Simon & Schuster is not growing old quietly.

The venerable publishing house ? one of the industry?s so-called Big 5 ? is celebrating its 100th birthday this month after a period of tumult that saw it put up for sale by its previous owner, pursued by its rival Penguin Random House in an acquisition bid that fell apart after the Justice Department won an antitrust suit, then bought for $1.62 billion last fall by the private equity firm KKR.

With conditions seemingly stabilized since then, the company is turning 100 at an auspicious time to celebrate its roots and look to its future. On this week?s episode, Gilbert is joined by Simon & Schuster?s publisher and chief executive, Jonathan Karp, to talk about the centennial and what it means.

?It was a startup 100 years ago,? Karp says. ?It was two guys in their 20s. Richard Simon and Max Schuster. They were just a couple of guys who loved books. And they made a decision that they wanted to read every book they published. ? The first book was a crossword puzzle book. It was a monster success. They?d actually raised $50,000 from their friends and family. They didn?t need it. They returned the money. And the company was up and running.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Stephen King?s first novel, ?Carrie.? In the decades since, King has experimented with length, genre and style, but has always maintained his position as one of America?s most famous writers.

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, writing an essay on each as well as King superfan Damon Lindelof, the TV showrunner behind shows such as ?Lost? and ?The Leftovers.?

Some of the books discussed in this episode: "Carrie," "Cujo," "Duma Key," "From a Buick 8," "The Tommyknockers," "The Stand," and "The Long Walk."

Some of the articles referenced:

Earlier this month, the Book Review?s staff critics ? Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai ? released a list of 22 novels they have found reliably funny since Joseph Heller?s landmark comic novel ?Catch-22? came out in 1961. On this week?s episode, they tell Gilbert Cruz why ?Catch-22? was their starting point, and explain a bit about their process: how they think about humor, how they made their choices, what books they left off and what books led to fights along the way. (?American Psycho? turns out to be as contentious now as it was when it was first published.)

?There are only a very few number of books in my lifetime that have made me laugh out loud,? Jacobs says. ?And some of them no longer make me laugh out loud, because the thing about humor is it?s like this giant shifting cloud, this shape-shifting thing that changes over the course of our lives and also the life of the culture.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

If you're familiar with Tana French, it's likely for her Dublin Murder Squad series of crime novels that kicked off in 2007 with "In the Woods." But her new book, "The Hunter," a sequel to 2020's "The Searcher," takes place outside of that series.

In this episode of the podcast, speaking to Sarah Lyall about her shift to new characters, French said, "I wasn't comfortable with sticking to the detective's perspective anymore. I think from the perspective of a detective, a murder investigation is a very specific thing. It's a source of power and control. It's a way that you can retrieve order after the disruption that murder has caused. But I kept thinking there are so many other perspectives within that investigation for whom this investigation is not a source of power or control or truth and justice. It's the opposite. It's something that just barrels into your life and upends it and can cause permanent damage."

Frank Herbert?s epic novel ?Dune? and its successors have been entrenched in the science fiction and fantasy canon for almost six decades, a rite of passage for proudly nerdy readers across the generations. But ?Dune? is experiencing a broader cultural resurgence at the moment thanks to Denis Villeneuve?s recent film adaptations starring Timothée Chalamet. (Part 2 is in theaters now.)

This week on the podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks to The Times?s critic Alissa Wilkinson, who covers movies, culture and religion, about Herbert?s novel, Villeneuve?s films and the enduring hold of Fremen lore on the audience?s imagination.

?There?s a couple things that I think are really unsettling in ?Dune,?? Wilkinson says. ?One is, the vision of Frank Herbert was, I believe, to basically write a book that questioned authoritarians and hero mythology genuinely, across the board. Any kind of a hero figure he is proposing will always have things and people come up alongside that hero figure that distort their influence. Even if they intend well, if they?re benevolent, there?s still all of this really awful stuff that comes along with it. So Paul is a messiah figure ? we believe he wants good things for most of the book ? and then he turns on a dime or it feels like he might be turning on a dime. You can never quite tell where anyone stands in this book. And I think that is unsettling, especially because so many of the other kinds of things that we watch ? the superhero movies, ?Star Wars,? whatever ? there?s a clear-cut good and evil fight going on. Good and evil don?t really exist in ?Dune.??

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

It?s not often that the Academy Awards give the publishing world any gristle to chew on. But at this year?s Oscars ceremony ? taking place on Sunday evening ? one of the Best Picture contenders is all about book publishing: Cord Jefferson?s ?American Fiction? is adapted from the 2001 novel ?Erasure,? by Percival Everett, and it amounts to a scathing, satirical indictment of publishers, readers and the insidious biases that the marketplace can impose in determining who tells what stories.

Obviously, we recommend the movie. But even more, we recommend Everett?s novel. In this week?s episode, the Book Review?s MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Joumana Khatib, also from the Book Review, and Reggie Ugwu, a pop culture reporter at The Times. Caution: Spoilers abound for both the book and the movie.

Have you read ?Erasure? or seen ?American Fiction,? or both? We?d love to know what you thought. Share your reactions in the comments and we?ll try to join the conversation.

