Club Book

Elizabeth Acevedo is a Dominican-American author and spoken word artist. She is best known for her 2018 young adult novel-in-verse The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Acevedo’s follow-ups, With the Fire on High (2019) and Clap When You Land (2020), solidified Acevedo’s standing […]

Fiona Davis is a historical fiction mainstay beloved by readers for her “winning formula of showcasing the stories behind New York City landmarks” (USA Today). Her seven bestselling novels to date include Good Morning America Book Club pick The Lions of Fifth Avenue, a “delightful mystery delving into the history of New York Public Library” […]

Curtis Chin is an award-winning filmmaker and activist. He also holds distinction as the co-founder and first executive director behind New York’s prestigious Asian American Writers’ Workshop. His anticipated debut memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, hits shelves this October. Chin’s family restaurant, Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, occupied a special niche in […]

Nicole Chung grew up as a transracial adoptee – and one of the few people of color in her Oregon hometown. Her lifelong journey of self-discovery and poignant, candid writing on the subject have positioned Chung as a singular voice in memoir. In her 2018 debut, All You Can Ever Know, Chung shares her search […]

Jacqueline Holland is the pen behind the chart-topping novel The God of Endings. Publications as many and varied as Book Riot, B&N Reads, LitHub, Polygon, Library Journal and E! singled out this literary debut as one of the most anticipated fiction titles of 2023. The God of Endings follows Collette LeSange, headmistress of an elite […]

Book club phenom Sadeqa Johnson has authored five novels to date. Her early books, including Love in a Carry-on Bag and And Then There Was Me, won the Phyllis Wheatley Award and National Book Club honors, among other distinctions. Johnson branched out from contemporary fiction and reached a still wider audience with Yellow Wife, lauded […]

Speculative fiction superstar Rebecca F. Kuang is the author behind the #1 New York Times bestselling The Poppy War trilogy. Described by Publishers Weekly as “an ambitious fantasy reimagining of Asian history populated by martial artists, philosopher-generals, and gods,” Kuang’s early masterwork spans three installments: The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic, and The Burning God. […]

Joshua Bennett, PhD, is a prize-winning poet and spoken word artist. He gained critical acclaim in 2016 with The Sobbing School, winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Bennett’s follow-ups, Owed (2020) and The Study of Human Life (2022), solidified his standing as one of his generation’s most […]

Alka Joshi moved to the United States at age nine, but the author’s native Rajasthan, India looms large in her chart-topping historical fiction. Many readers know her best for The Henna Artist (2020), the first entry in The Jaipur Trilogy. It follows dye artisan and herbal healer Lakshmi Shastri, who flees an abusive marriage and […]

Ali Hazelwood holds a doctorate in neuroscience and a faculty position at a prestigious university. She also moonlights as one of the most popular romance authors writing today. Hazelwood’s distinctive brand centers on women in STEM fields and academia. She burst onto the literary scene in 2021 with The Love Hypothesis. Fellow romance writer Christina […]

Oscar Hokeah is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. He also proudly claims Mexican ancestry on his father’s side. Hokeah’s award-winning fiction explores intertribal identity and multicultural heritage. He honed his craft at the prestigious Institute of American Indian Arts, and his prose can be found in American Short […]

Janie Chang’s bestselling historical fiction is inspired by her Chinese ancestry, as well as that culture’s rich folkloric traditions. She gained a loyal following with Three Souls (2013) and Dragon Springs Road (2017), and reached a still wider audience with the 2020 release of The Library of Legends. Set against the Japanese invasion of China […]

Will Schwalbe is an acclaimed memoirist and entrepreneur. Amateur chefs may know him best as the mind behind Cookstr, the world’s largest free recipe database. Cookstr is owned today by Macmillan Publishing, where Schwalbe is now executive vice president of editorial development and content innovation. Schwalbe’s authorial debut, Send: Why People Email So Badly and […]

Nicola Yoon is one of the best known – and bestselling – authors writing today in the realm of YA fiction. Her debut, Everything, Everything, catapulted her to the top of the charts in 2015. Told through diary entries, text messages, and even illustrations, the story focuses around a teenage protagonist who suffers from a […]

Outside of the United States, the city of Duluth is best known by many as the primary setting for the mysteries of prolific, internationally bestselling novelist Brian Freeman. He is the author behind the acclaimed Jonathan Stride detective series. Stride’s 2006 debut, Immoral, won the Macavity Award and was a finalist for the Edgar, Dagger, Anthony […]

According to a poll conducted by the BCC, novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby ranks as one of most influential people in British culture. Hornby is best known to American readers for his chart-topping novels High Fidelity (1995), About a Boy (1998), and Juliet, Naked (2009) – each of which has been adapted for the screen. […]

Internationally acclaimed British novelist Maggie O’Farrell is the author behind eight bestselling novels. Readers and critics alike praise her “demonstrated mastery at depicting strained relationships, skewed family loyalties, and the just reachable light at the end of the tunnel” (Star Tribune). Standouts include her Betty Trask Award winning debut After You’d Gone (2000), Somerset Maugham […]

Chart-topping mystery phenom Karin Slaughter is the author behind nearly twenty thrillers to date. Collectively, her books have sold a staggering 35 million copies across more than 120 countries. She is best known for the nine-book Grant County series, set in rural Georgia, which launched her writing career in 2001. It centers around small town […]

Minnesota’s own Lorna Landvik is a comedienne, actress, playwright, and prolific novelist. Her 1995 fiction debut, Patty Jane’s House of Curl – a zany but heartwarming story about two Minnesota sisters who open a beauty parlor… complete with live harp music and Norwegian baked goods – introduced readers to Landvik’s unique brand of humor. She […]

Award-winning novelist Lily King is the author of Euphoria, one of 2014’s best reviewed books. King’s popular page-turner is inspired by and loosely based around the New Guinea fieldwork of famed cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. The New York Times Book Review singled out Euphoria for a coveted spot on its annual “10 Best Books” list, […]

Chris Pavone burst onto the mystery thriller scene in 2012 with The Expats, a chart-topping spy novel centered around an unassuming American housewife who stumbles upon evidence of a major conspiracy – while safeguarding a secret of her own. His debut earned Pavone both Edgar and Anthony awards. The international bestseller is currently in print […]

Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a treasured voice in Korean American literature. Her latest novel, The Evening Hero, follows the trials and travails of Korean obstetrician Dr. Yungman Kwak. In the wake of the Korean War, Kwak left his family and village to pursue the American Dream in rural Minnesota. Lee’s poignant, time-jumping narrative encompasses “rural […]

Leila Mottley is the pen behind Nightcrawling, one of the most-anticipated and best-reviewed fiction releases of 2022. Set in the author’s native Oakland, California, this searing debut welcomes readers into the world of 17-year-old Kiara Johnson. After her rent skyrockets, Kiara turns to sex work to stave off homelessness. She soon finds herself in the […]

Historical fiction phenom Kristin Harmel is the #1 international bestselling author behind book club favorites The Sweetness of Forgetting (2012) and The Winemaker’s Wife (2019). She reached a still wider audience with the publication of The Book of Lost Names in 2020. Inspired by a true story of WWII heroism, The Book of Lost Names […]

British Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid’s international bestsellers have been translated into an astounding forty languages. They include The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Exit West (2017), two novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), which won the Tiziano Terzani International Literary Prize. Hamid is also an […]

Jamie Ford made waves in 2009 with the publication of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which charted on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than two years. It also won Ford the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His follow ups, Songs of Willow Frost (2013) and Love and […]

Speculative fiction writer Peng Shepherd burst onto the literary scene in 2019 with The Book of M. In this critically acclaimed debut, people all across the globe are mysteriously shedding their shadows – and a few days later, losing their memories as well. Booklist praises the premise as “existential apocalypse that is eerie, dark, and […]

Acclaimed essayist and poet Boyah J. Farah immigrated to the United States in the mid-1990s as part of the Somali diaspora, when thousands of families fled the war-torn Horn of Africa. Instead of finding safety and freedom, Farah quickly learned that his adoptive country is plagued by deep-seated issues of its own. Systemic injustices against […]

Minnesota boasts more than its share of homegrown mystery novelists, and William Kent Krueger ranks near the top of that list for many. He is best known for his sixteen-book Cork O’Connor series, set in the state’s forested and isolated Arrowhead Region. O’Connor, a cop turned sheriff and private investigator, burst onto the scene in […]

Internationally bestselling science fiction and fantasy author Nnedi Okorafor is one of that genre’s most unique contemporary voices. Her spell-binding work is inspired by her rich West African heritage. Titles of particular note include the post-apocalyptic Who Fears Death (2010), winner of the prestigious World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and its 2016 prequel The […]

Architect-turned-author Charlotte Rogan made waves on the literary scene with the publication of The Lifeboat, a tense and haunting survival story set at sea at the outset of World War I. Stranded on an overcrowded lifeboat with few provisions and little chance of immediate rescue, survivors of the mysterious sinking of an ocean liner grapple […]

Jason Mott is the pen behind Hell of a Book, winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly described Mott’s modern masterpiece as “a cinematic novel that tackles what it means to live in a country where Black people live life under the hanging sword of fear.” In […]

Brendan Slocumb is a classically trained violinist and accomplished music educator. During his own education at the University of Carolina Greensboro, Slocumb served as concertmaster for the University Symphony. Slocumb has since performed violin and guest conducted for renowned orchestras including the Washington Metropolitan Symphony. Over his two-decade teaching career, Slocumb has earned accolades including […]

Qian Julie Wang is an Ivy League trained litigator and managing partner of New York City’s prestigious Gottlieb & Wang LLP – a law firm specializing in advocacy for immigrants and people of color. As an undocumented child of struggling Chinese émigrés, Wang had ample reasons to believe her future would not be so bright. […]

Angeline Boulley is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and former director of the Office of Indian Education at the US. Department of Education. Her upbringing and first-hand knowledge of Native life inform Boulley’s blockbuster YA debut Firekeeper’s Daughter. The instant #1 New York Times bestseller centers around Daunis Fontaine, […]

Robert Kolker is an established and esteemed investegative reporter. Long known in journalism circles for his exposés in New York Magazine and Bloomgberg News, Kolker became one of the nation’s most read nonfiction writers (almost overnight) after the April 2020 publication of Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family. Now a #1 […]

Cameroonian-American novelist Imbolo Mbue burst onto the literary scene in 2016 with her debut novel Behold the Dreamers. Semi-autobiographical in nature, the book tracks a young Cameroonian couple as they struggle to re-establish themselves in New York City in spite of racial barriers and the economic upheavel of the Great Recession. Lauded by The New […]

In the span of six short weeks in 2014, Nora McInerny had a miscarriage, buried her father, and lost her husband Aaron to an aggressive brain tumor. Devastated but undeterred, she spoke openly about her tragedies and parlayed that year into a platform to help others through grief. That platform now straddles many media. Her […]

Minnesota’s own Lorna Landvik is a comedienne, actress, playwright, and prolific novelist. Her 1995 fiction debut, Patty Jane’s House of Curl – a zany but heartwarming story about two Minnesota sisters who open a beauty parlor, “complete with live harp music and Norwegian baked goods” – introduced readers to Landvik’s unique brand of humor. She […]

Patricia Hampl is one of those rare authors who holds perennial appeal with general audiences, but is also beloved by writers everywhere: “lyric, cerebral, and a boon companion at any stage of the writing journey” (Ploughshares). In her debut memoir and travelogue, A Romantic Education (1981), Hampl explores her Czech heritage. Her equally poignant follow-up, […]

Mystery favorite Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer behind the popular Aimée Leduc private investigator series. Set in and around Paris, Leduc’s adventures span fifteen installments to date. Black boasts an international following, with more than 400,000 books in print in eight different languages. She is also a two-time […]

Novelist Christina Baker Kline is best known by many as the author behind Orphan Train, a runaway hit that reached #1 on The New York Times bestseller list – and continues to chart well on trade paperback bestseller lists nearly two years after its debut. Depression-era Minnesota factors prominently into this true-to-life tale, which centers […]

Amy Bloom is among the elite set of contemporary American storytellers to see international success as a novelist, short story author, and screenwriter. Bloom’s short fiction has been nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and appeared in popular anthologies including The Best American Short Stories and O. […]

This Club Book podcast features Elizabeth Berg at her February 26th event at Galaxie Library in Dakota County. One of the most prolific New York Times bestselling authors of the last two decades, Berg’s impressive bibliography lists more than twenty novels, including Open House, an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. She has also penned […]

The book club that defies all previous expectations kicks off its new podcast and new season in 2014 with a rock star lineup including Amy Thielen, Julie Kramer, J. Courtney Sullivan, Elizabeth Berg, P.S. Duffy, Nikki Giovanni, Dave Zirin, Brian Freeman, Peter Geye, Amy Greene, and Amanda Coplin. With a preview of each event along […]

Prince was one of the most original, accomplished and beloved musicians of our time. He was also, undeniably, one of the most enigmatic. In early 2016, “The Purple One” approached Dan Piepenbring, the 29-year-old editor of literary magazine The Paris Review, about collaborating on the superstar’s memoir. Prince envisioned the project as a way to […]

Lawrence Wright is an acclaimed journalist, screenwriter and novelist. His impressive ten nonfiction titles to date include The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Wright also executive produced a 10-episode miniseries adapted from this 2006 exposé (starring Alec Baldwin and Jeff Daniels) for Hulu in […]

Gish Jen is a second generation Chinese American, and a thoughtful chronicler of emigration, assimilation, and multiculturalism as they relate to the modern American experience. The Los Angeles Times said of her 1991 debut, Typical American: “Jen has done much more than tell an immigrant story… She has done it in some ways better than […]

Rebecca Roanhorse is among a small cohort of “Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror, and fantasy – genres in which Native writers have long been overlooked” (The New York Times). Roanhorse’s speculative fiction, much of which is informed by her Navajo heritage, has earned the genre’s coveted Nebula, Hugo, Campbell, and Locus awards. […]

Tia Williams is a tour de force in the style industry. For more than two decades, she served as beauty editor for iconic magazines including Elle, Glamour, and Essence. She also pioneered the “beauty blog” with her influential, award-winning site Shake Your Beauty. Williams parlayed many of her first-hand experiences into The Accidental Diva (2001), […]

Few authors today boast the cross-genre appeal or international following of novelist James Rollins. Over the past three decades, Rollins has published standalone thrillers, the popular Jake Ransom middle grade series, and the novelization of the 2008 Steven Spielberg film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Rollins is equally adept at epic […]

Maggie Shipstead is the author behind Great Circle, one of the most anticipated, best reviewed, and bestselling fiction releases of 2021. Her modern masterpiece intertwines the stories of Marian Graves, an aviation daredevil patterned after Amelia Earhart, and a Hollywood ingenue who attempts to adapt Marian’s larger-than-life story for the big screen a century later. […]

Chart-topping novelist Julie Otsuka is the daughter of Japanese immigrants, and a poignant chronicler of the Japanese American experience across the first half of the twentieth century. Her breakout debut When the Emperor Was Divine (2003) shines light on California’s dehumanizing concentration camps for Japanese Americans – a shameful and often overlooked chapter of American […]

Victoria Christopher Murray boasts more than 30 books to her credit – and is as versatile as she is prolific. Her writing runs the gamut from contemporary romance, to teen novels, to short story collections and even Christmas novellas. Over the course of her career to date, Murray has received an NAACP Image Award, the […]

John Moe is one of Minnesota’s best-known radio and podcast personalities. The reporter and talk show host first cut his teeth in the Seattle radio market, before bringing his unique wit to the North Star State. He is best known for his work as a senior reporter and host of American Public Media enterprises including […]

Pam Jenoff is the author behind The Kommandant’s Girl (2007), one of this past decade’s best received works of historical romance. After the Nazis occupy Poland in 1939, young Jewish bride Emma Bau is forced to flee her home and husband and assume a new identity. In hopes of gaining intel for the Polish resistance […]

Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley is “one of America’s most accomplished and wide-ranging writers” (Dallas Morning News). Her thirty books to date include two short story collections, two biographies, and eight books geared towards young readers. Her influential and admired novels include the Pulitzer Prize winning A Thousand Acres (1991), a modern retelling of King […]

Chart-topping novelist Kawai Strong Washburn lives in Minnesota but hails proudly from the Big Island of Hawai’i. His upbringing on the magical Hāmākua Coast inspires and infuses his first fiction foray, Sharks in the Time of Saviors. It centers on the family of Nainoa “Noa” Flores, a native son blessed by the Islands’ ancient gods […]

Tamara Winfrey-Harris is a nationally renowned columnist and speaker. Her work focuses on the fraught intersection of race and sex. In 2015, Winfrey-Harris published The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America. This popular essay anthology “exposes anti- Black-woman propaganda all around us, and shows the truth of what it’s […]

Kate Quinn is one of the best known – and bestselling – authors writing today in the realm of historical fiction. Standouts include her four-book Empress of Rome series, two novels set during the Renaissance, and a co-authored standalone that focuses on the lives of women during the French Revolution. Recently, Quinn has brought her […]

Over the last decade, thriller novelist Mary Kubica has established herself as a mainstay of the genre. The Good Girl, her 2014 breakout about an amnesiac kidnapping victim, became an Indie Next List pick and put Kubica in contention for the Goodreads Choice Award. It is currently being adapted for television – and won’t be […]

Rita Woods is the author behind Remembrance, one of the most celebrated historical fiction debuts in years. Woods’ opus straddles literary genres and historical epochs. In this book, “Remembrance” is a hallowed refuge for escaped slaves which exists outside the normal bounds of time and space. The most unusual stop on the Underground Railroad, Remembrance […]

Mystery phenom Rachell Howzell Hall is the pen behind the four-volume Elouise “Lou” Norton series. Readers and critics laud Hall’s intrepid and memorable lead as “a strong and likeable African American detective… with few equals” (Library Journal). Hall’s hometown of Los Angeles serves as the backdrop for the series – as well as most of […]

Ian Manuel is a name well known to legal and criminal justice reform advocates. Sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a crime committed at the age of 13, Manuel languished in prison for 26 years. Thanks to a coalition of supporters, including renowned activist Bryan Stevenson and the woman shot by Manuel […]

Michelle Zauner is a darling of the modern indie music scene, better known by fans under her solo project alias Japanese Breakfast. Zauner’s family moved to the United States from South Korea when she was just months old. She spent her formative years as one of only a handful of Asian American students in her […]

Food Network favorite Abby Jimenez is an award-winning pastry chef, and the owner of the world-famous Nadia Cakes cupcakery and custom cake studio. A self-taught baker, Jimenez won Food Network’s competitive Cupcake Wars in 2012. She parlayed her successes into her Minnesota-based small business, which now boasts outlets in Maple Grove, Woodbury, and Palmdale, California. […]

Therese Anne Fowler is a perennial favorite among historical fiction readers. She is perhaps best known for Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (2014). Z showcases the incredible life and historic times of Zelda Sayre, the reckless Southern belle who married and inspired literary superstar F. Scott Fitzgerald. Amazon Studios turned the book into a […]

Chart-topping historian H.W. Brands is one of the foremost American Studies scholars writing today – and also one of the most prolific. With nearly 40 published books to date, his work spans more than three decades of dedicated scholarship and nearly every epoch of American history. Brands’ areas of speciality include economic history and global […]

Claire Lombardo is one of few first-time authors to see their debut novel chart immediately on the New York Times Bestseller List. The Most Fun We Ever Had follows the fortunes and factious relationships of four sisters over five decades. In this time-jumping narrative, the surprise re-emergence of a teenage son put up for adoption […]

Lauren Fox is an acknowledged master of the family novel. Readers enjoyed their first taste of her achingly funny take on marriage, friendship, and domesticity in Still Life with Husband (2007) – a literary debut that The New York Times heralded as “the arrival of an immensely gifted writer.” Fox’s follow-ups, Friends Like Us (2012) […]

Eduardo Porter is an economics reporter for The New York Times. His distinguished career in journalism has taken him to Mexico City, São Paulo, Tokyo, and many points in between. He currently co-hosts The Pie, a podcast on pandemic economics sponsored by the University of Chicago, which explores the financial and social ramifications of the […]

Megha Majumdar is the author behind A Burning, one of the most anticipated and best reviewed fiction debuts of 2020. Set in modern-day India, this propulsive narratives hinges around three characters on the margins of society: Jivan, a Muslim girl living in the slums of Kolkata (Calcutta); Lovely, a member of India’s intersex hijra community; […]

David Treuer is a member of the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe, and one of the foremost chroniclers of the rich and diverse Native American experience – past and present. His writing straddles the barrier between fiction and nonfiction. Treuer’s four novels to date, including award-winning debut Little (1995) and book club favorite Prudence (2015), […]

Moroccan American novelist Laila Lalami uses fiction as a vehicle to showcase “overlooked” North African stories and experiences. Notable examples include her 2014 breakout The Moor’s Account, which reconstructs the journeys of the New World’s first explorer of color. It won the American Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Lalami’s follow-up, The Other […]

Acclaimed journalist and climate advocate Dahr Jamail is the author of The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. Part travelogue and part research exposé, The End of Ice offers a sobering look at the “geographic front lines” – areas of the planet that are most immediately and […]

Nancy Pearl is America’s Librarian. As the head of the Washington Center for the Book, she pioneered the groundbreaking “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book” series in the late 1990s. The Library of Congress now estimates that upwards of 400 “community read” programs take place every year, and each owes a debt to […]

Morgan Jerkins is the New York Times bestselling memoirist behind the popular 2018 essay collection This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America. Her anticipated follow-up, Wandering in Strange Lands, hit shelves August 4. Subtitled ‘A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots,’ Jerkins’ sophomore […]

Brad Taylor is the pen behind the New York Times bestselling Pike Logan series. Now spanning fourteen installments, Taylor’s high-octane thrillers center around “the Taskforce” – a highly trained covert ops team answerable only to a select few at the highest rungs of government. Protagonist Pike Logan first burst onto the scene in 2011’s One […]

Lara Prescott belongs to the small, exclusive club of authors who have had their work optioned for film. While this is an impressive accomplishment on the face of it, still fewer writers can claim to have reached this milestone before their first book even hit shelves! Prescott’s highly anticipated literary debut, The Secrets We Kept, […]

National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson is the author of four novels, including the critically acclaimed Where the Dead Sit Talking. Hobson’s layered coming-of-age story focuses around a Cherokee boy named Sequoyah. After a tumultuous childhood marked by abuse and neglect, sensitive Sequoyah is thrown into the foster system. While living with the eccentric Troutt […]

Columbian-born Ingrid Rojas Contreras is author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, one of 2018’s breakout fiction debuts. Based in part on the author’s own experiences growing up in factious Bogotá, Contreras’s story is set against the backdrop of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s shadow reign over Columbia. This turmoil is explored through the eyes of […]

Dacre Stoker is the great grand-nephew of renowned Irish novelist Bram Stoker, the mind behind the genre-defining classic Dracula. He is also manager of his famous ancestor’s estate, and an internationally recognized expert on all things Dracula. In 2009, Dacre turned his eye to fiction, and a sequel more than 110 years in the making. […]

Mystery phenom J.A. Jance is the mind behind not one, but four blockbuster series. Her corpus, stretching back to 1985, includes nearly 70 novels to date. Jance’s popular and compelling protagonists include news anchor-turned-sleuth Ali Reynolds, trailblazing sheriff Joanna Brady, and Arizona’s colorful Walker Family. Each has a devoted following, but none has been solving […]

Over the past decade, Thrity Umrigar has emerged as a leading, cherished voice in Indian American literature. Her fiction, usually set in urban India, showcases the wealth of diversity found within the world’s second largest country. Umrigar first gained a wide audience with her sophomore work The Space Between Us (2006), which hinges on “the […]

New York Times bestselling historian Charles C. Mann is perhaps best known for his ground-breaking 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. As the name suggests, 1491 challenges and corrects long-held assumptions about the indigenous peoples who populated the New World before European colonization. It won the prestigious National Academies Best Book Award. Mann’s […]

Cooking sensation Kwame Onwuachi is one of America’s best known chefs of color, and a vocal ambassador for Afro-Caribbean fusion cuisine. He first gained a national following as a Final Four contestant on the 2016 season of reality television juggernaut Top Chef. He wowed the judges, time again, by ingeniously melding elements of his parents’ […]

Award-winning novelist and poet Linda LeGarde Grover is a poignant chronicler of the modern Native American experience. A member of the Bois Forte Band of the Chippewa Tribe – and long-time professor of American Indian studies at UMN Duluth – Grover first made waves in the literary world with her 2010 short story collection The […]

Chart-topping novelist Leif Enger burst onto the literary scene in 2001 with Peace Like a River – one of this century’s few fiction debuts to sell a million copies. Set in northern Minnesota in the 1960s, audiences fell in love with Peace Like a River’s arcadian small town setting and 12-year-old protagonist Reuben ‘Rube’ Land […]

Internationally renowned thriller novelist Don Winslow is the mind behind “The Godfather trilogy of our time” – this according to sources as varied as The New York Times, Esquire magazine, and writer Stephen King. Over the past three decades, Winslow has published more than twenty books total. Early highlights include The Death and Life of […]

Tennessee native Emily Bernard is intimately familiar with, and endlessly fascinated by, the “complexities and paradoxes” of growing up as a person of color in the American South. She captures her insights and takeaways in the much anticipated essay anthology Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine. In […]

Peabody Award- winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz is one of the nation’s foremost commentators on urban violence and community perseverance. He is best known for the seminal but haunting There Are No Children Here, the real-life story of 9- and 11-year old brothers in Chicago’s most crime-ridden public housing complex. […]

Bestselling author Deborah Blum is one of America’s foremost science writers, and one of only a handful to find publishing success writing about the history of science. Blum’s debut, The Monkey Wars (1994), grew out of a Pulitzer Prize winning series she wrote for the Sacramento Bee about the ethical implications of primate research. Blum’s […]

David Grann is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. His gripping debut, The Lost City of Z (2009), follows the life and mysterious disappearance of Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett. It is the basis for the 2016 movie of the same name, starring Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson. Grann’s follow-up, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes […]

African American historian Wil Haygood made waves in 2008 with the publication of a feature in The Washington Post titled “A Butler Well Served by This Election.” It profiled the life and service of Eugene Allen, a White House butler who worked under eight presidents over the course of 34 years. It is the inspiration […]

National Book Award winner Julia Glass won one of fiction’s highest honors with her debut novel. That breakout, Three Junes (2002), follows the lives and loves of a Scottish family over the course of a full decade. Upon its release, The New York Times Book Review gushed: “Three Junes brilliantly rescues, then refurbishes, the traditional […]

Eli Saslow is a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist, and a leading voice in the discourse around resurgent white nationalism and how to combat it. His first book-length treatment of this subject, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, hits shelves in September. The book follows Saslow’s relationship with Derek Black, a […]

Eli Saslow is a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist, and a leading voice in the discourse around resurgent white nationalism and how to combat it. His first book-length treatment of this subject, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, hits shelves in September. The book follows Saslow’s relationship with Derek Black, a […]

Award-winning journalist and feminist icon Peggy Orenstein is a leading voice in the national conversations around gender norms and expectations. Her influential exposés include Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (2011) and Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (2016). Orenstein has also penned a bestselling […]

Somali expat and debut author Abdi Nor Iftin is the pen behind one of the most anticipated – and most timely – nonfiction releases of 2018. Iftin’s long and harrowing journey to America, as part of the U.S. Government’s embattled Diversity Visa Program, came to the attention of audiences around the world through a viral […]