Two Horror Authors on the Scary Books You Should Be Reading

As part of The New York Times Book Review's project on the 100 Best Books published since the year 2000, Nick Hornby called "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" one of the "greatest literary achievements of the 21st century." The author Patrick Radden Keefe joins host Gilbert Cruz to talk about his book, which has now been adapted into an FX miniseries.

The works of John le Carré are among the most beloved spy thrillers of all time. So it was a perilous task that author Nick Harkaway, one of le Carré's sons, set out for himself. On this week's episode, Harkaway discusses how he picked up the torch from his father, who died in December 2020, to write a new tale starring George Smiley, the Cold War spy who has appeared in more than a half dozen novels.

Sally Rooney is a writer people talk about. Since her first novel, “Conversations With Friends,” was published in 2017, Rooney has been hailed as a defining voice of the millennial generation because of her ability to capture the particular angst and confusion of young love, friendship and coming-of-age in our fraught digital era. In this week’s episode, the Book Review’s MJ Franklin discusses “Intermezzo,” her fourth and latest novel, with his fellow editors Joumana Khatib, Sadie Stein and Dave Kim.

Salman Rushdie's "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder," has been nominated in the nonfiction category as part of this year's National Book Awards, which will take place in mid-November. This week, we are running Rushdie's conversation with Ezra Klein from earlier this year.

The actor-director-producer Stanley Tucci is also, famously, an avid eater. He explored his enthusiasm for food in his 2021 memoir “Taste,” and now a food diary, “What I Ate in One Year." In this week’s episode, Tucci discusses his new book with host Gilbert Cruz and talks about bad meals, his food idol and his path to tracking a year’s worth of eating. Gilbert also chats with The Book Review's Joumana Khatib about the National Book Award finalists in fiction and nonfiction.