We?ll get you started:

Joumana Khatib: ?I?d read Percival Everett before. I love watching his mind on the page. He?s funny, he's irreverent, he?s sarcastic. There?s nobody that writes like him. And I have to tell you that ?Erasure? totally blew me away, just because of the sheer number of textures in this book. ? It?s obviously a parodical novel. It?s obviously unbelievably satirical and it?s just outrageous enough that it keeps the momentum without feeling schlocky or shticky.? ?

Reggie Ugwu: ?He has a great sense of pace, like he never wastes time. ? You can tell that it?s the work of a very sophisticated and mature writer who knows exactly what to leave on the page and exactly what he can cut. There are some moments where I marveled when he would just leap the plot forward in a few lines.?

Send your feedback about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general, to [email protected].

Tommy Orange?s acclaimed debut novel, ?There There? ? one of the Book Review?s 10 Best Books of 2018 ? 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, focusing specifically on the character Orvil Red Feather and tracing several generations of his family through the decades before and after the events of ?There There.? 

This week, Orange visits the podcast to discuss ?Wandering Stars? as well as the book he has read most in his life, Clarice Lispector's "The Hour of the Star." 

Orange explained how he decided to write a historical novel while sticking with the characters and story line from his earlier book.

?I got drawn in by this part of history because it was so specific to my tribe,? Orange says. ?I don?t necessarily love reading historical fiction, but if it?s driven from the interior and it?s character driven, it?s compelling to me. So figuring out the types of humans they might have been or things they might have thought or felt, that was a way for me to try to figure out how to make them real. and that?s sometimes on a sentence level and sometimes on a, like, what are their motivations or what are they doing in their day-to-day lives? What do they want??

Tricia Romano?s new book, ?The Freaks Came Out to Write,? is an oral history of New York?s late, great alternative weekly newspaper The Village Voice, where she worked for eight years as the nightlife columnist. Our critic Dwight Garner reviewed the book recently ? he loved it ? and he visits the podcast this week to chat with Gilbert Cruz about oral histories in general and the gritty glamour of The Village Voice in particular.

?You would pick it up and it was so prickly,? Garner says. ?The whole thing just felt like this production that someone had really thought through, from the great cartoons to the great photographs to the crazy hard news in the front to the different voices in back. It all came together into a package. And there are still great writers out there, but it doesn?t feel the same anymore. No one has really taken over, to my point of view. ... There?s no one-stop shopping to find the great listings at every club and every major theater, just a great rundown of what one might be interested in doing.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Barbara Kingsolver?s novel ?Demon Copperhead,? a riff on ?David Copperfield? that moves Charles Dickens?s story to contemporary Appalachia and grapples engagingly with topics from poverty to ambition to opioid addiction, was one of the Book Review?s 10 Best Books of 2022. And ? unlike an actual copperhead ? ?Demon Copperhead? has legs: Many readers have told us it was their favorite book in 2023 as well.

In this week?s spoiler-filled episode, MJ Franklin talks with Elisabeth Egan (an editor at the Book Review) and Anna Dubenko, the Times?s newsroom audience director, about their reactions to Kingsolver?s novel and why it has exerted such a lasting appeal.

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, including a 2022 biography of John Donne, a book about female artists who nurtured an interest in the supernatural, and the history of a Jim Crow-era mental asylum, along with a gripping new novel by Janice Hallett.

?It?s just so deft,? Stein says of Hallett?s new thriller, ?The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels.? ?It?s so funny. It seems like she?s having a lot of fun. One thing I would say, and I don?t think this is spoiling it, is, if there comes a moment when you think you might want to stop, keep going and trust her. I think it?s rare to be able to say that with that level of confidence.?

Here are the books discussed in this week?s episode:

?Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne,? by Katherine Rundell

?The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World,? by Jennifer Higgie

?The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels,? by Janice Hallett

?Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum,? by Antonia Hylton

(Briefly mentioned: "You Dreamed of Empires," by Álvaro Enrigue, "Beautyland," by Marie-Helene Bertino, and "Martyr!" by Kaveh Akbar.)

Former New York Times film critic A.O. Scott joins to talk both David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon," which continues to sit near the top of the bestseller list, and Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated film adaptation. 

Spoilers abound for both versions. (Also, for history.)

Molly Roden Winter and her husband, Stewart, have been married for 24 years. But since 2008, by mutual agreement, 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, The Times?s Sarah Lyall chats with Winter about her book, her marriage and why she decided to go public.

?I didn?t see any representations of either people who were still successfully married after having opened it up or people who were honest about how hard it was,? Winter says. ?The stories that were coming out were either, ?Oh, we tried it. It didn?t work,? or ?We?re born polyamorous and it?s just the best and I just feel love pouring out of me 24/7.? Neither of those things was true for me. I felt like I had learned something really profound through this journey of opening my marriage, and I wanted to share it."

It's gonna be a busy spring! On this week?s episode, Gilbert Cruz talks with Tina Jordan and Joumana Khatib about some of the upcoming books they?re anticipating most keenly over the next several months.

