The B&n Podcast

Lydia Pérez is an ordinary bookseller in Acapulco, Mexico, when an article by her journalist husband makes her family a target for a drug cartel. In an instant, Lydia and her family become migrants, fleeing for their lives. Their story at the center of American Dirt is a powerful and often harrowing story of love, sacrifice, and hope. John Grisham, Stephen King, and Oprah Winfrey are all talking about this timely novel that features an unforgettable mother and son at its heart. Our booksellers can't stop thinking about American Dirt either, which is why we've made it our February 2020 Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick. The author sat down with B&N's Miwa Messer to take us behind the making of this propulsive story.

Our guest today is the novelist Abigail Hing Wen, who joins us to talk about her new YA novel Loveboat, Taipei, a coming-of-age story about taking risks, finding your voice, and discovering yourself in places you never would have predicted. Ever's Chinese-American parents have planned every aspect of her future: but one summer in Taiwan -- a trip they've sprung on their daughter as a not-very-welcome surprise might change everything. The result is an absolutely sparkling story that's based in part on the author's own young experience and a program that's still going on today, and it's B&N's latest YA Book Club selection. Abigail Hing Wen sat down with Bill Tipper in the B&N studio to talk about the real summer-in-Taiwan experience that was the genesis for the story of Loveboat, Taipei.

Our guest on today's episode of the B&N Podcast is the novelist Ann Napolitano, who joins us to talk about her heart-stopping new novel Dear Edward.  When his survival in a terrible accident transforms a twelve-year-old boy's life forever, Edward Adler sets out on a confrontation with challenges both more subtle and more daunting -- grief, confusion, and the strangest kind of fame. We found Ann Napolitano's richly told, emotionally devastating novel one of the most compelling books of the season, and we asked the author to join B&N's Miwa Messer in the studio for a discussion about Dear Edward and how Napolitano brought its characters to vibrant, unforgettable life.

In celebration of some of the most fascinating authors we spoke with in 2019, we're re-sharing our conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning writer Elizabeth Strout, who joined us to talk about her new novel Olive, Again. Since she published her first novel Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout has been known to readers for her subtle, sidelong portrayals of what Alice Munro, praising Strout's fiction, described as "the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life." Strout's novels have all been populated with brilliantly illuminated characters, but one resident of the fictional town of Crosby, Maine has crackled with an especially powerful charge. The star of Strout's Pultizer winning 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge — an abrasive, unfiltered, and wincingly honest former schoolteacher — proved a voice that echoed in readers' heads long after the last page of that wry and winning story concluded. So Strout's return to Crosby and to this unforgettable personality in novel Olive, Again, has been hailed by r

To mark the end of 2019 we're re-sharing some of our favorite conversations from our year in reading. Among the standouts: our chat with Colson Whitehead, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author of The Underground Railroad , who returned to the B&N Podcast for a conversation about his novel The Nickel Boys. It's a riveting story of injustice, friendship, resistance and survival that turns on the experience of two boys incarcerated in a Florida institution, and its reverberating effects on their lives. Whitehead joined B&N's Miwa Messer for a talk about the true story that was the inspiration for the novel -- a 2019 Barnes & Noble Book Club selection  -- the battle between optimism and pessimism in his own worldview, and how he learns from the characters he brings to life.

Today's episode is a conversation with the prolific, bestselling author Alice Hoffman, who joins us to talk about her engrossing new novel The World That We Knew.  Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including The Rules of Magic, The Marriage of Opposites, Practical Magic, The Red Garden, and 1997's Here on Earth, which was an Oprah's Book Club selection, and she's written multiple works for young adults and children. In her novels Hoffman has drawn boldly on both historical fact and myth, folktale and legend, to create stories in which mystery and magic often suffuse an otherwise familiar world. For The World That We Knew, which follows a group of Jewish refugees struggling to survive and resist the unfolding terror of the Holocaust, Hoffman links ancient traditions of Jewish magic to the stories of hidden children she researched for her book. When she joined us in the studio,  B&N's Bill Tipper asked her to talk about the alchemy of her storytelling, and how she was able to con

In this episode we're so pleased to be joined via phone by the artist and author Charlie Mackesy, whose wonderful new book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse has just been selected by Barnes & Noble Booksellers as our Book of the Year. Mackesy, who lives and works in the United Kingdom, is a lifelong artist and illustrator whose works in both pen and ink and paint can be found in the British magazine The Spectator and in many books. But when Mackesy posted to Instagram a deceptively simple drawing of a boy atop a large horse, engaged in a dialogue and about courage, the internet took notice, and the artist found his work reaching an audience he'd never expected. That single drawing grew into a charmingly illustrated story in which a young boy and three animals wander through a beautifully rendered English countryside, and talk about life, love, acceptance, and, not to be forgotten, cake. There's a quiet grace about Macksey's work that has found the place in the hearts of readers around the world. Bi

Today on the podcast we're bringing you a conversation that features the wildest science fiction story in the galaxy -- one that's not been playing out not on television on a movie screen, but on the colorful pages of a comic book since 2012. Aptly named Saga, this expansive and unclassifiable outer space epic, co-created by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples, is many things: a story of star-crossed love between warring alien species, a soap opera featuring larger than life scenarios and stranger-than-human characters, a gritty war drama, a political satire, and the coming-of-age of one very special little girl. After 7 years, the series recently reached its halfway point, with the first 54 issues collected in the massive Saga: Compendium One. To mark the occasion, Barnes & Noble editor Joel Cunningham recently sat down with Vaughan to discuss the story’s genesis, his collaborative relationship with Staples, and what the future holds

Our guest on today's episode is the writer, thinker and teacher Michael Eric Dyson, who joins us to talk about his new book Jay-Z: Made in America. Dyson is the author of a wide array of books, including the bestsellers Tears We Cannot Stop and What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America, and has become one of the most incisive and eloquent voices speaking about race and the black experience. And among the subjects he's written about memorably is the poetry and meaning of hip hop, with works on rap superstars like Tupac Shakur advancing our understanding of hiphop as an art form with unparalleled global impact. In his  new book Jay-Z: Made in America, Dyson takes on one of the most influential personalities working not only in hip hop but in business and on the world stage -- he sat down in our studio with Miwa Messer to give us a taste of how he sees this moment in our nation's life through the lyrics and life of an icon.

Our guest today is bestselling writer Bill Bryson, whose books on travel, history and science celebrate our endless curiosity, our drive to discover and understand the mysteries of our world and of the universe itself. Readers followed Bryson's questing intelligence and wry humor in books about explorations like A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail and Notes from a Small Island. With 2003's wildly ambitious A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bryson followed his desire to overcome his dissatisfaction with his own early education in science. The result ranges from the birth of the universe to the evolutionary history of humankind, in under 600 pages.  He's gone on to write about everything from Shakespeare to Jazz Age America, but in his latest book The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bryson returns to a set of mysteries at once everyday and profoundly elemental. It's an exploration of our inner universe in the company of a guide whose fascination about the secrets of the human o

Welcome back to the B&N podcast. Our guest on today's episode is author, editor, fashion maven, and social media star Eva Chen, who joins us to talk about her latest marvelous book for kids, Juno Valentine and the Fantastic Fashion Adventure. Her career has been nothing short of a fantastic adventure itself, highlighted by her work at Elle and Teen Vogue before she became Lucky magazine's youngest ever editor in chief. She joined the social media platform Instagram in 2015 where she became Head of Fashion Partnerships — and an Insta star in her own right. But she's also a parent, and that experience led her to create picture books starring her young heroine Juno Valentine, whose exploits celebrate self-discovery with a touch of sass and style. Eva Chen joined B&N's Amanda Cecil in our studio to talk about being a late bloomer, literary heroes, and raising readers.

Our guest on today's episode is the novelist Erin Morgenstern, who joins us to talk about her new novel The Starless Sea. Every now and again a writer comes along with a story that seems to want to resist classification — a book that slips between the subjects and genres we tend to slot our fiction into, and there's no better example than Erin Morgenstern's best-selling 2011 debut The Night Circus, in which a deadly contest between two magicians is played out between their talented proteges, who fall in love despite their mentors schemes. Dreamlike, yet firmly grounded in its characters, heartbreaking yet funny, and manifestly unique, The Night Circus defied any classification other than addictive. It's no surprise that readers were eager to learn what its author would choose for her next act, and with The Starless Sea we finally get to return to a world created Morgenstern's thrilling imagination. She joined B&N's Miwa Messer by phone to talk about her new story, in which a strange volume leads a studen

Our guest on today's episode of the B&N Podcast is the musician and author Flea, famous as the bassist for the iconic, sometimes outrageous band the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who built a fervent fan base in their Los Angeles hometown before exploding as rock superstars with 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik.  He joins us to talk about his new memoir Acid for the Children, a nakedly honest and deeply tender account of his years growing up in 1970s Los Angeles, enamored of both the possibilities of art and the lure of the streets. Acid for the Children chronicles in appropriately electric style the life of a self-described "street kid" who was also a devoted reader and aspiring punk musician. Candid about both the drug use central to the scene and the vital friendships that buoyed him through those years, Flea delivers a true story with an emotional punch that matches its tough-minded revelations.  He joined B&N's Josh Perilo for a conversation about what it meant to revisit a time in his life marked by exuber

We're joined on today's episode by Lisa Jewell, the author of a host of suspenseful, psychologically twisty novels that include I Found You, The Girls in the Garden, and the New York Times bestseller Then She Was Gone. She's been called "a master of bone-chilling suspense" and she joins us today to talk about her riveting new novel The Family Upstairs, a fascinating story in which a young woman's lifetime quest to discover her real identity turns dark when she finds herself the inheritor of a London mansion with a terrible history. And Libby's story is only one path in the beguiling labyrinth Lisa Jewell leads us down in The Family Upstairs. We were so transfixed by her storytelling that we chose The Family Upstairs as the latest selection in the Barnes & Noble Book Club — and Lisa Jewell joined B&N's Miwa Messer by phone to talk about the creation of this enthralling tale.

