New Books in Literature

Now that science has granted eternal life and youth to all, the world is a place of endless opportunity to live out one's dreams and fulfill one's desires. With death unnecessary, it becomes optional and suicide is celebrated when chosen. However the main character, 10,000 year old Warren, has fought off the urge to die but begins to contemplate making this choice for himself. Matthew C. Kruger's...

At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster--Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an archit...

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Julia Fine about her new book The Upstairs House: A Novel (Harper Collins, 2021). We talked about a lot of things, including how Goodnight Moon is surreal and how one decides to become a novelist. Here's a bit about the book... Ravaged and sore from giving birth to her first child, Megan is mostly raising her newborn alone while her husband travels for work....

If there is such a thing as the American literary canon, then Percival Everett (The Trees, 2021) is at the center of it. The author of over 30 novels, books of poetry and short fiction, and children’s literature, for over thirty years Everett has been one of the great innovators of fictional forms. In our interview, we discuss how a novel about the history and present of racial violence, from the...

Noor Naga speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about co-editing The Common’s first-of-its-kind portfolio of writing from the Arabian Gulf, which appeared in Issue 22. Noor penned an introduction to the portfolio, titled “Who Writes the Arabian Gulf?”, which explores her experience growing up in the Gulf with no real contemporary literature written for, by, or about that diverse population. Noor...

Today I talked to Sue Lynn Tan about her new book Daughter of the Moon Goddess (Harper Voyager, 2022). The immortal Xinyin lives a quiet life on the moon with her mother the Moon Goddess, and a devoted servant. When an innocent Xinyin ignores her mother’s warning, her actions raise the suspicion of the Empress of the Celestial Kingdom, who swoops in for an unannounced visit. Xinyin has never quest...

In Karen Odden’s latest mystery (Down a Dark River, Crooked Lane Books 2021) it’s 1878 in London, and Scotland Yard inspector Michael Corravan, a former thief and bare-knuckles boxer, is battling demons, including his urge to drown his troubles in drink. In the wake of a police corruption scandal that threatens to shut down Scotland Yard, Corravan is assigned the case of a young, wealthy woman who...

An interview with Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back (University of Iowa Press, 2021). Cara and I discuss the joys of linked short story collections, the lack of adequate vocabulary to describe working people in the United States, the many moods of everyday life, and how humor works in her stories. These are stories of exquisite observation and the quiet beauty of everyday life. You...

Today I talked to Julie Hedlund. Julie is an award-winning children’s book author, founder of the 12 x 12 Picture Book Writing Challenge, co-founder of Picture Book Summit, co-creator with Emma Walton Hamilton of the Complete Picture Book Submissions System, and a frequent speaker at industry events such as SCBWI conferences. Mel Rosenberg is a professor of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeri...

This week on Recall this Book, another delightful crossover episode from our sister podcast Novel Dialogue, which puts scholars and writers together to discuss the making of novels and what to make of them. (If you want to hear more, RtB 53 featured Nobel Orhan Pamuk, RtB 54 brought in Helen Garner, and in RtB 72 we haveCaryl Phillips). Who better to chat with John and Jennifer Egan--prolific and...

A wonderful conversation with renowned editor Harold Underdown who founded and runs The Purple Crayon, a respected website with information about the children's publishing world talks about his favorite children's books growing up, his original plan of becoming a school teacher which morphed into an unexpected role as assistant editor. He discusses the importance of reader response (including thos...

Most people believe that when they grow up, they need to “put away childish things”—a wise strategy for holding a job, paying the rent and raising a family. But what if you need to fight a malevolent pirate who threatens to destroy the universe? In that case, a toy War Wizard blaster might come in handy. In British author Dan Hanks’s second novel, Swashbucklers (Angry Robot, 2021), the four lead c...

Even for someone trained from birth to manage a farm, stepping into an inheritance at the age of twenty is not easy. Yet this is the situation facing Promise Mears Crawford when Sunday’s Orphan opens in 1930. Trouble comes at her from many directions. Her adoptive uncle, Taylor Crawford, constructed his farm according to the principles of racial equality, in defiance of the Jim Crow laws in effect...