Books discussed in this week?s episode:

?Knife,? by Salman Rushdie

?James,? by Percival Everett

?The Book of Love,? by Kelly Link

?Martyr,? by Kaveh Akbar

?The Demon of Unrest,? by Erik Larson

?The Hunter,? by Tana French

?Wandering Stars,? by Tommy Orange

?Anita de Monte Laughs Last,? by Xochitl Gonzalez

?Splinters,? by Leslie Jamison

?Neighbors and Other Stories,? by Diane Oliver

?Funny Story,? by Emily Henry

?Table for Two,? by Amor Towles

?Grief Is for People,? by Sloane Crosley

?One Way Back: A Memoir,? by Christine Blasey Ford

?The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir,? by RuPaul

Every January on his website Extension765.com, the prolific director Steven Soderbergh looks back at the previous year and posts a day-by-day account of every movie and TV series watched, every play attended and every book read. In 2023, Soderbergh tackled more than 80 (!) books, and on this week's episode, he and the host Gilbert Cruz talk about some of his highlights. 

Here are the books discussed on this week?s episode:

"How to Live: A Life of Montaigne," by Sarah Bakewell

"Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining,'" by Lee Unkrich and J.W. Rinzler

"Cocktails with George and Martha," by Philip Gefter

The work of Donald E. Westlake

"Americanah," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"Pictures From an Institution," by Randall Jarrell

"Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will," by Robert M. Sapolsky

James McBride?s novel ?The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store? was one of the most celebrated books of 2023 ? a critical darling and a New York Times best seller. In their piece for the Book Review, Danez Smith called it ?a murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel? and praised its ?precision, magnitude and necessary messiness.?

On this week?s episode, the Book Review editors MJ Franklin, Joumana Khatib and Elisabeth Egan convene for a discussion about the book, McBride, and what you might want to read next.

John Vaillant?s book ?Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World? takes readers to the petroleum boomtown of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, in May 2016, when a wildfire that started in the surrounding boreal forest grew faster than expected and tore through the city, destroying entire neighborhoods in a rampage that lasted for days.

On this week?s episode, Vaillant (whose book was one of our 10 Best for 2023) calls it a ?bellwether,? and tells the host Gilbert Cruz how he decided to put the fire itself at the center of his story rather than choosing a human character to lead his audience through the narrative.

?It was a bit of a leap," he says. "It was a risk. But it also felt like, given the role that fire is increasingly playing in our world now, it really deserved to be focused on, on its own merit, from its own point of view, if you will.?

The Times?s staff book critics ? Dwight Garner, Jennifer Szalai and Alexandra Jacobs ? do a lot of reading over the course of any given year, but not everything they read stays with them equally. On this week?s podcast, Gilbert Cruz chats with the critics about the books that did: the novels and story collections and works of nonfiction that made an impression in 2023 and defined their year in reading, including one that Garner says caught him by surprise.

?Eleanor Catton?s ?Birnam Wood? is in some ways my novel of the year,? Garner says. ?And it?s not really my kind of book. This is going to sound stupid or snobby, but I?m not the biggest plot reader. I?m just not. I like sort of thorny, funny, earthy fiction, and if there?s no plot I?m fine with that. But this has a plot like a dream. It just takes right off. And she?s such a funny, generous writer that I was just happy from the first time I picked it up.?

Here are the books discussed on this week?s episode:

?Be Mine,? by Richard Ford

?Onlookers,? by Ann Beattie

?I Am Homeless if This Ia Not My Home,? by Lorrie Moore

?People Collide,? by Isle McElroy

?Birnam Wood,? by Eleanor Catton

?Biography of X,? by Catherine Lacey

?Madonna: A Rebel Life,? by Mary Gabriel

?The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune,? by Alexander Stille

?The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions,? by Jonathan Rosen

?Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State,? by Kerry Howley

?The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight,? by Andrew Leland

?Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets,? by Burkhard Bilger

?King: A Life,? Jonathan Eig

?Larry McMurtry: A Life,? Tracy Daugherty

?Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey,? by Robert ?Mack? McCormick

?Roald Dahl, Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography,? by Matthew Dennison

?The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality,? by William Egginton

?Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,? by Naomi Klein

?The Notebooks and Diaries of Edmund Wilson?

?Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair,? by Christian Wiman

?Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,? by Oliver Burkeman

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

It?s that time of year: After months of reading, arguing and (sometimes) happily agreeing, the Book Review?s editors have come up with their picks for the 10 Best Books of 2023. On this week?s podcast, Gilbert Cruz reveals the chosen titles ? five fiction, five nonfiction ? and talks with some of the editors who participated in the process.

Here are the books discussed on this week?s episode:

?The Bee Sting,? by Paul Murray

?Chain-Gang All-Stars,? by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

?Eastbound,? by Maylis de Kerangal

?The Fraud,? by Zadie Smith

?North Woods,? by Daniel Mason

?The Best Minds,? by Jonathan Rosen

?Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs,? by Kerry Howley

?Fire Weather,? by John Vaillant

?Master Slave Husband Wife,? by Ilyon Woo

?Some People Need Killing,? by Patricia Evangelista

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Book Review reporter Alexandra Alter discusses two of her recent pieces. The first is about Georgette Heyer, the "queen of Regency romance," and recent attempts to posthumously revise one of her most famous works in order to remove stereotypical language. The second looks at Rebecca Yarros, author of one of this year's most surprising and persistent bestsellers: the "romantasy" novel "Fourth Wing."

