Modern readers often experience C.S. Lewis as "the Narnia guy," but he's also one of the 20th century's foremost Christian apologetics. The Screwtape Letters, written from the point of view of a demon whose object is to send souls to Hell, is a deeply Christian work but its appeal comes just as much from Lewis' insight into what makes humanity tick.

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Toni Morrison’s second novel in her beloved Beloved trilogy, Jazz introduces the reader to a trio of characters united by an incident of tragic romance. Will the freewheeling optimism of the Jazz Age set them on the path of redemption or will they be bound to their painful pasts? 

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This episode is also brought to you in part by Eavesdrop: Conversations Across Time, the new fiction collection by Juliana Nicewarner. Head to juliananicewarner.com for more information.

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Percy Jackson returns for another road trip across a mythological United States. Plenty of new characters are introduced -- and some of them survive!

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Our month of sequels continues with the first full-length novel in Martha Wells' Murderbot series. The book's extra length leaves it room to dig into themes that the novellas had only nodded at, and also has a whole bunch of extra murderbots in it.

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To kick off a month of sequel coverage, we get bone deep in the Locked Tomb follow up Harrow the Ninth. This obtuse but compelling sci-fi/fantasy tome plays with perspective, doubles down on the space wizards, and challenges the reader NOT to notice oddly specific meme references.

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An early-90s Bengali novel that was translated into English relatively recently, The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die has a lot going for it, but as with many books the thing we'll remember the most is the murderous horny ghost aunt.

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For our latest show-within-a-show, we'll revisit Ancient Greece through Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Iliad. We'll be reading it a few books at a time and having a more in-depth chat about it than we do about most books. These two episodes cover Books 1-4.

Episode 1: The Iliad drops us right into the middle of the action, where "the middle" is 9 years into a 10 year conflict and "the action" is a couple of easily-affronted guys who instantly get mad at each other. Then we're treated to some maneuvering among the gods, some Odyssean trickery, the Catalog of Ships, and the less-impressive Catalog of Boys. (Books 1-2)

Episode 2: Just as the Trojans and Greeks seem on the brink of a giant clash, pretty boy Paris is shamed out of the crowd and cajoled into dueling Paris' former husband Menelaus. Surprise, surprise - the gods intervene! And after a brief interval, the gods spur the two sides into bloody action. (More like Aga-neg'em-on, amirite.) (Books 3-4)

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Move along, everyone. Nothing to see here. No women navigating adult friendships and their identities as parents. No jabs at men in power who work overtime to cover up their shame. And definitely no kids that catch on fire. Move along!

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Time to celebrate winter with a chilly fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Also we're talking Disney's FROZEN!

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The Witch Elm has Dublin, and it has murder, and it has a squad of detectives, but despite all that it is not a book in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. This riff on her classic crime novel formula focuses instead on some of the suspects, namely Toby Hennessey, who doesn’t know if he can’t remember things because of head trauma or because for most of his life he’s been able to get by without acknowledging the existence of systemic problems. 

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