New Books in Literature

Emma Sloley speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “The Cassandras,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. In this conversation, Sloley talks about writing a story based on the fear of men women are taught to have from a young age. She also discusses her decision to include a sort of Greek chorus in the story, apocalyptic isolation in her novel Disaster’s Children, and how travel writing has changed in the age of Instagram.Emma Slowley’s work has appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, Yemassee, Joyland, Structo, and The Masters Review Anthology, among many other publications. She is a MacDowell Fellow and Bread Loaf scholar. Her debut novel, Disaster’s Children, was published in 2019. Born in Australia, Emma now divides her time between the United States and the city of Mérida, Mexico.Read “The Cassandras” at thecommononline.org/the-cassandras.Read the LitHub essay mentioned in the podcast here.Read more about Emma and her work at emmasloley.net.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 Twitter @CommonMag.Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She holds an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Say hello on Twitter @Public_Emily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Jackson Ford has some things in common with his protagonist, Teagan Frost. Both use nom de plumes. And both can move sh*t.With her telekinetic powers, Teagan can move inorganic objects while Ford (aka Rob Boffard) uses his creative powers to move plots at a rapid clip.Ford, and his publisher, Orbit, have also moved the cultural needle—specifically, by bringing three books with sh*t (asterisk and all) into the world. The most recent contribution, Eye of the Sh*t Storm (Orbit, 2021), is the third in Ford’sThe Frost Files series and continues Teagan’s attempts to learn about her origins while managing her government handlers and keeping Los Angeles safe from those with strange psychic powers like hers.“Teagan is not a typical superhero because she resents her ability to move things with her mind,” Ford says. “She would much rather learn how to cook, be a professional chef, and own her own restaurant… Her ability has forced her into a life she has no desire to be a part of.”In his New Books interview, Ford discusses (among other things) profanity, pseudonyms, and why Teagan, despite her extraordinary power, still needs the help of regular people.Born in South Africa, Ford splits his time between London and Vancouver. Under his real name, Rob Boffard, he is the author of the Outer Earth series and Adrift.Rob Wolf is the host of New Books in Science Fiction and the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Edison Hark, the star of The Good Asian (Image Comics: 2021), the new comic series written by Pornsak Pichetshote and illustrated by Alexandre Tefenkgi, never signed up to investigate a murder in Chinatown. As the only Chinese-American law enforcement officer in the United States, he travels to San Francisco in 1936 to help find a Chinese maid who has run away from the household of the man who raised him. But he stumbles upon a crime scene that harkens back to an old crime legend: a hitman for the old Tongs, back for revenge.But while The Good Asian tells a thrilling noir story of crime, detectives and investigations, it also tells the story of the Chinese community, who at the time were still under scrutiny under laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act. The comic grapples with ideas of racial prejudice, respectability politics, and identity.In this interview, Pornsak and I talk about the setting and genre of The Good Asian, and what it means to star a Chinese-American lead in such a well-known genre.Pornsak Pichetshote was a Thai-American rising star editor at DC’s Vertigo imprint where he worked on such comics perennials as The Sandman and Swamp Thing. He left Vertigo to become an executive in DC Entertainment’s media team, where he started and oversaw DC TV’s department. He is also the writer of Infidel, also for Image Comics, which was his first work as a writer. He can be followed on Twitter at @real_pornsak, and on Instagram at @real_psak.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Good Asian. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate 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

We have a collective memory of a primeval world embodied in myth. It is a world where spirits lived in the trees, water, and mountains, and nature was sacred. Was such a world ever possible, or was it doomed as soon as humans spread? What went wrong with our planet and whose fault is it? Are innovators, who look to science for answers, agents of positive change, or merely heedless apologists for human greed? These are some of the many questions that Bell’s new novel, Appleseed (Custom House, 2021) provokes. No doubt a few literature students will be inspired to write papers.Bell’s ambitious and original triptych of interlocking stories explores man’s relationship with the wilderness through three timelines, set in the past, the near future, and the far future, after a cataclysmic catastrophe. Snow Piercer has nothing on this chilly future world, bereft of any life.Such a novel is a challenge to reduce