The Book Show on WAMC

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – Baroness Ruth Rendell has written an astounding 59 novels. All are reason to rejoice, but her 60th, The Vault, starring Reginald Wexford, is simply brilliant. The now retired Chief Inspector Wexford is called upon to aid the police in an investigation that has them stumped.

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – From Bob Dylan to Norman Mailer to Gustave Flaubert, from the Mississippi Delta to his adopted home of New Orleans, Tom Piazza covers a lot of ground as a writer on music and culture. His new book is Devil Sent the Rain.

Tom Piazza's Website
Music: Charley Patton - Devil Sent the Rain

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – In Lisa Grunwald's new novel, The Irresistible Henry House, we meet Henry whose early years were spent as a "practice baby" at a university for mothers in training. The novel is the story of Henry and the many women who enter his life over the course of three of the most compelling decades in American History. It is now out in paperback.

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – William Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and celebrated author of books set in Albany NY is the author of the new novel, Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes. The book is a tale of revolutionary intrigue, heroic journalism, crooked politicians, drug-running gangsters, Albany race riots, and the improbable rise of Fidel Castro.

About William Kennedy
Music: Celina Gonzalez - Camina y Ven
 

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – Writer Terry Brooks has spun epic fantasy tales for more than 30 years. His groundbreaking The Sword of Shannara became a runaway best-seller in 1977 and was the first fantasy paperback to appear on the New York Times bestseller list.

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – Ready Player One is the debut novel by screenwriter Ernest Cline. It is an exhilarating, unpredictable trip for retro pop culture junkies. Ready Player One follows Wade Watts through the virtual reality world, the OASIS, and on a quest to uncover and unlock the secrets buried deep inside a Willy Wonkian adventure.

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – Ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, former NY Times journalist and first-time novelist Amy Waldman has imagined an alternative history to the selection process for the 9/11 Memorial in NYC. The Submission tells the story of what happens when a Muslin architect wins the design competition.

By Joe Donahue

Albany, NY – Sebastian Barry is a Costa Prize winner and 2-time Man Booker Prize shortlist nominee. He is a prolific poet and playwright and the author of the new novel On Canaan's Side - the story of 20th century America though the span of one woman's lifetime, Lilly Dunne.

By Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

Albany, NY – In her book Agewise, Margaret Morganroth Gullette discusses the last remaining bigotry in America, against aging.

About Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Music: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - I Won't Back Down

By Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

Albany, NY – Charles C. Mann follows up his book 1491 with a new book, 1493 about how Columbus's entry into the Americas changed it ecologically and globally.

Charles C. Mann's Website
Music: Neil Young - Cortez the Killer