Podcast - Russ Kick "The Graphic Canon Volume One"

Stephen Usery interviews editor Russ Kick about his new project The Graphic Canon Volume One: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons. It's the first of three volumes to published this year which feature graphic novel interpretations of the world's great works of literature.

Podcast - Joseph Kanon "Istanbul Passage"

Stephen Usery interviews Joseph Kanon about his latest Cold War thriller Istanbul Passage. Set in Turkey a couple of months after the end of World War II, businessman Leon Bauer is asked to help smuggle a defector from eastern Europe, and Bauer has to examine his morals in light of atrocities and dubious politics in this new uncertain world.

Podcast - Daniel Friedman "Don't Ever Get Old"

 Stephen Usery interviews Memphis native Daniel Friedman about his debut mystery novel, Don't Ever Get Old. It stars the 87 year-old retired police detective Baruch "Buck" Schatz, who along with his grandson, tries to hunt down the Nazi prison camp officer who tortured him during World War II.

Podcast - Wiley Cash "A Land More Kind Than Home"

photo by Kevin Millard

Stephen Usery interviews Wiley Cash about his debut novel A Land More Kind than Home. Compared to the works of Tom Franklin and John Hart, A Land More Kind Than Home is set in the hills of western North Carolina in the mid-1980s, where a small snake-handling church and the secrets it holds threaten the Hall family, as well as others in the community.

Podcast - Sophie Littlefield "A Bad Day for Mercy"

Stephen Usery welcomes Sophie Littlefield back to the program to talk about her upcoming mystery, A Bad Day for Mercy. It's the fourth installment of her Stella Hardesty series, where a 50 year-old sewing machine shop owner from Missouri, who normally takes justice into her own hands with abusive spouses, now finds herself in Wisconsin helping her step-nephew who has a corpse on his kitchen table when she arrives.

Podcast - Kristen Iversen "Full Body Burden"

Stephen Usery interviews Kristen Iversen about her new book "Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats." Rocky Flats was the factory in suburban Denver, Colorado which made 70,000 plutonium triggers for America's nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1990. The federal government and its private contractors tried to minimize public concern about radioactive pollution downwind from the plant, including in the suburb where Kristen Iversen grew up.

Podcast - Thomas McNamee "The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat"

Stephen Usery interviews Thomas McNamee about his new book, THE MAN WHO CHANGED THE WAY WE EAT: CRAIG CLAIBORNE AND THE AMERICAN FOOD RENAISSANCE. Starting with Claiborne's upbringing in the Mississippi Delta and through his war-time naval service, this book looks at Claiborne's reign as the food editor of the New York Times and his creation of modern food writing.

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.

Podcast - Ron Rash "The Cove"

Stephen Usery interviews Ron Rash about his new novel, The Cove. Coming on the heels of winning the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, Rash's novel is set in rural North Carolina during World War I, as an adult brother and sister deal with distrust of the people who live in town and a curious, mute stranger who has appeared in this seemingly-cursed area known as The Cove.

Podcast - Lauren Groff "Arcadia"

Stephen Usery welcomes Lauren Groff back to the program. Following up on the success of her New York Times best-selling debut, Groff has just published her second novel, Arcadia. It's the story of the littlest hippie named Bit Stone who grew up on a utopian commune in upstate New York and his life beyond the idealistic community known as Arcadia.

Podcast - Noah Hawley "The Good Father"

Stephen Usery interviews Noah Hawley about his new novel, The Good Father. A veteran TV writer, producer and creator, Hawley's fourth book is about Dr. Paul Allen, a successful New York rheumatologist who comes home one evening to hear his his son's name on the network news, named as a suspect in the shooting of a presidential candidate. Dr. Allen tirelessly fights to prove his son's innocence as he tracks his movements over the year prior to the shooting. 

Podcast - Amy Franklin-Willis "The Lost Saints of Tennesee"

Stephen Usery interviews Amy Franklin-Willis about her debut novel, The Lost Saints of Tennessee. Zeke Cooper is a Hardeman County, Tennessee native who is having a hard time in the mid-1980s. His marriage has fallen apart, much as he did after his twin brother died ten years earlier. Desperate, he drives east looking for a way out of the regret for a tough past and a life of unfulfilled potential. Plus, a live performance by Andrew Castro, who wrote an album based on the book!

Podcast - Alex George "A Good American"

Stephen Usery interviews English expat Alex George about his new novel, A Good American, which follows Frederick and Henriette Meisenheimer as they emigrate from Germany to the United States in 1903. The story of the family's relationship with their new home in central Missouri spans almost a century, and the many upheavals in their lives mirror America's tumultuous history. many upheavals in their lives mirror America's tumultuous history.

Podcast - Eugenia Bone "Mycophilia"

 Stephen Usery interviews Eugenia Bone about her book Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms. In it we learn about the essential roll of fungi in all areas of life on earth, the wonderful diversity of edible wild mushrooms that one can pick, and the scientific discoveries about the nutritional and medicinal values of the humble mushroom.

Podcast - Taylor M. Polites "The Rebel Wife"

Stephen Usery interviews Taylor M. Polites about his debut novel, The Rebel Wife. Set in Alabama in the mid-1870s, reconstruction is coming to an end as Augusta "Gus" Branson's husband Eli lies dying from a mysterious hemorrhagic fever. Pressure mounts on the family as money grows tight and panic over the disease spreads.

Podcast - Patrick deWitt "The Sisters Brothers"

Stephen Usery interviews Patrick deWitt about his bestselling and critically-acclaimed novel, The Sisters Brothers. Set in the midst of the California gold rush, professional killers Charlie and Eli Sisters make their way from Oregon to San Francisco aiming to eliminate a miner who has crossed their powerful employer, The Commodore. Hilarious and melancholy, The Sisters Brothers won two major awards in deWitt's native Canada.

Podcast - L.A. Weatherly "Angel Burn" and "Angel Fire"

Stephen Usery talks to author L.A. Weatherly about her young adult series about angels who have invaded earth and the teenagers who are fighting back against them. The conversation starts with the first book, Angel Burn, and segues into Angel Fire, which was just released in the U.S. in hardcover.

Podcast - Paul and Angela Knipple "The World in a Skillet"

Stephen Usery interviews Paul and Angela Knipple about their first book The World in a Skillet: A Food Lover's Tour of the New American South. More than just a tour, it looks a immigrants from around the world who have moved to the South and how their cultures and cuisines have influenced and been influenced by their new home.

Podcast - Gin Phillips "Come In and Cover Me"

Stephen Usery interviews Gin Phillips, acclaimed author of The Well and the Mine. Her new novel, Come in and Cover Me, is the story of archaeologist whose study of early Southwest cultures is complicated by her own past.

Podcast - Kim Edwards "The Lake of Dreams"

Stephen Usery interviews Kim Edwards (The Memory Keeper's Daughter) about her latest novel, The Lake of Dreams, which is now available in paperback. Lucy Jarrett returns home to upstate New York after working in Asia for almost a decade. Family secrets new and old surface as Lucy is pulled at by loves old and new.

Podcast - Joshilyn Jackson "A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty"

Stephen Usery interviews Joshilyn Jackson about her fifth novel, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. It's an funny yet tense story of three generation of Slocumb women, eldest Ginny, Liza, and youngest Mosey, who have to deal with secrets coming to light after Liza has a stroke and a mysterious silver box is found in their backyard, exposing many lies in the process.

Podcast - Adam Johnson "The Orphan Master's Son"

Stephen Usery interviews Adam Johnson about his critically-acclaimed second novel, The Orphan Master's Son. It's the story of Pak Jun Do, a young man thought to be an orphan, and the incredible path his life takes inside the repressive and mysterious political system of North Korea. It's a harrowing tale that also allows room for love and humanity to bloom in the cracks of this totalitarian regime.