The Book Show

For the past seven decades, Tim Matheson has been an on-screen favorite in Hollywood. In his new memoir, "Damn Glad to Meet You," Matheson looks at his illustrious career, and reveals what it was like to learn from and work alongside the greats, including Lucille Ball, Dick Van Dyke, Steven Spielberg, and Aaron Sorkin.

Alafair Burke is the Edgar-nominated, New York Times best-selling author of fourteen novels of suspense. Her latest page-turner is “The Note.” The book follows three longtime friends who, despite their best intentions, don’t always bring out the best in one another.

“James,” by Percival Everett, is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” told from the point of view of enslaved person, Jim. While many narrative set pieces of “Huckleberry Finn” remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

“The Women,” a novel by Kristin Hannah, is set at a pivotal time in American history: the Vietnam era. It is an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous situation and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics.

Booker Prize finalist Mark Haddon, author of the internationally bestselling novel, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” returns with “Dogs and Monsters: Stories.” The story collection features eight mesmerizing tales exploring what ultimately makes us human.

Billy Collins is a former Poet Laureate of the United States and is the author of twelve collections of poetry. His latest is Water, Water: Poems. It is a collection of sixty new poems where Collins explores the subtle beauties and ironies of daily life.

“Colored Television” by Danzy Senna is a take on love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex. The book follows Jane, a novelist, as she struggles to create a picture-perfect life with her husband and kids. Jane learns being a writer is hard and working in Hollywood is even harder.

In his new novel, “Lazarus Man,” Richard Price presents a rich tapestry of lives intertwining and a portrait of a neighborhood in the midst of change.

Ian Rankin is the multimillion-copy worldwide bestseller of over thirty novels and creator of John Rebus. His latest, “Midnight and Blue,” is his 25th novel in the Rebus series.

Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Her new novel, “Don't Be a Stranger,” centers on the relationship between a younger man and an older single mother. It is a story about erotic obsession, the hunger for intimacy, communication, and oblivion.

Edwidge Danticat has enriched and enlarged American literature with her novels and short stories about Haiti. Her latest, “We’re Alone,” is an essay collection that explores her profound and enduring connection to Haiti, as well as a deep concern for her family, her beloved island and the world.

Author Liz Moore transports readers into a thrilling drama richly set against summertime in the Adirondacks in “The God of the Woods.” The novel follows the mysteries of a dynastic American family, the secrets of the summer camp nestled in their estate, the tragic history of a blue-collar community, and the disappearance of a young girl at the center of it all.

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author. Her new novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” is at once an adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. It tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history.

Richard Powers’ bestselling novel, "The Overstory," won the Pulitzer Prize and has more than 1 million copies in print.  His new novel, "Playground," captures the beauty and loss of the ocean, following four lives: a marine biologist, an artist, a schoolteacher, and an AI pioneer as they intersect on an island in French Polynesia.

In her new novel, “The Mighty Red,” Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout’s latest, “Tell Me Everything,” returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, forge new friendships, make difficult decisions about love, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”

Roddy Doyle’s latest novel, The Women Behind the Door, is a powerful mother-daughter story. At sixty-six, Paula Spencer has finally started to live her life. That is until her eldest daughter turns up on the doorstep one day. She has left her family and come to stay.

Amor Towles is the author of New York Times bestsellers “Rules of Civility,” “A Gentleman in Moscow,” and “The Lincoln Highway.” The three novels have collectively sold more than five million copies. His latest is a collection of stories: “Table for Two: Fictions.” He is also editor of this year’s “The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners.”

Peter Heller is the best-selling author of "Burn," a novel about two men - friends since boyhood - who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence.

In “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner, Sadie Smith, a 34 year old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists.

Helen Phillips is one of the most interesting and original writers working today. In her latest novel, “Hum,” she turns her eye to marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and artificial intelligence.

Known for her incredible research bestselling author Jodi Picoult brings to life the incomparable Emilia Bassano, the real-life and “too little considered” English poet believed to have authored many of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Picoult’s new novel is “By Any Other Name.”

Simon Rich is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He has written for “Saturday Night Live,” Pixar, and “The Simpsons” and is the creator of the TV shows “Man Seeking Woman” and “Miracle Workers.” His latest story collection, “Glory Days,” mourns the death of youthful innocence and hails the beginning of something approximating wisdom.

In 1993, in his hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas, Bret Anthony Johnston watched on live TV as flames engulfed a number of buildings in Waco – full of men, women, and children – during the FBI’s siege of the Branch Davidian compound. This time led to his writing the novel, “We Burn Daylight.”

“The Heart in Winter” by Kevin Barry is a big-hearted, violent, hypnotic, and lovelorn epic set against the iconic genre of the American Western. If features an unforgettable female protagonist and tackling the dislocation and self-invention of the Irish immigrant experience.