An interview with Kalani Pickhart, I Will Die in a Foreign Land (2021), a New York Public Library Best Book of 2021. Russia is again amassing troops on the Ukrainian border. There are threats of more sanctions from the US and the EU, but those come with a tacit understanding that there is likely little that the world can do to stop Putin should he decide to invade. It is within this frightening co...

In 2016, the city of Mumbai was blanketed in toxic smog. The source? Fires at the nearby dumping ground of Deonar: the country’s oldest. The Deonar fire became an embarrassment for Mumbai, coming right before an international expo meant to announce the city to international investors and business. Law enforcement immediately blamed scrap dealers who lived alongside the landfill. The pickers are me...

Ghastly Tales from the Yotsuya Kaidan (Chisokudo, 2020) is a newly revised and corrected translation of what is perhaps the most famous and oft told tales of horror in Japan. The legend of Iwa and her curse blurs the lines between fact and fiction as it spins its terrifying tale of ghostly vengeance. For nearly three hundred years in the repertoire of itinerant storytellers, in dramatic performanc...

Stoking Hope (D.X. Varos, 2021), C.K. McDonough’s debut novel, opens in an early 1900’s southwest Pennsylvania coal town. Nineteen-year-old Martha gets pregnant, her father banishes her, and she’s sent to a home for unwed mothers in neighboring West Virginia. She gives birth, and when her daughter Frances is taken from her six years later, Martha agrees to marry her widowed boss with hopes of gett...

One of the first members of Albert Samaha’s family introduced in his memoir Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes (Riverhead Books, 2021) is his uncle Spanky: a baggage handler in San Francisco’s airport. Spanky emigrated to the United States from his home country, the Philippines, where he lived a very different life as a rockstar: one of the founding members of VST & Co., one of the country...

Night Came With Many Stars (Godine 2021) ebbs and flows with people who only take or destroy, balanced by those who give or heal. And everything centers on a family. A Kentucky father treats Carol, his thirteen-year-old motherless daughter like a servant up to the moment he loses her in a poker game. It’s 1933, and Carol’s aching heart begins a novel of stories filled with heartache or joy that we...

A conversation with booksellers from three of the most dynamic, exciting, and community-oriented independent bookstores in the country. Lisa Swayze of Buffalo Street Books (Ithaca, NY), Michelle Malonzo of Changing Hands Bookstore (Tempe, AZ), and Alena Jones of Seminary Co-op Bookstores (Chicago, IL) join me and my special co-host, professor Kasia Bartoszynska for a roundup of their favorite book...

As Jinny Webber explains in this interview, a “bedtrick” is a literary device through which a character is deceived into spending the night with someone unexpected, trapping that character into an unwanted commitment. William Shakespeare used the device in All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. So it is a fitting title for this novel about the gender-bending that was so much a part of...

Mary O’Donoghue speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Safety Advice for Staying Indoors,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Mary talks about crafting a story that explores two points of view within the same Irish family, both stuck inside during a strong storm, both coping with loss. She also discusses her work translating Irish-language poets, her interest in stories th...

Patricia A. Jackson’s debut novel Forging a Nightmare immerses the reader in a world of menace-—fallen angels and demigods whose history of alliances and resentments stretch to the beginning of time. Jackson puts a fresh spin on biblical characters like Gabriel and Lucifer by turning them into FBI agents, a parish priest, a homeless preacher and other seemingly ordinary folks who pursue ancient ve...

When Cassandra Lane finds herself pregnant at thirty-five, the knowledge sends her on a poignant exploration of memory to prepare for her entry into motherhood. She moves between the twentieth-century rural South and present-day Los Angeles, reimagining the intimate life of her great-grandparents Mary Magdelene Magee and Burt Bridges, and Burt's lynching at the hands of vengeful white men in his s...

In The Girl Singer (Fireside Industries, 2021), her latest collection of poems, Marianne Worthington weaves together nature writing, feminism, and country music to form a powerful strand of interlocking poems. In the book's first section, Worthington inhabits famous woman singers like Hazel Dickens and Sara Carter, but also unsung artists who struggled to find a voice or an audience in the patriar...