Listen Up! July 2023 on Poured Over

Sirius is up in the night sky and we can’t stop singing about Dog Days with Florence and the Machine. It’s always a good time to discover a new favorite author, but there’s something extra-special about having time to linger over summer picks.

We’re kicking off July with another piece of your summer soundtrack: Jason Mraz on his new album — available as a B&N Exclusive vinyl — Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride.

We have a thrilling, chilling Double Shot episode featuring Danielle Trussoni on The Puzzle Master and Ivy Pochoda on Sing Her Down. Adrienne Brodeur, author of the bestselling memoir Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me, joins us to talk about her new novel, Little Monsters. Bestselling author of French Exit and The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt talks about life, love and his beautiful, melancholic new novel, The Librarianist.  

You’ll fall in love (and find more summer hits) in our second Double Shot episode of the month: National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 recipient Caleb Azumah Nelson (Open Water) on his extraordinary new novel, Small Worlds; and Aaliyah Bilal on her surprising, luminous story collection, Temple Folk, which counts us and Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward P. Jones (Lost in the City and The Known World) among its fans.

Summer reading can take us anywhere and introduce us to anyone (including ourselves): Beth Nguyen’s memoir, Owner of A Lonely Heart, is more than a story of mothers and daughters and finding home. Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods) delivers a tale of incomprehensible larceny and more in The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession. Rachel Cargle talks self-care and healing in A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining, and David Lipsky about climate science and the dangers of disinformation in The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial.

We close out the month with more indelible fiction: bestselling authors Christine Pride and Jo Piazza (We Are Not Like Them) join us from our flagship store on NYC’s Union Square to riff on collaboration, motherhood and their new novel, You Were Always Mine. Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Russo (Empire Falls) brings us back to North Bath in Somebody’s Fool, the follow-up to his acclaimed novels Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool. And he’s not the only one returning readers to a beloved world: Pierce Brown is back with Light Bringer, the long-awaited return to his Red Rising series. Finally, we close out July with Colin Walsh and Kala, his not-to-be-missed debut murder mystery set in Ireland.

Kick back, relax and listen up while we fill you in on the hottest reads of this month.