

Wed, 11 May 2022 20:39:36 +0000

Tia Williams is a tour de force in the style industry. For more than two decades, she served as beauty editor for iconic magazines including Elle, Glamour, and Essence. She also pioneered the “beauty blog” with her influential, award-winning site Shake Your Beauty. Williams parlayed many of her first-hand experiences into The Accidental Diva (2001), her debut novel, which “accurately relates the joys and the pains of [working in] the beauty industry” (Booklist). Her follow-up, The Perfect Find, garnered Williams the African American Literary Award for Best Fiction and is currently being adapted into a romantic comedy starring and produced by Gabrielle Union. Williams’ latest novel, Seven Days in June, became an instant New York Times bestseller and gained a still wider audience as the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick for June 2021. Seven Days in June tracks the star-crossed love story of Eva and Shane, two gifted writers with an undeniable chemistry but complicated personal history. As New York Magazine notes: “Williams creates an entire world around the new Black literati. It’s Black without apology, qualification, or race-related tragedy.”

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Club Book Episode 139 James Rollins

Wed, 11 May 2022 18:31:19 +0000

Few authors today boast the cross-genre appeal or international following of novelist James Rollins. Over the past three decades, Rollins has published standalone thrillers, the popular Jake Ransom middle grade series, and the novelization of the 2008 Steven Spielberg film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Rollins is equally adept at epic fantasy. Recent ventures include The Order of the Sanguines trilogy, co-authored with Rebecca Cantrell, and The Starless Crown, the first entry in his promising Moon Fall Saga. For many readers, however, Rollins is best known for the #1 New York Times bestselling Sigma Force series. Commissioned by the U.S. government, this elite corps explores and safeguards all manner of ‘anomalies’ with national security implications. The sixteenth installment, Kingdom of Bones, hits shelves in April. Deep in the Congo, an insidious phenomenon is leveling the evolutionary playing field by turning the lush biome cunning and predatory. As they race to prevent pending global catastrophe, the Sigmas – so often the hunters – find themselves in the unfamiliar role of prey.

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Club Book Episode 138 Jason Mott

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 17:16:22 +0000

Jason Mott is the pen behind Hell of a Book, winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly described Mott’s modern masterpiece as “a cinematic novel that tackles what it means to live in a country where Black people live life under the hanging sword of fear.” In alternating and ultimately intertwined narratives, Hell of a Book follows the cross-country publicity junket of an eccentric novelist, and the tale of a young Black boy whose world is turned upside down by a heinous (but all-too-common) episode of police violence. In addition to the National Book Award laurel, Hell of a Book won the prestigious Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction and was selected by The Today Show for the popular #ReadWithJenna book club in July 2021. Mott’s prior novels include his 2013 debut The Returned. It served as the basis for the high-concept fantasy drama series Resurrection, produced by Brad Pitt for ABC Studios.

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Club Book Episode 137 Maggie Shipstead

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 19:27:57 +0000

Maggie Shipstead is the author behind Great Circle, one of the most anticipated, best reviewed, and bestselling fiction releases of 2021. Her modern masterpiece intertwines the stories of Marian Graves, an aviation daredevil patterned after Amelia Earhart, and a Hollywood ingenue who attempts to adapt Marian’s larger-than-life story for the big screen a century later. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews raves: “Whether Shipstead is creating scenes in the Prohibition-era American West, in wartime London, or on a Hollywood movie set, her thorough research… allows for [a uniquely] immersive experience.” Great Circle is also shaped in part by the author’s globe-trekking work as a travel writer. The Today Show selected the novel as the May 2021 pick for the popular #ReadWithJenna book club, and the title put the author in contention for the hyper-competitive Booker Prize. Shipstead’s prior novels include her debut Seating Arrangements (2012), an uproarious satire about upper-crust New England society and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

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Club Book Episode 136 Julie Otsuka

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 04:08:00 +0000

Chart-topping novelist Julie Otsuka is the daughter of Japanese immigrants, and a poignant chronicler of the Japanese American experience across the first half of the twentieth century. Her breakout debut When the Emperor Was Divine (2003) shines light on California’s dehumanizing concentration camps for Japanese Americans – a shameful and often overlooked chapter of American history. It holds distinction as one of the most popular Community Reads titles in the country, and more than 45 colleges and universities have assigned it as required reading for incoming freshmen. Otsuka’s follow-up, Buddha in the Attic (2011), breathes life into the untold story of Japanese “picture brides” in the early 1900s. It garnered the PEN/Faulker Award, put Otsuka in contention for the National Book Award, and has since been translated into more than 20 languages. Her latest novel, The Swimmers, revisits the theme of American concentration camps – this time, through the fractured lenses of retrospection and memory loss. Booklist raves: “Once again, Otsuka has created an elegiac, devastating masterpiece.”

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Club Book Episode 135 Victoria Christopher Murray

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 20:39:30 +0000

Victoria Christopher Murray boasts more than 30 books to her credit – and is as versatile as she is prolific. Her writing runs the gamut from contemporary romance, to teen novels, to short story collections and even Christmas novellas. Over the course of her career to date, Murray has received an NAACP Image Award, the Phillis Wheatley Trailblazer Award for African American Fiction, and nine African American Literary Awards. Murray’s latest is her first foray into historical fiction. Co-authored with New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian tells the story of banking magnate J.P. Morgan’s collection curator. Throughout Belle da Costa Greene’s distinguished career, her Black heritage made it difficult to navigate the racist and classist society of her patrons. NPR lauded: “Benedict, who is white, and Murray, who is African American, do a good job of depicting the tightrope Belle walked, and her internal conflict from both sides.”

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Club Book Episode 134 Brendan Slocumb

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 17:08:11 +0000

Brendan Slocumb is a classically trained violinist and accomplished music educator. During his own education at the University of Carolina Greensboro, Slocumb served as concertmaster for the University Symphony. Slocumb has since performed violin and guest conducted for renowned orchestras including the Washington Metropolitan Symphony. Over his two-decade teaching career, Slocumb has earned accolades including Teacher of the Year for his district, the Nobel Teacher of Distinction honorific, and a spot in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. Slocumb’s much-anticipated debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy, takes place against a backdrop the author knows well: the fiercely competitive world of professional classical musicians. Intrepid protagonist Ray McMillian – who, like Slocumb, is a Black violinist from North Carolina – is shocked to discover that his family’s beat-up heirloom fiddle is in fact a priceless Stradivarius. Soon after this life-changing revelation, however, the rising star’s fortunes take a turn for the worse. Publishers Weekly calls The Violin Conspiracy: “A gripping debut… Slocumb sensitively portrays Ray’s resilience in the face of extreme racism.”

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Club Book Episode 133 Maggie O’Farrell

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 03:44:45 +0000

Internationally acclaimed British novelist Maggie O’Farrell is the author behind eight bestselling novels. Readers and critics alike praise her “demonstrated mastery at depicting strained relationships, skewed family loyalties, and the just reachable light at the end of the tunnel” (Star Tribune). Standouts include her Betty Trask Award winning debut After You’d Gone (2000), Somerset Maugham Award winning The Distance Between Us (2004), and Costa Novel Award winning The Hand That First Held Mine (2010). O’Farrell also penned a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am (2018), about a series of near-death experiences that have punctuated and added new meaning to her life. Her latest entry into this literary canon is a work of historical fiction. Hamnet explores the domestic life of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway, and how the untimely death of the couple’s only son may have inspired one of the bard’s greatest plays. “Hamnet vividly captures the life-changing intensity of maternity in its myriad stages—from the pain of childbirth to the unassuageable grief of loss” (NPR).

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Club Book Episode 132 Jane Smiley

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:27:57 +0000

Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley is “one of America’s most accomplished and wide-ranging writers” (Dallas Morning News). Her thirty books to date include two short story collections, two biographies, and eight books geared towards young readers. Her influential and admired novels include the Pulitzer Prize winning A Thousand Acres (1991), a modern retelling of King Lear. Smiley returned to the heartland in her The Last Hundred Years trilogy, which follows the fortunes and travails of an Iowa farm family over several generations. Smiley’s latest, Perestroika in Paris, offers fans something of a departure. In this instant bestseller, a spirited racehorse named Perestroika escapes her enclosure outside Paris and tries to make a new life for herself. In so doing, she befriends a street-smart dog named Frida, a pair of talkative ducks, and a curious boy named Etienne. The Los Angeles Times writes: “In an era beset by polarization, it feels like a gift to find a novel where characters of different species and different instincts come together to build a community.”

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Club Book Episode 131 Kawai Strong Washburn

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 18:34:02 +0000

Chart-topping novelist Kawai Strong Washburn lives in Minnesota but hails proudly from the Big Island of Hawai’i. His upbringing on the magical Hāmākua Coast inspires and infuses his first fiction foray, Sharks in the Time of Saviors. It centers on the family of Nainoa “Noa” Flores, a native son blessed by the Islands’ ancient gods with unique abilities. As mysterious as they are impressive, Noa’s nascent powers cause friction within his family even as this gift allows them to consider a future beyond their current, hardscrabble lives. Publisher’s Weekly lauds: “Washburn’s standout debut provides a vivid portrait of Hawaiian identity, mythology, and diaspora… It’s a unique and spirited depiction of the 50th state and its children.” Sources as varied as The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and President Barack Obama have singled out Sharks in the Time of Saviors as one of the best reads of 2020. Washburn’s gripping family saga also won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award and a 2021 Minnesota Book Award.

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Club Book Episode 130 Tamara Winfrey Harris

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:30:09 +0000

Tamara Winfrey-Harris is a nationally renowned columnist and speaker. Her work focuses on the fraught intersection of race and sex. In 2015, Winfrey-Harris published The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America. This popular essay anthology “exposes anti- Black-woman propaganda all around us, and shows the truth of what it’s like to be a Black woman in America” (Blavity). A revised and expanded second edition of The Sisters Alright hits shelves on October 12, 2021. Earlier this year, Winfrey-Harris also released Dear Black Girl: Letters From Your Sisters on Stepping Into Your Power. An outgrowth of her grassroots “Letters to Black Girls Project,” first launched in 2017, the book is a collection of empowering messages from Black women to the next generation. Covering a host of topics – from body positivity, to politics, to family relations – Dear Black Girls is intended to help Black girls navigate and thrive in a world that can so often be ugly and unforgiving.

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Club Book Episode 129 Dan Piepenbring

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 03:07:20 +0000

Prince was one of the most original, accomplished and beloved musicians of our time. He was also, undeniably, one of the most enigmatic. In early 2016, “The Purple One” approached Dan Piepenbring, the 29-year-old editor of literary magazine The Paris Review, about collaborating on the superstar’s memoir. Prince envisioned the project as a way to reveal more of himself to his legions of fans. His untimely death that April left Piepenbring with a dilemma: abandon the book project, or complete the manuscript in a way that realized Prince’s intentions for the memoir. Piepenbring reconceptualized, completed and published The Beautiful Ones in 2019. In one of a host of glowing reviews, Variety said of this #1 New York Times bestseller: “The Beautiful Ones brings so much new information to light that it’s hard to imagine anyone being disappointed.” Dan Piepenbring is also co-author, with Tom O’Neill, of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (2019).

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Club Book Episode 128 Kate Quinn

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 18:55:09 +0000

Kate Quinn is one of the best known – and bestselling – authors writing today in the realm of historical fiction. Standouts include her four-book Empress of Rome series, two novels set during the Renaissance, and a co-authored standalone that focuses on the lives of women during the French Revolution. Recently, Quinn has brought her “compelling blend of historical fiction, mystery, and women’s fiction” (Library Journal) to the two World Wars. Based on a true story, 2017’s The Alice Network focuses on a French and female-driven espionage ring in the Great War. Reese Witherspoon selected it as one of the inaugural picks for her popular Reese’s Book Club. Quinn’s follow up, The Huntress, spotlights Nazi hunters and the Soviet Union’s storied Night Witch fighter pilots in the waning days of World War II. Her latest, The Rose Code, follows a trio of British codebreakers as these women form an unlikely alliance to break Germany’s most notorious military cipher.

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Club Book Episode 127 Mary Kubica

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 18:46:24 +0000

Over the last decade, thriller novelist Mary Kubica has established herself as a mainstay of the genre. The Good Girl, her 2014 breakout about an amnesiac kidnapping victim, became an Indie Next List pick and put Kubica in contention for the Goodreads Choice Award. It is currently being adapted for television – and won’t be the only of Kubica’s seven books to make it to the screen. Netflix recently purchased the rights to The Other Mrs. (2020), a modern whodunnit set in a tight-knit island community off the coast of Maine. Fellow mystery writer Karin Slaughter called this New York Times bestseller “altogether unpredictable” – a descriptor that holds true for most of Kubica’s work. Her latest, released in March, is Local Woman Missing. In this “daringly plotted, emotionally eviscerating psychological thriller” (Publishers Weekly), several women vanish without a trace from a seemingly safe and ordinary community. When one of those victims returns to town ten years later, the shocking truth upends even more lives.

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Club Book Episode 126 Rita Woods

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 20:46:43 +0000

Rita Woods is the author behind Remembrance, one of the most celebrated historical fiction debuts in years. Woods’ opus straddles literary genres and historical epochs. In this book, “Remembrance” is a hallowed refuge for escaped slaves which exists outside the normal bounds of time and space. The most unusual stop on the Underground Railroad, Remembrance owes its existence to generations of women with secret supernatural abilities. Their personal stories span from the Haitian Revolution of 1791, to the last gasps of the New Orleans slave trade in the 1850s, up to the present day. NPR lauds: “Remembrance is well-researched, truly epic historical fantasy… Woods creates memorable characters in all her settings, each with a distinct purpose that helps make the impossible relatable.” It has drawn Woods glowing comparisons to the fiction of literary heavyweights like Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler. In addition to her burgeoning writing career, Woods is a physician and medical director of a wellness center in the Chicago area.

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Club Book Episode 125 Qian Julie Wang

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 16:47:21 +0000

Qian Julie Wang is an Ivy League trained litigator and managing partner of New York City’s prestigious Gottlieb & Wang LLP – a law firm specializing in advocacy for immigrants and people of color. As an undocumented child of struggling Chinese émigrés, Wang had ample reasons to believe her future would not be so bright. During her formative years, the family’s “illegal” status took a toll on everything: their housing stability, her parents’ marriage and health, as well as Wang’s own self- worth and identity. These childhood trials and traumas form the basis of Wang’s anticipated debut Beautiful Country – a heartrending memoir drafted almost entirely on her iPhone while she commuted to and from her Brooklyn law office. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly raves: “While the author’s story of pursuing the American dream is undoubtedly timeless, it’s her family’s triumph in the face of xenophobia and intolerance that makes it feel especially relevant today.” Beautiful Country hits shelves in September.

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Club Book Episode 124 Angeline Boulley

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 03:26:53 +0000

Angeline Boulley is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and former director of the Office of Indian Education at the US. Department of Education. Her upbringing and first-hand knowledge of Native life inform Boulley’s blockbuster YA debut Firekeeper’s Daughter. The instant #1 New York Times bestseller centers around Daunis Fontaine, a biracial Anishinaabe teenager described by the author as “an Indigenous Nancy Drew.” Fontaine finds herself part of an undercover FBI operation to root out the source of a lethal narcotic ravaging the Ojibwe reservations in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly praises the novel for its treatment of “hard issues such as citizenship, language revitalization, and the corrosive presence of drugs on Native communities.” Higher Ground – the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama – is currently adapting Firekeeper’s Daughter for a series on Netflix. Boulley’s debut is also one of 2021’s young adult picks for Reese Witherspoon’s popular Hello Sunshine Book Club.

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Club Book Episode 123 Rachel Howzell Hall

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 03:23:08 +0000

Mystery phenom Rachell Howzell Hall is the pen behind the four-volume Elouise “Lou” Norton series. Readers and critics laud Hall’s intrepid and memorable lead as “a strong and likeable African American detective… with few equals” (Library Journal). Hall’s hometown of Los Angeles serves as the backdrop for the series – as well as most of her standalone works. These include book club favorite And Now She’s Gone (2020), which put Hall in contention for three of the genre’s coveted accolades: the Anthony, Barry, and Shamus awards. Hall is also known for co-authoring the page-turning novella The Good Sister, published in 2017 as part of James Patterson’s bestselling anthology The Family Lawyer. Hall’s latest thriller, These Toxic Things, hits shelves on September 1, 2021. In this “refreshing take on the serial killer theme” (Publishers Weekly), a young freelance artist unexpectedly comes into possession of a former client’s curios collection – and soon discovers that these trinkets are not as innocuous as they first seemed.

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Club Book Episode 122 Ian Manuel

Tue, 18 May 2021 17:24:35 +0000

Ian Manuel is a name well known to legal and criminal justice reform advocates. Sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a crime committed at the age of 13, Manuel languished in prison for 26 years. Thanks to a coalition of supporters, including renowned activist Bryan Stevenson and the woman shot by Manuel in 1990, Manuel received a fair resentencing from the Florida Court of Appeal in 2010. His story is told in Stevenson’s #1 New York Times bestseller Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014), as well as in two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof’s Tightrope: Americans Reach for Hope (2020). Manuel finally tells the story in his own words in My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption, one of the most anticipated memoirs of 2021. In it, the author candidly chronicles his turbulent childhood in Tampa, harrowing experiences in prison (including 18 years in solitary confinement), and his continual search for self-improvement, atonement, and – above all – justice.

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Club Book Episode 121 Michelle Zauner

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 20:41:38 +0000

Michelle Zauner is a darling of the modern indie music scene, better known by fans under her solo project alias Japanese Breakfast. Zauner’s family moved to the United States from South Korea when she was just months old. She spent her formative years as one of only a handful of Asian American students in her Eugene, Oregon neighborhood and school. The young songwriter grappled with her own “sense of Koreanness” then – and continued her journey of self-discovery while attending college and finding her footing in the East Coast music scene. Zauner fronted the Philadelphia-based rock band Little Big League from 2011-2014, before her mother’s unexpected cancer diagnosis compelled her to return home to Oregon. During this time, Zauner began to compose and record solo music, including the acclaimed album Psychopomp. She shared her story in 2018 in a viral New Yorker essay. Zauner’s unflinching, book-length memoir, titled Crying in H Mart, hit shelves April 20.

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Club Book Episode 120 Lawrence Wright

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 19:25:11 +0000

Lawrence Wright is an acclaimed journalist, screenwriter and novelist. His impressive ten nonfiction titles to date include The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Wright also executive produced a 10-episode miniseries adapted from this 2006 exposé (starring Alec Baldwin and Jeff Daniels) for Hulu in 2018. His explosive follow-up, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief, likewise received the screen treatment. Wright co-produced a 2015 film adaptation that won three Emmys (including for Best Documentary), along with the prestigious Peabody Award. Wright’s recent fiction includes the eerily prescient novel The End of October, a 2020 medical thriller about a virus that originates in Asia before ravaging the globe. According to The New York Times Book Review, “Wright applies the magisterial force of his reporting skills, spinning a novel of pestilence, war and social collapse that – given the current pandemic – cuts exceedingly close to the bone.”

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Club Book Episode 119 Abby Jimenez

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 18:50:44 +0000

Food Network favorite Abby Jimenez is an award-winning pastry chef, and the owner of the world-famous Nadia Cakes cupcakery and custom cake studio. A self-taught baker, Jimenez won Food Network’s competitive Cupcake Wars in 2012. She parlayed her successes into her Minnesota-based small business, which now boasts outlets in Maple Grove, Woodbury, and Palmdale, California. Jimenez is also a USA Today bestselling romance writer. Publishers Weekly commended her debut, The Friend Zone, noting that “biting wit and laugh-out-loud moments take priority, but the novel remains subtle in its sentimentality and sneaks up on the reader with unanticipated depth.” Jimenez brings this same formula to Life’s Too Short, which hits shelves April 6. It follows a globe-trotting social media superstar whose carefree lifestyle hits a road bump when she unexpectedly comes into custody of her baby niece. In a glowing review, romance mainstay Katherine St. John praised Jimenez’s latest for “refreshingly real characters and compulsively readable prose… clear your schedule, because you won’t be able to put this delicious book down!”

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Club Book Episode 118 Therese Anne Fowler

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 18:27:42 +0000

Therese Anne Fowler is a perennial favorite among historical fiction readers. She is perhaps best known for Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (2014). Z showcases the incredible life and historic times of Zelda Sayre, the reckless Southern belle who married and inspired literary superstar F. Scott Fitzgerald. Amazon Studios turned the book into a period drama, Z: The Beginning of Everything, starring Christina Ricci and co-produced by Fowler herself. Fowler’s next novel, the New York Times and USA Today bestseller A Well-Behaved Woman, profiles the iron-willed Alva Vanderbilt. Matriarch of one of the Gilded Age’s richest families, Vanderbilt gained a notoriety in her own right as an early and instrumental leader in the universal suffrage movement. Fowler’s latest novel, A Good Neighborhood, turns the spotlight from historic luminaries to everyday Americans. Set in modern times in a tight-knit suburban community, A Good Neighborhood “traverses the topics of love, race and class” and asks whether families with diametrically opposed worldviews can be authentically neighborly (Kirkus Reviews).

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Club Book Episode 117 Robert Kolker

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 16:31:41 +0000

Robert Kolker is an established and esteemed investegative reporter. Long known in journalism circles for his exposés in New York Magazine and Bloomgberg News, Kolker became one of the nation’s most read nonfiction writers (almost overnight) after the April 2020 publication of Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family. Now a #1 New York Times bestseller, Hidden Valley Road centers around the 12-child Galvin family in post-WWII Colorado. Considered a paragon of domestic prosperity and bliss by friends and neighbors, the Galvins harbored dark secrets. Hereditary schizophrenia – diagnosed in six family members – eventually came to light as the culprit, but only after the Galvins’ story had confounded medical science for years. Oprah Winfrey recently selected Hidden Valley Road for her reimagined Oprah’s Book Club, bringing Kolker to a still wider audience. In 2020, Netflix released the feature film Lost Girls – based on Kolker’s 2013 book of the same name – which tracks the murder spree and clues trail of an as-yet-unidentified serial killer.

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Club Book Episode 116 H.W. Brands

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 18:01:41 +0000

Chart-topping historian H.W. Brands is one of the foremost American Studies scholars writing today – and also one of the most prolific. With nearly 40 published books to date, his work spans more than three decades of dedicated scholarship and nearly every epoch of American history. Brands’ areas of speciality include economic history and global policy, as well as biographies on presidents and other change-makers who shaped our nation. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, for The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000) and Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008). Brands’ latest is The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom. Brands’ incisive look at the abolition of slavery gained wide acclaim. Library Journal calls it “a fascinating and wonderfully readable portrayal of the tensions between fiery militancy and determined-but-measured devotion in working toward a goal.”

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Club Book Episode 115 Claire Lombardo

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 01:36:37 +0000

Claire Lombardo is one of few first-time authors to see their debut novel chart immediately on the New York Times Bestseller List. The Most Fun We Ever Had follows the fortunes and factious relationships of four sisters over five decades. In this time-jumping narrative, the surprise re-emergence of a teenage son put up for adoption by one sister sparks a long overdue family reckoning. NPR praised Lombardo’s debut as “a wonderfully immersive read that packs more heart and heft than most first novels,” and “a deliciously absorbing novel with – brace yourself – a tender and satisfyingly positive take on family.” The Chicago Tribune, People magazine, and Good Housekeeping singled out The Most Fun We Ever Had as one of the best books of summer 2019. Random House will release a paperback edition on April 6, and the book is currently being adapted for HBO by the powerhouse Hollywood producing duo of Amy Adams and Laura Dern.

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Club Book Episode 114 Imbolo Mbue

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 01:34:09 +0000

Cameroonian-American novelist Imbolo Mbue burst onto the literary scene in 2016 with her debut novel Behold the Dreamers. Semi-autobiographical in nature, the book tracks a young Cameroonian couple as they struggle to re-establish themselves in New York City in spite of racial barriers and the economic upheavel of the Great Recession. Lauded by The New York Times as “a dissection of the American Dream, savage and compassionate in all the right places,” Behold the Dreamers became an Oprah’s Book Club pick in 2017. Mbue’s anticipated follow-up, How Beautiful We Were, hits shelves on March 9. A heart-wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company, How Beautiful We Were reads as a contemporary fable. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews raves that Mbue’s masterwork “uses an ecological nightmare to frame a vivid and stirring picture of human beings asserting their value to the world – whether that world cares about them or not.”

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Club Book Episode 113 John Moe

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:35:46 +0000

John Moe is one of Minnesota’s best-known radio and podcast personalities. The reporter and talk show host first cut his teeth in the Seattle radio market, before bringing his unique wit to the North Star State. He is best known for his work as a senior reporter and host of American Public Media enterprises including Weekend America, Marketplace Tech Report, and the uproarious radio variety show Wits. His podcasting projects include The Hilarious World of Depression, a show in which Moe set out to dispel societal stigma around and entrenched stereotypes about clinical depression. Celebrity guests have included chef Andrew Zimmern, authors John Green and Jenny Lawson, and actors Wil Wheaton and Jameela Jamil. In 2020, Moe published a book under the same title. In The Hilarious World of Depression, Moe shares all he knows about the illness – from personal experience, extensive research, and years of interviews. In a glowing review, Booklist asserts that “Moe is exactly the right person to give an attentive, irreverent voice to those suffering with depression.”

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Club Book Episode 112 Lauren Fox

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:02:53 +0000

Lauren Fox is an acknowledged master of the family novel. Readers enjoyed their first taste of her achingly funny take on marriage, friendship, and domesticity in Still Life with Husband (2007) – a literary debut that The New York Times heralded as “the arrival of an immensely gifted writer.” Fox’s follow-ups, Friends Like Us (2012) and Days of Awe (2015), justified the praise. Her latest, out February 2, is Send for Me. In this time-jumping work of historical fiction, a woman discovers a cache of old letters from her Jewish grandmother that sheds light on her family’s struggles and fate during the rise of Nazism in Germany. Booklist touts Send for Me as “a thoughtful, character-driven exploration of the unbreakable bonds of motherhood, [which] deftly moves between generations as Fox illuminates the ways that choices echo through the lives of those who come after.” Send for Me is also semi-autobiographical in nature, inspired by heirlooms letters held by her own family.

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Club Book Episode 111 Eduardo Porter

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 19:15:23 +0000

Eduardo Porter is an economics reporter for The New York Times. His distinguished career in journalism has taken him to Mexico City, São Paulo, Tokyo, and many points in between. He currently co-hosts The Pie, a podcast on pandemic economics sponsored by the University of Chicago, which explores the financial and social ramifications of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Porter is also the author of The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do (2011), a revealing look at the cost-benefit analyses that underpin each and every human behavior. His latest book is American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise. In a sterling review, Booklist says that “with a scintillating rhythm and pointed language, Porter exposes all the ways in which racism has infected everything from unions to welfare to education and immigration policy. American Poison is a work for our times.” It will be reissued in paperback on February 9.

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Club Book Episode 110 Megha Majumdar

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 20:06:12 +0000

Megha Majumdar is the author behind A Burning, one of the most anticipated and best reviewed fiction debuts of 2020. Set in modern-day India, this propulsive narratives hinges around three characters on the margins of society: Jivan, a Muslim girl living in the slums of Kolkata (Calcutta); Lovely, a member of India’s intersex hijra community; and PT Sir, an opportunistic gym teacher turned right-wing politician. Although fiction, “A Burning quickly dismantles the ordinary skepticism that attends the reading of made-up stories” (New Yorker), and “offers a powerful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated in contemporary India” (Time). Majumdar is herself a native of Kolkata. She moved to the United States to attend school at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University. She is currently an associate editor at literary magazine and independent publisher Catapult. A Burning has won several honors since its June launch, including being picked up by NBC’s “Today” as the summer’s #ReadWithJenna pick.

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Club Book Episode 109 David Treuer

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 20:04:54 +0000

David Treuer is a member of the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe, and one of the foremost chroniclers of the rich and diverse Native American experience – past and present. His writing straddles the barrier between fiction and nonfiction. Treuer’s four novels to date, including award-winning debut Little (1995) and book club favorite Prudence (2015), “mount a challenge to the whole idea of Indian identity as depicted by both Native and white writers” (New York Times). His first major foray into nonfiction, Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life, garnered national attention and won the Minnesota Book Award in 2013. His follow up, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, earned the author his third Minnesota Book Award and put him in heated contention for the National Book Award. A masterfully crafted mélange of journalism, memoir, and historical research, Treuer’s latest showcases “the Native struggle to preserve their tribes and cultures, using resourcefulness and reinvention in the face of overwhelming opposition” (BookPage).

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Club Book Episode 108 Laila Lalami

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 20:03:34 +0000

Moroccan American novelist Laila Lalami uses fiction as a vehicle to showcase “overlooked” North African stories and experiences. Notable examples include her 2014 breakout The Moor’s Account, which reconstructs the journeys of the New World’s first explorer of color. It won the American Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Lalami’s follow-up, The Other Americans, centers around the mysterious death of a Moroccan immigrant in California. Equal parts family drama, murder mystery, and love story, The Other Americans was singled out by media as varied as the BBC and BuzzFeed as one of the most anticipated releases of 2019. Lalami’s new release, Conditional Citizens, is something of a departure. In this deeply personal exposé, the author uses her own unlikely immigration story as an entrée for explore the hot-button question: What does it mean to be American? One reviewer noted: “Probing, unflinching and fiercely intelligent, Conditional Citizens is a must-read for all of those who have stared, stunned, at the shifting terrain of our political landscape and wondered how we got here.”

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Club Book Episode 107 Dahr Jamail

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 20:02:11 +0000

Acclaimed journalist and climate advocate Dahr Jamail is the author of The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. Part travelogue and part research exposé, The End of Ice offers a sobering look at the “geographic front lines” – areas of the planet that are most immediately and visibly impacted by global warming. Front-line reporting is Jamail’s forte. He cut his teeth as a wartime correspondent in Iraq, as one of only a handful of so-called unembedded reporters to travel without military escort and report out for Western audiences after the 2003 invasion by American-led forces. In 2007, the Nader Trust for the Community Interest bestowed Jamail with the prestigious Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, which “recognizes individuals who take a public stance to advocate truth and justice, at some personal risk.” Jamail’s pivot to climate issues stemmed from his personal passion for mountaineering, which affords “a stronger connection to nature…. something that Jamail says many people living in urban areas have lost or left behind” (Smithsonian).

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Club Book Episode 106 Nancy Pearl

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 20:00:40 +0000

Nancy Pearl is America’s Librarian. As the head of the Washington Center for the Book, she pioneered the groundbreaking “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book” series in the late 1990s. The Library of Congress now estimates that upwards of 400 “community read” programs take place every year, and each owes a debt to Pearl’s replicable template. Nancy Pearl is also an acknowledged expert in readers advisory, both within librarianship and outside of the field. Her bestselling, multi-installment Book Lust series is a testament to her uncanny ability to recommend a book “for every mood, moment and reason” – to paraphrase the subtitle. Library Journal named Pearl the Librarian of the Year in 2011. In a still more singular honor, she is also the inspiration and image behind the popular librarian action figure from Archie McPhee. Pearl’s newest release, The Writer’s Library, is an edited anthology showcasing how favorite books altered the lives of 23 chart-topping authors – including luminaries like Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Amor Towles.

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Club Book Episode 105 Morgan Jerkins

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 19:57:44 +0000

Morgan Jerkins is the New York Times bestselling memoirist behind the popular 2018 essay collection This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America. Her anticipated follow-up, Wandering in Strange Lands, hit shelves August 4. Subtitled ‘A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots,’ Jerkins’ sophomore book is at once deeply personal and nationwide in its scope. Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as the Great Migration. In so doing, many became disconnected from their proud roots. As a means of rediscovering those national stories, Jerkins traced her own ancestors’ circuitous journey across the country – from Georgia and South Carolina, to Louisiana and Oklahoma, and all the way to California. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly lauded: “Jerkins’s careful research and revelatory conversations with historians, activists, and genealogists result in a disturbing yet ultimately empowering chronicle of the African-American experience.”

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Club Book Episode 104 Brad Taylor

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 16:48:35 +0000

Brad Taylor is the pen behind the New York Times bestselling Pike Logan series. Now spanning fourteen installments, Taylor’s high-octane thrillers center around “the Taskforce” – a highly trained covert ops team answerable only to a select few at the highest rungs of government. Protagonist Pike Logan first burst onto the scene in 2011’s One Rough Man, which earned Taylor glowing comparisons to established heavyweights like Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy, and Brad Thor. Reviewers praised the believability of Taylor’s storylines and settings; and that authenticity has been hard won. Taylor served more than two decades in the U.S. Army, in both the Infantry and Special Forces divisions, including a stint with the clandestine Delta Force. His talents are on full display in Hunter Killer. Logan’s latest adventure finds the elite Taskforce, often the hunters, in the unfamiliar role of the hunted. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a surefire hit for those who like contemporary foreign affairs spiced heavily with page-turning action.”

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Club Book Episode 103 Gish Jen

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 16:47:03 +0000

Gish Jen is a second generation Chinese American, and a thoughtful chronicler of emigration, assimilation, and multiculturalism as they relate to the modern American experience. The Los Angeles Times said of her 1991 debut, Typical American: “Jen has done much more than tell an immigrant story… She has done it in some ways better than it has ever been done before.” Jen’s shrewd insights and sensitive prose are not confined to novels. Her fiction has appeared an impressive four times in the competitive Best American Short Stories anthology. Jen’s forays into nonfiction include The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Exploring the East-West Culture Gap and Tiger Writing, a semi-autobiographical examination of “self” in different cultural contexts. Jen’s eighth and latest book, The Resisters, offers something of a departure; it is set in a dystopian future ravaged by climate change. In a deeply divided society, baseball prodigy Gwen is plucked from the slums to represent North America in the newly reconstituted Olympic games. Gwen and this most innocuous of sports become an unexpected rallying point for disenfranchised social justice warriors.

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Club Book Episode 102 Lara Prescott

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 19:56:16 +0000

Lara Prescott belongs to the small, exclusive club of authors who have had their work optioned for film. While this is an impressive accomplishment on the face of it, still fewer writers can claim to have reached this milestone before their first book even hit shelves! Prescott’s highly anticipated literary debut, The Secrets We Kept, premieres September 3. It tells the true story behind the writing and incendiary publication of the Cold War era novel Doctor Zhivago. Now a mainstay of the Russia’s literary canon, Doctor Zhivago is a tale of life and love set during the Russian Revolution. Penned by controversial Soviet national Boris Pasternak, the manuscript was smuggled to Italy in the 1950s. Prescott’s retelling is already receiving rave reviews. In a starred review, Booklist opined: “Spy stories offer high reader appeal, but Prescott’s debut far surpasses the typical genre fare…Through extensive research, Prescott artfully illuminates the CIA’s role in helping disseminate the Soviet-banned masterwork.” The Secrets We Kept will debut in a staggering 28 languages. A film treatment, helmed by Oscar-nominated producer of La La Land and Bridge of Spies, is now in the works.

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Club Book Episode 101 Brandon Hobson

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 03:54:47 +0000

National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson is the author of four novels, including the critically acclaimed Where the Dead Sit Talking. Hobson’s layered coming-of-age story focuses around a Cherokee boy named Sequoyah. After a tumultuous childhood marked by abuse and neglect, sensitive Sequoyah is thrown into the foster system. While living with the eccentric Troutt family in Oklahoma, he meets and develops feelings for a wayward young artist who shares his Native heritage and checkered family history. Hobson himself is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and “is in total control of his material… in this masterly tale of life and death” (Kirkus Reviews). Where the Dead Sit Talking garnered a host of literary honors, and came within striking distance of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. In addition to his career as a novelist, Hobson is a short fiction writer, essayist, and educator. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at New Mexico State University, and a Writing Mentor at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

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Club Book Episode 100 Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 03:48:53 +0000

Columbian-born Ingrid Rojas Contreras is author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, one of 2018’s breakout fiction debuts. Based in part on the author’s own experiences growing up in factious Bogotá, Contreras’s story is set against the backdrop of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s shadow reign over Columbia. This turmoil is explored through the eyes of Chula, a seven-year-old from a well-to-do family living safely in a gated community. When her mother hires Petrona, a young woman from the Bogotá slums, as the family’s maid, Chula is forced to challenge assumptions and change her worldview. Entertainment Weekly commends Fruit of the Drunken Tree as “simultaneously propulsive and poetic, with something powerful to say.” It was rereleased in paperback in summer 2019. In addition to her fiction, Contreras’s has contributed essays and thought pieces to publications as varied as USA Today, Architectural Digest, and Buzzfeed.

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Club Book Episode 99 Nicola Yoon

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 03:43:58 +0000

Nicola Yoon is one of the best known – and bestselling – authors writing today in the realm of YA fiction. Her debut, Everything, Everything, catapulted her to the top of the charts in 2015. Told through diary entries, text messages, and even illustrations, the story focuses around a teenage protagonist who suffers from a rare immune disease often called “bubble boy syndrome” – but refuses to let this debilitating condition define her. Warner Brothers adapted Everything, Everything into an award-winning 2017 feature film starring Amandla Stenberg. The New York Times lauded Yoon’s 2016 follow-up, teen romance The Sun Is Also A Star, as “a deep dive into love and chance and self-determination – and the many ways humans affect one another, often without knowing it.” Like its predecessor, The Sun Is Also A Star dominated bestseller lists for the better part of a year, and received its own Hollywood treatment. It also garnered Yoon a finalist nod for the National Book Award, and a host of other high honors besides.

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Club Book Episode 98 Dacre Stoker

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 17:54:22 +0000

Dacre Stoker is the great grand-nephew of renowned Irish novelist Bram Stoker, the mind behind the genre-defining classic Dracula. He is also manager of his famous ancestor’s estate, and an internationally recognized expert on all things Dracula. In 2009, Dacre turned his eye to fiction, and a sequel more than 110 years in the making. Aptly titled Dracula: The Undead, this continuation of the original story is built upon Bram Stoker’s own handwritten notes. More than twenty publishers around the world optioned this unique work of fiction, which Publisher’s Weekly lauded as “a well-needed shot of fresh blood for the Dracula mythos.” In the same vein – pun intended – Dacre plumbed his great grand-uncle’s personal notes and life story to craft a 2017 prequel to the 1897 masterpiece. Dracul, co-authored with J.D. Barker, features none other than Bram Stoker himself as the central protagonist. Library Journal praised Dracul as “a strong pick for fans of classic gothic tales, but also good for anyone who appreciates gripping historical novels.” The prequel will be released in paperback in October 2019.

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Club Book Episode 97 JA Jance

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 15:14:04 +0000

Mystery phenom J.A. Jance is the mind behind not one, but four blockbuster series. Her corpus, stretching back to 1985, includes nearly 70 novels to date. Jance’s popular and compelling protagonists include news anchor-turned-sleuth Ali Reynolds, trailblazing sheriff Joanna Brady, and Arizona’s colorful Walker Family. Each has a devoted following, but none has been solving crimes for as long – or can boast as many installments – as retired Seattle police detective J. P. Beaumont. First introduced nearly 35 years ago in Until Proven Guilty, Beaumont has been the focus of 24 books (and several well received novellas, besides). Two in this series, Without Due Process (1992) and Failure to Appear (1993), have won Jance the prestigious American Mystery Award. Beaumont’s latest adventure, Sins of the Fathers, hit shelves in September. In his most personal and suspenseful case to date, the detective is coaxed out of retirement by an old acquaintance to solve a missing person case – one that dredges up unwelcome memories.

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Club Book Episode 96 Thrity Umrigar

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 22:53:54 +0000

Over the past decade, Thrity Umrigar has emerged as a leading, cherished voice in Indian American literature. Her fiction, usually set in urban India, showcases the wealth of diversity found within the world’s second largest country. Umrigar first gained a wide audience with her sophomore work The Space Between Us (2006), which hinges on “the intimacy, and the irreconcilable class divide, between a well-to-do woman and her downtrodden servant in contemporary Bombay.” Umrigar – who grew up in Mumbai’s minority Parsi community – knows her subject matter intimately. She even chronicled her own stories in a 2008 memoir, First Darling of the Morning. For her most recent project, Umrigar returned to her unforgettable The Space Between Us protagonist Bhima for a sequel twelve years in the making. Publishers Weekly praised The Secrets Between Us as “a splendid tale that should appeal to all readers with open hearts – regardless of their familiarity with the previous work or the culture of Mumbai.”

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Club Book Episode 95 Nora McInerny

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 19:38:41 +0000

In the span of six short weeks in 2014, Nora McInerny had a miscarriage, buried her father, and lost her husband Aaron to an aggressive brain tumor. Devastated but undeterred, she spoke openly about her tragedies and parlayed that year into a platform to help others through grief. That platform now straddles many media. Her blog, originally called “My Husband’s Tumor,” rapidly hit and passed the 200,000 mark for readership. McInerny also launched “Terrible, Thanks for Asking,” a popular yet intimate podcast which The Atlantic praised for “continuously, unapologetically, ferociously plowing into subjects most people are too uncomfortable to touch.” McInerny’s first book, It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too) (2016), candidly chronicles her courtship, marriage, and mourning. Two 2019 follow-ups, No Happy Endings and The Hot Young Widows Club, pick up the theme by exploring how to move forward, even when an overwhelming loss prevents one from truly moving on.

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Club Book Episode 94 Charles C. Mann

Thu, 09 May 2019 19:13:15 +0000

New York Times bestselling historian Charles C. Mann is perhaps best known for his ground-breaking 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. As the name suggests, 1491 challenges and corrects long-held assumptions about the indigenous peoples who populated the New World before European colonization. It won the prestigious National Academies Best Book Award. Mann’s meticulously researched follow-up, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, “ranges across continents and centuries to explain how the world we inhabit came to be” (The Washington Post). Changing gears, his newest project, The Wizard and the Prophet, tells the remarkable story of two influential yet little-known twentieth century scientists who laid the groundwork for the modern environmentalism movement. In a rave review, Sierra called it “an elegantly written, devoted testimonial to the art of the possible.” In addition to his book-length scholarship, Mann is also a prolific correspondent and columnist for publications ranging from Smithsonian, to Fortune, to Vanity Fair.

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Club Book Episode 93 Lorna Landvik

Thu, 09 May 2019 19:07:59 +0000

Minnesota’s own Lorna Landvik is a comedienne, actress, playwright, and prolific novelist. Her 1995 fiction debut, Patty Jane’s House of Curl – a zany but heartwarming story about two Minnesota sisters who open a beauty parlor, “complete with live harp music and Norwegian baked goods” – introduced readers to Landvik’s unique brand of humor. She has since published nearly a dozen other books, including bestsellers Welcome to the Great Mysterious (2002), Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (2004), Oh My Stars (2008), Best to Laugh (2014), and Once in a Blue Moon Lodge (a long-awaited sequel to Patty Jane’s House of Curls). Her newest novel is Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes). In the fictional yet real-to-life town of Granite Creek, Minnesota, curmudgeonly but beloved newspaper columnist Haze Evans slips unexpectedly into a coma. In a scramble to fill the void, her editor republishes old articles – dredging up a host of memories for the denizens of Granite Creek in the process. In addition to her writing, Landvik is a regular in the local improv comedy scene, and has written and starred in several scripted plays.

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Club Book Episode 92 Kwame Onwuachi

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 20:28:06 +0000

Cooking sensation Kwame Onwuachi is one of America’s best known chefs of color, and a vocal ambassador for Afro-Caribbean fusion cuisine. He first gained a national following as a Final Four contestant on the 2016 season of reality television juggernaut Top Chef. He wowed the judges, time again, by ingeniously melding elements of his parents’ Nigerian, Jamaican and Creole cultures into never-before-seen culinary masterpieces. Industry mainstay Zagat named Onwuachi to its prestigious “30 Under 30” list in 2016. While still in his 20s, Onwuachi parlayed his celebrity into a posh restaurant in Washington D.C. – which quickly went belly up. Undeterred, Onwuachi learned from his mistakes and started anew with Kith and Kin, an Afro-Caribbean eatery in Washington’s tony new Wharf district. Onwuachi chronicles his personal successes and failures, and perspectives on being a black chef in America more generally, in the anticipated Notes from a Young Black Chef. Early reviewers praise it as “a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest memoir of following your dreams.” It debuted on April 9.

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Club Book Episode 91 Linda LeGarde Grover

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 18:26:48 +0000

Award-winning novelist and poet Linda LeGarde Grover is a poignant chronicler of the modern Native American experience. A member of the Bois Forte Band of the Chippewa Tribe – and long-time professor of American Indian studies at UMN Duluth – Grover first made waves in the literary world with her 2010 short story collection The Dance Boots. This debut garnered Grover the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award. Recent releases include essay collection Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year (2017), winner of the 2018 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir & Creative Nonfiction. Grover’s first novel, The Road Back to Sweetgrass (2014), followed the diverging paths of three Ojibwe women. In a rave review, the Pioneer Press notes: “At heart, [Sweetgrass] is a story about longing for home, with traditions of pow-wows and wild ricing… and of coming of age when the Anishinaabe struggled to preserve their culture in a changing world.” In her much anticipated follow up, In the Night of Memory, the author returns to northern Minnesota and weaves a moving tale of family loss and redemption. It hit shelves on April 2.

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Club Book Episode 90 Leif Enger

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 01:56:08 +0000

Chart-topping novelist Leif Enger burst onto the literary scene in 2001 with Peace Like a River – one of this century’s few fiction debuts to sell a million copies. Set in northern Minnesota in the 1960s, audiences fell in love with Peace Like a River’s arcadian small town setting and 12-year-old protagonist Reuben ‘Rube’ Land – a young narrator every bit as memorable as Huck Finn or ‘Scout’ Finch. Enger’s follow-ups to date include So Brave, Young and Handsome, a classic Western with a Minnesota spin. Along with older brother Lin (and under the apropos pen name L.L. Enger), he also penned an Edgar Award nominated mystery series about a retired baseball all-star and his less-than-restful retirement in the Northwoods. Enger’s newest, Virgil Wander, centers on a small industrial town past its prime, and the band of residents who love it fiercely. The Wall Street Journal raved: “Virgil Wander brings out the charm and downright strangeness of the defiantly normal.” Since its publication in October 2018, this newest addition to the Enger corpus has garnered a host of honors, including being named a #1 Indie Next List Pick.

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Club Book Episode 89 Don Winslow

Sun, 24 Mar 2019 22:38:25 +0000

Internationally renowned thriller novelist Don Winslow is the mind behind “The Godfather trilogy of our time” – this according to sources as varied as The New York Times, Esquire magazine, and writer Stephen King. Over the past three decades, Winslow has published more than twenty books total. Early highlights include The Death and Life of Bobby Z, basis for a 2007 film of the same name starring Laurence Fishburne and Paul Walker, and Savages, which was adapted for the big screen by Oliver Stone in 2012. Winslow reached still further heights with The Power of the Dog, the first of a trilogy about DEA agent Art Keller’s decades-long war with a Mexican drug kingpin. Based on the U.S. Government’s very real War on Drugs (and six years of research by Winslow), The Power of the Dog and its 2015 sequel The Cartel replicate “the pace and feel of an explosive documentary” (NPR). The trilogy’s much-anticipated conclusion, The Border, debuts February 26. It finds protagonist Keller pulled from retirement to combat a domestic heroine epidemic and new enemies where he least expected to find them: in his own government.

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Club Book Episode 88 Emily Bernard

Sun, 24 Mar 2019 22:36:49 +0000

Tennessee native Emily Bernard is intimately familiar with, and endlessly fascinated by, the “complexities and paradoxes” of growing up as a person of color in the American South. She captures her insights and takeaways in the much anticipated essay anthology Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine. In an advance review for the intertwining, twelve-essay collection, Publisher’s Weekly lauds: “The author’s wisdom and compassion radiate throughout.” While her struggles and themes will strike a chord with many, Bernard’s life story is singular and her authorial voice fresh. She holds a PhD from Yale, and is now on the faculty of a university in the whitest state of America. She is also the mother of two daughters adopted from Ethiopia. Prior to her memoir, Bernard penned significant scholarship on Harlem Renaissance luminaries Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, and co-authored Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs (2009). Her essays have appeared in a host of journals and anthologies, including The American Scholar and Best African American Essays.

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Club Book Episode 87 Alex Kotlowitz

Sun, 24 Mar 2019 22:35:26 +0000

Peabody Award- winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz is one of the nation’s foremost commentators on urban violence and community perseverance. He is best known for the seminal but haunting There Are No Children Here, the real-life story of 9- and 11-year old brothers in Chicago’s most crime-ridden public housing complex. (Oprah Winfrey produced and starred in a film version of There Are No Children Here in 1993.) His 2007 follow-up, The Other Side of the River, shines a light on two towns in southern Michigan as a microcosm for the racial divides still prevalent in America. In addition to numerous journalism plaudits, Kotlowitz won an Emmy Award as producer of the 2011 documentary The Interrupters (based on a gripping New York Times Magazine article researched by the author). Kotlowitz returns to Chicago in his newest exposé, An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. In it, he shares heart-wrenching vignettes of residents who lived through Chicago’s most violent summer on record, and paints a fresh, honest portrait of a city in turmoil. It hit shelves in March.

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Club Book Episode 86 Deborah Blum

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 19:03:14 +0000

Bestselling author Deborah Blum is one of America’s foremost science writers, and one of only a handful to find publishing success writing about the history of science. Blum’s debut, The Monkey Wars (1994), grew out of a Pulitzer Prize winning series she wrote for the Sacramento Bee about the ethical implications of primate research. Blum’s follow-ups demonstrate her research range: Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences between Men and Woman (1998), and Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death (2007). Blum’s popularity grew still further in 2010, with The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. One review lauded The Poisoner’s Handbook as “a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madam Curie.” Plum’s newest book, The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, follows in a similar vein. It tells the surprising – sometimes stomach-churning – story of the unsung heroes we have to thank for today’s food industry safety protocols.

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Club Book Episode 85 David Grann

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:53:31 +0000

David Grann is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. His gripping debut, The Lost City of Z (2009), follows the life and mysterious disappearance of Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett. It is the basis for the 2016 movie of the same name, starring Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson. Grann’s follow-up, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes (2010), is a twelve-essay anthology. Each entry focuses on someone with an all-consuming passion in life that leads them into decidedly unusual (and sometimes deadly) situations. Grann solidified his reputation in 2017 with Killers of the Flower Moon, a shocking exposé that documents one of the most sinister racial injustices in American history – and the founding of the modern FBI. In his newest release, The White Darkness, Grann returns to the world of intrepid explorers. This lavishly illustrated book follows the story of Henry Worsley, a special forces veteran eager to retrace the steps of famed adventurer Ernest Shackleton – and to do the legend one better, by traversing the full length of the Antarctic on foot. The White Darkness hit shelves in October.

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Club Book Episode 84 Wil Haygood

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 22:23:17 +0000

African American historian Wil Haygood made waves in 2008 with the publication of a feature in The Washington Post titled “A Butler Well Served by This Election.” It profiled the life and service of Eugene Allen, a White House butler who worked under eight presidents over the course of 34 years. It is the inspiration behind the Lee Daniels movie of the same name, starring Oprah Winfrey and Forrest Whitaker. In 2013, as a tie-in to the Hollywood film, Haygood fleshed out Allen’s story into a New York Times bestselling biography, The Butler: A Witness to History. Haygood has also penned biographers of African American luminaries including musician Sammy Davis Jr., boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, and Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Haygood’s new book, Tigerland, tells the remarkable untold story of baseball and basketball teams at a poor, black, segregated high school in Ohio. The Tigers both won high-profile state championships (and made national headlines) in 1968-1969 against the backdrop of escalating racial tensions.

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Club Book Episode 83 Brian Freeman

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 22:14:27 +0000

Outside of the United States, the city of Duluth is best known by many as the primary setting for the mysteries of prolific, internationally bestselling novelist Brian Freeman. He is the author behind the acclaimed Jonathan Stride detective series. Stride’s 2006 debut, Immoral, won the Macavity Award and was a finalist for the Edgar, Dagger, Anthony and Barry awards for best first novel. Freeman introduced a second popular protagonist, eccentric Florida investigator Cab Bolton, in The Bone House (2011). Freeman’s titles have been printed in 22 different languages and sold in 46 countries to date. His latest, Alter Ego, is the ninth installment in the Jonathan Stride series. In this memorable case, Duluth’s famous son finds himself investigating a mercurial Hollywood actor starring in a film about none other than Stride himself! The Star Tribune called Alter Ego “a practically perfect summer read… Brian Freeman’s latest explores the cult of celebrity and the sociopaths that it sometimes shelters.”

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Club Book Episode 82 Julia Glass

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 21:46:25 +0000

National Book Award winner Julia Glass won one of fiction’s highest honors with her debut novel. That breakout, Three Junes (2002), follows the lives and loves of a Scottish family over the course of a full decade. Upon its release, The New York Times Book Review gushed: “Three Junes brilliantly rescues, then refurbishes, the traditional plot-driven novel.” Subsequent bestsellers to Glass’s credit include The Whole World Over (2007), I See You Everywhere (2008), The Widower’s Tale (2010), and And the Dark Sacred Night (2014). This last revisits several of the characters and settings from Three Junes. Glass is also a prize-winning short fiction writer and a frequent anthology collaborator. Glass’s new full-length novel, A House Among the Trees, centers around the childhood secrets and shocking last will and testament of a world-renowned children’s book author. The National Book Review calls it: “Enthralling… Glass is a master at withholding information until just the right moment.”

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Club Book Episode 81 Curt Brown

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 21:42:45 +0000

Eli Saslow is a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist, and a leading voice in the discourse around resurgent white nationalism and how to combat it. His first book-length treatment of this subject, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, hits shelves in September. The book follows Saslow’s relationship with Derek Black, a white supremacist from one of the movement’s most high-profile families. In college, Black’s interactions with people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds led him to question (and ultimately reject) the worldview of his upbringing. Saslow first introduced Black’s story in 2016, in a seminal piece for The Washington Post. Saslow’s previous works of note include Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President (2011), which profiles a sampling of poignant letters received – and responded to – by President Obama. Among other high journalism honors, Saslow earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for a hard-hitting Washington Post series on the rise in food stamps usage. He won the George Polk Award for National Reporting that same year.

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Club Book Episode 80 Eli Saslow

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 16:13:24 +0000

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Club Book Episode 79 Peggy Orenstein

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 16:11:39 +0000

Award-winning journalist and feminist icon Peggy Orenstein is a leading voice in the national conversations around gender norms and expectations. Her influential exposés include Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (2011) and Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (2016). Orenstein has also penned a bestselling and candid memoir about her personal struggles with infertility and motherhood. She has been featured on a dozen major media outlets, including Nightline, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, and NPR’s Fresh Air and Morning Edition. In 2012, the Columbia Journalism Review named Orenstein one of “40 Women Who Changed the Media Business Over 40 Years.” Her latest project is a wide-ranging anthology, Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex and Life. Library Journal – among a host of other publications – praised it with a starred review, sure to “enrich the reader’s understanding of everything from abortion laws, to breast cancer, to pornography and body image.”

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Club Book Episode 78 Abdi Nor Iftin

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 20:22:35 +0000

Somali expat and debut author Abdi Nor Iftin is the pen behind one of the most anticipated – and most timely – nonfiction releases of 2018. Iftin’s long and harrowing journey to America, as part of the U.S. Government’s embattled Diversity Visa Program, came to the attention of audiences around the world through a viral BBC Radio mini-series. Iftin’s larger-than-life immigration story begins in war-torn Mogadishu, where he risked his life chronicling the rise of Islamic extremism in Somalia as an underground NPR correspondent. He narrowly escaped to a refugee camp in Kenya, where against long odds he received an invitation from the U.S. Embassy to interview for a visa in 2014. Chart-topping radio show and podcast This American Life packaged Iftin’s nightly interviews with BBC journalist Leo Hornak into a popular episode in 2015 (“Abdi and the Golden Ticket”). He is now living in Portland, Maine, where he works as an English interpreter for other Somali immigrants and recently collected his stories into a book. Call Me American debuted in June.

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Club Book Episode 77 Karin Slaughter

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 01:57:58 +0000

Chart-topping mystery phenom Karin Slaughter is the author behind nearly twenty thrillers to date. Collectively, her books have sold a staggering 35 million copies across more than 120 countries. She is best known for the nine-book Grant County series, set in rural Georgia, which launched her writing career in 2001. It centers around small town pediatrician and part-time coroner Dr. Sara Linton and her husband, the local chief of police. Slaughter also writes the so-called Atlanta series, which follows special agents at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Unsurprisingly, her two worlds have collided a number of times, beginning with the bestselling novel Undone (2009). Karin Slaughter has also written several well received standalones. Three of these – Cop Town (2014), The Good Daughter (2017), and Pieces of Her (2018) – are currently in development for film or television adaptations. Pieces of Her debuts in August. In a starred review, Booklist promises: “Readers will find themselves totally immersed in Slaughter’s suspenseful, alternating story lines, and won’t want either of them to end.”

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Club Book Episode 74 Patricia Hampl

Mon, 14 May 2018 00:45:27 +0000

Patricia Hampl is one of those rare authors who holds perennial appeal with general audiences, but is also beloved by writers everywhere: “lyric, cerebral, and a boon companion at any stage of the writing journey” (Ploughshares). In her debut memoir and travelogue, A Romantic Education (1981), Hampl explores her Czech heritage. Her equally poignant follow-up, Virgin Time (1992), turns the spotlight to her Roman Catholic upbringing and the author’s quest for spiritual fulfillment beyond religious dogma. The Florist’s Daughter (2007) focuses on “the relentlessly modest life” of her hard-working parents. Hampl, a three-time Minnesota Book Award winner and professor at the University of Minnesota, is back in 2018 with The Art of a Wasted Day. Like her other masterworks, The Art of a Wasted Day is difficult to pigeonhole as simple memoir. It is part travelogue, and part spirited defense of leisure time in the face of our ever-more busy and stressful modern lifestyle. It debuted in April.

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Club Book Episode 76 Samantha Irby

Sun, 13 May 2018 01:02:25 +0000

Samantha Irby is a comedienne and memoirist, and a decidedly unique voice in contemporary African American literature. Her fresh, honest brand of humor first came to the attention of readers through her immensely popular blog Bitches Gotta Eat. Irby’s bestselling essay collection, Meaty (2013), adapts and expands her most popular blog entries – and adds some new ones, to boot. Topics truly run the gamut, from personal reflections on the author’s failed relationships and on being black in America, to a ribald take on her struggles with Crohn’s disease, to an ode to tacos. Cable network FX recently optioned Meaty for a half-hour comedy series. Irby’s follow-up, the New York Times– bestselling We Are Never Meeting In Real Life (2017), continues in that tradition. Twenty new, sidesplitting essays – including “The Real Housewife of Kalamazoo” and “I’m in Love and It’s Boring” – reaffirm Irby’s deserved reputation as a “breathtakingly honest and, best of all, imminently relatable humorist” (Chicago Tribune).

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Club Book Episode 75 Emily Fridlund

Sun, 13 May 2018 00:52:20 +0000

Emily Fridlund’s opus History of Wolves straddles the line between thriller and coming-of-age novel. Fridlund’s teenage protagonist, Linda, is an outsider in her close-knit Northwoods community. She finally finds a sense of belonging babysitting for the eccentric Gardner family, but the role comes with expectations and secrets she is ill equipped to handle. History of Wolves shortlisted Fridlund for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Before and after its release, the book won a host of other honors besides: it is a #1 Indie Next Pick, Barnes & Noble Discovers Great New Writers Selection, New York Times Editors Choice, and a USA Today Notable Book. National Public Radio notes: “Fridlund does a remarkable job transcending genres without sacrificing the suspense that builds steadily in the book… It is as beautiful and as icy as the Minnesota woods where it’s set, and with her first book, Fridlund has already proven herself to be a singular talent.”

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Club Book Episode 73 Ariel Lawhon

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 19:04:55 +0000

Ariel Lawhon is a rising star in the realm of historical fiction. Her first forays into the popular genre include The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (2014), which explores one of the most mysterious missing persons cases of the twentieth century as told from the perspectives of the three women who knew the victim best. The New York Times Book Review praised Lawhon’s woven narrative as “more meticulously choreographed than a chorus line.” Her 2016 follow-up, Flight of Dreams, breathes new life into the famous Hindenburg and the deadly 1937 air disaster that claimed 36 lives in rural New Jersey. Lawhon’s greatly anticipated 2018 release, I Was Anastasia, follows the life of Anna Anderson, an enigmatic woman who spent half a century battling to be recognized as the lost Russian princess Anastasia Romanov. Notes publisher Doubleday: “Lawhon wades into the most psychologically complex and emotionally compelling territory: the nature of identity itself.” I Was Anastasia hit shelves in March.

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Club Book Episode 72 Laura Lippman

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 22:06:11 +0000

Laura Lippman is author of the chart-topping Tess Monaghan series. Plucky, resourceful Baltimore private eye Tess Monaghan is a consistent New York Times bestseller, and the dozen installments so far have garnered Lippman an international following. She has also published ten standalone books, including the acclaimed Every Secret Thing (2004) and After I’m Gone (2014), and an intertwined anthology called Hardly Knew Her (2006). Lippman’s mysteries have won her a staggering number of industry honors, including the Shamus Award, Edgar Award, and seven Anthony Awards. Her latest departure from Tess Monaghan, Sunburn, is a psychological thriller about a pair of lovers with dark secrets and darker intentions. In a starred review, Booklist lauds Sunburn as “an homage to classic noir, showcasing a writer at the height of her powers.” Library Journal concurs, promising “it will delight old-movie lovers, and reward Lippman’s legion of fans.” It hit shelves in late February.

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Episode 71 William Kent Krueger

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 03:22:55 +0000

Minnesota boasts more than its share of homegrown mystery novelists, and William Kent Krueger ranks near the top of that list for many. He is best known for his sixteen-book Cork O’Connor series, set in the state’s forested and isolated Arrowhead Region. O’Connor, a cop turned sheriff and private investigator, burst onto the scene in Iron Lake (1998). This debut won Krueger a rare honor: both the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel. Subsequent installments have won too many honors to name, including five Minnesota Book Awards. Moreover, Krueger has penned two acclaimed standalone novels: The Devil’s Bed (2001) and Ordinary Grace (2013). O’Connor’s sixteenth and latest adventure, Sulfur Springs, offers a departure from the verdant Northwoods setting readers associate with the series. After receiving a cryptic voicemail from his stepson, Krueger’s dogged protagonist travels to Arizona – and finds himself embroiled with the area’s dangerous drug cartels. The Star Tribune lauds it as “a blistering Wild West mystery.”

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Club Book Episode 69 Edward Kelsey Moore

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 03:19:42 +0000

Edward Kelsey Moore is the pen behind 2014’s breakout hit The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. Moore’s debut follows three life-long friends – dubbed “The Supremes” while in high school – as they navigate four decades of life’s challenges. It garnered Moore a Best First Novel Award from the American Library Association – Black Caucus, among other high honors. The Supremes also boasted an impressive run on The New York Times Bestseller List, and has been optioned by Fox Searchlight Pictures for a motion picture. His anticipated follow-up, The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues, hit shelves in June. Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean are back in this sequel adventure that BookPage lauds as “an uplifting read which tugs at readers’ heartstrings and elicits enthusiastic chuckles in equal measure… sure to satisfy fans while welcoming new ones to the fold with open arms.” In addition to his career as a novelist, Edward Kelsey Moore is also a nationally renowned cellist and accomplished music essayist.

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Club Book Episode 68 Allen Eskens

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 03:09:57 +0000

Lawyer-turned-novelist Allen Eskens burst onto the thrillers scene in 2014 with his “compulsively suspenseful” (Bookpage) mystery The Life We Bury. This literary debut won the former defense attorney the genre’s prestigious Barry Award, the Rosebud Award for Best First Novel – and put him in contention for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, and half a dozen others. The Life We Bury has since been published in sixteen languages and optioned for a feature film adaptation. Eskens’ follow-ups, The Guise of Another (2015) and The Heavens May Fall (2016), follow some of the same characters. The latter won the 2017 Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction. Eskens’ newest book, The Deep Dark Descending, debuted in October. It centers around homicide detective Max Rupert – a protagonist already known to Eskens fans – as the veteran cop struggles to balance his professional integrity with a desire for personal vengeance after the shocking revelation that the hit-and-run accident that killed his wife was no accident after all.

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Club Book Episode 67 Heather Ann Thompson

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:40:58 +0000

Acclaimed writer and prison reform advocate Heather Ann Thompson, PhD, is the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History. Thompson won that high honor for Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its Legacy – the first definitive account of our country’s largest and most notorious prison rebellion. In addition to the Pulitzer, the 2016 title also garnered Dr. Thompson the Bancroft Prize in American History and put her in the running for a National Book Award and the prestigious Los Angeles Book Prize. Furthermore, over a dozen publications – including The New York Times, Bloomberg, Newsweek, and Publishers Weekly – singled out Blood in the Water for their “Top 10 Books of the Year” lists. TriStar Pictures recently optioned Blood in the Water for adaptation into a feature film penned by Hollywood screenwriters Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel. Heather Ann Thompson is a native of Detroit and professor at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. Her previous, book-length research projects include Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City.

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Club Book Episode 66 Shawn Lawrence Otto

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 19:18:42 +0000

Shawn Lawrence Otto is a science activist and two-time Minnesota Book Award winner. His nonfiction debut, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America (2012), is a meticulously researched exposé on the growing anti-science movement – a book that “every voter in the country should read it,” according to MinnPost. Otto’s provocative 2016 follow-up, The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It, is “an essential work, a game changer, and probably the most important book you’ll read this year,” lauds ScienceBlogs. Otto is a co-founder of Science Debate, a grassroots movement dedicated to ensuring that candidates for public office address hot-button science and technology issues. He is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, Salon, Scientific American, and other outlets. In addition to his advocacy work, Shawn Otto has penned a well-received novel, Sins of Our Fathers (2014), and wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated film House of Sand and Fog.

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Club Book Episode 65 David Housewright

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 18:59:05 +0000

Minnesota boasts its fair share of thriller novelists, but few are as prolific as David Housewright. Intrepid ex-cop Holland Taylor, Housewright’s original protagonist, first came to the attention of readers in his 1995 debut, Penance. It earned the author the 1996 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and put him in contention for that year’s Shamus Award (bestowed by the Private Eye Writers of America). Housewright’s follow-up, Practice to Deceive (1997), garnered him his first Minnesota Book Award. Jelly’s Gold (2010) and Curse of the Jade Lily (2013), two books in the fourteen-installment Rushmore “Mac” McKenzie series, earned him two more – putting him in a rare company. His latest, What the Dead Leave Behind, follows the Saint Paul private investigator as he takes on the case of an unsolved murder in New Brighton that – like so many of the Twin Cities area crimes Mac investigates – is more than it first seems. Not mincing words, Publishers Weekly warns readers that they will find What the Dead Leave Behind: “Nearly impossible to put down.” It hit shelves in June.

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Club Book Episode 64 Dave Page

Sat, 21 Oct 2017 19:02:41 +0000

Dave Page is one of the foremost scholars writing today on the life and legacy of Saint Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald. Among other credits, Page edited The Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the future literary star’s boyhood journal. (Fitzgerald mined Minnesota characters and episodes from his ‘Thoughtbook’ when crafting a backdrop for his seminal The Great Gatsby, and in other stories.) Page also co-edited The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (2004). His latest research endeavor, F. Scott Fitzgerald in Minnesota: The Writer and His Friends at Home, is a house-by-house guide to Summit Avenue and other areas of Saint Paul that Fitzgerald knew and loved. In this impressive opus – which weighs in at nearly two pounds – Page’s anecdotes are accompanied by hundreds of historical and contemporary photographs, and nearly 700 footnotes. Page has taught English and Fitzgerald courses at Inver Hills Community College, and currently serves on the board of the non-profit organization Fitzgerald in Saint Paul.

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Club Book Episode 63 Vidar Sundstøl

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 19:34:50 +0000

Scandinavian readers who have never visited the United States have come to know northern Minnesota intimately through the inspired work of Norwegian crime novelist Vidar Sundstøl. He is best known, both in his native country and abroad, for the Minnesota Trilogy: The Land of Dreams, Only the Dead, and The Ravens. The series, translated to English by Tiina Nunnally, centers around a U.S. Forest Service officer whose happy, unassuming life on Lake Superior is turned upside down by the grisly murder of a Norwegian tourist. The Land of Dreams won Sundstøl the Riverton Prize for Best Norwegian Crime Story in 2008; popular newspaper Dagbladet recently praised it as one of the twenty-five best Norwegian mystery novels of all time. Sundstøl’s newest novel, The Devil’s Wedding Ring, picks up with the mysterious death of an occult folklore researcher on Midsummer Eve. It is a story American fans have been craving: not only “taut with suspense, but steeped in Norwegian culture past and present” (University of Minnesota Press). Its English translation debuted in September.

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Club Book Episode 62 Lesley Nneka Arimah

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:14:54 +0000

Nigerian-American short fiction favorite Lesley Nneka Arimah made waves in April with the release of her long-awaited collection What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky. For months prior, publications as varied as Time, Elle, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and even Buzzfeed had lauded it as one of 2017’s most anticipated releases – and with good reason. Arimah’s debut features a dozen stories, several of which have already earned her an international following. These include the O. Henry Prize-winning, National Magazine Award-nominated “Glory,” about a doll woven from hair which comes to life, and “Light,” winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Considered in its entirety, NPR calls What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky “electrifying and defiantly original… Arimah crafts stories that reward rereading, not because they’re unclear or confusing, but because it’s so tempting to revisit each exquisite sentence, each uniquely beautiful description.”

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Club Book Episode 61 Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 18:14:40 +0000

Only a handful of romance writers can boast a career as long or prolific as Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Over the past three decades, she has published nearly thirty books. Moreover, that corpus including five novels singled out as Favorite Book of the Year by the Romance Writers of America (RWA) – a distinction achieved by no other author to date. RWA inducted Phillips into its Romance Writers Hall of Fame in 2001, and she received the organization’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. Phillips is perhaps best known to readers for her New York Times bestselling Chicago Stars series – a string of nine beloved books that, in the words of fellow writer Kristin Hannah, solidify her reputation as “the absolute queen of contemporary romance.” Her latest installment, #1 New York Times bestseller First Star I See Tonight, was reissued in paperback in June. In it, dogged, novice detective Piper Dove is assigned to tail a star quarterback, and quickly finds the case to be anything but routine.