to a synopsis. In one time period, the late 1800s, a faun, Chapman, suppresses his identity out of love for his human brother, as well as fear of the Furies who chase him, carrying Orpheus’ howling head. Chapman might be, in some magical manner, responsible for Eurydice’s death, though the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice does not involve Chapman directly, but rather an unnamed shadowy shepherd, who in some accounts was a faun. Chapman’s fear of the women who pursue him leads him to renounce the wild.The second segment of the novel follows John Worth, a scientist who regrets his part in building the corporate empire that supplies a climate-change battered world with genetically modified foods, in return for absolute power. John, urged on by three wild women, former soldiers, returns to the company he helped found, to plot against the CEO, Eury, short for Eurydice.In the third part of the novel, something apparently has gone wrong, either with Eury’s plan to delay the disastrous effects of climate change through launching a swarm of nanobees into the stratosphere, or with John’s intention to subvert her. The world is a frozen wasteland, apparently populated only by a cyborg creature that seems modelled after the faun we first met planting apple seeds.The gorgeous writing and fraught symbolism will engage serious readers with a philosophical bent.You can follow Gabrielle on Twitter to get updates about new podcasts and more @GabrielleAuthor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to Jeanne Matthews about her new novel Devil by the Tail (D.X. Varos, 2021)It’s 1867, and a 20-something civil war widow has just set up a detective agency with a former rebel soldier named Gabriel Garnick. She uses a professional name, Mrs. Paschal, so nobody connects her with the former in-laws who are trying to stop her from receiving her dead husband’s estate. Garnick and Paschal get two cases on the same day – the first to help prove a man innocent of murdering his wife, the second to find reasonable doubt for an accused murderer. Imagine their surprise when the cases turn out to be linked? And imagine 19th Century pre-fire Chicago, teeming with corrupt politicians, gambling parlors, and bawdy houses of ill-repute. Also, someone is trying to murder Quinn Sinclair, aka Mrs. Paschal.Jeanne Matthews graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism and has worked as a copywriter, a high school English and Drama teacher, and a paralegal. She worked for litigators for twenty years, and there was seldom a day when she didn’t fantasize about murder. So it was no wonder when her interested turned to writing murder mysteries. An avid traveler and crime fiction reader, she is the author of the Dinah Pelerin international mystery series (Five book set published by Poison Pen). Matthews and her husband, a law professor, currently live in Washington State with Jack Reacher, their Norwich terrier. She loves travel, hiking, and photography, plays old torch songs from the 1930’s and 40’s on piano after a few glasses of wine, and enjoy cooking and baking. She also plays a mean game of Scrabble.I interview authors of beautifully written literary fiction and mysteries, and try to focus on independently published novels, especially by women and others whose voices deserve more attention. If your upcoming or recently published novel might be a candidate for a podcast, please contact me via my website, gpgottlieb dot com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Kin by Miljenko Jergović (Archipelago Books, 2021) is a family story that covers more than a century; it takes readers to various geographical places and introduces them to a kaleidoscope of historical perturbations. The narrator seems to sincerely try to tell a truthful story, but acknowledges from the very beginning that it would probably be impossible to provide only true facts. Thus, the reader has no other choice than to rely on the narrator’s sincerity and make their way through the labyrinthine narrative in which everything seems to have its own story: places, objects, names, food, houses, etc. Gradually, the novel turns into an attempt to provide evidence for everything that the narrator seems to know and remember: family members and friends, wars and conflicts, marriages and adulteries, devotion and betrayal, happiness and despondency. The novel chapters resemble vignettes which lure the reader into a magical world in which nothing can be lost. In this interview, Russell Scott Valentino, translator of the novel, shares his insights about the novel and the translation journey through Miljenko Jergović’s family saga.Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD student in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Jeanne de St.