Steve Bertrand on Books

With the release of Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman, Steve Bertrand on Books gets the lowdown on Harper and Alice Lee with Marja Mills. Her book The Mockingbird Next Door details her time living next door to the Lee sisters in Monroeville, Alabama.

Brad Meltzer talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about the pull of parents, the secrets of Devil’s Island, and Ronald Reagan’s gun. It’s all in Meltzer’s latest political thriller, The President’s Shadow.

Michael Alan Peck is the winner of the 2015 Soon to Be Famous Authors Project. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his award winning novel and the wonder of librarians.

Michael Harvey knows Chicago. The former CBS news producer proves that time and again with his hard-boiled Michael Kelly detective novels. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his latest, The Governor’s Wife. Spoiler alert: The governor is a crook.

Mary Morris talks Jazz, Al Capone, and Chicago in the days of Prohibition with Steve Bertrand on Books. It’s all in her novel The Jazz Palace.

Maz Jobrani is an Iranian-born, American comedian who is looks at his life with both comedy and introspection in his memoir I’m Not a Terrorist, But I’ve Played One on TV. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about why he refuses to play a terrorist and why the King of Jordan has his cell […]

Kazuo Ishiguro, who has won the Man Booker Prize and been awarded the O.B.E., has been called one of Britain’s most important living novelists. His latest, The Buried Giant, examines the frailty of collective memory with the story of an elderly post-King Arthur era couple on their way to visit their long lost son. Their […]

New York Times columnist David Brooks says we’ve lost focus on the virtues that matter most: we worry too much about shallow accomplishments and not enough about the more meaningful behavior that truly makes a difference in the world. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his book The Road to Character.

Erik Larson talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. It was 100 years ago this week that a German U-boat sank the ocean liner with a single torpedo.

Cartoonist Jessica Hagy explains Sun Tzu’s Art of War with Venn diagrams. She talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about taking an ancient text and pulling out current meaning in her book, The Art of War Visualized.

Former Congressman Barney Frank lives up to his name in his new memoir, “Frank.” He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his life in Washington, the Religious Freedom law in Indiana, Aaron Schock, and more.

Author Boris Fishman talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about A Replacement Life.

Kate Alcott talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about her latest novel, A Touch of Stardust, an inside Hollywood story of an Indiana girl who finds herself in the middle of the making of Gone with the Wind. Kate talks about Hollywood in the 1930s, politics of the 1980s, and why her family calls her […]

Author Thomas Perry talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about why he stopped writing his Jane Whitefield series. And also why he started up again. The latest Whitefield Novel is String of Beads.

Pico Iyer thinks we’re doing too much, even when we’re not supposed to be doing anything at all. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about Leonard Cohen, the secular Sabbath, and his new book, The Art of Stillness.