
For this fourth season, Check This Out! is expanding to 12 episodes, offering more opportunities for in-depth exploration of the work of diverse and emerging authors.
Host Rachel Barenbaum goes beyond the pages of each book with each auther, discussing not only the characters and themes, but the writing process itself—from finding writing groups to navigating the evolving world of publishing.
Check out the show page for each episode to discover downloadable PDF discussion questions for readers and book clubs.
Check This Out is proud to partner with The PEN/Faulkner Foundation to champion new voices in literature.
Check This Out! airs Saturdays at 3 p.m. beginning April 5 through June 21 on NHPR and NHPR.org.
Subscribe to the podcast: Apple | Amazon | Spotify
Upcoming episodes:
Karissa Chen, Homeseeking - Saturday, April 5 3pm
“Homeseeking” follows Haiwen and Suchi, two separated lovers through six decades of Chinese history. War, famine, and opportunity take them from Hong Kong, to Taiwan, New York, and LA.
This debut novel is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance and time.
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, Mutual Interest - Saturday, April 12 3pm
A novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire. “Mutual Interest” explores the lives of “three queer misfits turned business titans” during the Gilded Age with immersive period detail and compelling emotional stakes.
Callan Wink, Beartooth - Saturday, April 19 3pm
Two brothers are living off the grid on the edge of Yellowstone. In dire straits and desperate for money, they accept a dangerous proposition that permanently alters their lives and their relationship to each other.
Julie Iromuanya, A Season of Light - Saturday, April 26 3pm
When 276 schoolgirls are abducted from their school in Nigeria, a Florida-based lawyer and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War is consumed by memories of his younger sister who went missing during that conflict. “A Season of Light” explores the shaky promise of the immigrant American dream and a family struggling with intergenerational trauma.
Tova Mirvis, We Would Never - Saturday, May 3 3pm
Inspired by a true story, “We Would Never” is a gripping murder mystery and an intimate family drama. It explores the issues of loyalty, betrayal, and the blurred line between protecting and forsaking the ones we love most.
Sameer Pandya, Our Beautiful Boys - Saturday, May 10 3pm
Three star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student. Their secrets, and the secrets of their parents, threaten to shatter their entire community in a novel of race, class, and privilege.
Colwill Brown, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh - Saturday, May 17 3pm
A coming of age novel about working-class female friendship, set in the schoolyards, nightclubs, and alleyways of a gritty, post-industrial town in Yorkshire, England. Three girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are, but as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.
Jon Hickey, Big Chief - Saturday, May 24 3pm
A story about power and politics on a reservation in Wisconsin in the days leading up to a hotly contested tribal election, where loyalties are being sharply tested, and the lines between right and wrong have become blurred. This debut novel is also a family saga that explores what it means to belong to a family, a community, and a history.
Jemimah Wei, The Original Daughter - Saturday, May 31 3pm
In this debut novel, two sisters are betrayed and violently estranged. They must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love and home versus the outside world. An exploration of family bonds in a story of sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.
Emma Pattee, Tilt - Saturday, June 7 3pm
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. All she can do is try to walk home. We follow her journey across a transformed city as she reflects on her life and re-considers hope for the future.
Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope - Saturday, June 14 3pm
A young Stanford graduate caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.
Darrow Farr, The Bombshell - Saturday, June 21 3pm
The pampered French American daughter of a politician becomes the face of a widespread movement for a global TV audience. Her radicalization sparks a media frenzy, exploring youthful passion, political awakening and first love.
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"The Wedding People" is a novel about depression, love, one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.
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"The Safekeep" 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.
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Looking for a good book to read by the fire or to give as a gift? Tune in to hear three NH librarians offer their takes on their favorite books of 2024.
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A tender yet searing debut novel about intergenerational fractures and coming of age, following a young woman who immigrates to the U.S. from the Philippines and finds herself adrift between familial expectations and her own desires.
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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 and brotherhood in a time of enmity.
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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.
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In this historical fantasy novel, a group of passengers set out on the Trans-Siberian Express train, in a journey across a magical landscape known as “the Wastelands.” Can they trust each other even as the rules seem to be changing?
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This debut novel uncovers the story of three generations of African Americans, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, love and devotion.
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In a novel about belonging, the shifting nature of memory, and bloodlines, one man’s family is divided like the river that separates him from his childhood home on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation.
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Rachel Barenbaum returns for a third season of in-depth conversations with writers. "The Lion Women of Tehran" is about friendship, betrayal, and redemption, during three transformative decades in Iran.
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