AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK. We're going to take some back-to-school energy right now and fill up some grown-up book bags with some fall reading. The stack of books coming our way is high, but never fear because Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast, is here to give us some fiction picks. Hey, Andrew.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, I'm taking notes. What should I be reading? These better be good.
LIMBONG: OK. Oh. No pressure. All right. No pressure (laughter).
CHANG: No pressure (laughter). Don't make me waste my time.
LIMBONG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, we'll get to it. This Tuesday is actually a kind of a big drop day in book world. I'm seeing a lot of excitement for the new Rachel Kushner book, "Creation Lake." I think people might recognize her from her 2018 novel "The Mars Room." This new one is about a spy named Sadie Smith. A great spy name, by the way.
CHANG: Oh, yeah.
LIMBONG: And she goes undercover to infiltrate, like, this eco extremist group in France. It's already getting great reviews. I read an LA Times article this morning that called it, like, sexy and cerebral. And it's also...
CHANG: Oh, I want to be that (laughter).
LIMBONG: Yeah, I know, right? Great things to be. (Inaudible). And it's already been, like, longlisted for the Booker Prize, which is, like, the fancy literary award over in the U.K., so it's already getting a lot of shoutouts.
CHANG: Cool.
LIMBONG: Also coming out that same day is Attica Locke's "Guide Me Home." Locke is a longtime crime writer, and this latest book is the third in a trilogy starring Texas Detective Darren Mathews. It's that classic setup of, like, he's being pulled out of retirement to solve one more crime, you know what I mean?
CHANG: (Laughter).
LIMBONG: But this time, you know, the crime is a case of a missing Black college student from an all-white sorority. And, you know, all the best detective stories deal with these, like, hard questions of morality, right?
CHANG: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Like, where is the line between good guy and bad guy? And when the last book in the series came out back in 2019, Locke was on NPR. And here's what she had to say about that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
ATTICA LOCKE: We're all kind of in life trying to do the best that we can. And I wanted to create a character who has a strong moral center even as he lives these questions out loud. There are very few answers about what's right and wrong in my books, but the characters are living the question.
CHANG: Oh, that sounds very intriguing. I will definitely check that out. What about stuff from international writers?
LIMBONG: We got a new Haruki Murakami book coming out. Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about this one. It's called "The City And Its Uncertain Walls." The English translation comes out in November. People are pumped. Apparently, according to the publicist, there are, across the country - like in New York, St. Louis, Columbus and more - there's, like, bookstores holding midnight release parties for this book like it's the new "Hunger Games" or something.
CHANG: Oh, no.
(LAUGHTER)
LIMBONG: Yeah. I mean, it's his first novel in six years. It takes place in this, like, fantastical realm. I don't want to spoil it too much because the plot takes a lot of twists and turns, but it's a lot of big Murakami themes like love, loss, loneliness and death.
CHANG: OK, well, fall, Andrew, also means Halloween, so what's a good spooky book?
LIMBONG: All right, let's see. I think I want to shout out this book called "A Sunny Place For Shady People" by Mariana Enriquez. She's a writer from Argentina, and she's made a pretty big name for herself tying in supernatural horror - you know, your ghosts and witches and haunted houses, those sort of things - with more concrete horrors of everyday life in Argentina. Her last novel was this big tome, about, like, 600 pages. And this new one is a collection of short stories, so it's a little bit more digestible, like a trick or treat, you know?
CHANG: (Laughter) I love that.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
CHANG: OK. I think we've got time for one more. So of course, I'm going to ask you, what do we have in the romance section?
LIMBONG: All right.
CHANG: Get me going, Andrew.
LIMBONG: All right. OK. You can't talk about romance without talking about TikTok, right?
CHANG: Yeah. I guess. I don't know.
LIMBONG: And I don't know about you, but I've been getting a lot of videos in my life about this book series called "Ice Planet Barbarians."
CHANG: I think that's just you. It's not me (laughter).
LIMBONG: All right. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. It's just me. It's this romance erotica series about these human women. They land on this planet full of, like, sexy skinned, like, blue aliens.
CHANG: OK.
LIMBONG: And, you know, they, like, do stuff, you know what I mean? You know what I mean, right?
CHANG: Yeah, I totally know what that means. OK.
LIMBONG: Yeah. And it's a super popular series. The author, Ruby Dixon, she's starting a new world now. It's called - she's got a new novel coming out called "Bull Moon Rising." My copy literally just came in the door today. It's about this woman who joins something called the Artifactual Guild to look for rare artifacts, right? Except because she's a woman, the guild won't let her train without a chaperone.
CHANG: Of course.
LIMBONG: So she has to marry someone who will train her, right?
CHANG: Oh, I wonder what's going to happen?
LIMBONG: And - well, here's a twist.
CHANG: Yeah.
LIMBONG: The person she marries is a minotaur.
CHANG: What?
LIMBONG: (Laughter) Yeah. So, you know, if you're not up on your...
CHANG: But that's supposed to be hot? OK.
LIMBONG: Yeah, yeah. And, like, if you're not up on mythology, a minotaur is a half man, half bull, right?
CHANG: Right.
LIMBONG: Hence the title "Bull Moon Rising."
CHANG: (Laughter) That is NPR's Book of the Day podcast host Andrew Limbong. Thank you so much, Andrew.
LIMBONG: Thanks a lot, Ailsa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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