New Books in Literature

In her novels, Nicola Cornick blends a modern perspective with a historical mystery and a paranormal connection between the two. The Winter Garden (Graydon House Books, 2022) revolves around the infamous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, known to every British schoolchild as the origin of Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated on November 5 with fireworks, bonfires, and bobbing for apples, among other things.In the contemporary portion of the novel, Lucy, an internationally renowned concert violinist, has suffered a health crisis that strips her of her ability to perform. Facing the death of her career, she takes the opportunity to recover at a rural English estate. There she experiences bizarre dreams in which she appears to inhabit the body of a Tudor-era woman named Catherine, even as she is increasingly pulled into a relationship with Finn, an archeologist working on the gardens of the estate.Alongside this modern story, we follow the events leading up to the Gunpowder Plot, told by Anne Catesby, the mother of the main conspirator. At first, past and present seem far apart, but as the novel progresses, the links between them become clearer. Anne and Lucy are both strong, determined women fighting circumstances beyond their control—for very different reasons—and they hold our attention to equal degree as they variously navigate the origins of the Gunpowder Plot, the fate of the Knights Hospitaller, and the discovery of a long-hidden treasure in a Tudor garden.Nicola Cornick, a historian raised in the north of England, has become an international and award-winning bestseller. She now writes dual-timeframe novels inspired by the history and legends of Wessex and the Vale of the White Horse. Her latest novel is The Winter Garden.C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her next novel, Song of the Storyteller, will appear in January 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Grant Faulkner. We discuss National Novel Writing Month, of which Grant is the executive director, 100 Word Story, of which Grant is a practitioner and editor, and Grant's book of short stories All the Comfort Sin Can Provide (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Here's a bit about the book, a book I highly recommend you buy and read."With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise-tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence.Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page-honest, cutting, and wise."Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novels Hold Still, Want, and Flight (Mariner Books, 2022). Her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York, The Paris Review, Time, and elsewhere. She has taught writing at The Pratt Institute, Fairfield University, Catapult, and Columbia University and will be the Visiting Fiction Writer at Bates College for the 2022-2023 school year. She was born and raised in South Florida.Recommended Books: Sheila Heti, Pure Color Claire Keegan, Foster Namwali Serpell, The Furrows Giada Scodellaro, Some of Them Will Carry Me Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract 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

In this episode, I talk to Dr. Laura Jean McKay about her award-winning novel The Animals in that Country (Scribe, 2020).Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals — first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean’s infected son, Lee. When he takes off with Kimberly, heading south, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin.Setting off on their trail, with Sue the dingo riding shotgun, they find themselves in a stark, strange world in which the animal apocalypse has only further isolated people from other species. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.Kyle Johannsen is an academic philosopher who does research in animal and environmental ethics, and in political philosophy. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021). You can follow him on Twitter @KyleJohannsen2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Sindya Bhanoo speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Tsunami Bride,” which appears in The Common’s new fall issue. Sindya talks about her experience reporting from India after the 2004 tsunami, and how that experience eventually became a story about a journalist in the same position, told from a local’s perspective. She also discusses how the training and techniques she developed as a journalist have shaped her drafting and revision process for fiction, how food often makes its way into her stories, and how her 2022 story collection Seeking Fortune Elsewhere came together.Sindya Bhanoo is the author of the story collection Seeking Fortune Elsewhere. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Award, the DISQUIET Literary Prize, and an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, New England Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. A longtime newspaper reporter, she has worked for The New York Times and The Washington Post. She teaches at Oregon State University.Read Sindya’s story in The Common at thecommononline.org/tsunami-bride.Read more from Sindya at sindyabhanoo.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 Twitter @CommonMag.Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She is a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow. 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

In our season finale, Ann Goldstein, renowned translator of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, gives a master class in the art and business of translation. Ann speaks to Duke scholar Saskia Ziolkowski and host Aarthi Vadde about being the face of the Ferrante novels, and the curious void that she came to fill in the public imagination in light of Ferrante’s anonymity. In a profession long characterized by invisibility, Ann reflects on her own celebrity and the changing orthodoxies of the book business. Where once having a translator’s name on a book cover would be sure to kill interest, now there are movements to display author’s and translator’s names together.Ann reads an excerpt in Italian from Primo Levi’s The Truce, followed by her re-translation of the autobiographical story for The Complete Works of Primo Levi. She then offers an extraordinary walk through of her decision-making process by honing in on the difficulty of translating one key word “scomposti.” Listening to Ann delineate and discard choices, we are reminded of Italo Calvino’s assertion (echoed by Ann) that translation is indeed the closest way to read. This season’s signature question on “untranslatables” yields another brilliant meditation on word choice and the paradoxical task of arriving at precise approximations. Plus, Ann and Saskia reveal some of their favorite Italian women writers, several of whom Ann has brought into English for the first time.Mentions:--Elena Ferrante--Jennifer Croft--Primo Levi, The Periodic Table--Primo Levi, The Truce, from The Complete Works of Primo Levi--Stuart Woolf, original translator of Levi, If This is the Man--Catherine Gallagher, Nobody’s Story--Italo Calvino--Marina Jarre, Return to Latvia--Elsa Morante, Arturo’s Island--Emily Wilson, only female translator of The Odyssey--Jenny McPhee--Cesare GarboliFind out more about Novel Dialogue and its hosts and organizers here. Contact us, get that exact quote from a transcript, and explore many more conversations between novelists and critics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

DC heart surgeon Dr. Steven Leeds is suddenly besieged by a handful of immensely complicated heart attack and stroke cases, all caused by a rare arterial injury--a dissection. And all the victims have first received innocuous-looking cards announcing: "Your heart attack/stroke will arrive within one hour!"Private detective Kirk Miner and FBI agent Jack Mulville investigate, and they immediately suspect Leeds' former lover, Dr. Silvana Moretti, a brilliant research scientist who harbors a grudge against all the victims. Then when prominent people in the U.S. government begin to receive these same threatening cards and almost immediately experience these same deadly cardiac emergencies, it falls to the unlikely team of three--the headstrong FBI agent, the gifted private investigator, and the brilliant but conflicted heart surgeon--to find the actual perpetrators and to snuff out a catastrophic plot that only the medically astute can divine.Dr. Cristina LePort's story is vaguely reminiscent of the artfully nightmarish scenarios in Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp novels, combined with the fast-paced tempo of Robin Cook's medical thrillers. Her Dissection (Bancroft Press, 2022) features page-turning suspense, action-packed climaxes, and thoughtful character development, set against a believable backdrop of medical science informed by her long career as a cardiologist. Her style, though accessible, is more sophisticated than superficial, and, with strong protagonists on both sides of the gender divide, appeals to both male and female readers. 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 Mariah Fredericks about her new novel The Lindbergh Nanny (Minotaur Books, 2022).The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr in 1932 shocked the country and made international headlines. The famous Charles Lindbergh Sr became an American hero after successfully flying solo across the Atlantic. He was married to the wealthy and beautiful Anne Morrow Lindbergh, also a pilot. Their son Charles Lindbergh, Jr was suddenly kidnapped from his family home in New Jersey, and the case made international headlines. The parents were out on the night of the kidnapping, but the nanny was home. After the baby disappeared from his bed, that nanny, Betty Gow, became a prime suspect, and her life was never the same. She was known thereafter as the Lindbergh Nanny.Mariah Fredericks is the author of the Jane Prescott mystery series, set in 1910s New York and nominated twice for the Mary Higgins Clark award. She was born and raised in New York City, graduated from Vassar College with a degree in history and was the head copywriter for Book-of-the-Month Club for many years. Mariah lives with her husband and teenager in Queens and has a beloved French bulldog named Dita.G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Kayla Maiuri holds an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. Born in the greater Boston area, she now lives in Brooklyn. Mother in the Dark (Riverhead Books, 2022) is her first novel.Recommended Books:Anna Hogeland, The Long Answer Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract 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

Stay True (Doubleday: 2022), the new memoir from Hua Hsu, is a coming-of-age story about the writer’s time in the University of California in Berkeley, where he tries to become a writer–and becomes a bit of a music snob. He builds a close friendship with another Asian-American student, Ken, very different from Hua, about which he writes in the book:"All the previous times I had met poised, content people like Ken, they were white. It’s one of those obscure parts of an already obscure identity that Japanese American kids can seem like aliens to other Asians, untroubled, largely oblivious to feeling like outsiders."But Ken is killed in a robbery gone wrong, forcing Hua to grapple with the death of his friend.In this interview, Hua and I talk about his story in Stay True, including his unbelievably non-stereotypical parents, his dive into college music, and his attempt with Ken to put together an homage for the Berry Gordy-produced martial arts film, the Last Dragon.Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a professor of Literature at Bard College. Hua serves on the executive board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. He was formerly a fellow at the New America Foundation and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library. He is also the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific (Harvard University Press: 2016)You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Stay True. Follow 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