Happy Halloween! On today's episode of the B&N Podcast we're joined by the novelist and filmmaker Stephen Chbosky, for a conversation about his spine-tingling new novel Imaginary Friend. Many readers and moviegoers alike know Chbosky as the author of the acclaimed coming-of-age story The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a novel whose early devoted audience grew substantially following Chbosky's deft and memorable 2012 film adaptation of his own work starring Emma Watson and Ezra Miller. His long-awaited second work of fiction is now finally here: Imaginary Friend is the story of a seven year old boy named Christopher and his mother Kate, their arrival in a small town with a strange past, and what happens when Christopher disappears into the woods for nearly a week — only to return terribly changed, and obsessed with the knowledge that the fate of the world is in his hands. The chilling tale that follows takes in the secret lives and hidden shames of a community, a cosmic clash between mysterious forces, and

Our guest on today's episode is the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Elizabeth Strout, who joins us to talk about her new novel Olive, Again. Since she published her first novel Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout has been known to readers for her subtle, sidelong portrayals of what Alice Munro, praising Strout's fiction, described as "the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life." Strout's novels like Amy and Isabelle, My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything Can Happen have all been populated with brilliantly illuminated characters, but one resident of the fictional town of Crosby, Maine has crackled with an especially powerful charge. The star of Strout's Pultizer winning 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge — an abrasive, unfiltered, and wincingly honest former schoolteacher — proved a voice that echoed in readers' heads long after the last page of that wry and winning story concluded. So Strout's return to Crosby and to this unforgettable personality in her latest novel Olive, Again, has been

With Halloween only a few days away we're thrilled that our guest on this episode is the writer Joe Hill, here to talk about his engrossing and often hair-raising new collection Full Throttle. Two of the short stories included here were written in collaboration with his father, Stephen King, but Full Throttle's range of invention shows that the author of bestsellers like NOS4A2, The Fireman, and Horns works from a spell book of his own devising. From a tale that fuses big-game hunting with a classic work of fantasy to a story that draws us into a diabolic circus via the means of an all too familiar social media app, the stories of Full Throttle offer pleasures heartfelt and horrifying in equal measure. Hill prefaces Full Throttle with a marvelous introduction that stands as a great story of its own, a story of Hill's experience growing up as a writer in an extraordinary family, and with an extraordinary literary force as a father and mentor. When he joined us in the studio, we talked about his journey as a w

Our guest on today's episode is celebrated poet and memoirist Saeed Jones, who joins us to talk about his new book How We Fight for Our Lives. The author of the award-winning poetry collection Prelude to a Bruise, Jones has made wry, cutting and often laugh out loud hilarious commentary on contemporary culture his hallmark on Twitter and in online venues like Buzzfeed's beloved AM to DM web series, which he launched with co-host Isaac Fitzgerald in 2017. In How We Fight for Our Lives, Jones delivers a revelatory, incendiary, page-turning true story: it's both a richly rendered portrait of the artist as a young man growing up gay and black in 1980s Texas, and a chronicle of confrontation with deadly challenges that emerge from both within and without. One of the most keenly anticipated books of the fall, How to Fight for Our Lives is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and Miwa Messer, Director of the Discover program, spoke to author via phone recently about what it meant to put his st

Today's guest has turned thousands of 21st century kids into passionate, intensely knowledgable fans of ancient mythologies. When Rick Riordan published The Lightning Thief in 2008, his story of modern tweens magically connected to a hidden world of gods and monsters taken from Greek myths was an instant sensation — but it was no flash in the pan. Across multiple blockbuster series including Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Kane Chronicles and Magnus Chase, Riordan has taken his fans on thrill rides through fantasy worlds that draw up on Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Norse mythos, mixing anachronistic humor and page-turning thrills to make figures from Poseidon to Loki come alive as friends or foes to his young adventurers. In his latest series, The Trials of Apollo, Riordan has taken a fresh twist, following the travails of a god trapped in a human body. Book four in the series, The Tyrant's Tomb, is just out, and Riordan joined B&N's Melissa Albert — who frequently hosts our YA podcast — to talk about

We're joined on this episode of the B&N podcast by Julie Andrews and her daughter and co-author Emma Walton Hamilton, for a conversation about Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years. Julie Andrews is the sort of guest for whom the phrase "needs no introduction" was invented, but here's one thing worth mentioning at the start: if you didn't know that the singer, actor and Academy Award-winning star of Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria and many other films was also the author of an absolutely wonderful memoir of growing up singing and traveling the vaudeville circuit in postwar Britain, do yourself a favor and go and get her 2008 memoir Home. But in the meantime, you can savor the wealth of stories in Home Work, which brings us in just as Andrews, a young mother and stage star, arrives in Hollywood, ready to start her career in movies with Walt Disney and Mary Poppins. It's a scintillating story that unfolds not just Andrews' fascinating career and often tumultuous family life, but a kee