Stephen Usery interviews authors of mysteries, thrillers, and crime fiction.

 

 

 
Alexander Weinstein's fiction has appeared in Notre-Dame Review, Pleiades,Southern Indiana Review, and other journals. His stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and appear in the anthologies 2013 New Stories from the Midwest, and the 2014 & 2015 Lascaux Prize Stories. Today we'll be talking about his debut collection, Children of the New World, which is published by Picador.
Direct download: ALEXANDER_WEINSTEIN_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 9:49am EDT
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Beth Macy is a journalist having written for The Roanoke Times and has contributed essays to The New York Times.  She's written two best-selling books of non-fiction. The first was Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local -- and Helped Save an American Town, and today we'll be talking about Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South.

Direct download: BETH_MACY_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 9:39am EDT
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Beverly Lowry is a respected novelist and writer of non-fiction. In addition to biographies of Harriet Tubman and Madame C.J. Walker, her book Crossed Over: A Monster, A Memoir dealt with the unsolved crime of her son's death by a hit and run driver and her getting to know Karla Faye Tucker, the convicted murderer who became the first woman executed in Texas in over 100 years. Today we'll be talking about her new book, Who Killed These Girls?, her investigation to the still unresolved murders of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop in Austin Texas in December of 1991.

Direct download: BEVERLY_LOWRY_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 12:00pm EDT
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Robert Olen Butler back to the program today. Bob is one of America's most acclaimed writers of fiction, having not only won many literary honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, but he also had prize for short fiction named in his honor, which was award five times in the early 2000s. Early in his writing career, Butler wrote fiction about the Vietnam conflict from several different angles, and in his latest novel, Perfume River, he looks about how this war, and even wars before and since, have influenced the Quinlan family.

Direct download: ROBERT_OLEN_BUTLER_2016_WYPL_BOOKTALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 12:00pm EDT
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Candice Millard is a former writer and editor for National Geographic Magazine. Her first book The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey was published in 2005. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of A President, which won an Edgar for best fact crime book, followed in 2011. Doubleday has recently published her third book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill, which has already spent several weeks in the top ten of the New York Times Best Sellers list.
Direct download: CANDICE_MILLARD_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 10:25am EDT
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Thomas Mullen has published four novels, The Last Town on Earth, which won the James Fenimore Cooper prize, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, The Revisionists, and Atria has recently published his latest, Darktown, set in the dawning of the Civil Rights era in Atlanta. Eight African-American men are the first hired onto the police force, and two of them Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith are tested as they investigate a black woman's murder, complicated by the fact she was seen last with a disgraced, white ex-cop who still has friends on the force.
 
 

 

Direct download: THOMAS_MULLEN_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 3:21pm EDT
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Nathan Hill has worked as a journalist and is currently on leave from his job as an associate professor of creative writing. He's just published his debut novel The Nix to much critical acclaim, including starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus. And it was recently announced that Meryl Streep and J.J. Abrams plan on adapting The Nix for television.


Direct download: NATHAN_HILL_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 2:47pm EDT
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Kerri Maniscalco is a debut novelist who has the honor of being the first author published by James Patterson's new young adult imprint called Jimmy Patterson Books and is distributed by Little, Brown. Stalking Jack the Ripper is the story of a 17-year-old girl named Audrey Rose Wadsworth who is fascinated by the Jack the Ripper case and is then terrified to learn that Jack might be closer to her than she suspects. Also, Stalking Jack the Ripper debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list for young adult hardcover! Congratulations Kerri!


Direct download: KERRI_MANISCALCO_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 10:08am EDT
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Jason Miller is a noted Twitter funny person and contributor to the RiffTrax movie satire series. Jason first appeared on Book Talk in 2015 to talk about the first book in his Slim in Little Egypt mystery series, Down Don't Bother Me. 2016 brings book two in the series set in southern Illinois coal country, Red Dog.

Direct download: JASON_MILLER_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 2:15pm EDT
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Donald Ray Pollock came to writing later in life after having worked 30+ years in a paper mill in central Ohio. His first published book was a collection of short stories called Knockemstiff, followed by the novel, The Devil All the Time. 2016 sees the release of his second novel, The Heavenly Table, which is published by Doubleday.

Direct download: DONALD_RAY_POLLOCK_2016_WYPL_BOOK_TALK.mp3
Category:Arts - Literature -- posted at: 6:00pm EDT
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