The Avid Reader Show

Listen to Sam's and Alex discuss Alex's new book "From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel". Fashionistas and g-men clash in a masterful debut.

Sam talks with the "wickedly talented" (Boston Globe) and "darkly funny" (New York Times Book Review) Ryan Boudinot, on his new book Blueprints of the Afterlife.

Sam talks with the "wickedly talented" (Boston Globe) and "darkly funny" (New York Times Book Review) Ryan Boudinot, on his new book Blueprints of the Afterlife.

Take an attractive young blonde, a sex shop, a political candidate, and add a Catholic Church for good measure, and you have the recipe for a riveting controversy that riddled a wealthy Philadelphia suburb and divided a community. Follow the quandaries of Jill McDevitt, a determined recent college graduate with a degree in sexuality and a love of pushing the envelope.

Take an attractive young blonde, a sex shop, a political candidate, and add a Catholic Church for good measure, and you have the recipe for a riveting controversy that riddled a wealthy Philadelphia suburb and divided a community. Follow the quandaries of Jill McDevitt, a determined recent college graduate with a degree in sexuality and a love of pushing the envelope.

Isabel is a single, twentysomething thrift-store shopper and collector of remnants, things cast off or left behind by others. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska. Glaciers unfolds internally, the action shaped by Isabel's sense of history, memory, and place, recalling the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Virginia Woolf. For Isabel, the fleeting moments of one day can reveal an entire life. While she contemplates loss and the intricate fissures it creates in our lives, she accumulates the stories?the remnants?of those around her and she begins to tell her own story.

Isabel is a single, twentysomething thrift-store shopper and collector of remnants, things cast off or left behind by others. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska. Glaciers unfolds internally, the action shaped by Isabel's sense of history, memory, and place, recalling the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Virginia Woolf. For Isabel, the fleeting moments of one day can reveal an entire life. While she contemplates loss and the intricate fissures it creates in our lives, she accumulates the stories?the remnants?of those around her and she begins to tell her own story.

What a pleasure to encounter a first novel as self-assured and effortlessly told as Ayad Akhtar’s “American Dervish.” Mr. Akhtar, a first-generation Pakistani-American, has written an immensely entertaining coming-of-age story set during the early 1980s among the Pakistanis in the author’s hometown, Milwaukee.

What a pleasure to encounter a first novel as self-assured and effortlessly told as Ayad Akhtar’s “American Dervish.” Mr. Akhtar, a first-generation Pakistani-American, has written an immensely entertaining coming-of-age story set during the early 1980s among the Pakistanis in the author’s hometown, Milwaukee.

Julia Scheeres, author of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown

Julia Scheeres, author of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown

Diana Abu Jaber, author of Birds Of Paradise

Diana Abu Jaber, author of Birds Of Paradise

Anne Enright, author of The Forgotten Waltz

Anne Enright, author of The Forgotten Waltz