Then, staff critic Alexandra Jacobs joins Book Review editor Gilbert Cruz to discuss her review of Barbra Streisand's epic memoir, "My Name is Barbra."

In 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare died, two of his friends and fellow actors led an effort to publish a single volume containing 36 of the plays he had written, half of which had never been officially published before. Now known as the First Folio, that volume has become a lodestone of Shakespeare scholarship over the centuries, offering the most definitive versions of his work along with clues to his process and plenty of disputes about authorship and intention.

In honor of its 400th anniversary, the British Library recently released a facsimile version of the First Folio. On this week?s episode, The Times?s critic at large Sarah Lyall talks with Adrian Edwards, head of the library?s Printed Heritage Collections, about Shakespeare?s work, the library?s holdings and the cultural significance of that original volume.

You don?t need Halloween to justify reading scary books, any more than you need sand to justify reading a beach novel. But the holiday does give editors here a handy excuse to talk about some of their favorite spooky reads. On this week?s episode, the host Gilbert Cruz talks with his colleagues Tina Jordan and Sadie Stein about the enduring appeal of ghost stories, Gothic novels and other scary books.

Titles discussed:

?Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death,? by Deborah Blum

?Something Wicked This Way Comes,? by Ray Bradbury

?Rebecca,? by Daphne du Maurier

?Don?t Look Now: And Other Stories,? by Daphne du Maurier

?The Exorcist,? by William Peter Blatty

?Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,? by Alvin Schwartz

?Ghosts,? by Edith Wharton

?Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of Ghost Stories,? by various

?Oh, Whistle, and I?ll Come to You, My Lad,? by M.R. James

?The Hunger,? by Alma Katsu

?The Terror,? by Dan Simmons

?The Little Stranger,? by Sarah Waters

?Affinity,? by Sarah Waters

?The Paying Guests,? by Sarah Waters

?The Haunting of Hill House,? by Shirley Jackson

?Hell House,? by Richard Matheson

?House of Leaves,? by Mark Z. Danielewski

?A Haunting on the Hill,? by Elizabeth Hand

?The Virago Book of Ghost Stories,? edited by Richard Dalby

?The Turn of the Screw,? by Henry James

In 2008 ? the same year that Robert Downey Jr. appeared in the action comedy ?Tropic Thunder,? for which he would earn his second Oscar nomination ? he also appeared as the billionaire inventor and unlikely superhero Tony Stark in ?Iron Man,? the debut feature from the upstart Marvel Studios.

Downey lost the Oscar (to Heath Ledger in ?The Dark Knight?), but Marvel won the day. In the 15 years since ?Iron Man? came out, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded to 32 films that have earned a staggering $26 billion and changed the world of moviemaking for a generation. 

In a new book, ?MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios,? the writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards explore the company?s scrappy beginnings, phenomenal success and uncertain hold on the future, with lots of dish along the way.

On this week?s episode, Gonzales and Robinson join the host Gilbert Cruz to talk all things Marvel.

On this week?s episode, a look at the rest of the year in books ? new fiction from Alice McDermott and this year?s Nobel laureate, Jon Fosse, a journalist?s investigation of state-sanctioned killings in the Philippines, and a trio of celebrity memoirs. 

Discussed in this week?s episode:

?The Vulnerables,? by Sigrid Nunez

?Day,? by Michael Cunningham

?Absolution,? by Alice McDermott

?A Shining,? by Jon Fosse

?Romney: A Reckoniung,? by McKay Coppins

?Class,? by Stephanie Land

?Some People Need Killing,? by Patricia Evangelista

?The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,? by Tim Alberta

?My Name is Barbra,? by Barbra Streisand

?The Woman in Me,? by Britney Spears

?Worthy,? by Jada Pinkett Smith

Madonna released her first single in 1982, and in one guise or another she has been with us ever since ? ubiquitous but also astonishing, when you consider the usual fleeting arc of pop stardom. How has she done it, and how have her various personae shaped or reflected the culture she inhabits? These are among the questions the renowned biographer Mary Gabriel takes up in her latest book, ?Madonna: A Rebel Life,? which casts new light on its subject?s life and career.

On this week?s episode, the host Gilbert Cruz chats with Gabriel about all things Madonna, and revisits the context of the 1980s? music industry that she conquered.

You love books. You love podcasts. Ergo, we assume you love audiobooks the way we do ? we hope you do, anyway, because this week we?ve devoted our entire episode to the form, as Gilbert Cruz is joined by a couple of editors from the Book Review, Lauren Christensen and Tina Jordan, to discuss everything from favorite narrators to regional accents to the ideal listening speed and the way audiobooks have to compete with other kinds of media.

Zadie Smith?s new novel, ?The Fraud,? is set in 19th-century England, and introduces a teeming cast of characters at the periphery of a trial in which the central figure claimed to be a long-lost nobleman entitled to a fortune. Smith discusses her new novel with Sarah Lyall.

Also on this week?s episode, the Times reporters Alexandra Alter and Julia Jacobs discuss a recent controversy involving the National Book Awards and their decision to drop Drew Barrymore as this year?s master of ceremonies in solidarity with the Hollywood writers? strike.

Elon Musk, the billionaire South Africa-born entrepreneur whose business interests include the electric car company Tesla, the private rocket company SpaceX and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), is the richest person in the world ? and the subject of an expansive new biography by Walter Isaacson, whose earlier subjects famously include the Apple founder Steve Jobs. Our critic Jennifer Szalai discusses her review of the Musk biography.

Szalai also discusses her recent Times Magazine profile of the writer and activist Naomi Klein, whose new book, ?Doppelganger,? examines the ?mirror world? of online conspiracy theories and paranoia and its effect on real-world politics.

Stephen King?s new novel, ?Holly,? is his sixth book to feature the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her debut as a mousy side character in the 2014 novel ?Mr. Mercedes? and has become more complicated and interesting with each subsequent appearance. King appears on the podcast this week to tell the host Gilbert Cruz about Holly?s hold on his imagination and the ways she overlaps with parts of his own personality. Along the way, he also tells a dad joke, remembers his friend Peter Straub, and discusses his views on writing and life.

Also on this episode, Cruz talks with Joumana Khatib about some of the month?s most anticipated new titles. Here are the books discussed in this week?s September preview:

?The Fraud,? by Zadie Smith

?Elon Musk,? by Walter Isaacson

?The Iliad,? by Homer. Translated by Emily Wilson

?Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss?s Glossier,? by Marisa Meltzer

?Land of Milk and Honey,? by C. Pam Zhang

?American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15,? by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson

The novelist Amor Towles, whose best-selling books include ?Rules of Civility,? ?A Gentleman in Moscow? and ?The Lincoln Highway,? contributed an essay to the Book Review recently in which he discussed the evolving role the cadaver has played in detective fiction and what it says about the genre?s writers and readers.

Towles visits the podcast this week to chat with the host Gilbert Cruz about that essay, as well as his path to becoming a novelist after an early career in finance.

Also on this week?s episode, Sarah Lyall, a writer at large for The Times, interviews the actor Richard E. Grant about his new memoir, ?A Pocketful of Happiness,? and about his abiding love for the book ?Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Sarah Lyall discusses a new thriller in which a scuba diver gets swallowed by a sperm whale and Joumana Khatib gives recommendations for five August titles.

Books discussed on this week's episode: 

?Anansi?s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World,? by Yepoka Yeebo

?The Bee Sting,? by Paul Murray

?The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times,? by Wolfram Eilenberger

?Pet,? by Catherine Chidgey

?Happiness Falls,? by Angie Kim

?Whalefall,? by Daniel Kraus

Ann Patchett returns to the podcast to talk about her new novel, "Tom Lake,"  waxes poetic on Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" (which plays a big part in her book), and talks about the joys of owning an independent bookstore.

The author Jeff Goodell joins to talk about his book  ?The Heat Will Kill You First,?  about the consequences of a warming planet. Times critic Jennifer Szalai also discusses three books about the natural world.

Gilbert Cruz is joined by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, who talks about his novel "Crook Manifesto" and Harlem in the '70s. He also reflects on his famous post-9/11 essay about New York City.

Gilbert Cruz is joined by fellow editors from the Book Review to revisit some of the most popular and most acclaimed books of 2023 to date. First up, Tina Jordan and Elisabeth Egan discuss the year?s biggest books, from ?Spare? to ?Birnam Wood.? Then Joumana Khatib, MJ Franklin and Sadie Stein recommend their personal favorites of the year so far.

Books discussed on this week?s episode:

?Spare,? by Prince Harry

?I Have Some Questions for You,? by Rebecca Makkai

?Pineapple Street,? by Jenny Jackson

?Romantic Comedy,? by Curtis Sittenfeld

?You Could Make This Place Beautiful,? by Maggie Smith

?The Wager,? by David Grann

?Master, Slave, Husband, Wife,? by Ilyon Woo

?King: A Life,? by Jonathan Eig

?Birnam Wood,? by Eleanor Catton

?Hello Beautiful,? by Ann Napolitano

?Enter Ghost,? by Isabella Hammad

?Y/N,? by Esther Yi

?The Sullivanians,? by Alexander Stille

?My Search for Warren Harding,? by Robert Plunket

?In Memoriam,? by Alice Winn

?Don?t Look at Me Like That,? by Diana Athill

The editors of The Book Review talk about the nitty gritty of literary translation. And then, a conversation about the legacy of the novel ?Bridget Jones?s Diary."

What makes translation an art? How does a translator?s personality affect their work? Why do we see so many translations from some countries and almost none from others? These are just some of the questions addressed in a recent translation issue of the Book Review, which Gilbert Cruz breaks down with the editors Juliana Barbassa and Gregory Cowles.

Also on this week?s episode, Elisabeth Egan and Tina Jordan discuss ?Bridget Jones?s Diary,? published in the U.S. 25 years ago this summer. ?I discovered, looking back at back into Bridget?s life on the eve of my 50th birthday, she was not as funny to me as she used to be,? says Egan, who wrote an essay about the novel called ?Bridget Jones Deserved Better. We All Did.?