-Rémy has a grudge against the world. Born into the French royal family—if admittedly by a somewhat labyrinthine route—she spends years of her childhood so disinherited and ignored that at the age of six she is begging in the streets of Paris. A lucky accident brings her to the attention of the Marquise de Boulainvilliers, who adopts the little waif, raises her as a daughter, and helps her prove her claim to be considered a relative of King Louis XV through a legitimized descendant of the previous royal family, the Valois. The marquise even helps Jeanne secure a pension, but Jeanne remains unsatisfied. She will settle for nothing less than full acceptance into the court at Versailles.Through a series of affairs and a forced marriage to Nicolas de La Motte, who becomes Jeanne’s loyal partner if not the husband of her heart, Jeanne ploughs through all obstacles on her path. Her greatest conquest is the Cardinal-Prince Louis de Rohan, a high-ranking aristocrat whose campaign to regain his influence with the new king, Louis XVI, is repeatedly challenged by a hostile Marie Antoinette. When Jeanne learns of a magnificent diamond necklace, a creation so elaborate and enormous that its purchase price would bankrupt a nation, the stage is set for a scandal that will bring down the very monarchy Jeanne is so desperate to enter.With a keen eye and a vivid appreciation for detail, Mary Martin Devlin creates, in The La Motte Woman (Cuidono Press, 2021), an indelible picture of how three clashing obsessions—Jeanne’s quest for the validation of her heritage, Rohan’s yearning for his appointment as prime minister, and the jewelers’ determination to produce a unique and, in their minds, perfect work of art—intersected to destroy the reputation of Queen Marie Antoinette, with catastrophic results for the French monarchy as a whole.A former professor of English and creative writing at Mount Holyoke College, Mary Martin Devlin has always had a passion for French literature and culture. In addition to The La Motte Woman, she is the author of Precious Pawn, based on the memoir of an aristocrat in the decadent reign of Louis XV, and Death in the Rainy Season, set among the American and European expat community of 1980s Zaire.C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Sisters, appeared in January 2021. Find out more about her at http://www.cplesley.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Helen Sword, writing champion, brings us into the word gym. Or maybe kitchen. Either way, The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (U Chicago Press, 2016) is a short, sharp introduction to great writing based around 5 principles:--use active verbs whenever possible;--favour concrete language over vague abstractions;--avoid long strings of prepositional phrases;--employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence; --reduce your dependence on four pernicious “waste words”: it, this, that, and there.There are examples of the good - William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King Jr., John McPhee, A. S. Byatt, Richard Dawkins, Alison Gopnik, and well, the bad. But you can fix the bad - really Dr Sword's point. Dr Helen Sword received her doctorate in comparative literature from Princeton University and has lived since 2001 in New Zealand, where she is a Professor of Humanities at the University of Auckland and runs a private writing consultancy, WriteSpace Limited.Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Hello, this is Eric LeMay, a host on the New Books Network. Today I interview Martín Prechtel, who's written a book about horses called The Mare and the Mouse (North Start Press of Saint Cloud, 2021). Actually, he's written three books about horses. The subtitle of this one is called Stories of My Horses, Volume 1, and there are two more volumes to come. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "I'm not a horse person." Well, I'm not a horse person either. And if you aren't, it doesn't matter. You'll love hearing what Martin has to say. He's an amazing storyteller and a profound teacher. And if you are a horse person, I suspect you'll find Martín's vision of horses moving, rambunctious, insightful, deeply learned, and richly experienced. He may even change the way you understand your horse and, as importantly, he may also give your horse a better chance to understand you. Here's my conversation with the extraordinary and invaluable Martín Prechtel. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. He is the author of five books, most recently Remember Me. He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I interview Martín Prechtel, who's an author and so much more than an author. He's a teacher, a musician, a farmer, a cook, a silversmith, a horseman, and...and...and... so much more, including a guiding light for many of us hoping to live as true human beings. He's got a new book called Rescuing the Light: Quotes from the Oral Teachings of Martín Prechtel (North Atlantic Books, 2021). His teaching now happens at his school in Northern New Mexico. It's called Boland's Kitchen, and that name in itself is a riddle that, over the course of our interview, lights the way to wisdom. I deeply admire and love Martín and all the work he does and I'm delighted to share our conversation with you. One note before we start: Martín doesn't use computers and doesn't really like using phones, for reasons you'll hear about. Toward the end of our conversation, our connection cut out, and I didn't have the chance to thank him on the air. I'm happy to do so now. Thank you, Martín, for your words and your wisdom. Jump up and live!Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. He is the author of five books, most recently Remember Me. He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature