The True Story of a Married Couple Stranded at Sea
11 July - 31 minsSome time ago, the British journalist Sophie Elmhirst was reporting a story about people who try to escape the land and to live on the water. “I found myself trolling around as you do in these moments, online and on a website devoted to castaway stories and shipwreck stories,” she tells host Gilbert Cruz. “There were lots of photographs and tales of lone wild men who were pitched up on desert islands and had various escapades. And in among all of these was a tiny little black-and-white picture of a man and a woman."
The couple were Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a husband and wife who took to the seas from 1970s England, selling their suburban home to buy a boat and sail to New Zealand. Nine m...
Series Episodes
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Wild Dark Shore,' by Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte McConaghy’s latest novel, “Wild Dark Shore,” opens with an enigma: A mysterious, half-drowned woman washes ashore. On this week’s episode, Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses the novel with his colleagues Lauren Christensen and Elisabeth Egan.
43 mins
23 August Finished
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
