New Books in Literature

Jesse Browner is the author of the novels Sing to Me (Little Brown, 2025) The Uncertain Hour and Everything Happens Today, among others, as well as of the memoir How Did I Get Here? He is also the translator of works by Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, Rainer Maria Rilke, Matthieu Ricard and other French literary masters. He lives in New York City. Recommended Books: Cormac McCarthy, The Road Álvaro Enrigue, You Dreamed of Empires Susanna Clarke, Piranesi Dezso Kosztolanyi, Skylark Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

 Nightshining (Milkweed, 2025) Jennifer Kabat is the author of The Eighth Moon, her writing has also appeared in Frieze, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and The Believer. She teaches at the school of Visual Arts and the New School. An Apprentice herbalist, she lives in rural Upstate New York and serves on her volunteer fire department. Recommended Books: Hélène Bessette, Lily is Crying Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain Majula Martin, Last Fire Season Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

After Gwin Gilmore loses her adjunct teaching job, mother, and boyfriend, she leaves the south and heads for the cottage she’s just inherited on the Maine coast. It’s in the town her family visited every summer, people still remember her, and she has some old friends there, but it’s also filled with terrible memories of her sister’s drowning. And the old houses are slowly giving way to ugly condos and mini mansions. Anna grapples with a teenage runaway, a realtor trying to condemn her cottage, a handsome artist, and the ghosts of previous tenants who make their presence known. This is a beautiful novel about overcoming past failures, finding a community, and moving forward. Libby Buck earned her BA in English from the University of Virginia, her MA in art history from Columbia University, and PhD. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While her general area of expertise is Nineteenth Century France, her dissertation focused upon the Gustave Moreau museum and its challenge to traditional museology. She taught as a visiting lecturer for over a decade at various institutions, including Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She and her husband raised three daughters in North Carolina, where she still lives with her husband when she is not beside the sea in Downeast Maine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Lindsay Zier-Vogel about her new novel, The Fun Times Brigade (Book*hug Press, 2025).  From acclaimed author Lindsay Zier-Vogel comes an insightful and heart-rending exploration of motherhood, grief, and the search for identity. Amy is a new mother, navigating the fog of those bewildering early days and struggling with a role she feels ill-prepared for. It’s the first time in a decade that she hasn’t been living the busy life of an acclaimed children’s musician, and her sense of self is unravelling. To make matters worse, her bandmates have seemingly abandoned her. In flashbacks, we see Amy’s journey to success—her stumblings as a solo singer-songwriter and her eventual rise to fame as a member of the Fun Times Brigade. But as the novel progresses—and Amy grapples with a devastating loss—we come to understand how precarious definitions of artistic success can be. The Fun Times Brigade examines the enduring challenges of reconciling being an artist with being a mother. It is also a timely reflection on forgiveness and what it really means to have a good life in a world that demands we have—and be—it all, and asserts that amidst the chaos, we can find our way back to our genuine selves. About Lindsay Zier-Vogel: LINDSAY ZIER-VOGEL is a Toronto-based author and the creator of the internationally beloved Love Lettering Project. After studying contemporary dance, Zier-Vogel received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Letters to Amelia, and her first picture book, Dear Street, was a Junior Library Guild pick, a Canadian Children’s Book Centre book of the year, and was nominated for a Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award in 2024. The Fun Times Brigade is her second novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Bianca Marais about her delightful and highly entertaining new book, A Most Puzzling Murder (Harper Collins, 2025),  How do you solve a murder that hasn't happened yet?Destiny Whip is a former child prodigy, world-renowned enigmatologist and very, very alone. A life filled with loss has made her a recluse, an existence she’s content to endure until a letter arrives inviting her to interview for the position of Scruffmore family historian. Not only does an internet search for the name yield almost nothing, it’s a role she never applied to in the first place!She decodes the invitation's hidden message with ease, and its promise to reveal her family secrets proves too powerful a draw for the orphaned Destiny, who soon finds herself on Eerie Island. It’s a place whose inhabitants are almost as inhospitable as the tempestuous weather. The Scruffmores themselves turn out to be not much better, a snarled mess of secrets and motives connected by their mistrust for one another.Their newly arrived guest proves to be just as much an enigma to them as they are to her. While Destiny slowly works to unravel the mysteries hidden throughout the ominous castle, she struggles to interpret disturbing nightly visions of what is to come. In the midst of cryptic ciphers, hidden passages, and the family’s magical line of succession, Destiny is certain of two things: one of the Scruffmores is going to die and she’s running out of time to stop it.Interspersed with riddles and puzzles that both Destiny and the reader must solve, A Most Puzzling Murder is a one-of-a-kind mystery that will leave you guessing and gasping until the very last page! About Bianca Marais: Bianca Marais cohosts the popular podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers get published. She teaches creative writing through the podcast and was named a winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she loves playing escape-room games and writing about strong female protagonists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Tochi Onyebuchi’s novel Harmattan Season: A Novel (Tor Books, 2025) follows Boubacar, a veteran and private eye living in French occupied West Africa, as he begins a reluctant journey to discover what happened to the bleeding woman who stumbled onto his doorway and vanished soon after. That mystery quickly drags Bouba into exactly the kind of violence and political intrigue he had been working so hard to avoid. In this interview, Onyebuchi describes finding Boubacar’s voice and the different noir tropes he was most excited about. We discuss fiction as a way to examine colonialism, magic as a tool for social exploration as well as engaging set pieces, and the joy of fast-paced novels. We also talk depictions of violence, world-wise urchin kids, and experimentation and growth throughout a writing career. Harmattan Season is a compelling and thoughtful adventure and it was so much fun discussing it with the author. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with John Devore about his phenomenal memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway (Applause, 2024). Friendship. Grief. Jazz hands. In 2004, in a small, windowless theater in then-desolate Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an eccentric family of broke art-school survivors staged an experimental, four-hour adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying inside an enormous wooden coffin that could barely fit the cast, much less an audience.The production’s cast and crew—including its sweetly monomaniacal director—poured their hearts and paychecks into a messy spectacle doomed to fail by any conventional measure. It ran for only eight performances. The reviews were tepid. Fewer than one hundred people saw it. But to emotionally messy hack magazine editor John DeVore, cast at the last minute in a bit part, it was a safe space to hide out and attempt sobering up following a devastating loss.An unforgettable ode to the ephemeral, chaotic magic of the theatre and the weirdos who bring it to life, Theatre Kids is DeVore’s buoyant, irreverent, and ultimately moving account of outsize ambition and dashed hopes in post-9/11, pre-iPhone New York City. Sharply observed and bursting with hilarious razzle-dazzle, it will resonate with anyone who has ever, perhaps against their better judgment, tried to bring something beautiful into the world without regard for riches or fame. About John DeVore: John DeVore is a two-time James Beard Award–winning writer and editor who has worked for The New York Post, SiriusXM, and Conan O’Brien's Team Coco. He's also written for Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Marvel Comics, among many others. John lives in Brooklyn with his partner and their one-eyed mutt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Jennifer Kabat, author of "Nightshining: A Memoir in Four Floods," intertwines personal experiences with broader historical narratives about climate change and community resilience. She discusses the significance of her hometown floods while reflecting on the legacy of the General Electric campus during the Cold War. Kabat also explores Johannes Kepler's impact on science, alongside personal stories that bridge past and present. With a poet's insight, she addresses themes of identity, memory, and the environmental challenges we face today.