Recently, two giants of modern American literature died within a single day of each other. Gilbert Cruz talks with Dwight Garner about the work of Cormac McCarthy?s work, and with Pamela Paul and Emily Eakin about the life and legacy of Robert Gottlieb.

Jonathan Eig?s book ?King: A Life? is the first comprehensive biography in decades of Martin Luther King Jr., drawing on reams of interviews and newly uncovered archival materials to paint a fuller picture of the civil rights leader than we have received before. On this week?s podcast, Eig describes the process of researching and writing the book, and tells the host Gilbert Cruz how he tracked down resources that were unavailable to earlier biographers.

?I was a newspaper reporter for a long, long time ? and you know, working on daily stories, if you got five days to work on a story, it was a luxury. Now I?ve got five, six years to work on a story, and I take full advantage of that," Eig says. "It took me two years to find, even though I knew it was out there, this unpublished autobiography that Martin Luther King?s father wrote. Nobody had ever quoted from it. ... Stuff like that just gets me really, really pumped up.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

There?s no rule that says you have to read thrillers in the summer ? some people gobble them up them year round, while others avoid them entirely and read Kafka on the shore ? but on a long, lazy vacation day it?s undeniably satisfying to grab onto a galloping narrative and see where it pulls you. This week, Gilbert Cruz talks to our thrillers columnist Sarah Lyall about some classics of the genre, as well as more recent titles she recommends.

Also on this week?s episode, Joumana Khatib offers a preview of some of the biggest books to watch for in the coming season.

Here are the books discussed in this week?s episode:

?Rebecca,? by Daphne du Maurier

?Presumed Innocent,? by Scott Turow

?The Secret History,? by Donna Tartt

?Going Zero,? by Anthony McCarten

?What Lies in the Woods,? by Kate Alice Marshall

?My Murder,? by Katie Williams

?The Quiet Tenant,? by Clémence Michallon

?All the Sinners Bleed,? by S.A. Cosby

?Crook Manifesto,? by Colson Whitehead

?Nothing Special,? by Nicole Flattery

?Daughter of the Dragon,? by Yunte Huang

?The Sullivanians,? by Aledxander Stille

?The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,? by James McBride

?Silver Nitrate,? by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

For readers, a book?s meaning can change with every encounter, depending on the circumstances and experiences they bring to it each time. On this week?s podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks to Salamishah Tillet, a Pulitzer-winning contributing critic at large for The Times, about her abiding love for Toni Morrison?s novel ?Beloved? ? in which a mother chooses to kill her own daughter rather than let her live in slavery ? and about the ways that Tillet?s personal experiences have affected her view of the book.

?I was sexually assaulted on a study abroad program in Kenya.? Tillet says. ?And when I came back to the United States, I entered an experimental program that helped people who were sexual assault survivors, who were suffering from PTSD. Part of the process was like, you had to tell your story over and over again, because the idea was that the memory of the trauma is almost as visceral as the moment of the trauma. And so ? looking at what Morrison does in her novel, she?s dealing with trauma and she?s moving, going back and forth in time. So I actually experienced this on a personal level.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

The writer Martin Amis, who died last week at the age of 73, was a towering figure of English literature who for half a century produced a body of work distinguished by its raucous wit, cutting intelligence and virtuosic prose.

On this week?s podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks with The Times?s critics Dwight Garner (who wrote Amis?s obituary for the paper) and Jason Zinoman (who co-hosts a podcast devoted to Amis?s career, ?The Martin Chronicles?) about the life and death of a remarkable figure who was, as Garner puts it, ?arguably the most slashing, articulate, devastatingly clear, pungent writer of the last 25 years of the past century and the first almost 25 of this century.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Are you ready to dive in to the work of the prolific and inventive fantasy writer Neil Gaiman? On this week?s episode, the longtime Gaiman fan J.D. Biersdorfer, an editor at the Book Review, talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about Gaiman?s work, which she recently wrote about for our continuing ?Essentials? series.

Also this week, Cruz talks with the Times critic Dwight Garner about ?The Death of the Author,? a murder mystery that the novelist Stephen Marche wrote with the assistance of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs. Is A.I. in fact a harbinger of doom for creative writers?

Here are the books discussed in this week?s episode:

?American Gods,? by Neil Gaiman

?Good Omens,? by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

?Stardust,? by Neil Gaiman

?Coraline,? by Neil Gaiman

?The Ocean at the End of the Lane,? by Neil Gaiman

?The Sandman,? by Neil Gaiman

?The Hyphenated Family,? by Hermann Hagedorn

?Monsters,? by Claire Dederer

?The Death of the Novel,? by Aidan Marchine

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced on Monday, bestowing one of America?s most prestigious awards in journalism and the arts on writers across a range of categories. Among the winners were three authors who had also appeared on the Book Review?s list of the 10 Best Books of 2022: the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, for his memoir ?Stay True,? and two novelists who (in a first for the Pulitzers) shared the prize in fiction, Barbara Kingsolver for ?Demon Copperhead? and Hernan Diaz for ?Trust.?

On this week?s episode, Hsu and Diaz chat with the host Gilbert Cruz about their books and what it?s like to win a Pulitzer.

?I wish I had a more articulate thing to say, but it was just truly weird,? Hsu tells Cruz about learning he was the inaugural winner in the memoir category. (Before this year, memoirs were judged alongside biographies.) ?It was a thrill, but it was also just truly a weird out-of-body experience.?

For Diaz, the Pulitzer announcement came while he was at a fried chicken and waffle restaurant in South Carolina, where he was on tour to promote his book?s paperback release. ?I totally lost it,? he says. ?I had to go out and, I?m a little bit embarrassed to confess it but I was weeping sitting on the curb. And these three lovely older ladies come by and they ask me, Oh sweetheart, honey, are you OK? I?m not exactly sure what I said, but I shared the good news with them and suddenly all four of us were hugging in the middle of the street. So it was a good moment.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Book-banning efforts remain one of the biggest stories in the publishing industry, and on this week?s episode of the podcast, our publishing reporters Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth Harris chat with the host Gilbert Cruz about the current state of such attempted bans and how they differ from similar efforts in the past.

?It is amazing to see both the upward trend in book bans but also the ways that the process of getting bans has evolved,? Alter says. ?This has happened really quickly. ? We?ve seen a lot of the book bans that have taken place in the last couple of years coming from either organized groups or from new legislation, which is a big shift from what librarians had tracked in the past, where they would see usually just a couple hundred attempts to ban books each year. And most of those were from concerned parents who had seen what their kid was reading in class or what their kid brought home from the public library. And usually those disputes were resolved quietly. Now you have people standing up in school board meetings reading explicit passages aloud.?

Also on this week?s episode, Joumana Khatib takes a look at some of the biggest new books to watch for this month.

Here are the books discussed in this week?s episode:

?Chain-Gang All-Stars,? by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

?King: A Life,? by Jonathan Eig

?Quietly Hostile,? by Samantha Irby

?Yellowface,? by R.F. Kuang

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

Eleanor Catton?s new novel, ?Birnam Wood,? is a rollicking eco-thriller that juggles a lot of heady themes with a big plot and a heedless sense of play ? no surprise, really, from a writer who won Britain?s prestigious Man Booker Prize for her previous novel, ?The Luminaries,? and promptly established herself as a leading light in New Zealand?s literary community.

On this week?s podcast, Catton tells the host Gilbert Cruz how that early success affected her writing life (not much) as well as her life outside of writing (her marriage made local headlines, for one thing). She also discusses her aims for the new book and grapples with the slippery nature of New Zealand?s national identity.

?You very often hear New Zealanders defining their country in the negative rather than in the positive,? she says. ?If you ask somebody about New Zealand culture, they?ll begin by describing something overseas and then they?ll just say, Oh, well, we?re just not like that. ? I think that that?s solidified over time into this kind of very odd sense of supremacy, actually. It?s born out of an inferiority complex, but like many inferiority complexes, it manifests as a superiority complex.?

A word of warning, for listeners who care about plot spoilers: Toward the end of their conversation, Catton and Cruz talk about the novel?s climactic scene and some of the questions it raises. So if you?re a reader who prefers to be taken by surprise, you may want to finish ?Birnam Wood? before you finish this episode.

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

David Grann is one of the top narrative nonfiction writers at work today; a staff writer at The New Yorker, he has previously combined a flair for adventure writing with deep historical research in acclaimed books including ?The Lost City of Z? and ?Killers of the Flower Moon.? His latest, ?The Wager,? applies those talents to a seafaring tale of mutiny and murder, reconstructing the fate of a lost British man-of-war that foundered on an island off the coast of Patagonia in the 18th century. On this week?s podcast, Grann tells the host Gilbert Cruz that one of the things that most drew him to the subject was the role that storytelling itself played in the tragedy?s aftermath.

?The thing that really fascinated me, that really caused me to do the book,? Grann says, ?was not only what happened on the island, but what happened after several of these survivors make it back to England. They have just waged a war against virtually every element, from scurvy to typhoons, to tidal waves, to shipwreck, to starvation, to the violence of their own shipmates. Now they get back to England after everything they?ve been through, and they are summoned to face a court marshal for their alleged crimes on the island. And if they don?t tell a convincing tale, they?re going to get hanged. I always think of that lovely line from Joan Didion, where she said we all tell ourselves stories in order to live ? but in their case, it was quite literally true.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

It?s been more than 50 years since the publication of Judy Blume?s middle-grade novel ?Are You There God? It?s Me, Margaret,? a coming-of-age tale that has become a classic for its frank discussion of everything from puberty to religious identity to life in the New Jersey suburbs. Despite its grip on generations of readers, though, the book has never been adapted for film ? until now, in a screenplay written by the director Kelly Fremon Craig and opening for wide release on April 28. To mark the occasion, our editor Elisabeth Egan appears on this week?s podcast and talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about the novel?s importance to her own 1980s New Jersey girlhood.

?For me, Judy Blume was one of those writers ? and I know that all readers have them ? who just explained the world and talked about things that we did not talk about in my family,? Egan says. ?I loved her constant theme of moving to New Jersey, as my family did when I was 6 years old. Most of all, I really loved her books for young adolescents, especially ?Are You There God? It?s Me, Margaret.? It?s one of those books that I remember where I was sitting when I read it, and it kind of had a profound effect on my life.?

Also on this week?s episode, Miguel Salazar talks about the Nobel-winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, and offers his list of essential books for readers who are eager to approach García Márquez?s work but unsure where to start.

?He is a mammoth figure, not just across Colombia but across Latin America. He was the face of the boom in literature in Latin America in the mid- and late 20th century,? Salazar says. ?García Márquez still today remains today kind of the point of reference for American readers, and a lot of readers across Latin America, to understand their region. I think he?s most people?s first author when they turn to the region to understand it through literature.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

As you might guess, the folks who work at the Book Review are always reading ? and many of them like to juggle three or four books at once. In this episode, Gilbert Cruz talks to the editors Tina Jordan and Greg Cowles about what they?ve been reading and enjoying, and then, in honor of National Poetry Month, interviews Cowles ? who, in addition to about a million other things, edits the Book Review's poetry coverage ? about how he came to love it.

?I?ve always loved good sentences and surprising language,? Cowles says. ?A novel has room ? and is even required ? to have some slack language in it. If every sentence was perfectly chiseled and honed and used surprising metaphors, you wouldn?t have the patience to stick with it. But poetry, because it?s so distilled, requires that; any slack language stands out and would ruin a poem.?

After a spate of more or less contemporary horror novels set in and around New York, Victor LaValle?s latest book, ?Lone Women,? opens in 1915 as its heroine, Adelaide Henry, is burning down her family?s Southern California farmhouse with her dead parents inside, then follows her to Montana, where she moves to become a homesteader with a mysteriously locked steamer trunk in tow.

?Nothing in this genre-melding book is as it seems,? Chanelle Benz writes in her review. ?The combination of LaValle?s agile prose, the velocity of the narrative and the pleasure of upended expectations makes this book almost impossible to put down.?

LaValle visits the podcast this week to discuss ?Lone Women,? and tells the host Gilbert Cruz that writing the novel required putting himself into a Western state of mind.

?There was the Cormac McCarthy kind of writing, which is more Southern," he says, ?but certainly has that feeling of the mythic and the grand. But I also got into writers like Joan Didion and Wallace Stegner, even though that?s California: the feeling of the grand but also spare nature of the prose. So it was less about reading, say, the old Western writers ? well, they were Western writers but not writing westerns, if that makes sense. And then, if I?m honest, I also was very steeped in, my uncle used to make me watch John Wayne films with him when I was a kid. And so I felt like that was another kind of well that I was dipping into, in part for what I might do but also what I might not do.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

It should come as no surprise that writers and editors at the Book Review do a lot of outside reading ? and, even among ourselves, we like to discuss the books that are on our minds. On this week?s episode, Gilbert Cruz talks to the critic Jennifer Szalai and the editors Sadie Stein and Joumana Khatib about what they?ve been reading (and in some cases listening to) recently.

For Szalai, that includes a novel she?s revisiting some two decades after she first read it: Kazuo Ishiguro?s ?The Remains of the Day,? which she?s listening to this time around as an audiobook. ?It has been wonderful,? she says. ?The narration is great and it?s told in the first person, which I think is actually an ideal feature ? at least for me, when I?m listening to an audiobook. It feels a bit like a conversation or a story, a personal story, that?s being related to me. And it?s been so long since I read the book that there are certain details that I hadn?t remembered that keep coming up. And so it?s been a nice experience. I?m going through it slowly. I sort of listen to it in little snatches here and there.?

Here are the books discussed on this week?s episode:

?The Remains of the Day,? by Kazuo Ishiguro

?Look at Me,? by Anita Brookner

?The Pigeon Tunnel,? by John le Carré

?Run Towards the Danger,? by Sarah Polley

?The Color of Water,? by James McBride

?The Dirty Tricks Department,? by John Lisle

?Spare,? by Prince Harry

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].

The 95th Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday evening in Hollywood, with top contenders including ?Tár,? ?Women Talking? and ?Everything Everywhere All at Once.? For readers, it?s a perfect excuse to revisit two recent books about the Oscars.

On this week?s episode, the host Gilbert Cruz talks to our critic Alexandra Jacobs about ?The Academy and the Award,? by Bruce Davis, a former executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and ?Oscar Wars,? by the journalist Michael Schulman, which she recently wrote about for the paper.

?We like to think that this is a ceremony, a process about merit. But I think that has been proven wrong time and time again,? Cruz says.

?It?s like a political election,? Jacobs says, ?or a sports contest that turns on a single play or call. These books really reveal that. It?s just interesting how many times Oscar ? as one of these books puts it ? gets it wrong. Like, the movie that won isn?t the one that you remember, or isn?t the one that time judges as the best one. That?s fascinating to see. ? You might ask, What does this ceremony matter if it?s not even adjudicating properly? But I think it matters because ? look, it?s the electronic hearth around which we gather. I think it matters because people crave communal entertainment experiences.?

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review?s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected].