New Books in Literature

David Ly, "Not All Dragons" (Poplar Press, 2026)

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with David Ly about his novel, Not All Dragons (Wolsak & Wynn, 2026).What is it that you are, Rhys? In a land of magic and myth, Rhys awakens on the shore of Lanilia with mysterious wounds on his back and no memory of his life before. Disoriented, he stumbles on the Mernese estuary protected by the mermaid Delia, who is quickly intrigued by this male who doesn't smell like any Lanilian she's ever met and who is unable to answer questions about himself. Determined to figure out his past, Rhys convinces Delia to help, and begins a dangerous journey to discover who he is, or was, and who he might become as they hunt for the truth beneath story and prophecy. David Ly brings readers a fascinating and fresh take on dragons and destiny in this captivating debut novel. David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (Anstruther Books, 2020) and Dream of Me as Water (Anstruther Books, 2022), both short-listed for ReLit Poetry Awards, and the fantasy novel Not All Dragons (Poplar Press, 2026). He co-edited, with Daniel Zomparelli, Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). David’s poems have appeared in publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, PRISM International, and The Ex-Puritan, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for Poetry, as well as in the Pan MacMillan anthologies He, She, They, Us: Queer Poems (2024) and You’re Never Too Much: Poems for Every Emotion (2025). He is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine. More here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Kevin Reilly, "Gregory Ghosts: Haunting Irishness" (Peter Lang, 2026)

3w ago00:43:29Tap to summarize

Kevin P. Reilly is President Emeritus and Regent Professor with the University of Wisconsin System, having served as President from 2004-13. Kevin grew up in Manhattan and the Bronx, and went on to earn his B.A. at the University of Notre Dame, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, all in English. He has published on higher education policy and accreditation, autobiography and biography, and in Irish Studies. In this interview he discusses his most recent book, Gregory Ghosts: Haunting Irishness ( Peter Lang, 2026), a creative non-fiction intervention into Irish literary studies. This book is a kind of Irish ghost story. In it the ghosts of Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) and eight of her family members and colleagues look back over their lives—and sometimes forward beyond them—to try to make sense of them, their times, and one another. Theirs were all turbulent lives played out on the western edge of Europe at a time of great change.Lady Gregory helped shape that change at a pivotal moment in Ireland’s development into a modern nation state. The author’s fresh approach questions and complicates the image of her as a prim Victorian workhorse. Setting her in the midst of the personal chatter of her departed family, lovers, friends, and collaborators brings home how the historical Irish moment found her just when it needed her. Gregory Ghosts: Haunting Irishness is published with Peter Lang, as part of their Re-imagining Ireland series Aidan Beatty is a lecturer in the history department at Carnegie Mellon University and the President of the American Conference for Irish Studies Transcript here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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“O Albany”: Novelist William Kennedy on His Great Cycle of the City

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Monday, June 22—William Kennedy is to Albany what Joyce is to Dublin and Faulkner to Mississippi, a fictional alchemist who transforms his native place into novels at once deeply evocative of their setting and movingly universal in their human resonances. In The Albany Trilogy, just out from Library of America, three of Kennedy’s masterpieces—including his beloved novel Ironweed—take readers from the gutter to the statehouse in narratives of brokenness, resilience, and unexpected grace set against the backdrop of one of America’s most storied underdog cities. Join Kennedy himself, one of only a handful of living authors in the LOA series, and his longtime friend Paul Grondahl, editor of the LOA edition, for a special, intimate, and wide-ranging conversation about craft, Albany as a protagonist, and what’s next for this titan of American letters, at work on his next book at ninety-eight years old. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Emily De Angelis, "The Stones of Burren Bay" (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2024)

4w ago00:39:13Tap to summarize

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with YA author Emily De Angelis about her acclaimed novel, The Stones of Burren Bay (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2024). In a tragic car accident, 15-year-old Norie loses her father while her distant mother is injured. Her prized possession, an antique artist’s box that traveled from Ireland with her great-great-grandmother, is destroyed along with her deep connection to her art. As Norie grapples with her self-identity, obscured by grief and anger, she and her physically and emotionally fragile mother are forced to relocate. With no other relatives to rely on, they call on the kindness of her mother’s oldest friend Dahlia and her daughter Wil, who run the Jolly Pot Tearoom and Burren Bay Lighthouse Museum on Manitoulin Island. Dahlia introduces Norie to ancient Irish Celtic spiritualism and opens the thin veil between the past and present where Norie encounters the echo of a century’s old spirit, Oonagh. Through Oonagh’s own story Norie comes to terms with her father’s betrayal and death and rediscovers her passion for art. As her mother’s emotional wounds reach a crisis, Norie realizes they must face their guilt and grief together in order to heal and become reunited as mother and daughter. Emily De Angelis comes from a long line of visual artists, musicians, and storytellers. She was born in Sudbury, Ontario where she lived and taught special needs students for 30 years. A graduate of the Humber School of Writing, her western and Japanese-style poems as well as short stories have been published in various anthologies. The Stones of Burren Bayis her first YA novel. Emily now lives in Woodstock, Ontario while spending summers on Manitoulin Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Naomi Hirahara, "Crown City (A Japantown Mystery)" (Soho Crime, 2026)

