View and listen to the Top 10 Author Event Podcasts Downloaded in June 2014.

Authors coming to the Free Library soon include economist and magazine magnate Steve Forbes, local cookbook author and food blogger Marisa McClellan will be demonstrating canning techniques in our new Culinary Literacy Center, and the first married couple to receive the Pulitzer Prize, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. View our full schedule for more great upcoming Author Events and be on the lookout soon for our Fall 2014 Author Events announcements!

	Diana Gabaldon | Written in my Own Heart’s Blood Recorded 6/17/2014 Listen to MP3 audio “A feast for ravenous readers of eighteenth-century Scottish history, heroism and romance” (Kirkus), Diana Gabaldon’s New York Times bestselling Outlander novels contain elements of mystery, adventure, and science fiction in telling the extraordinary story of 18th century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his 20th  century wife, Claire. Her new book—the eighth in the series—marches through revolutionary Philadelphia and onto the battlefields, where a family’s loyalties, danger, romance, and death lay on the front line. In addition to the Outlander novels, Gabaldon is the author of The Outlandish Companion, which details the settings, characters, research, and writing of the novels; several books in a sub-series featuring Lord John Grey; The Exile, a graphic novel set within the Outlander universe; and numerous comic book scripts for Walt Disney. This podcast contains explicit content.
	John Feinstein | Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball Recorded 6/3/2014 Listen to MP3 audio “The best writer of sports books in America today” (The Boston Globe), John Feinstein is the author of the influential and bestselling A Good Walk Spoiled and A Season on the Brink, among almost two dozen other books. He has been a staff columnist for the Washington Post, Sporting News, and Golf Digest, and a regular on-air commentator for The Golf Channel and The Jim Rome Show. He also currently hosts a daily show on the CBS Sports Radio Network. In his new book, Where Nobody Knows Your Name, Feinstein follows the ups and downs of a year in the colorful but hard-knock world of AAA Baseball.
	Tom Rob Smith | The Farm with Michael Koryta | Those Who Wish Me Dead Recorded 6/5/2014 Listen to MP3 audio Tom Rob Smith’s propulsive debut thriller Child 44, a “densely, ingeniously plotted” (New York Times) portrait of Russia's secret police and the lengths they would go to protect their country’s crime-free image was an instant bestseller. The book was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and adapted for a film starring Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace to be released in October 2014. The Secret Speech and Agent 6 completed Smith’s New York Times bestselling trilogy of Soviet thrillers. His new book The Farm examines family tensions, trust, and betrayal as a retired couple’s attempt to create a bucolic idyll in Sweden goes very wrong. Former private investigator Michael Koryta is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including The Ridge, The Cypress House, and So Cold the River—all New York Times notable books—and Envy the Night, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In Those Who Wish Me Dead, 13-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a vicious murder, and is issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens until police can find the two killers. The nightmare unfolds in the desolate Montana mountains as the killers slaughter anyone in their path in a methodical quest to reach him.
	Kimberla Lawson Roby | The Prodigal Son Recorded 5/29/2014 Listen to MP3 audio New York Times bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby is known for heartfelt and heart-wrenching novels that explore family and relationship issues, including infidelity and single motherhood, with “high-octane levels of emotion” (USA Today). She won the 2013 NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work and the 2001 Blackboard Fiction Book of the Year Award for Casting the First Stone, one of her many books featuring the flashy and flawed preacher, Reverend Curtis Black. In The Prodigal Son, Reverend Black’s two sons—one he hasn’t spoken to in a year and the other his long-lost firstborn—struggle to find their way back into the Black family fold.
	Ana Castillo | Give it to Me with Ruth Reichl | Delicious! Recorded 6/2/2014 Listen to MP3 audio By turns “defiant, satirically hilarious, sexy, and wise” (Booklist), Ana Castillo is one of the preeminent voices of the Chicana experience. Vibrantly experimental in style, she explores themes of feminism, oppression, and classism in a vast array of works, including several collections of poetry and many novels, including Peel My Love Like an Onion, The Guardians, and So Far From God. Castillo is also a prolific short story writer, essayist, playwright, editor and literary translator. Give it to Me tells the story of a recent 40-something divorcée who finds adventure with her gangster younger cousin. Editor-in-chief of Gourmet for ten years, Ruth Reichl is the author of four bestselling memoirs: Comfort Me with Apples, Tender at the Bone, Garlic and Sapphires, and For You Mom, Finally. She has been the restaurant critic for the New York Times and the food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including 6 prestigious James Beard Awards. In her debut novel Delicious!, a young woman finds herself the sole employee of a shuttered New York food magazine and stumbles upon a mysterious collection of letters written during World War II.
	Bill Geist and Willie Geist | Good Talk, Dad: The Birds and the Bees...and Other Conversations We Forgot to Have Recorded 6/6/2014 Listen to MP3 audio Father-son collaborators Bill and Willie Geist are both popular television journalists and bestselling authors in their own right. Bill Geist has been correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning since 1987, for which he has received two Emmys for his everyman reportage of Americana. He has contributed to 60 Minutes II, CBS Sports, and the New York Times, and his books include Little League Confidential and Way Off the Road. Willie Geist is co-host of NBC’S Today program and of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He is a contributor to NBC News and Sports and wrote American Freak Show. Told in a back-and-forth style that riffs on pop culture and family life, Good Talk, Dad is a testament to the Geists’ hilarious and endearing relationship. In conversation with Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Joe Juliano.
	Jennifer Weiner | All Fall Down Recorded 6/19/2014 Listen to MP3 audio Jennifer Weiner is the beloved no. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 10 books, including Good in Bed; In Her Shoes, which was made into a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz, Shirley MacLaine, and the city of Philadelphia; and The Next Best Thing. Crafted with humor and heart, her novels plumb life’s messiness with witty, relatable characters that face real issues— relationships, careers, family dynamics, and motherhood. In All Fall Down, a successful mother and wife struggles to free herself from addiction and rebuild her family. This podcast contains explicit content.
	George Vecsey | Eight World Cups: My Journey through the Beauty and Dark Side of Soccer Recorded 6/23/2014 Listen to MP3 audio Since 1968, columnist George Vecsey has covered the Olympics, tennis, football, hockey, boxing, baseball, and a variety of other sports for the New York Times. The author of more than a dozen books, including the bestseller Stan Musial: An American Life, he has co-written several celebrity autobiographies, Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter most notable among them. “With the eye of a reporter and the soul of a fan” (ESPN), Vescey’s new book about the enduring phenomenon of worldwide soccer sheds light on the game’s superstar personalities, back room dealings, rabid fans, and the on-field heroics of the last eight World Cups.
	John Waters | Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America Recorded 6/13/2014 Listen to MP3 audio Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads “I’m Not Psycho,” John Waters hitchhikes from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely highways and risky drivers, celebrating America’s weird, surprising, and generous citizenry in his new book Carsick. Described by William Burroughs as “The Pope of Trash,” the legendary filmmaker, actor, and writer is famous for his cult films, including Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Polyester, Cry Baby, and Serial Mom. Waters is the author of several previous books, including Shock Value, Crackpot, and Role Models, and This Filthy World, his touring one-man show. In conversation with Wesley Stace This podcast contains explicit content.
	Kevin Birmingham | The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses with Maya Lang | The Sixteenth of June Recorded 6/18/2014 Listen to MP3 audio For more than a decade, James Joyce’s Ulysses — a book often considered the greatest novel of the 20th century—was illegal to own, sell, advertise, or purchase in most of the English-speaking world. Even before its publication in 1922, the book outraged government censors on both sides of the Atlantic, with its obscenities, masturbation, and adulterous sex. But a band of literary radicals and free speech activists helped initiate the landmark 1933 obscenity case that set a precedent for First Amendment rights and cultural freedom. In The Most Dangerous Book, Birmingham tells the remarkable story surrounding Ulysses, from the first stirrings of Joyce’s inspiration to a world forced to contend with a masterpiece.  Dedicated to “all the readers who never made it through Ulysses (or haven’t wanted to try),” Maya Lang’s debut novel The Sixteenth of June takes place, like James Joyce’s monolithic masterpiece, over the course of a single day. This “clever” social satire maps the “family dynamic and its currents of longing, loss, and love” (Booklist) as three 20-something Philadelphians hurtle toward the same resolution by the day’s end. Lang is the winner of the 2012 Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Fiction and a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writer, and her writing has most recently appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review.

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