Podcast - Geraldine Brooks "Caleb's Crossing"

Stephen Usery interviews Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks about her novel Caleb's Crossing which is now available in paperback. Drawing inspiration from the life of the first Native American graduate of Harvard, Caleb's Crossing tells the tale of young Bethia Mayfield, daughter of a Calvinist minister trying to bring Christianity to the Wampanoag people on Martha's Vineyard in the mid-17th century.

Podcast - Charlaine Harris "Deadlocked"

Stephen Usery interviews Charlaine Harris about the latest installment to her Sookie Stackhouse series, Deadlocked. The series, which is the inspiration for the television program True Blood, is ramping up for a conclusion next year, as human, vampire, shapeshifter and fairy worlds vie for the services of Sookie, whose psychic abilities are belied by her small-town waitress exterior.

Podcast - David Rees "How to Sharpen Pencils..."

Stephen Usery interviews former cartoonist David Rees about his new book, How To Sharpen Pencils: A PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL TREATISE ON THE ARTISANAL CRAFT OF PENCIL SHARPENING, FOR WRITERS, ARTISTS, CONTRACTORS, FLANGE TURNERS, ANGLESMITHS, AND CIVIL SERVANTS, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS SHOWING CURRENT PRACTICE. Fraught with tension and discord, this episode Book Talk should have played on AM radio!

Podcast - Heidi Julavits "The Vanishers"

Stephen Usery interviews Heidi Julavits, an editor of The Believer Magazine. She has recently published her fourth novel, The Vanishers, which is the story of a young woman who attempts to develop her psychic abilities and is sucked into a web of deceit and confusion where an academic is searching for a believed-to-be-dead filmmaker and there is no such things as coincidence.