4w ago00:29:37Tap to summarize

In Crown City (A Japantown Mystery)" (Soho Crime, 2026), Ryunosuke “Ryui Wada is orphaned at 18, with no family or path left in Japan. He’s lucky when merchants from the states pay for him to get to Pasadena to work in their store selling authentic Japanese merchandise. It’s 1903, and although he’s lonely and confused by American customs, he’s committed to his new life. He thinks he’s starting to fit in, making friends with his roommate, Jack, and falling for a pretty seamstress in his boarding house, but the man whose bed he acquired has gone missing, he’s attacked on the street, and a painting is stolen from Pasadena’s most well-known Japanese artist, Toshio Aoki. The artist then hires Jack and Ryui to find his painting, which just might get them both killed. Naomi Hirahara is an Edgar Award-winning author of multiple traditional mystery series and noir short stories. Her Mas Arai mysteries, which have been published in Japanese, Korean and French, feature a Los Angeles gardener and Hiroshima survivor who solves crimes. Her first historical mystery, Clark and Division, which won a Mary Higgins Clark Award, follows a Japanese American family’s move to Chicago in 1944 after being released from a California wartime detention center. A former journalist with The Rafu Shimpo newspaper, Naomi has also written numerous non-fiction history books and curated exhibitions. She has also written a middle-grade novel, 1001 Cranes. Her follow-up to Clark and Division, Evergreen, was released in August 2023 and was on the USA Today bestseller list for two weeks. And she’s passionate about collecting vintage postcards! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Jason Weiss, "Other Lives Our Own" (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2025)

Jun 2200:55:04Tap to summarize

In Other Lives Our Own (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025) Jason Weiss reflects on travel, language, memory, identity, and the stories we inherit and create. This conversation explores how we inhabit each other's stories, tracing how movement across places and languages reshapes our understanding of self and belonging. Drawing on experiences in New York, Paris, Mexico, California and beyond, Weiss reflects on what it means to be a foreigner, the shifting nature of home, and the limits of labels such as "American." Weiss reveals his gift for uncovering meaning in overlooked moments. He reflects on the value of curiosity, attentiveness, and recognizing significance in experiences that often go unnoticed. Whether discussing art, literature, family history, or everyday encounters, he argues that "in all our experiences there is more meaning than we normally give them." This conversation includes Jason Weiss, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Jorge Rodríguez Acevedo. Other episodes of the Nuevos Horizontes podcast with Jason Weiss include discussions of his books Listenings (in English and Spanish) and Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Literature in Paris. The Instituto Nuevos Horizontes is housed at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Topics, scholars, books and quotes mentioned: Susan Beegel Aurora Levins Morales "I think it [home] is a moving perspective." -Jorge Rodríguez Acevedo Heraclitus the Obscure "Where are you from? I think that changes." -Jorge Rodríguez Acevedo "If you say, 'you're from here' - you're too conscious of all that's missing from that answer." -Jason Weiss "Parisian as a temporary designation felt right, as I enjoyed being a foreigner." -Jason Weiss The Paradox of Choice "Most things are like lightbulbs; they burnout and we throw them away" -Jorge Rodríguez Acevedo John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat Travel Writing "…lack curiosity about the ones who went away" (Other Lives Our Own 63). "Leaving disrupts a shared story, and the return doesn't quite fit the version of you they hold onto." -Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera "They thought [the US] was a land of boundless opportunities, not endless forgetting" (Other Lives our Own 37). "They didn't talk about the old country. The stuff to remember is predominantly not pleasant or they have that attitude that we have to look forward." -Jason Weiss on previous generations of Eastern European Jews "American culture has always been angled toward not remembering." -Jason Weiss "Myself, I find it complicated to work with [the word 'American']. But when you use it, I feel like I'm reading the cheeky, brilliant kid sitting in the back of the class, using it with all this other meaning." -Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera "Travel supercharged my desire to learn it [Spanish]." -Jason Weiss "It should be a requirement for everyone to know at least two languages...I think of it as a toolbox, it gives us the capacity to think in another way." -Jorge Rodríguez Acevedo "Every American should have to study Spanish.” -Jason Weiss Anti-intellectualism in the US "[A title can be] a wink at the reader." -Jason Weiss Juanes, "A dios le pido" "In another place, we are always someone else and maybe also the same. A little disoriented, almost lost, unsure of what we know. We speak another tongue, and our own tongue becomes different too: a secret among strangers, possibly a trap" (Other Lives our Own 21). Louis Leroy Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise Bringing Back New Concepts to This Mad City, Caroline Hagood. Los Angeles Review of Books "The Gleaners and I," Agnès Varda "In all our experiences there is more meaning than we normally give them." -Jason Weiss "The crowd is at the Mona Lisa but in the room next door you see works that make you say. This is so great, how is no one looking at this? Those types of things are happening in our own lives." -Jason Weiss "UPR as a model for what US universities could do." -Jason Weiss "On the Puertoricanization of US Higher Ed," Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera "…recognizing the otherness in yourself." -Jorge Rodríguez Acevedo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Loretta Chefchaouni, "The Lustrous Dark" (Peachtree Teen, 2026)

Jun 2100:34:42Tap to summarize

Loretta Chefchaouni's debut The Lustrous Dark (Peachtree Teen, 2026) follows protagonist Shay.Orphaned as a baby, Shay has spent her life training as the midwife’s apprentice. Her role grants her stability, yet Shay has always yearned for more. Namely, motherly affection and answers regarding her mysterious birth—neither of which the midwife deems practical to provide.After Shay discovers her birth mother, Hind, is still alive and addicted to a magical drug called Snow, she determines to get the woman clean. But when Hind betrays Shay to get her hands on more Snow, Shay’s abandoned within a deadly forest and forced to rely on a band of monstrous ghouls for safety.Shay’s realm has long stood on the brink of war between the men who control magic and the revolutionaries who want to eliminate it. But in the forest, Shay hears the pleading call of ancient spirits who claim that not only has magic been stolen, but Shay has the power to return it. With the help of a spitfire revolutionary and the boy who’s winning over her heart, Shay discovers the horrific truth of who produces Snow and will have to decide for herself whether to heed the spirits’ charge or fade into obscurity. This emotionally raw and gorgeously rendered fairy tale combines the lush worldbuilding of This Woven Kingdom with the mother trauma of Snow White and a dash of Tim Burton. Steeped in mysticism and mythology, The Lustrous Dark confronts injustices against women with a righteous scream that’ll inspire readers to rally against the patriarchy and oppressive regimes worldwide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Wendy J Fox, "The Last Supper" (Sante Fe Writer's Project, 2026)

Jun 1900:41:32Tap to summarize

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Wendy J. Fox about her novel, The Last Supper, published by Sante Fe Writer's Project, 2026. As stay-at-home mom Amanda turns forty, she faces a reckoning. She' s doing her best at parenting eight-year-old Toby, who only wants to eat orange-colored food, and almost-four-year-old Blake, who really should be in pre-school but is home doing YouTube aerobics with her. Amanda' s mother is a successful attorney. Her next-door neighbor makes an enviable living as a visual artist. Her two best friends from college seem to handle careers and motherhood just fine. Yet, Amanda just barely manages to muddle through dinner every night while obsessively Googling life advice. She' s racked up failures, like being swindled into pyramid schemes, and is struggling to launch what she thought was a sure-fire influencer lifestyle brand, AMANDAtory. When her husband loses his job and threatens her with divorce, Amanda is forced to face her choices head-on. Will she finally forge her own identity, or is she doomed to repeat her past mistakes? Wendy J. Fox is the author of four books of fiction, including What If We Were Somewhere Else, which won the Colorado book and received a star for excellence in the genre of short-stories in Booklist. Her 2019 novel, If the Ice Had Held, was a top pick in audio for LitHub. She has written for many national publications including Self, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, and Ms. and authors a quarterly column in Electric Literature focusing on small press. She is a former SVP of marketing for a green tech firm and lives outside of Phoenix. Find her at wendyjfox.com. Wendy J. Fox is the author of four books of fiction, including What If We Were Somewhere Else, which won the Colorado book and received a star for excellence in the genre of short-stories in Booklist. Her 2019 novel, If the Ice Had Held, was a top pick in audio for LitHub. She has written for many national publications including Self, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, and Ms. and authors a quarterly column in Electric Literature focusing on small press. She is a former SVP of marketing for a green tech firm and lives outside of Phoenix. Find her at wendyjfox.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Shana Galen, "A Shop Girl's Guide to Wooing a Lord" (Berkley, 2026)

Jun 1800:28:24Tap to summarize

Romance novels—especially historical romance novels—thrive on heroes and heroines who don’t match in terms of social class. There must be conflict, after all, or the novel would end before it began. But not even George Bernard Shaw’s mismatched couple in Pygmalion (later My Fair Lady) can claim quite as much distance as Shana Galen’s Tamsin Archer and the Honourable Garret Kildare, the main characters in A Shop Girl’s Guide to Wooing a Lord (Berkley, 2026). Tamsin’s once comfortable if never opulent life took a sharp downward turn when a Royal Navy press gang hauled her father off to unwanted service on a seagoing vessel, service from which he never returned. By 1813, when we meet her at age twenty-three, she’s doing her best to support her injured mother and two much younger siblings by selling flowers in the street. A young man named Garret speaks kindly to her and pays her a shilling when she’s expecting far less, and as a result she remembers him fondly, but it’s not until two years later that she meets him again. By then, a chimney sweep has taken her younger siblings and holds them hostage to payments she can never make and that he might not honor even if she did. She’s desperate to get them back. In 1815, Garret’s life also makes a dramatic turn. His father, the Earl of Glenister, announces that the family has run out of money and must sell its ancestral lands in Ireland. Not exactly poverty, especially by Tamsin's standards, but still uncomfortable. Garret and his three brothers—Liam, Killian, and Daire—make a bet that one of them will secure the hand of an heiress, thus sparing their younger sister, Mariah, from having to marry an elderly and decrepit duke. But as Garret sets out to woo his heiress, he encounters Tamsin somewhere she’s not supposed to be … Shana Galen, a former English teacher, has written more than fifty romances. A Shop Girl’s Guide to Wooing a Lord, first in her The Heiress Hunters series, is the latest. Find out more about her and her books here. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels, including one co-written with P.K. Adams. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in the summer or fall of 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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Kimberly McCreight, "Someone Else's Husband" (Knopf, 2026)

Jun 1600:41:31Tap to summarize

New York Times bestselling author Kimberly McCreight delivers a tour de force of character-driven suspense with her latest novel, Someone Else's Husband (Knopf, 2026), the story of two women whose secrets and desires entrap them in a deadly love triangle. You had to rely on the power of love. That he loved you enough not to do the thing that would break your heart. It was paper-thin ice on which to stake your survival. Gretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, knows she lives a charmed life, and she’s not about to risk losing any part of it. That’s why she tried to convince Richard, her devoted husband and the father to their three children, not to join his old college friends on an expedition almost eight thousand miles away, to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Little did she know that the beautiful artist climbing alongside him might prove the far greater danger. Frankie Callahan’s dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. If all goes well, the show will leave her financially independent, free of the tainted money that ties her to a past—and a man—she’s desperate to escape. To mark this new beginning, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro. But when she learns she’s the sole female accompanying a group of male friends, Frankie realizes that nothing about the trip will be as she expected. She certainly hasn’t counted on meeting anyone like the very charismatic, very rich, very married Richard Falk. By the time they descend—with one fewer in their group than when they began—they have lost more than they ever could have imagined. Now, less than two weeks after their return to New York, Frankie’s East Village loft is a blood-soaked crime scene, and Richard has been charged with her murder. It falls to Gretchen to figure how the life she so carefully constructed could have imploded so completely. There are only two things she knows for sure: she’s the only woman Richard has ever loved, and he would never hurt anyone. Someone Else’s Husband is the sweeping and suspenseful story of two women on a collision course with love—and with each other—in which no one is right and everyone is very, very wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

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All episodes

David Ly, "Not All Dragons" (Poplar Press, 2026)

Kevin Reilly, "Gregory Ghosts: Haunting Irishness" (Peter Lang, 2026)

“O Albany”: Novelist William Kennedy on His Great Cycle of the City

Emily De Angelis, "The Stones of Burren Bay" (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2024)

Naomi Hirahara, "Crown City (A Japantown Mystery)" (Soho Crime, 2026)

Jason Weiss, "Other Lives Our Own" (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2025)

Loretta Chefchaouni, "The Lustrous Dark" (Peachtree Teen, 2026)

Wendy J Fox, "The Last Supper" (Sante Fe Writer's Project, 2026)

Shana Galen, "A Shop Girl's Guide to Wooing a Lord" (Berkley, 2026)

Kimberly McCreight, "Someone Else's Husband" (Knopf, 2026)