Season 3 of Check This Out will air Saturdays at 3 p.m. beginning October 26 and will run through December 28 on NHPR and NHPR.org. Subscribe to the podcast here!
Join author and host, Rachel Barenbaum, as she delves into the worlds of emerging authors from all walks of life, unveiling their latest works and the unique journeys that shape their stories. Presented by New Hampshire Public Radio and the Howe Library in Hanover, N.H., this 10-part series is a celebration of up-and-coming voices that deserve to be heard.
Check This Out Season Three:
Marjan Kamali - The Lion Women of Tehran
Saturday, October 26 at 3pm
In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.
A heartfelt epic about friendship, betrayal, and redemption during three transformative decades in Iran. This timely novel serves as a reminder of the fragility of freedom.
Morgan Talty - Fire Exit
Saturday, November 2 at 3pm
Set around Maine’s Penobscot Reservation, a novel about one man’s family, divided, like the river that separates him from his childhood home. The novel is about belonging, the shifting nature of memory - and bloodlines. Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction 2024 First Novel Prize.
From the award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty’s debut novel, Fire Exit, is a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another
Essie Chambers - Swift River
Saturday, November 9 at 3pm
It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.
This debut novel uncovers the story of three generations of Black women, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. A story of friendships, family secrets, and how history shapes us.
Sarah Brooks - The Cautious Traveler’s Guide to the Wastelands
Saturday, November 16 at 3pm
A group of passengers on a grand and fortress-like train, known as the Trans-Siberian Express, set out across a magical landscape known as the “Wastelands.” Can they trust each other even as the rules seem to be changing?
Elizabeth Gonzalez James - The Bullet Swallower
Saturday, November 23 at 3pm
Based on (mostly) true events, The Bullet Swallower is a magical realism western about violence and revenge, a story that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.
Ferdia Lennon - Glorious Exploits
Saturday, November 30 at 3pm
An unlikely production of Euripides in a prison quarry, set in ancient Greece with a contemporary Irish accent. As funny as it is moving, the novel is an ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.
Cherry Lou Sy - Love Can’t Feed You
Saturday, December 7 at 3pm
A beautiful, tender, yet searing debut novel about intergenerational fractures and coming of age, following a young woman who immigrates to the United States from the Philippines and finds herself adrift between familial expectations and her own desires.
NH Librarians Recommend Emerging and Diverse Authors Their Readers Love
Saturday, December 14 at 3pm
Looking for holiday suggestions? Good books to read by the fire? Tune in to hear three NH librarians offer recommendations. Catch their takes on their favorite emerging and diverse authors.
Yael Van der Wouden - The Safekeep
Saturday, December 21 at 3pm
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this is a story of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961. An exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
Alison Espach - The Wedding People
Saturday, December 28 at 3pm
It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event.
A novel about depression, love, the ways women make themselves small, and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
