The Book Show

Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel, “Vera, or Faith,” is set in a near-future America wrestling with authoritarian politics and cultural anxiety. The story is told through the eyes of 10-year-old Vera - a sharp, observant child navigating a fractured family and a society teetering on the edge.

Rick Atkinson has just published the second volume of his American Revolution trilogy, "The Fate of the Day," covering the middle years of the war. Benjamin Franklin was wooing the French while George Washington was pleading with Congress to deliver the money, men, and material he needed to continue the fight.

In his latest novel, “The River Is Waiting,” Wally Lamb gives us a story about one man’s fall and uncertain redemption. Corby Ledbetter, a married, father of twins, makes a tragic mistake that sends him to prison and shatters his family. Behind bars, he faces the consequences of addiction, grief, and guilt—while searching for a path to forgiveness.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo is known for books like “Empire Falls,” “Nobody’s Fool,” and “Straight Man,” having long chronicled working-class America with wit, empathy, and a sharp eye for character. His latest, “Life & Art,” is a thoughtful and very funny collection of essays that explore the deeply personal side of a writer’s life.

Set during the final stretch of the Civil War, author Chris Bohjalian’s “The Jackal’s Mistress” tells the story of Libby, a woman stuck in the South with a missing husband and a whole lot of moral questions. When she finds a nearly dead Union officer in the woods, she decides to save him. With war raging around them, Libby has to choose between loyalty and compassion.

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.

“All Fours,” a new novel by Miranda July, tells the story of a semi-famous artist who announces her plan to drive cross-country on a one woman quest for a new kind of freedom. The book is part absurd entertainment and part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist.

Celebrated cartoonist and “Fun Home” author Alison Bechdel returns with “Spent: A Comic Novel,” a sharp, funny, and self-aware look at art, aging, and the absurdity of success. Set on a goat farm in Vermont, Bechdel (both author and character) grapples with writer’s block, late-stage capitalism, and the unintended consequences of cultural fame.

In 2004, Historian Russell Shorto published “The Island at the Center of the World,” a book about Manhattan and the role of the Dutch in making New York (and America) what it is today. His new book, “Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America,” continues the story.

Adrian McKinty’s latest novel, “Hang on St. Christopher,” brings readers to July 1992 when The Troubles in Northern Ireland are still grinding on after twenty-five years. McKinty’s character, Sean Duffy, is assigned to his most violent and dangerous case yet, and the future of the burgeoning “peace process” may depend on it.

Poet Joy Harjo’s poems are described as musical, intimate, political and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. Her latest book, “Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief,” explores the complexity of a daughter’s grief as she reflects on the joys and sorrows of her mother’s life.

Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award-winning host of MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.” In his new book, “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource,” he writes about attention as a resource – one that is being drawn away from citizens in ways they don’t even realize. This episode of The Book Show was recorded at The Bardavon in Poughkeepsie, New York in an event presente...

When Chloe Dalton, a city-dwelling professional with a high-pressure job, finds a newly born hare - endangered, alone and no bigger than her palm - she is compelled to give it a chance at survival. The new book, “Raising Hare,” is the story of their journey together.

Karen Russell's latest, “The Antidote,” is a dust bowl novel and a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting that enacts the settler amnesia and omissions passed down from generation to generation.

Colum McCann is the New York Times bestselling author of “Let the Great World Spin.” His new novel, “Twist,” tells a propulsive story of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean. 

Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of “In the Time of the Butterflies” and “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” returns with “The Cemetery of Untold Stories” - a novel about storytelling that reminds us that the events of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end. 

Hailed by The Booker Prize judges as a “fierce and philosophical interrogation of human existence,” Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional” chronicles “one woman’s inward journey to make sense of the world and her life when conflicts and chaos are abundant in both realms.” 

Private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, race to find a terrifying, unidentified killer in "The Big Empty," the 20th Elvis Cole novel. Author Robert Crais delivers Cole and Pike's toughest case yet, testing their loyalty to their clients and themselves.

Scott Turow’s latest novel is “Presumed Guilty” - a sequel to “Presumed Innocent,” the #1 bestseller that redefined the legal thriller and is the basis for Apple TV+’s most-watched drama series ever. The book examines whether the system can ever provide true justice for those who are presumed guilty.

“Alphabetical Diaries” by Sheila Heti contains a decade’s worth of thoughts, arranged in alphabetical order. The book is a chronicle of the self, of the fundamentals and idiosyncrasies of human experience, that plays out thrillingly in the space that Heti has staked out between life and art, reality and fiction.

Poet Kaveh Akbar joins us to discuss his first novel “Martyr!” which follows Cyrus Shams on a journey of introspection and discovery. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet. His obsession with martyrs and dealing with the death of his mother drives him to examine the mysteries of his past.

Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books translated into twenty-three languages, most recently “The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise” and “The Art of Stillness.” His latest, “Aflame,” is an exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat.