Joyce Carol Oates has been called one of the most quintessentially American writers. She’s also one of the most prolific, with more than 70 books to her name. The Leonard Lopate Show has selected her 2007 novel "The Gravedigger’s Daughter" for the next Book Club read.

Shortly after four o’clock on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 13, 2011, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner walked down the hall from his office toward a large conference room facing the building’s interior. He was surrounded by a retinue of counselors and aides. When they arrived in the room—known around Treasury simply as “the large”—four people were seated at a long walnut table on the side near the door. Geithner and his entourage greeted them, then walked around to the far side and took their seats.

It all started with dinner.

In 2004 my husband, John, and I were celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary. That night we were the only Black people at Tru, a five-star restaurant in Chicago’s ultra-exclusive Gold Coast neighborhood. Instead of enjoying the romance of the moment, though, I ruined it by bringing up the discouraging status of Blacks in America. Although we moved on to other topics, they all seemed to lead us back to how fortunate we were and how we should be doing more to help improve the situation— The Black Situation.

The idea for the new novel "The Tragedy of Arthur" came to author Arthur Phillips when he was walking down the street and thought to himself: "I wonder if I could write a Shakespeare play." His book is in the form of a memoir that serves as the introduction to an undiscovered play by William Shakespeare.

Fans are mourning the end of Oprah Winfrey's show. But the loss of the internationally syndicated talk show doesn’t just affect fans, it also affects book sales. Patrik Henry Bass, Takeaway contributor and senior editor at Essence magazine, talks with us about the impact Oprah has had on the publishing industry, and how publishers are preparing the life minus her book club.