Drinks in the Library

In Night Train to Memphis by Elizabeth Peters, Vicky Bliss, an assistant curator at Munich's National Museum, may not be an Egypt expert, but her Ph. D. in crime-solving comes in handy when an intelligence agency recruits her for a luxurious Nile cruise. Amidst the backdrop of the majestic Sphinx Vicky must navigate her personal frustrations and the deadly charms of a cunning criminal hiding i...

 Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, i...

An episode so good I’m re-airing it! If you have listened to the podcast for awhile, you have probably heard me reference the book Here For it: Or, How To Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas. It is a favorite of mine and had a big impact on me when I read it the first time in June of 2020, so I was SO excited when my friend and returning guest Izzie Call read it, loved it as well, and want...

The Only Good Indians is a 2020 horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones about four Blackfeet men haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way. The companion book to this novel, Off the Reservation ,...

Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series follows a fiercely independent Victorian lepidopterist who finds herself entangled in murder, mystery, and adventure in 19th-century England. Alongside her enigmatic partner, natural historian Stoker, Veronica uses her sharp wit, scientific knowledge, and unconventional methods to solve dangerous crimes. Carmela Dutra is a writer from the San Francisco B...

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism is a 2025 memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook. This book offers an explosive, first-hand look at the internal culture and decision-making practices at the highest levels of the tech giant. Lauren Comito is a cape wearing, sword swinging, activist librarian in NYC. Lauren is curren...

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a sci-fi novel set in a post-scarcity future where death is curable and social status is run by a reputation metric called "whuffie". The protagonist, a centenarian named Jules, lives his dream managing classic attractions at Walt Disney World. When a rival faction stages a hostile takeover and figuratively and literally "kills&#...

Old Man's War by John Scalzi follows 75-year-old John Perry, who joins the Colonial Defense Forces in exchange for a chance to explore the stars and a new, younger body. Recruited into an interstellar war, Perry discovers that the universe is far more dangerous and morally complicated than he expected. Blending sharp humor, military science fiction, and big questions about aging, identity, and...

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is a book in which generations of readers have journeyed with Milo to the Lands Beyond in this beloved classic. Enriched by Jules Feiffer's splendid illustrations, the wit, wisdom, and wordplay of Norton Juster's offbeat fantasy are as beguiling as ever. For Milo, everything's a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives th...

What if every relationship you've ever had left behind a version of yourself? In A Life in Men by Gina Frangello, Mary's life is forever shaped by her complicated friendship with Nix, her charismatic, free-spirit best friend, and the rift that ultimately divided them forever. Both intimate and emotionally honest, this book is a powerful novel about love, identity, grief, and the people who...

In The Ogress and the Orphans , Kelly Barnhill tells the story of the struggling town of Stone-in-the-Glen, where fear and misinformation lead the townspeople to blame a kindhearted ogress for their misfortunes instead of the corrupt mayor who caused them. When a group of resourceful orphans discovers the truth, they join forces with the ogress to expose deception, restore compassion, and rebuild...

Missing You, Metropolis by Gary Jackson is a poetry collection that blends superheroes, comic book mythology, pop culture, and personal memory to explore identity, race, love, grief, and belonging. Through inventive, emotionally resonant poems, Jackson reimagines iconic characters and fictional worlds as lenses for examining real-life experiences and the complexities of growing up Black in America...

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a satirical allegorical novel about a group of farm animals who overthrow their human owner in hopes of creating a society based on equality and freedom. As the pigs gradually take control, the animals discover that their revolution has replaced one form of oppression with another. Through its dark humor and memorable characters, the novel explores power, corruption,...

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi is about an 86-year-old Portuguese widower who arrives in a small Southern town in Georgia. He spends his year there buying local pencil portraits from a coffee shop wall and gifting them back to the people they depict. Through these quiet meetings, his deep kindness and close attention change the lives of the townspeople. MaryCatherine Price is the Digital Streaming E...

The Burning Girls by CJ Tudor is a folk horror and mystery novel about Reverend Jack Brooks and her teenage daughter, Flo, who move to a remote English village seeking a fresh start. The village of Chapel Croft carries a dark history of past martyrdoms, missing teenagers, and the recent suicide of the previous vicar. As Jack investigates these intertwined tragedies, Flo begins seeing frightening a...

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historical narrative that chronicles the Great Migration, the decades-long exodus of nearly six million Black Americans fleeing the oppressive Jim Crow South for Northern and Western cities. Wilkerson captures the immense scale of this demographic shift through intimate, intertwined biographies of three individuals—Ida Mae Gl...

The Half Life by Rachel Beanland is a novel set on a remote Italian island, about a navy wife’s reckoning with power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age. I loved this book and reached out to Rachel and her team to see if we could do a special Drinks in the Library episode, I was thrilled when she said yes! Rachel Beanland is the author of the novels, The House Is On Fire  and...

To support Drinks in the Library and listen to ad-free episode and additional bonus content, subscribe on Patreon The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien is a timeless adventure novel, tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger...

Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. This is the wildly fun and fast moving plot from the book Starter Vill...

To support Drinks in the Library and listen to ad-free episode and additional bonus content, subscribe on Patreon Hannah Coulter is Wendell Berry's seventh novel and his first to employ the voice of a woman character in its telling. Hannah, the now-elderly narrator, recounts the love she has for the land and for her community. She remembers each of her two husbands, and all places and communit...

Transcendent Kingdom is a 2020 novel by Yaa Gyasi that follows Gifty, a Ghanaian-American neuroscience PhD candidate at Stanford, as she studies addiction and depression in mice while grappling with her family's history of trauma, addiction, and faith. The story explores the tension between science and religion, memory, and the search for meaning after her brother's opioid overdose and her...

To support Drinks in the Library and listen to ad-free episode and additional bonus content, subscribe on Patreon Set in a totalitarian superstate, George Orwell's 1984 follows Winston Smith, an official tasked with rewriting history to align with state propaganda. Driven by a desperate yearning for truth and individuality, Winston rebels against the regime by keeping a forbidden diary and pur...

To support Drinks in the Library and listen to ad-free episode and additional bonus content, subscribe on Patreon Set in a world where every person’s soul exists outside their body in the form of an animal companion called a dæmon, The Golden Compass follows a brave young girl named Lyra Belacqua as she uncovers a sinister plot involving kidnapped children. Lyra journeys from the halls of Jordan C...

To support Drinks in the Library and listen to ad-free episode and additional bonus content, subscribe on Patreon In Nikesha Elise Williams’ The Seven Daughters of Dupree, it's 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati is determined to uncover the identity of her father. But her mother, Nadia, keeps her secrets close, while her grandmother Gladys remains silent about the family's past, including wh...

In How to Save Your Own Life , Erica Jong follows novelist Isadora Wing as she grapples with fame, aging, marriage, and the search for personal freedom after the success of her earlier books. Blending sharp humor with emotional honesty, the novel explores identity, desire, and self-reinvention in the face of midlife uncertainty. Award-winning author and creator Selene Castrovilla explores the cour...