Téa Obreht talks with Parini Shroff on the Fully Booked Takeover.

On this week’s Fully Booked Takeover, special guest host Téa Obreht celebrates the publication of her eagerly anticipated new novel, The Morningside (March 19), with fellow novelist and friend Parini Shroff.

The Fully Booked Takeover invites a beloved bestselling author to become our special guest host for one episode. They choose another author whose work they admire for an in-depth conversation, writer to writer. The questions they ask and the topics they explore are all up to them.

Obreht is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife and Inland. The former garnered the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011, making Obreht the youngest winner of the prize to date, as well as a spot on the National Book Award shortlist. In a starred review, Kirkus calls her latest novel The Morningside, “a captivating blend of science fiction and magical realism with a wonderfully engaging protagonist.”

She is joined in conversation by Parini Shroff, author of the witty, winning debut novel, The Bandit Queens, which was published by Ballantine early last year and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, among other honors.

And in a sponsored interview, I talk with Abbey Lee Nash, author of Breathing Underwater (Holiday House, March 5), a striking YA novel about an elite swimmer named Tess, whose epilepsy diagnosis challenges the rewards she believed were well within reach. Kirkus calls it “a sincere story of approaching a new reality with a competitive edge.”  

Then Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, and Eric Liebetrau share their top picks in books for the week.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Bright Red Fruit by Safia Elhillo (Make Me a World)

Gifts From Georgia’s Garden by Lisa Robinson, illus. by Hadley Hooper (Neal Porter/Holiday House)

Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O’Brien (Pantheon)

ALSO MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE:

Spoken Word: A Cultural History by Joshua Bennett

Ode to an Onion: Pablo Neruda & His Muse by Alexandria Giardino, illus. by Felicita Sala

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Master Lovers: A Twisted Puzzle of Love and Fascism by David Winner

A Thousand Flying Things by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger

Musings 2022 by Denis O’Neill

Water Music: A Cape Cod Story by Marcia Peck

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.