Pria Anand speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “The Elephant’s Child,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. The piece is a vivid retelling of a Hindu myth, the origin story of the elephant-headed god Ganesh. Pria talks about the process of writing and revising many versions of this ancient myth, why she felt inspired by it, and how her literary writing intersects with her career as a neurologist. Pria also discusses her debut book, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains, out this month from Simon & Schuster. The book explores how story and storytelling can illuminate the rich, complex gray areas within the science of the brain, weaving case study, history, fable, and memoir. Pria Anand is a neurologist and the author of The Mind Electric, out from Simon & Schuster in the U.S. and Little, Brown in the U.K. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Medical School, and she trained in neurology, neuro-infectious diseases, and neuroimmunology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital. She is now an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine, and she cares for patients at the Boston Medical Center. ­­Read Prias’s story “The Elephant’s Child” in The Common at thecommononline.org/the-elephants-child. Order The Mind Electric in all formats via Simon & Schuster at simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mind-Electric/. Learn more about Pria at www.priaanand.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her new debut novel All That Life Can Afford is the Reese’s Book Club pick for April 2025. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Naomi Xu Elegant’s debut novel, Gingko Season (W. W. Norton: 2025), stars Penelope Lin, a young Chinese woman living in New York in the faraway year of 2018. With difficult parents and a bad break-up, she works for a museum’s exhibition on bound feet, with a gaggle of other, somewhat clueless friends. But a meeting with Hoang, a researcher at a cancer lab, forces Penelope to rethink what she wants with her life. Naomi joins me today to talk about her book, her choice of characters, how she wanted to approach tropes like the meet-cute—and why 2018 now feels like ancient history, even to young-ish millennials. Naomi Xu Elegant is a writer and journalist living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Monocle, Fortune, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature