Podcast - Kiese Laymon

Stephen Usery interviews Jackson, Mississippi native and Vassar College professor Kiese Laymon about his two new books. Long Division is the story of contemporary Jackson teenager named City Coldson, who finds a novel starring a teen from the 1980s with his same name. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of unflinching essays which examine race and class in America and how it often fails to live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all.

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Podcast - Eric Barnes

Stephen Usery interviews Eric Barnes. Eric is the publisher of three newspapers: The Daily News, The Memphis News, and The Nashville Ledger. He's written short stories which have appeared in many fine journals such as Prairie Schooner and The Literary Review. 2009 saw his first novel publication with Shimmer, and Outpost19 has recently published Something Pretty, Something Beautiful.

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Podcast - Elaine Hussey

Elaine Hussey is a new name on the southern literary fiction scene, although the woman behind that name, Peggy Webb, has published dozens of  romance, suspense, and mystery novels. Her new novel inspired her to take on a new pen name. The Sweetest Hallelujah is set in Tupelo, Mississippi in the 1950s, which becomes the meeting ground for women from different races and backgrounds to plan for the care of a young girl.

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Podcast - Matthew Guinn

Stephen Usery interviews Matthew Guinn about his debut novel, The Resurrectionist, about a slave in the 1850s ordered to steal other slaves' corpses for dissection for a South Carolina medical school, as well as a 1990s doctor who learns of the story which jeopardizes his school's reputation.

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Podcast - Susan Crandall

Susan Crandall has published ten novels, including Magnolia Sky. and Seeing Red. Gallery Books has published her historical novel, Whistling Past the Graveyard, a story about a young, runaway white girl named Starla who becomes attached to a black woman named Eula, and their uneasy journey through Jim Crow landscape of Mississippi in the early 1960s.


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Podcast - Michael Harvey

Michael Harvey is the co-creator and producer of the hit A&E television show Cold Case Files. He has earned a law degree, teaches at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He also writes crime novels. He's published four starring the former Chicago cop and current PI Michael Kelly, and Knopf has recent published a standalone thriller which marries his love of journalism and criminal law in The Innocence Game.

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Podcast - David Berg

David Berg is one of the most feared and respected trial attorneys in America. His brother Alan Berg was murdered in the spring of 1968. Charles Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, was tried for the murder. David has recently published  Run, Brother, Run: A Memoir of Murder in My Family which looks at David's tumultuous family history leading up to the time of Alan's death, and the effect it and the subsequent trial had on him and his family.

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Podcast - Scott Phillips "Rake"

Scott Phillips is probably best known for his debut novel, The Ice Harvest, which was made into a film with John Cusak and Billy Bob Thornton.Counterpoint has just released his novel Rake, the story of an American soap opera actor who gets in over his head when he tries to make a movie in Paris.

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Podcast - Cathie Pelletier

 
Stephen Usery welcomes Cathie Pelletier to the program. She's written ten novels,  five of which are set in the fictional town of Mattagash,  Maine. In the new book, The One-Way Bridge, mailman Orville Craft and Vietnam vet Harry Plunkett butt heads as almost the entire town begins to feel unhappy with their relationships in this humorous and heartbreaking portrait of a small town on the Canadian border.

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Podcast - William Hustwit

Sara Hoover interviews historian William P. Hustwit about his book, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation. Kilpatrick was a controversial newspaper editor and syndicated columnist who attempted to use intellectual arguments for maintaining the unfair and racist Jim Crow laws of the South. He was also a key figure in turning southern conservatives toward the Republican Party in the 1960s and 70s.

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Podcast- Beth Hoffman

Linda Lloyd interviews New York Times bestselling Author Beth Hoffman about her new novel, Looking For Me. Teddi Overman has left her native Kentucky to get involved with the antiques trade in Charleston, South Carolina. However, she returns home in hopes of finding her estranged and missing brother Josh, while confronting difficult memories in her family's past.


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Podcast - Ace Atkins

Stephen Usery welcomes Ace Atkins back to the program this week to discuss The Broken Places, the third installment of the Quinn Colson series. Former Army Ranger turned Mississippi county sheriff, Colson is suspicious of his sister's ex-con preacher boyfriend, while some Parchman Prison escapees are lurking in the background.

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Podcast - John Scalzi

Stephen Usery interviews John Scalzi about his new novel, The Human Division, the fifth book in his Old Man's War series. Humankind is in danger because it has angered almost every other species in our corner of the universe. A not-ready-for-prime-time diplomatic squad, known as "The B Team", is thrown into difficult situation after difficult situation and succeeds because of clever thinking instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

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Podcast - Wayne B. Drash

 
We welcome back Sara Hoover as one of our guest hosts this week as she talks with Wayne B. Drash. Wayne is a veteran journalist and web producer for cnn.com and grew up for a while in Memphis.  His debut book is On These Courts: A Miracle Season That Changed a City, a Once-Future Star, and a Team Forever.  It's the story of Memphian and NBA superstar Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway and how he helped his friend Desmond Merriweather coach the Lester Middle School basketball team to a championship and the impact it had on their Binghampton community.

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Podcast - Richard Paul Evans

Stephen Usery interviews Richard Paul Evans about the fourth installment of his The Walk series. In A Step of Faith, former advertising executive Alan Christofferson is continuing his walk from Seattle to Key West, which he began after the death of his wife and losing his firm. He starts off in Saint Louis, makes his way to Georgia, including a stop at Graceland, and meets the kind and sometimes bizarre people who make up our country.

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Podcast - Clyde Edgerton

Stephen Usery welcomes Clyde Edgerton back to the program. Known for his often humorous novels, Clyde is now branching out into the field of paternal advice with Papadaddy's Book for New Fathers: Advice to Dads of All Ages. Clyde draws on his experience with his four children, three of whom came along in his late fifties. He even sings a little song that he wrote for his kids.

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Podcast - Gail Godwin

Stephen Usery interviews National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin about her thirteenth novel, Flora. Flora is the story of ten year-old Helen Anstruther and her 22 year-old cousin Flora who spend the summer of 1945 in a run-down grand home on top of a hill in western North Carolina. Helen's father is helping the war effort over in Oak Ridge, TN, while Flora has come up from Alabama to stay with her.


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Podcast - Vince Vawter

Stephen Usery interviews Memphis native Vince Vawter about his semi-autobiographical novel, Paperboy. July 1959 is a pivotal month for a young boy, who has a prominent stutter and takes over a friend's paper route. He gets to know some of the customers on his route and learns lessons that he will carry the rest of his life.

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Podcast - Daniel Wallace

Stephen Usery welcomes Daniel Wallace to the program to talk about his new novel, The Kings and Queens of Roam. Helen and Rachel McCallister are inseparable adult sisters who cannot outrun the evil done by their great-grandfather Elijah McCallister when setting up his silk-worm empire in the remote, magical town of Roam. Sins of previous generations are compounded by more recent misdeeds and do not bode well for them or their hometown.

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Podcast - Joel Harrington

Tune into Book Talk this week as Stephen Usery interviews Vanderbilt history professor Joel Harrington about his new book The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century. Frantz Schmidt was the master executioner of Nuremberg in the late 1500s. His father was forced into the execution profession, and Frantz had little choice but follow, yet he worked tirelessly to restore the family's honor. Joel Harrington on this week's Book Talk, Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. and Sunday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. on FM89.3 WYPL Memphis.

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Podcast - Jill McCorkle

Stephen Usery interviews Jill McCorkle about her first novel in 17 years, Life After Life. It's the story of the patients, employees, and neighbors of the Pine Haven Retirement Center in Fulton, North Carolina. Each character is at a major transition point in life, and it forces them to reflect on the choices they made in their past and deal with the regrets that plague us all.

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Podcast - Ann B. Ross

Linda Lloyd interviews Ann B. Ross about the 14th book in her hilarious Ms. Julia Series.

In Miss Julia Stirs Up Trouble, friend Hazel Marie's maid falls down the stairs, leaving Hazel Marie overwhelmed with all the chores and her two babies. Miss Julia tries to rally support in the community to teach Hazel Marie cooking and other domestic lessons, all while Hazel Marie's good-for-nothing uncle comes back on the scene to stir up some trouble of his own.

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Podcast - Dana Sachs

Stephen Usery Interviews Memphis native Dana Sachs about her second novel, The Secret of the Nightingale Palace. Anna is a young widow who travels to meet with her demanding grandmother, Goldie, from whom she has been estranged for five years. As we learn more about Anna's brief marriage, the story of Goldie's time in San Francisco prior to WWII reveals why she holds such strong opinions.
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Podcast - Alan Huffman

Stephen Usery interviews Alan Huffman about his new book, Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer. Hetherington was the Oscar-nominated filmmaker and photographer of the Afghan war documentary, Restrepo. Huffman looks at his career's beginnings during the Liberian civil war until his untimely death while covering the Libyan revolution in 2011.

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Podcast - Maureen Johnson

Stephen Usery interviews Maureen Johnson about her new novel The Madness Underneath, the second book in the Shades of London series. Louisiana high-school student Rory Deveau is recovering from a run in with a killer who imitated the crimes of Jack the Ripper, and now she has to make some tough decisions while being pulled in different directions by family, friends, and government while attending boarding school in London. Download here.