New Books in Literature

By: Marshall Poe
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with Writers about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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Episodes
  • Cynthia Weiner, "A Gorgeous Excitement" (Crown, 2025)

    Cynthia Weiner, "A Gorgeous Excitement" (Crown, 2025)
    Feb 20 2025
    There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother’s depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible—when her mother isn’t lying in bed for days, she’s lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan’s, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn’t help that she’s Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents’ medicine cabinet. Flanagan’s is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed. Every girl wants to sleep with him and every guy wants to be him. After she’s introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost? Freud called cocaine “a gorgeous excitement,” but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal. Cynthia Weiner has had a long career writing and teaching fiction. Her short stories have been published in Ploughshares, The Sun, and Epiphany, and her story “Boyfriends” was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Recently, her story “A Castle in Outerspace” was republished in Coolest American Stories 2024. She is also the assistant director of The Writers Studio in New York City. A Gorgeous Excitement is her debut novel. Recommended Books: Beena Kamlani, The English Problem Margarita Montimore, The Doll House Academy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    39 mins
  • Janet Sherfund, "Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me" (Worth, 2024)

    Janet Sherfund, "Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me" (Worth, 2024)
    Feb 19 2025
    Adoption is often painted as a happy, inspirational act—a baby finds a family and lives happily ever after. But the truth is that adopted children experience displacement and rupture from their mother and that trauma can impact an individual for a lifetime. Adoption can lead to feelings of loss and grief not just for the adoptee, but for the biological and adoptive parents as well. This startling fact comes vividly to life in Janet Sherlund’s heartbreaking memoir, Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me (Worth, 2024). In her literary debut, Janet Sherlund explores the complex issues so many adoptees and their parents grapple with, including the complicated emotions of rejection, loss, grief, denial, and shame. Sherlund, who was given up for adoption within days of her birth, shares her journey to fulfill her lifetime longing for connection with her family of origin, her instinctive ache for connection with her birth mother, and what it was like to have a “borrowed identity.” In poignant detail, Sherlund describes her quest to find out who she is, where she came from, and why she was given away. And she reveals the pain and courage required to discover one’s true identity. With 5 million adoptees in the U.S., many of whom are discovering their biological roots on DNA websites, Abandoned at Birth is the book for our time. The insight Sherlund derived from her journey will encourage and console others on the same path, while examining the inherent need of all of us to belong, and understand our origins, our culture, and our genetic roots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    49 mins
  • Janna Brooke Wallack, "Naked Girl" (2024)

    Janna Brooke Wallack, "Naked Girl" (2024)
    Feb 18 2025
    After their mother dies, Jackson Jones is too busy selling drugs and bedding young women to pay attention to his two motherless children. Sienna and her little brother Siddhartha grow up in a Miami Beach mansion without schools, doctors, or attention. It’s the 1980s and their dad uses the mansion, with its dock on the water, as a base for his drug dealing and to house the seekers and lost souls who follow his lackadaisical cult, leaving Sienna and Siddhi to raise themselves. Their dotty grandmother and distant occasionally picks up some slack but won’t take responsibility for her son’s failings as a father. Sienna realizes that she and Siddhi have to raise themselves in this intriguing and unusual story about siblings helping each other survive a dysfunctional family. Janna Brooke Wallack’s stories have been published by literary publications such as Hobart, Upstreet, Glimmer Train Press, American Literary Review, and more. Her short story "Campaigning" was a finalist for the Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction. Naked Girl’s prologue "Five Pictures" was a finalist for Glimmer Train Press's Short Story Award for New Writers, and her story "Cat and Rose" received a Pushcart nomination by The MacGuffin. Naked Girl was named a semifinalist for the 2024 Publishers Weekly Book Life Prize in Fiction. In addition to her writing career, Wallack has worked as a grant writer, a substance abuse prevention counselor, a wetlands manual editor, a theatre production assistant and an actress. After spending a couple of years in Hong Kong, she moved to Hoboken, NJ, raised five children and moved to Stone Ridge in the Catskills of New York, where she ran a permaculture gentleman’s farm. For more about Janna, visit https://jannabrookewallack.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    28 mins

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