New Books in Literature

It’s the early 1900s and Brigid is restricted by straightlaced Irish society and a difficult stepmother, but her father is loving and supportive. She and her cousin Molly dream of life in Yankeeland, a.k.a. America, but only Brigid gets the chance once she’s married, and a lifetime of correspondence follows. While Molly thrives back in Ireland, Brigid’s dream of having a child leads to unexpected problems in a society that values women for their childbearing capabilities. With little to no help available for the problem of infertility, her mental health suffers. Irish author Lacy Fewer based this moving historical story on the letters she inherited from her great-aunt who emigrated in 1908. Lacy Fewer is the recipient of the Literary Titan Book Award for her debut novel Yankeeland, a powerful story of family secrets and societal change. Fewer, born and raised in Ireland, has nearly three decades of experience working in the financial services sector. She earned numerous degrees and certifications, including: QFA from Institute of Bankers; CFP master’s degree from them as well; a Master of Science in Financial Planning and Services, and then a professional diploma in Fintech, both from University of College in Dublin. She recently earned a Certificate in ESG Investing from CFA. Fewer enjoys theatre, reading literature, storytelling, travel and studying history. A proud Dubliner, she resides, with her husband, in a small village close to Dublin City, in Co. Meath. They have three children. You can find her at http://www.linkedin.com/in/annmarie-lacy-fewer. 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 Alpha Nkuranga about her deeply powerful and unforgettable memoir, Born to Walk: My Journey of Trials and Resilience (Goose Lane Editions, 2024). “My grandparents used to tell me Rwanda is a country unlike any other, and I knew they spoke the truth. Blessed with majestic mountains and breathtaking valleys, it is a sacred and spiritual land. And yet Rwandan men drenched the land in blood in acts of hate so horrific that the stains of those three years will not fade in one hundred lifetimes.” At the age of eight, Alpha Nkuranga made a fateful decision. With war raging around her, she grabbed the hand of her younger brother, Elijah, and ran from her grandparents’ home. When they came to a swamp, they hid until it was safe to escape. Weeks later, they joined a group of refugees, who were fleeing to Tanzania. “If I kept walking,” Alpha remembers thinking, “I could tell my story.” Nkuranga emigrated to Canada more than a decade later. She now works with women and children who face abuse and homelessness. In Born to Walk, she tells a remarkable story of resistance and survival. About Alpha Nkuranga: Alpha Nkuranga fled her village as an eight-year-old during the Rwandan Civil War of 1994 and subsequently lived in refugee camps in Tanzania and Uganda, where she overcame the odds to graduate high school and attend university. She came to Canada as a refugee in 2010 and currently lives in Kitchener, Ontario, where she works for Women’s Crisis Services of Waterloo Region. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

How to Dodge a Cannonball is a razor-sharp satire that dives into the heart of the Civil War, hilariously questioning the essence of the fight, not just for territory, but for the soul of America.How to Dodge a Cannonball (Henry Holt, 2025) is funnier than the Civil War should ever be. It follows Anders, a teenage idealist who enlists and reenlists to shape the American Future―as soon as he figures out what that is, who it includes, and why everyone wants him to die for it. Escaping his violently insane mother is a bonus.Anders finds honor as a proud Union flag twirler―until he’s captured. Then he tries life as a diehard Confederate―until fate asks him to die hard for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Barely alive, Anders limps into a Black Union regiment in a stolen uniform. While visibly white, he claims to be an octoroon, and they claim to believe him. Only then does his life get truly strange.His new brothers are even stranger, including a science-fiction playwright, a Haitian double agent, and a former slave feuding with God. Despite his best efforts, Anders starts seeing the war through their eyes, sparking ill-timed questions about who gets to be American or exploit the theater of war. Dennard Dayle’s satire spares no one as doomed charges, draft riots, gleeful arms dealers, and native suppression campaigns test everyone’s definition of loyalty.Uproariously funny and revelatory, How to Dodge a Cannonball asks if America is worth fighting for. And then answers loudly. Read it while it’s still legal. You can find author Dennard Dayle at his newsletter. And I am your host, Sullivan Summer. You can find me online, on Instagram, and on Substack, where she and Dennard went to talk about Cannonball spoilers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The year 1925 was arguably the peak of literature's centrality. There were more magazines, more journals, more reviews, more book news, and more book gossip than ever before or since. Literature's rivals for cultural attention were on the rise-film was becoming a more significant part of people's media diet, radio was just taking off, television technologies were advancing--but literature was still king. Even mediocre books got dozens of reviews, and the reviews were (most often) thoughtful and intellectually engaged. The belief that literary writing was an essential and consequential business was nearly universal. Modernist ferment continued to excite discussion while the pulp revolution in genre fiction--detective stories, science fiction, Westerns, romance--was booming. These popular books, even if sometimes condescended to, were also given thoughtful review attention. This encyclopedia was written as we approached the 100th anniversary of the annus mirabilis. In what follows, we can see the seeds of virtually every aspect of our cultural life, from art, literature, theater, and music to physics, philosophy, social science, and political discourse. The fear of environmental degradation, the corruption in our politics, the competing claims of utopianism and dystopia, the bitterly divided views on science, mass media, art, nature, justice, generations, community, freedom, sexuality, race, immigration--all can be seen in their budding or full-blown gore and glory in 1925. We have come far and not very far at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/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