The Avid Reader Show

Foer’s unlikely journey from chronically forgetful science journalist to U.S. Memory Champion frames a revelatory exploration of the vast, hidden impact of memory on every aspect of our lives.

"Stone Arabia", Dana Spiotta’s moving and intrepid third novel, is about family, obsession, memory, and the urge to create — in isolation, at the margins of our winner-take-all culture.

Unlike anyone else, O’Nan delivers a new book every year that speaks directly to the anxieties of our fearful times

"Remarkably fresh, complex and memorable... Max’s adventure would be enough to fill any book." - New York Times Sunday Book Review

Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career–if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former st...

"Flatscreen" tells the story of Eli Schwartz as he endures the loss of his home, the indifference of his parents, the success of his older brother, and the cruel and frequent dismissal of the opposite sex.

A captivating tale, set in Scotland in the early 1960s, that is both an homage to and a modern variation on the enduring classic Jane Eyre.

A major new talent tackles the complicated terrain of sisters. A winsome novel that explores sibling rivalry, the power of books, and the places we decide to call home.

Sam interviews Ben Marcus author of "The Flame Alphabet". Listen as Sam and Ben discuss Ben's new novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure, in order to protect our families.

Join Sam and Adam as they discuss Adam's book "The Orphan Master's Son". An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.

Listen to Sam's and Alex discuss Alex's new book "From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel". Fashionistas and g-men clash in a masterful debut.

Sam talks with the "wickedly talented" (Boston Globe) and "darkly funny" (New York Times Book Review) Ryan Boudinot, on his new book Blueprints of the Afterlife.

Take an attractive young blonde, a sex shop, a political candidate, and add a Catholic Church for good measure, and you have the recipe for a riveting controversy that riddled a wealthy Philadelphia suburb and divided a community. Follow the quandaries of Jill McDevitt, a determined recent college graduate with a degree in sexuality and a love of pushing the envelope.

Isabel is a single, twentysomething thrift-store shopper and collector of remnants, things cast off or left behind by others. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture a...

What a pleasure to encounter a first novel as self-assured and effortlessly told as Ayad Akhtar’s “American Dervish.” Mr. Akhtar, a first-generation Pakistani-American, has written an immensely entertaining coming-of-age story set during the early 1980s among the Pakistanis in the author’s hometown, Milwaukee.