New Books in Literature
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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1651
K.R. Richardson, “Blood Orbit,” (Pyr, 2018)
For Inspector J.P. Dillal, the main protagonist in K. R. Richardson’s Blood Orbit (Pyr, 2018), the expression “I’ve got a lot on my mind” takes on new meaning when he allows his bosses to replace a good chunk of his brain with a mobile crime lab.
36 min
1652
Bob Brody, “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Fam...
There comes a time in every man’s life when he’s got to grow up. Personally, I found growing up very hard. I went to college and fell in love with it. And what’s not to love? You meet really interesting people (some very attractive,
59 min
1653
Cat Rambo, “Hearts of Tabat” (WordFire Press, 2...
Cat Rambo‘s Hearts of Tabat (WordFire Press, 2018) is rich in emotions and description, though it revolves around a murder mystery as well. We experience the imaginary port city of Tabat through the eyes of four narrators,
24 min
1654
Nick Dybek, “The Verdun Affair: A Novel” (Scrib...
In a break with protocol, I decided to interview a novelist rather than a military historian. Nick Dybek, a creative writing professor at Oregon State University has written a terrific novel, The Verdun Affair: A Novel (Scribner, 2018).
43 min
1655
Zhang Tianyi (tr. David Hull), “The Pidgin Warr...
“Big boys, the story in this little book is told for you.” Thus begins the preface to Zhang Tianyi’s The Pidgin Warrior (Balestier Press, 2017), as translated by the wonderful David Hull. Not just for boys (big or small),
61 min
1656
Tony Romano, “Where My Body Ends and the World ...
Where My Body Ends and the World Begins (Allium Press, 2017) imagines what it might have been like for one of the survivors of a tragic fire that took place on December 1, 1958, in a Catholic school on Chicago’s west side.
27 min
1657
Sumana Roy, “How I Became a Tree” (Aleph, 2017)
Sumana Roy‘s first book How I Became a Tree (Aleph, 2017) is impossible to classify. Part-philosophical tract, part-memoir and part-literary criticism, the book is a record of her explorations in “tree-time.” Intrigued by the balance,
58 min
1658
Mary-Kim Arnold, “Litany for the Long Moment” (...
In 1974, a two-year old Korean girl named Mi Jin Kim was sent from the country and culture of her birth to the United States, where she was adopted by a man and woman who would become her American parents and where she would become the artist and write...
56 min
1659
Sharon Solwitz, “Once, in Lourdes” (Spiegel & G...
Sharon Solwitz‘s novel, Once, in Lourdes (Spiegel & Grau, 2017), is the story of four close friends in the fictional town of Lourdes, Michigan, who decide, during the summer before their senior year of high school, to make a suicide pact.
33 min
1660
Martha Wells, “Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Di...
The “artificial” in artificial intelligence is easy to understand. But the meaning of “intelligence” is harder to define. How smart can an A.I. get? Can it teach itself, change its programming, become independent? Can it outfox its human inventors,
33 min
1661
Julia Fine, “What Should be Wild” (Harper, 2018)
“What should be wild” is really asking who should be wild? Simultaneously a plea against the domestication of women, a unique fairy tale, and impressive literary fiction, this novel explores the taming of women through the experiences of the modern Mai...
40 min
1662
Sam J. Miller, “Blackfish City” (Ecco, 2018)
Sam J. Miller loves cities. He lives in one, has a day job dedicated to making urban life more humane and fair, and has set his new novel, Blackfish City (Ecco, 2018), in a teeming metropolis full of people who are grateful to be there.
36 min
1663
Robert Goolrick, “The Dying of the Light” (Harp...
“It begins with a house and it ends in ashes.” So opens Robert Goolrick’s rich, lyrical new novel, The Dying of the Light (Harper, 2018). The house is Saratoga, a colonial-era estate in Virginia that is at once a joy and a burden to the family that liv...
47 min
1664
M. L. Liebler, “Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz t...
In Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond (Wayne State University Press, 2016), M. L. Liebler curates an exhaustive collection of essays about Detroit music by a diverse group of music scholars, journalists, and musicians.
51 min
1665
Daryl Gregory, “Spoonbenders” (Knopf, 2017)
If Tolstoy had written Spoonbenders (Knopf, 2017), he might have started it: “All happy families are alike; each family of psychics is unhappy in its own way.” Then again, who needs Tolstoy when you have Daryl Gregory,
28 min
1666
Kelly Sundberg, “Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story o...
If you’ve read the news or been on the internet at all this year, you’ve probably come across the hashtag #MeToo, the rallying cry of a movement aimed at calling out the harassment and abuse men in positions of power have perpetuated against mostly sil...
36 min
1667
Maggie Shen King, “An Excess Male” (Harper Voya...
Maggie Shen King’s An Excess Male (Harper Voyager, 2017) is a work of science fiction inspired by a real-world dystopia: a country with tens of millions of “extra” men who will never find spouses. The country is China,
33 min
1668
Sandra Allen, “A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A...
What is it really like to have a family member with serious mental illness? Sandra Allen’s unique book, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia (Scribner, 2018), addresses this question. In the book,
51 min
1669
Fonda Lee, “Jade City” (Orbit, 2017)
Jade City combines what its author, Fonda Lee, calls the 3 Ms: mafia, magic and martial arts. Lee’s talent for depicting complex characters struggling with both internal and external conflicts earned Jade City nominations for the Nebula and Locus Award...
35 min
1670
Danielle Teller, “All the Ever Afters: The Unto...
Most of us hear the Cinderella story in childhood: a mean stepmother favors her own daughters and controls her hapless husband, turning the sweet and innocent Cinderella into a scullery maid and refusing to let her attend the royal ball,
36 min
1671
James Cook, “Memory Songs: A Personal Journey i...
Today on the New Books in Music podcast James Cook discuses his book, Memory Songs: A Personal Journey into the Music that Shaped the 90s (Unbound, 2018). The book details the author’s own adolescent musical obsessions from The Beatles to John Barry fr...
44 min
1672
Douglas Lain, “Bash Bash Revolution” (Night Sha...
The technological “singularity” is a popular topic among futurists, transhumanists, philosophers, and, of course, science fiction writers. The term refers to that hypothetical moment when an artificial superintelligence surpasses human intelligence,
36 min
1673
Ellen Notbohm, “The River by Starlight” (She Wr...
When Annie Rushton heads west to keep house for her older brother on his Montana homestead, she expects to leave marriage and motherhood behind her. After all, the husband she walked out on at twenty, after the birth of their daughter sent her into a s...
52 min
1674
Patricia Leavy and Victoria Scotti, “Low-Fat Lo...
Patricia Leavy and Victoria Scotti‘s Low-Fat Love Stories (Sense Publishers, 2017) is a collection of short stories and artistic portraits focusing on women’s dissatisfying relationships. What makes these stories different from conventional fictions is...
53 min
1675
Annalee Newitz, “Autonomous” (Tor, 2017)
Jack Chen is a drug pirate, illegally fabricating patented pharmaceuticals in an underground lab. But when she discovers a deadly flaw in Big Pharma’s new productivity pill, corporate bosses hire a team of assassins to silence her.
33 min