Podcast: The Book Review

In the world of fantasy fiction, Leigh Bardugo is royalty: Her Grishaverse novels are mainstays on the young adult best-seller list and her adult novels “Ninth House” and “Hell Bent” established her as a force to reckon with in dark academia. This week on the podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks with Bardugo about her first work of historical fiction, "The Familiar."

Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel “Brooklyn” told the story of a meek young Irishwoman, Eilis Lacey, who emigrates to New York in the 1950s and slowly begins building a new life for herself. On this week’s podcast, Tóibín talks to Sarah Lyall about the sequel, "Long Island," and how he came to write it.

In this week’s episode, MJ Franklin discusses Dolly Alderton's hit book "Good Material" with his colleagues Emily Eakin and Leah Greenblatt. (Caution: Spoilers abound!)

The publisher has gone through a lot of changes since its founding in 1924. Its current chief executive, Jonathan Karp, talks about the company’s history and its hopes for the future.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Stephen King’s first novel, “Carrie.”
On this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks to the novelist Grady Hendrix, who read and re-read many of King’s books over several years for a writing project, as well as King superfan Damon Lindelof, the TV showrunner behind shows such as “Lost” and “The Leftovers.”

Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai weigh in on 22 of the funniest novels since “Catch-22.”

The great Irish crime novelist Tana French joins Sarah Lyall to talk about her new novel "The Hunter," a sequel to 2020's "The Searcher."

The Times’s critic Alissa Wilkinson discusses Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel and Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptations.

A scathing satire about race, publishing and identity politics, Everett’s acclaimed 2001 novel is the basis of the Oscar-nominated movie “American Fiction.”

Tommy Orange’s acclaimed debut novel, “There There” centered on a group of characters who all converge on an Indigenous powwow in modern-day Oakland, Calif. His follow-up, “Wandering Stars,” is both a prequel and a sequel to that book. This week, Orange visits the podcast to discuss his new work as well as the book he has read most in his life, Clarice Lispector's "The Hour of the Star."

Dwight Garner discusses a new oral history of the venerable alt-weekly, Tricia Romano’s “The Freaks Came Out to Write.”

On this week's episode, a roundtable conversation about Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” a riff on “David Copperfield” that moves Charles Dickens’s story to contemporary Appalachia and grapples with topics from poverty to ambition to opioid addiction.

The early part of a year can mean new books to read, or it can mean catching up on older ones we haven’t gotten to yet. This week, Gilbert Cruz chats with the Book Review’s Sarah Lyall and Sadie Stein about titles from both categories that have held their interest lately.

A.O. Scott joins for a spoiler-filled conversation about both David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon" and Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated film adaptation.

Molly Roden Winter and her husband have been married for 24 years. But since 2008 they have also dated other people — an arrangement that Winter details in her new memoir, “More: A Memoir of Open Marriage.”

In this week’s episode, Sarah Lyall chats with Winter about her book, her marriage and why she decided to go public.

It's gonna be a busy spring! On this week’s episode, we talk about some of the upcoming books we are anticipating most keenly over the next several months, including new work from Salman Rushdie, Percival Everett, Tana French and Erik Larson.

Every January, the director Steven Soderbergh posts a detailed list of his previous year's cultural consumption — every movie and TV series watched, every book read. On this week's episode, we talk books!

In our last episode of 2023, we convene to talk about James McBride's novel — one of the year's most celebrated books.

John Vaillant, the author of “Fire Weather” (one of our 10 Best Books this year), discusses climate change and the fire that devastated a Canadian petroleum town in 2016.

Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs look back on the books that have stuck with them in 2023.