The Book Show on WAMC

Martin Amis' latest novel is his 15th work of fiction. Lionel Asbo: State of England centers around a thuggish, yet occasionally endearing antihero, Lionel Asbo, whose last name results from being handed down at age 3 an Anti Social Behavior Order, a civil order issued in Britain against conduct that includes things like begging, graffiti and excessive noise.

Pete Hamill is a veteran New York journalist and novelist. He's the author of numerous books, including Downtown: My Manhattan and his memoir, A Drinking Life. His nine novels include Snow in August, Forever and Tabloid City. His new book is The Christmas Kid: And Other Brooklyn Stories, a collection of Brooklyn-based stories spanning thirty years.

Archer Mayor is the author of the highly acclaimed, Vermont-based series featuring detective Joe Gunther, which the Chicago Tribune describes as "the best police procedurals being written in America." In the new book, Paradise City, Joe Gunther investigates Vermont burglaries and a murder leads him to Northampton, Massachusetts.

Louise Erdrich has been a published and highly regarded author for nearly 30 years but had never won a National Book Award until being cited in November 2012 for her novel, The Round House. It is the second book of a planned trilogy about an Ojibwe boy and his quest to avenge his mother's rape.

Jeffrey Toobin in CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst and a staff writer for The New Yorker. In his new book, The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, he describes how the court’s 2010 Citizens United decision and the Affordable Care Act ruling from this year show how the constitution is being reinterpreted.

Da Chen’s debut novel, Brothers - set during the Chinese cultural revolution - received tremendous praise for its insight into the period. His new book, My Last Empress: A Novel, is a mystical and poetic story of romance and palace intrigue set in 19th Century China.

For over three decades in American history, Willie Sutton was America’s most successful bank robber. Sutton became so good at breaking into banks, and such a master at breaking out of prisons, police called him one of the most dangerous men in New York.

Winter of the World is the second book in Ken Follett's Century Trilogy, which tracks the intertwined fates of five families from the early 1930s and the rise of Nazism through the late 1940s and the dawn of the nuclear arms race. In it, we follow the characters from Book One — Fall of Giants.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Díaz’s first book, Drown, established him as a major new writer. His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, won the Pulitzer Prize.