Tyranny is the key this week on Talking Scared this week. How fitting.

Susan Barker’s Old Soul is a globe-trotting, decade-spanning supernatural tour of autocracies, from behind the Iron Curtain to contemporary China. If that isn’t frightening enough, it also features an ageless woman who curses anyone she meets, a grand cosmic entity, and the exhilaration and terror of deep time. 

Heady stuff, and Susan and I talk about all of it – and just why she likes to write about as many times and places in each book as she can.

Enjoy.

• Incarnations (2014) by Susan Barker
• Sayonara Bar (2005), by Susan Barker
• Ghostwritten (1999), by David Mitchell
• Number9Dream (2001), by David Mitchell
• Slade House (2015), by David Mitchell
• House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski
• Under the Skin (2000), by Michelle Faber
• Audition (1997), by Ryū Murakami
• The Denial of Death (1973), by Ernest Becker
• The Three Body Problem (2006), by Cixin Liu
• You Like it Darker (2024), by Stephen King
• Starve Acre (2019), by Andrew Michael Hurley
• Barrowbeck (2024), by Andrew Michael Hurley
• The Ritual (2011), by Adam Neville

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices