Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Wild Dark Shore,' by Charlotte McConaghy
23 August - 43 minsCharlotte McConaghy’s latest novel, “Wild Dark Shore,” opens with an enigma: A mysterious, half-drowned woman washes ashore.
The stranger’s name is Rowan, and she has arrived on Shearwater, a remote island near Antarctica. The island, which houses an important seed bank, was once teeming with a community of scientists, but now the project is shutting down, the workers have left and the land lies quiet and deserted, everybody gone except for the Salt family, whose members are all lost in their own way. And all are hiding terrible secrets.
They’re not alone. Rowan herself has come to the island with a hidden purpose, putting this small community on a crash course for a long-overdue reckoning...
Series Episodes
The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: 'Pachinko' (Rerun)
Summer is slipping away and we are on break this week. But we have a fantastic rerun for you — our conversation with Min Jin Lee from last summer, when her book "Pachinko" was named one of the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" by a New York Times Book Review panel. She spoke about her novel as well as the book she's read the most times — George Eliot's "Middlemarch."
34 mins
15 August Finished
This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like
Annie Jacobsen discusses her book “Nuclear War: A Scenario.”
45 mins
8 August Finished
It's Still Summer. Let's Talk Road Trip Books.
Summer is the season for road trips, and also for road trip stories. Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” may be the most famous example in American literature — but there are so many other great ones. This week the Book Review’s critics Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai chat with host Gilbert Cruz about some of their favorites.
31 mins
1 August Finished
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'The Catch,' by Yrsa Daley-Ward
In this month’s installment of the Book Review Book Club, we’re discussing “The Catch,” the debut novel by the poet and memoirist Yrsa Daley-Ward. The book is a psychological thriller that follows semi-estranged twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey, who were babies when their mother was presumed to have drowned in the Thames.
52 mins
25 July Finished
The Best Books of the Year (So Far)
We’re halfway through 2025, and we at the New York Times Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the ones that just won’t let us go. On this week’s episode of the podcast, Gilbert Cruz and Joumana Khatib talk about some of the best books of the year so far.
46 mins
18 July Finished