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Club Book Episode 60 P.J. Tracy

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 21:34:00 +0000

P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo Patricia (P.J.) and Traci Lambrecht, authors behind the internationally bestselling Monkeewrench mystery series. Set right here in the Twin Cities, the Monkeewrench novels center around a group of computer geniuses who split their time between software engineering and a much less prosaic pastime: helping authorities solve Minnesota’s seemingly unsolvable crimes. P.J. Tracy’s debut, Monkeewrench (2003), earned the Lambrechts the prestigious Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Mystery Novel, as well as the 2014 Minnesota Book Award for Popular Fiction. Subsequent installments – Live Bait (2004), Dead Run (2005), Snow Blind (2006), Shoot to Thrill (2010), and Off the Grid (2012) – firmly established P.J. Tracy as a murder mystery mainstay. Their seventh, The Sixth Idea, will be released in paperback in June. Nothing Stays Buried, Traci Lambrechet’s newest Monkeewrench thriller – and the first since the passing of her mother P.J. in 2016 – was released in August.

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Club Book Episode 59 Yaa Gyasi

Wed, 17 May 2017 18:37:19 +0000

Ghanaian-American novelist Yaa Gyasi is the author behind Homegoing, one of the breakout hits of 2016. This sweeping, transcontinental family saga follows the descendants of two sisters torn apart by the African slave trade. The legacy of slavery follows six subsequent generations – through the American Civil War, to twentieth-century Harlem, and up to the modern day. It has earned a wide range of accolades and honors. The Washington Post endorses Homegoing as “[Alex Haley’s] Roots for a new generation. A bold tale of slavery… how much we know, and how much we willfully forget.” Gyasi’s unique, relevant, and engaging voice earned the 26-year-old the National Book Foundation’s highly coveted ‘5 Under 35’ Award for 2016. Random House is re-releasing the New York Times bestseller in paperback in May.

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Club Book Episode 58 Lorna Landvik

Tue, 02 May 2017 20:48:16 +0000

Minnesota’s own Lorna Landvik is a comedienne, actress, playwright, and prolific novelist. Her 1995 fiction debut, Patty Jane’s House of Curl – a zany but heartwarming story about two Minnesota sisters who open a beauty parlor… complete with live harp music and Norwegian baked goods – introduced readers to Landvik’s unique brand of humor. She has since published nearly a dozen other books, including bestsellers Welcome to the Great Mysterious (2002), Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons (2004), Oh My Stars (2008), and Best to Laugh (2014). In addition to her writing, Landvik is a regular in the local improv comedy scene, and has written and starred in several scripted plays. Her latest novel, Once in a Blue Moon Lodge, is a long-awaited sequel to Patty Jane’s House of Curls. It hit shelves in April.

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Club Book Episode 57 Julie Rivett

Tue, 02 May 2017 18:53:38 +0000

Julie Rivett is a scholar and granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett, author of the 1929 detective classic The Maltese Falcon. Hammett is considered the father of the “hard-boiled” style of detective writing, and The Maltese Falcon is undoubtedly his opus. Julie Rivett has edited five books on her celebrated grandfather’s work, including: Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett (2001), Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers (2001), Return of the Thin Man (2012), The Hunter and Other Stories (2013), and The Continental Op: Case Files Complete (2016). Rivett is also a trustee of the Hammett estate, and delivers lectures around the world on Hammett and autobiographical Falcon protagonist Sam Spade.

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Club Book Episode 56 Lily King

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 18:40:09 +0000

Award-winning novelist Lily King is the author of Euphoria, one of 2014’s best reviewed books. King’s popular page-turner is inspired by and loosely based around the New Guinea fieldwork of famed cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. The New York Times Book Review singled out Euphoria for a coveted spot on its annual “10 Best Books” list, praising King’s work as a “meticulously researched homage to Mead’s restless mind — and a considered portrait of Western anthropology in its primitivist heyday.” The book garnered the author a host of other honors, as well, including the first-ever Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Lily King has also published three additional novels, including The Pleasing Hour (1999), a riveting debut honored with a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, and Father of the Rain (2010), winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction.

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Club Book Episode 55 Pam Jenoff

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 17:34:25 +0000

Pam Jenoff is the author behind The Kommandant’s Girl (2007), one of this past decade’s best received works of historical romance. After the Nazis occupy Poland in 1939, young Jewish bride Emma Bau is forced to flee her home and husband and assume a new identity. In hopes of gaining intel for the Polish resistance movement, she becomes the secretary and love interest of a high-ranking German official – a brave decision with unexpected consequences. Jenoff has since penned half a dozen more novels against the backdrop of war-torn Europe, including The Diplomat’s Wife (2008), The Things We Cherished (2011), The Ambassador’s Daughter (2013), The Other Girl (2014), The Winter Guest (2014), and The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach (2015). Her newest, The Orphan’s Tale, debuts in February. It follows Noa, a young woman who becomes pregnant by a German soldier, is ostracized from her community, and joins up with a traveling circus.

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Club Book Episode 54 Jamie Ford

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 17:31:54 +0000

Book club favorite Jamie Ford made waves in 2009 with the publication of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Set in Seattle against the backdrop of Japanese-American internment during World War II, Ford’s historical fiction debut follows the unlikely but lasting friendship between a Chinese-American boy and Japanese-American girl. Kirkus Reviews commended it “a timely tale that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices.” Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet became a mainstay on the New York Times bestseller list for two full years, and garnered Ford a number of honors, including the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. It has been translated into an astounding 34 languages to date. Ford’s sophomore novel, Songs of Willow Frost (2013), revisits the author’s favorite setting at the height of the Great Depression.

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Club Book Episode 53 Richard Zacks

Tue, 14 Mar 2017 19:27:19 +0000

Richard Zacks is an accomplished journalist and historian, best known by many for his gripping, well-researched books on topics relating to the Golden Age of Piracy. These include The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd (2002), billed as a “rare, authentic pirate story for grown-ups,” and The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 (2005) – a bestseller that Kirkus Reviews lauds as an intense adventure narrative peppered with “exquisitely researched, character-enhancing tangential anecdotes.” Zacks expanded his investigative lens in 2012 with Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York. His newest, Chasing the Last Laugh, tells the tale of a round-the-world comedy tour that took American humorist Mark Twain as far from home as Australia and South Africa. Booklist recommended it highly as a “fast-paced and revealing look at a neglected episode in Twain’s life.”

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Club Book Episode 52 Chris Pavone

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 18:35:37 +0000

Chris Pavone burst onto the mystery thriller scene in 2012 with The Expats, a chart-topping spy novel centered around an unassuming American housewife who stumbles upon evidence of a major conspiracy – while safeguarding a secret of her own. His debut earned Pavone both Edgar and Anthony awards. The international bestseller is currently in print in over twenty languages, and being adapted for a major motion picture produced by Kevin Spacey. None other than Stephen King singled out Pavone’s 2014 follow up, The Accident, as one of the best nail-biters of that year. His newest, The Travelers, centers around a disillusioned travel writer who finds himself caught in a web of international intrigue that takes him to Argentina, Iceland, and many points in between. Notes The New York Times: “The Travelers confirms what Mr. Pavone’s first two books have established: that when it comes to quick-witted, breathless thrillers that trot the globe, his are top-tier.”

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Club Book Episode 51 Kao Kalia Yang

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 17:21:19 +0000

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American memoirist and teacher, and a leading voice for one of Minnesota’s fastest growing ethnic groups. Her moving 2008 memoir, The Latehomecomer, chronicles the story of her own family – and hundreds like them – who made the harrowing trek from their native Laos, to refugee camps in Thailand, and ultimately to the United States in the wake of the Vietnam War. The Latehomecomer won Yang the 2009 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir & Creative Nonfiction, as well as that year’s MNBA Reader’s Choice Award – the first-ever title to win two awards. The National Endowment for the Arts recently singled out the memoir for a coveted spot on its Big Read roster, and it remains Minnesota publisher Coffee House Press’s single bestselling title to date. Yang turns the spotlight on the trials and travails of her father, Bee Yang, in her 2016 follow up The Song Poet. The Pioneer Press praised it as “inventive and touching . . . an elegantly written, moving testament to so many aspects of the human experience.”

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Club Book Episode 50 Nnedi Okorafor

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 17:03:01 +0000

Internationally bestselling science fiction and fantasy author Nnedi Okorafor is one of that genre’s most unique contemporary voices. Her spell-binding work is inspired by her rich West African heritage. Titles of particular note include the post-apocalyptic Who Fears Death (2010), winner of the prestigious World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and its 2016 prequel The Book of Phoenix, which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Okorafor’s equally popular young adult books include Akata Witch (2011), affectionately dubbed “the Nigerian Harry Potter” by fans, and Zahrah the Windseeker (2005), winner of multiple prizes for pan-African literature. A screenplay for Zahrah the Windseeker is currently in the works, and both Who Fears Death and Akata Witch have also been optioned for films. In addition to her novel-length work, Okorafor also pens short fiction, including the recent Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novella Binti (2015).

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Club Book Episode 49 R.T. Rybak

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 21:13:09 +0000

Minneapolis native R.T. Rybak served as mayor of Minnesota’s largest city from 2002 to 2014, before stepping down from the post at the end of a third term. His post-mayoral career is proving to be an eventful one. Rybak currently serves as CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation, one of the region’s most prominent philanthropies, and is active at the helm of Generation Next, a public–private coalition aiming to improve academic outcomes for underserved children. Between commitments, he has found time to pen a well-received memoir that is equal parts political coming-of-age story and behind-the-scenes look at the running of a major American city. With refreshing candor, Pothole Confidential: My Life as Mayor of Minneapolis chronicles Rybak’s experiences with and thoughts on defining events of the past decade, including the I-35 bridge collapse and the fight over marriage equality.

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Club Book Episode 48 Sy Montgomery

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:04:34 +0000

Internationally renowned naturalist, author, documentarian and media commentator Sy Montgomery is sometimes described as “part Indiana Jones, part Emily Dickinson” (Boston Globe). A distinguished career in animal behavior research has taken Montgomery to far-flung locations including Costa Rica, the Congo, Mongolia’s deserts, and many points in between. Her impressive written corpus spans ten books for adults and another ten geared toward children. Bestsellers include the perennial favorite The Good Pig (2007), a personal memoir about her family’s 750-pound pet pig, and Birdology (2011). Her latest New York Times bestseller, The Soul of an Octopus (2015), was shortlisted for a National Book Award. In it, she explores the psyche of this extraordinary species, including their remarkable ability to forge personal connections with humans.

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Club Book Episode 47 Candice Millard

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 17:08:59 +0000

Candice Millard is a New York Times bestselling historian widely acclaimed for producing “crisp, concise and revealing history” (The Washington Post). She began her distinguished career as a writer and editor for National Geographic, before turning her attention to book-length projects. Millard’s 2005 debut, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, explored a little-known chapter in the life of our twenty-sixth president. Her 2011 follow-up, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President, chronicled the life and assassination of President James Garfield. Both charted extremely well and garnered Millard numerous honors. Millard’s newest title, debuting in September, focuses on the larger-than-life character of Winston Churchill – prior to his time as Prime Minister. Hero of the Empire recounts the story of Churchill’s capture and harrowing escape from a POW camp in colonial South Africa during the Boer Wars.

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Club Book Episode 46 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Wed, 19 Oct 2016 19:47:08 +0000

American Book Award winner Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a master of many different genres. Her hit novels to date include The Mistress of Spices (1997), Sister of My Heart (1999), One Amazing Thing (2010), and Oleander Girl (2013). Studios have optioned many of Divakaruni’s works for films or television, including a big screen adaptation of The Mistress of Spices in 2005. She is also an accomplished poet, playwright, and an award-winning author of short stories and teen literature. Divakaruni’s short fiction and essays have appeared in more than 50 publications. Her newest novel, Before We Visit the Goddess, is set in India and Texas – two places she has lived in and knows intimately. It explores the bounds of multi-generational and transcontinental bonds, twinned themes that have become the author’s hallmark. It charted high on bestseller lists in both the United States and India.

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Club Book Episode 45 Charlotte Rogan

Wed, 05 Oct 2016 18:37:27 +0000

Architect-turned-author Charlotte Rogan made waves on the literary scene with the publication of The Lifeboat, a tense and haunting survival story set at sea at the outset of World War I. Stranded on an overcrowded lifeboat with few provisions and little chance of immediate rescue, survivors of the mysterious sinking of an ocean liner grapple with life-and-death decisions. Rogan’s debut hit numerous bestseller lists and put Rogan in contention for several major literary awards. The Lifeboat has been translated into more than 25 languages, and is currently being adapted into a major motion picture produced by and starring Anne Hathaway. Rogan’s second novel, Now and Again, hit shelves in April. Hailed by The Huffington Post as “just as harrowing, and even more complex,” it centers on an unassuming secretary who stumbles across proof of a massive corporate conspiracy.

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Club Book Episode 44 Lucie Amundsen

Wed, 05 Oct 2016 18:35:57 +0000

Lucie Amundsen is a self-described ‘reluctant farmer’ and co-owner, with her husband Jason, of Locally Laid Egg Company, a ranch enterprise in Duluth that supplies pasture-raised eggs to markets in Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana. Amundsen holds an MFA from Hamline University and is a past contributor to the Star Tribune and Reader’s Digest Association. When this plucky couple – with no real agricultural experience between them – decided to leave their professions to start up a mid-sized chicken farm, Amundsen applied her considerable writing talents to a part-memoir, part-exposé about the experience. Kirkus Reviews recommends Locally Laid highly, stating: “The author’s skepticism and her husband’s optimism collide to create a laughable tale.” Behind the humor, however, Amundsen reveals some alarming truths about today’s egg and poultry industry, along with insights on what we can all do to turn the situation around.

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Club Book Episode 43 Cara Black

Fri, 23 Sep 2016 15:31:32 +0000

Mystery favorite Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer behind the popular Aimée Leduc private investigator series. Set in and around Paris, Leduc’s adventures span fifteen installments to date. Black boasts an international following, with more than 400,000 books in print in eight different languages. She is also a two-time finalist for the Anthony Award, a high honor in the crime fiction genre. Her newest novel, Murder on the Quai, hit shelves in June. In an exciting departure from the norm, Black takes us back in time to explore how a college-aged Aimée Leduc first came to take the reins of her family’s detective agency. Her first caseload is an exciting one, involving a hunt for Nazi gold and much more. Booklist raves: “Finally we have the prequel we’ve been craving… A treat for series fans.”

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Club Book Episode 42 Forrest Pritchard

Tue, 10 May 2016 19:44:59 +0000

Forrest Pritchard is a seventh-generation farmer and New York Times bestselling memoirist. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts on and champions of organic and sustainable farming practices. Pritchard’s literary debut, Gaining Ground, chronicles his personal struggle to save his family farm in Virginia. His 2015 follow up, Growing Tomorrow: A Farm-to-Table Journey, showcases the remarkable stories of 18 sustainable farmers across the country who are changing the way we eat. (Several live and work here in Minnesota.) Club Book is pleased to host Pritchard in Stillwater in conjunction with the 2016 St. Croix Valley Big Read, co-sponsored by Stillwater Public Library and ArtReach St. Croix. The featured title is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback – a classic novel replete with cautionary lessons about the price of poor stewardship of our agricultural resources.

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Club Book Episode 41 JA Jance

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 18:03:45 +0000

Mystery phenom J.A. Jance is the mind behind not one, but three blockbuster series. Her corpus, stretching back to 1985, includes an impressive 60 novels to date. Jance’s popular and compelling protagonists include retired Seattle police detective J. P. Beaumont, Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady, and news anchor-turned-sleuth Ali Reynolds. Among other high honors, two books in the Beaumont series, Without Due Process (1992) and Failure to Appear (1993), have won Jance the prestigious American Mystery Award. Her latest is Clawback, the thirteenth installment in the Ali Reynolds series. In her most controversial case to date, Reynolds is determined to solve the murder of a man whose Ponzi scheme bankrupted hundreds of people – a plight that hits all too close to home for her. Clawback debuts in March 2016.

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Club Book Episode 40 Jacquelyn Mitchard

Wed, 13 Apr 2016 23:13:08 +0000

Book club favorite Jacquelyn Mitchard is the author of ten acclaimed novels to date. Her 1996 debut, The Deep End of the Ocean, propelled the author to superstar status after Oprah Winfrey chose it as the inaugural selection for her wildly popular book club. Hollywood adapted the story into a movie of the same name, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Whoopi Goldberg. Mitchard’s newest book, Two If by Sea, hit shelves in March 2016. The story follows a retired police officer, grieving after the recent and sudden loss of his family, and his relationship with a young ward who exhibits apparent telepathic abilities. “Soulful and emotionally arresting… [Two If by Sea] masterfully mines the place where catastrophic loss meets near-impossible hope and healing,” praised novelist Paula McLain.

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Club Book Episode 39 Lyndsay Faye

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 16:19:02 +0000

Lyndsay Faye is one of the most unique voices writing today in the realms of historical and speculative fiction. Her 2009 debut, Dust and Shadow, takes place in Victorian-era England, and pits the inimitable Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper. Faye followed up that success with the three-book Timothy Wilde series, set in New York City over the 1840s – during the early days of the NYPD and the height of Tammany Hall political corruption. Both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews named The Gods of Gotham, the first in this trilogy, among the ten best crime novels of the year. It also garnered Faye a nomination for the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Novel. Her newest, Jane Steele, is an imaginative retelling of Jane Eyre, the beloved classic by Charlotte Brontë. It hits shelves in March – coinciding with the celebration of Bronte’s 200th birthday.

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Club Book Episode 38 David Mura & Sun Yung Shin

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:41:50 +0000

Writers David Mura and Sun Yung Shin will come together for an evening of conversation about the Asian-American experience in Minnesota. David Mura is a multitalented poet, novelist, memoirist, and playwright. His four full-length poetry collections to date include After We Lost Our Way, winner of the 1989 National Poetry Contest, and The Colors of Desire, winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award. Mura’s first memoir, Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sensei, gained distinction as a New York Times Notable Book. Sun Yung Shin is a Korean American poet and educator. Her poetry debut, Skirt Full of Black, received the Asian American Literary Award in 2008. She is also editor of the upcoming essay anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, which debuted in February.

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Club Book Episode 37 Christina Baker Kline

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 17:29:43 +0000

Novelist Christina Baker Kline is best known by many as the author behind Orphan Train, a runaway hit that reached #1 on The New York Times bestseller list – and continues to chart well on trade paperback bestseller lists nearly two years after its debut. Depression-era Minnesota factors prominently into this true-to-life tale, which centers around a welfare program responsible for relocating thousands of orphaned and destitute children to new homes in the Midwest between 1850 and 1930. At present, there are well over two million copies of Orphan Train in print, and foreign rights have been sold in nearly 40 countries. Kline is also author of four previous novels and writer or editor of five works of nonfiction.

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Club Book Episode 36 Karen Abbott

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:55:16 +0000

Karen Abbott is a New York Times bestselling historian and a pioneer of what USA Today calls “sizzle history.” Her hits to date include Sin in the Second City (2008) and American Rose (2012). Publishers Weekly praises Abbott’s latest title, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, as a “gripping… remarkable story of passion, strength, and resilience.” It brings to light the stories and contributions of four daring female spies from the Civil War. Amazon, Library Journal and the Christian Science Monitor are among those who singled out Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy as one of the best books of 2014. Sony recently optioned it for a miniseries. In addition to her book-length work, Abbott is a regular contributor to Smithsonian and The New York Times.

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Club Book Episode 35 Lori Sturdevant

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 17:59:02 +0000

Lori Sturdevant is a veteran editorial writer and columnist for the Star Tribune and one of the most recognizable bylines in Twin Cities print journalism. Her forte is state government and politics, a beat she has covered for more than 35 years. Sturdevant has also penned, co-written, or edited nine books on important Minnesota topics. These include A Man’s Reach: The Autobiography of Elmer L. Andersen, The Pillsburys of Minnesota, and Citizen Swain: Tales of a Minnesota Life. Sturdevant is a three-time Minnesota Book Award winner, most recently in 2015 for Her Honor: Rosalie Wahl and the Minnesota Women’s Movement, which tells the remarkable story of the first woman to be named to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

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Club Book Episode 34 Brando Skyhorse

Mon, 16 Nov 2015 16:46:06 +0000

Novelist and memoirist, Brando Skyhorse, made a name for himself in 2011 with the publication of The Madonnas of Echo Park. This fiction debut – set in one of Los Angeles’ most racially diverse neighborhoods, where Skyhorse himself grew up – garnered accolades for its contributions to the important, ongoing dialogue on what it means to be Mexican in America. It won the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award, as well as the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction. Skyhorse’s recent, one-of-a-kind memoir is equally compelling. In Take This Man, Skyhorse recounts stories from a singular childhood, during which his mother hid the truth of his heritage and raised him to believe he was Native American. Kirkus Reviews named it one of its Best Nonfiction Books of 2014, and NBC News called it one of its 10 Best Latino Books for that year.

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Club Book Episode 33 Pate & Jones

Fri, 06 Nov 2015 16:35:49 +0000

Authors Alexs Pate and Tish Jones come together for an evening of conversation about their writing and the African American experience in Minnesota. Pate is a professor of writing, playwright, and award-winning novelist. His notable work includes his debut, Losing Absalom, which won a Minnesota Book Award in 1994, and Armistad, a novelization of the screenplay for the 1997 Steven Spielberg historical drama of the same name. Tish Jones is a poet, activist, and the executive director of TruArtSpeaks – a Twin Cities nonprofit dedicated to arts education through the Hip Hop and Spoken Word culture. Pate is senior editor of, and Jones one of 43 contributors to, Blues Vision, a landmark anthology showcasing the unique vision and reality of Minnesota’s diverse African American community.

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Club Book Episode 32 Chuck Logan

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 16:09:26 +0000

Minnesota boasts more than its share of homegrown thriller novelists, and Chuck Logan ranks near the top of that list for many. He is best known for his six-book Phil Broker series, featuring a larger-than-life military veteran and ex- undercover agent. After the Rain, the fifth in that series, earned Logan a Shamus Award nomination for Best P.I. Hardcover Novel in 2005. Hollywood adapted its follow up, Homefront, for the big screen in 2013, with Jason Statham playing Broker alongside co-stars James Franco and Winona Ryder. Logan’s newest book, Fallen Angel, is a gripping standalone. A wounded Army pilot, only recently returned from Iraq, struggles to make sense of the incident that brought down her helicopter – and finds herself part of something much bigger.

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Club Book Episode 31 Ron Rash

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 15:34:13 +0000

Ron Rash is one of the most popular authors writing today in the areas of historical and regional fiction. Rash’s “powerful, yet gently beautiful” novels draw heavily from his own experiences in his native Appalachia (USA Today). These include Serena, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Cove, winner of the 2012 Langum Prize for Historical Fiction. The former saw a big screen adaptation in 2014, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Rash is also an accomplished short story writer, with two O. Henry Prizes and the prestigious Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award to his credit. His newest novel, Above the Waterfall, offers a poignant look at small town life in contemporary Appalachia. It debuted in September.

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Club Book Episode 30 Marja Mills

Tue, 13 Oct 2015 14:48:33 +0000

Journalist Marja Mills made a name for herself in the literature world last year with the publication of her much-anticipated The Mockingbird Next Door. Considered the definitive biography on Harper Lee – the reclusive author behind one of the best-loved novels of the last century – The Mockingbird Next Door became an instant national bestseller. Mills traveled to Lee’s native Monroeville, Alabama in hopes of securing a rare interview for the Chicago Tribune. Exceeding all expectations, Mills struck up an unlikely and close friendship with the literary luminary. In addition to accolades for her writing on Harper Lee, Mills received a Pulitzer Prize as part of a Chicago Tribune team who worked on a 2001 expose about O’Hare Airport entitled “Gateway to Gridlock.”

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Club Book Episode 29 Sara Paretsky

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 16:13:19 +0000

Detective fiction favorite, Sara Paretsky, is the author of more than twenty books, including the New York Times bestselling V.I. Warshawski series. Warshawski, an intrepid private investigator from Chicago, “always makes the top of the list when people talk about female operatives” in literature, according to The New York Times. In recognition of her achievements to date, Mystery Writers of America named Paretsky a Grand Master of the genre in 2011. She earned the prestigious Anthony Award – Lifetime Achievement Award that same year. Her latest novel, Brush Back, hit shelves this July. “Paretsky plots more conscientiously than anyone else in her field,” and this latest installment in the V.I. Warshawski series is no exception, notes Kirkus Reviews.

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Club Book Episode 28 Mitchell Zuckoff

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 16:31:26 +0000

Mitchell Zuckoff is a veteran journalist and prolific historian. A two-decade career as a roving correspondent for The Boston Globe won him numerous accolades, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination. As an author, his recent New York Times bestsellers include two larger-than-life WWII aviation thrillers: Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II (2011), and Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II (2013). Zuckoff’s journalism background proved invaluable to his most recent – and most important – book project to date, 13 Hours. It is considered the definitive account of what happened on September 11, 2012, when terrorists in Libya attacked the U.S. State Department compound in Benghazi.

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Club Book Episode 27 Meg Waite Clayton

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 16:01:49 +0000

Book club favorite, Meg Waite Clayton, is the author of five novels to date. Her 2002 debut, The Language of Light, was a finalist for that year’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction. She gained national recognition when her 2007 follow up, The Wednesday Sisters, landed spots on both the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Entertainment Weekly named it one of its “25 Essential ‘Best Friend’ Novels of All Time.” Clayton has also penned articles for a wide range of publications, including Writer’s Digest, The Los Angeles Times, and Runner’s World. Her newest book, about female reporters in the closing days of WWII in Europe, hit shelves in August. “Involving and thoroughly researched… [The Race for Paris] will draw women’s fiction readers as well as historical fiction and WWII devotees,” according to Booklist.

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Club Book Episode 26 Garth Stein

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 16:06:04 +0000

Literary dynamo Garth Stein is best known by many for 2008’s The Art of Racing in the Rain, a runaway hit that spent a consecutive 156 weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list. In addition to penning several other well received novels, Stein is also an accomplished playwright and film producer, whose credits include a 1991 Academy Award win in the short film category. His newest book, A Sudden Light, is a masterful blend of ghost tale and coming-of-age story, centered around a 14-year-old desperate to uncover the dark secrets hidden in his ancestral estate. Random House calls it “a triumphant work of a master storyteller at the height of his power,” and Booklist lauds it as simply “haunting in all the right ways.”

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Club Book Episode 25 Jon Ronson

Thu, 16 Apr 2015 16:14:09 +0000

Jon Ronson is among Britain’s most prolific journalists and documentarians, and a household name throughout that country. He first came to the attention of most Americans with the publication of Them: Adventures with Extremists in 2001 and the even more successful The Men Who Stare At Goats in 2004. In the latter, Ronson investigated the strange but true experiments conducted until just recently by a secret department within the U.S. Army. It was the basis for a 2009 movie of the same name starring and produced by George Clooney. Ronson’s most recent book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, offers a witty but eye-opening look at the widespread but little studied social phenomenon of public shaming.

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Club Book Episode 24 Marisa de los Santos

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 18:19:12 +0000

Over the last eight years, Marisa de los Santos has penned three consecutive New York Times bestsellers: Love Walked In in 2006, Belong to Me in 2011, and Falling Together in 2012. She is also an award-winning poet, with published work in a number of prominent journals to her credit, plus a collection all her own called From the Bones Out. In addition, de los Santos is co-writer (with her husband) of the young adult time-traveling odyssey Saving Lucas Biggs. De los Santos’ latest novel, The Precious One, promises to please old fans as well as new. It is “a satisfying novel about friends rediscovering one another — and confronting unwelcome truths — at their college reunion,” according to People.

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Club Book Episode 23 Anthony Marra

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 15:10:22 +0000

Anthony Marra’s 2013 opus, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, takes place against the backdrop of occupation and insurgency in war-torn Chechnya. NPR called it “one of the most accomplished and affecting books in a very long time.” It was a contender for the National Book Award, and won the author a number of awards and accolades – including the National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Prize for emerging authors. Marra is a frequent contributor to publications ranging from The Atlantic to Narrative Magazine and MAKE Magazine. His other honors to date include a Whiting Writers’ Award and the prestigious Pushcart Prize.

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Club Book Episode 22 Jonathan Odell

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:02:59 +0000

Jonathan Odell’s popular books draw from and explore racial divisions that continue to define his native Mississippi. His second novel, 2012’s The Healing, garnered praise for its candid look at plantation life in the antebellum South, and was an American Booksellers Association (ABA) ‘Indie Next’ pick for that year. His most recent title, Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League, is the story of two Civil Rights era mothers – one wealthy and white and the other poor and black – bound together in unexpected ways. In addition to his novels, Odell is both a short story and essayist and a corporate leadership coach. In the latter role, he has published a number of titles on diversity and training in the workplace.

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Club Book Episode 21 Nadia Hashimi

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:00:39 +0000

Nadia Hashimi made waves last year with the release of her fiction debut, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell – “a luminous tale of two women, destiny, and identity in Afghanistan,” according to Kirkus Reviews. Hashimi’s parents emigrated from their native Afghanistan in the 1970s, but a lifelong fascination with her cultural heritage led her to pen The Pearl That Broke Its Shell. The crisscrossing narrative follows two Afghan women, one in the present the other in the recent past, living as bacha posh —young women disguised as young men, a true Afghan practice. Hashimi, a pediatrician by training, received accolades for this “lyrical, heartbreaking account of silence lives” and is hard at work on a follow up centered around the experiences of Afghan refugees in Europe.

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Club Book Episode 20 Amy Quan Barry

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 15:56:06 +0000

Amy Quan Barry is a Vietnamese-American author and poet. Her work has appeared in a wide range of literary publications, including The New Yorker and Ploughshares. Barry has written three poetry collections to date, Asylum (2001), Controvertibles (2004), and Water Puppets (2011). The last of these won the Donald Hall Poetry Prize from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and was a finalist for the 2012 PEN/Open Book Prize. In her newest novel, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born, Barry draws from history and her personal experiences with her native country to “weave a chronicle of life in pre- and postwar Vietnam within the mystical and turbulent journey of the novel’s protagonist,” according to Booklist.

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Club Book Episode 19 Peter Heller

Wed, 18 Feb 2015 21:03:05 +0000

Before turning his attention to novels, literary fiction breakout Peter Heller made a name for himself as a contributor to and editor for such publications as National Geographic Adventure, Outside Magazine, and Men’s Journal. Heller traveled on assignment to all corners of the globe, and parlayed many of his larger-than-life experiences into four gripping works of adventure nonfiction. Heller’s fiction debut, The Dog Stars, was a dystopian thriller. It became a New York Times bestseller and a ‘Best Book of 2012′ selection from both Publishers Weekly and Amazon. His second novel, The Painter, centers around a reclusive artist trying to outrun his checkered past. The New York Times calls it “a stunning, savage novel of art and violence, love and grief.”

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Club Book Episode 18 Nikki Giovanni

Wed, 19 Nov 2014 15:30:19 +0000

Over a prolific career spanning five decades, activist and educator Nikki Giovanni has penned nearly twenty popular poetry collections including, more recently, Acolytes (2007), Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), and Chasing Utopia (2013). She is also the author or co-author of ten children’s books, including several profiling seminal moments from black history. Prominent among other awards and accolades, Giovanni is a five-time NAACP Image Award winner, holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, and is the first-ever recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award. She is currently serving as a Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech.

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Club Book Episode 17 Rebecca Rasmussen

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 20:41:14 +0000

Literary fiction writer Rebecca Rasmussen garnered accolades in 2011 for The Bird Sisters, an “achingly authentic, almost completely character driven” novel chronicling the remarkable lives of two spinster sisters in rural Wisconsin according to Publisher’s Weekly. Rasmussen also pens short fiction; her stories have appeared in or won prizes from notable journals including The Mid-American Review, Narrative Magazine, and TriQuarterly. Rasmussen currently resides in California, where she teaches writing at UCLA, but her creative interests remain in her native Midwest. Her newest book, Evergreen, also centers around siblings, and plays out against the picturesque backdrop of Minnesota’s verdant northwoods.

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Club Book Episode 16 Julie Klassen

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 19:23:02 +0000

Julie Klassen is Minnesota’s answer to Jane Austen. Her romances, set in Regency-era England, have a strong and growing national following. Two of these, The Maid of Fairbourne Hall and The Girl in the Gatehouse, have the rare distinction of receiving both a Midwest Book Award and the Christy Award for Historical Romance. Her third hit, The Silent Governess, also earned a Christy Award, and was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award and the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award. The Dancing Master, her latest book, shines the spotlight on the unsung professionals responsible for teaching young ladies the social graces necessary for a public life in high society.

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Club Book Episode 15 Hampton Sides

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 16:09:01 +0000

Hampton Sides is one of the best known – and bestselling – American historians of the past decade. Sides first made a name for himself with 2001’s Ghost Soldiers, a World War II narrative chronicling the greatest rescue mission in the history of our Armed Forces. The debut received the PEN USA Award for Nonfiction and also became the basis for documentaries on the History Channel and PBS. His gripping follow-ups, Blood and Thunder and Hellhound on his Trail (focused on key chapters of America’s westward expansion and civil rights movement, respectively) also saw successful small-screen adaptations. His newest, In the Kingdom of Ice, is “a white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival” (Random House).

View the images that accompany this Club Book event. (May take a few minutes to load.)

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Club Book Episode 14 Sue Miller

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:03:46 +0000

Sue Miller is the author of nearly a dozen bestselling and critically acclaimed novels. Her first two hits, The Good Mother and Inventing the Abbotts, saw successful big screen adaptations in 1988 and 1997. Her third, Family Pictures, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and her sixth, While I Was Gone, became a popular Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Over the course of her distinguished career, Miller has earned a number of fellowships and other honors, including the Carl Sandburg Award and Kate Chopin Literary Award. Her newest, The Arsonist, is a “suspenseful and romantic novel” that “explores the tensions between the ‘summer people’ and locals in a small New Hampshire town” according to Booklist.

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Club Book Episode 13 Jennifer McMahon

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 19:44:38 +0000

Jennifer McMahon’s unique brand of suspense straddles the line between conventional mystery and supernatural thriller. Her novels have been staples on The New York Times bestseller list since her 2009 breakout, Promise Not to Tell. McMahon’s latest, The Winter People, boasts “a consistently eerie atmosphere, and some of its darker supernatural flights are reminiscent of Stephen King,” according to USA Today. It was an Indie Next pick, Library Reads selection, and Amazon Best Book of the Month (Mystery) in February, its debut month. McMahon is also the author of My Tiki Girl, a well-received GLBT young adult novel included on ALA’s Rainbow List for 2009.

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Club Book Episode 12 Louise Penny

Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:12:45 +0000

Canadian mystery phenom Louise Penny is the author behind the wildly popular Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, set in Quebec but sold around the world in twenty different languages. She published Still Life, the first of that set, to great acclaim in 2005. Between the ten installments to date, Penny has won or been in contention for nearly every major prize awarded in the mystery genre: five Agatha Awards, four Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, two Macavity Awards, and an Edgar Award. In addition to her writing, Penny also executive-produced the 2013 film adaptation of Still Life. The tenth Gamache novel, The Long Way Home, is out in August.

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Club Book Episode 11 Amy Bloom

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 16:05:35 +0000

Amy Bloom is among the elite set of contemporary American storytellers to see international success as a novelist, short story author, and screenwriter. Bloom’s short fiction has been nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and appeared in popular anthologies including The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories. A psychotherapist by training, Bloom also created, wrote, and produced the Lifetime psychiatry drama “State of Mind.” She brings all this talent and experience to bear in her third full-length novel, Lucky Us, described by Kirkus Reviews as “a multilayered, historical tale about different kinds of love and family.”

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Club Book Episode 10 Lev Grossman

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 15:56:08 +0000

Lev Grossman is the author of the bestselling Magicians trilogy, lauded by the Washington Post as a “masterful… fresh and compelling” addition to the corpus of coming-of-age fantasy literature popularized by Harry Potter. The much anticipated third and final installment, The Magician’s Land, debuted August 5, and the full series is already being adapted as a television drama by NBC/Universal. Grossman is also the author of two stand-alone novels, Warp and Codex, and he is currently lead book critic and technology writer for Time Magazine. His nonfiction work has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired. He is also a regular guest on NPR. WARNING: This podcast contains some explicit language that may not be appropriate for children.

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Club Book Episode 9 Amanda Coplin

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 14:25:39 +0000

This last Club Book Podcast of the 2014 Winter/Spring season features Amanda Coplin at her April 24th visit to Stillwater Public Library. Amanda Coplin’s majestic debut novel, The Orchardist, was a New York Times bestseller and has garnered wide critical praise since its release in 2012. Called a “stunning accomplishment” by NPR, the story follows a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the late nineteenth century Pacific Northwest. Coplin, who grew up in her grandparents’ orchards in Washington, received her MFA from the University of Minnesota and was the recipient of residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Omi International Arts Center at Ledig House in Ghent, New York. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Club Book Episode 8 J. Courtney Sullivan

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:52:03 +0000

J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels Commencement, Maine, and The Engagements. Maine was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011. Gloria Steinem called Commencement a “generous-hearted, brave first novel…that makes clear the feminist revolution is just beginning.” Sullivan’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York Magazine, and the New York Observer, among many others. She is a contributor to the essay anthology The Secret Currency of Love and co-editor of Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Her latest novel, The Engagements, a multi-generational look at marriage and commitment, is currently being adapted for a major motion picture produced by and starring Reese Witherspoon.

The post Club Book Episode 8 J. Courtney Sullivan first appeared on Club Book.

Club Book Episode 7 Peter Geye and Amy Greene

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:46:55 +0000

This Club Book Podcast features authors Peter Geye and Amy Greene coming together for an evening of conversation about their work and the rich physical landscapes that drive their writing at their April 15th visit to Roseville Library in Ramsey County.

Set against the powerful lakeshore terrain of northern Minnesota, Peter Geye’s second novel, The Lighthouse Road, beautifully explores the hardship and isolation of life in a turn-of-the-century logging town. Geye, a Minnesota native, is also the author of the award-winning novel, Safe from the Sea.

Amy Greene first brought her native Appalachia to life with a spellbinding debut novel, Bloodroot, in 2010. Her highly anticipated second novel, Long Man, explores rural Tennessee in the summer of 1936, as a government-built dam is about to flood an Appalachian town to bring electricity to the area. Long Man was released February, 2014.

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Club Book Episode 6 Brian Freeman

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 17:09:03 +0000

This Club Book Podcast features Brian Freeman at his April 7th visit to Rum River Library in Anoka. Brian Freeman is Minnesota’s own master of psychological suspense. He is best known for his internationally acclaimed Jonathan Stride detective series, set in and around Duluth. His 2006 debut, Immoral, won the Macavity Award and was a finalist for the Edgar, Dagger, Anthony and Barry awards for best first novel. His second novel, Stripped, was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. 2011’s The Bone House was also a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and the Audie Award (Audiobook Publishers Association). Freeman’s titles have been printed in 20 different languages and sold in 46 countries. His highly anticipated sixth full-length Stride novel, The Cold Nowhere, was released in April 2014.

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Club Book Episode 5 Dave Zirin

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 17:00:48 +0000

This Club Book Podcast features Dave Zirin at his March 19^th visit to Southdale Library in Edina. Dave Zirin, correspondent and sports editor for The Nation, is the author, most recently, of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down. His newest expose, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil, turns attention on the volatile political situation in Brazil in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. It’s due out this June.” Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin is a frequent guest on MSNBC, ESPN and Democracy Now! He also hosts his own weekly Sirius XM show, Edge of Sports Radio.

Warning: This podcast episode features limited explicit language.

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Club Book Episode 4 P.S. Duffy

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 22:08:27 +0000

This Club Book Podcast features P.S. Duffy at her March 11^th event at Merriam Park Library in Saint Paul. Duffy’s highly praised fiction debut, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land, has been called an “astounding first novel” by Library Journal and was a Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers pick for fall 2013. Set in France and Nova Scotia during the First World War, Duffy’s alternating portrayal of a son coming of age at home while his father faces battle overseas is a soulful addition to the canon of World War I literature. With a long career in neuroscience, Duffy is the author of numerous scientific publications and now balances her work as a science writer for the Mayo Clinic with her talent for creative writing.

The post Club Book Episode 4 P.S. Duffy first appeared on Club Book.

Club Book Episode 3 Elizabeth Berg

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 19:31:41 +0000

This Club Book podcast features Elizabeth Berg at her February 26^th event at Galaxie Library in Dakota County. One of the most prolific New York Times bestselling authors of the last two decades, Berg’s impressive bibliography lists more than twenty novels, including Open House, an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. She has also penned two well-received works of nonfiction, and her writing has appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, and New York Times Magazine. Her newest novel, Tapestry of Fortunes, confirms her place as “one of America’s most beloved chroniclers of female friendship” according to The Chicago Tribune.

The post Club Book Episode 3 Elizabeth Berg first appeared on Club Book.

Club Book Episode 2 Julie Kramer

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 15:55:46 +0000

This Club Book podcast features Julie Kramer at her February 11th event at Central Park Amphitheatre in Washington County. Set in the cutthroat world of television news, Julie Kramer’s alliteratively titled mystery thrillers draw from her extensive career in the industry as a news producer for NBC and CBS. Her first novel, Stalking Susan, won both a Minnesota Book Award and the 2008 RT Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Mystery. Her fourth, Killing Kate, won the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mainstream Mystery/Suspense. Kramer has also been a finalist for the Anthony, Barry, Shamus, Mary Higgins Clark, and RT Best Amateur Sleuth awards, to name just a few. Her newest title, Delivering Death, hit bookstores in January 2014.

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Club Book Episode 1 Amy Thielen

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 17:40:18 +0000

This Club Book podcast features Amy Thielen at her February 3rd event at Prior Lake Library in Scott County. Thielen is a classically trained chef and host of Food Network’s “Heartland Table.” A woman who spent years cooking in some of New York City’s finest restaurants before returning home to Minnesota in 2008. Since then, she has worked as a freelance writer for publications such as the Star Tribune, Men’s Journal, and Saveur, and won a James Beard journalism award in 2011. Her first cookbook, The New Midwestern Table, was released in September 2013 and served as inspiration for her popular Food Network series, which debuted the same month. A cross between memoir, travelogue and cookbook, The New Midwestern Table is a stunning collection of 200 recipes that reveal all Thielen’s come to learn —and love —about the foods of her native Midwest.

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Club Book Pilot Episode

Fri, 10 Jan 2014 20:24:26 +0000

The book club that defies all previous expectations kicks off its new podcast and new season in 2014 with a rock star lineup including Amy Thielen, Julie Kramer, J. Courtney Sullivan, Elizabeth Berg, P.S. Duffy, Nikki Giovanni, Dave Zirin, Brian Freeman, Peter Geye, Amy Greene, and Amanda Coplin. With a preview of each event along with a little history and humor, Club Book outlines just how the podcast works. Plug in your headphones, crank up the volume, and get ready to be a part of the coolest club in town.

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