Welcome to Episode 227, featuring an author spotlight with Megan Marshall discussing her new collection of essays, After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart. Megan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who turns her writerly gaze and historical imagination on her own life, her family and friends, and the “after lives” of her biographical subjects. After Lives publishes the day this episode drops–purchase your copy post-haste or request it at your library. We have been enjoying a “real” New England winter this season, which has kept us hunkered down and reading on our respective couches. The books in our Just Read segment are: A New Home, Who Will Follow? by Caroline Kirkland The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spottswood How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith by Mariann Edgar Budde My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave by Elle Cosimano (release date 3/4/25) The Vanishing Kind by Alice Henderson (release date 3/4/25) I’ll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom (release date 6/24/25) In short stories, we discuss “The Old Nurse’s Story” by Elizabeth Gaskell, the first story in The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce, which we will be reading throughout 2025 for our year of reading Ghost Stories. Chris also read the ghost story The Inn by Guy De Maupassant. We did get out and about for a Biblio Adventure to the New York Society Library to see a reading of Lord Byron’s Manfred by The New Relic Theatre. While there we also watched a virtual event via the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism featuring Ruth Franklin in conversation about her new book The Many Lives of Anne Frank. And we had two couch biblio adventures. Emily watched the film The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse based on the book by Charlie Mackesy, and Chris participated in the Women’s Prize Book Club with Sarah Waters in conversation with Simon Savidge about her novel Fingersmith. Of course, we also talk about what we’re currently reading, hope to read, upcoming jaunts, Simon & Schuster’s news about book blurbs, and more. There’s a whole lot of yuck in the world now, and we are grateful for good books and bookish friends. Thank you, friends, for listening and connecting with us on social media, email, or Zoom. We wish you lots of Happy Reading! https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2025/episode227

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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