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February’s Leonard Lopate Show Book Club selection is Téa Obreht’s critically acclaimed novel, The Tiger’s Wife. It tells the story of Natalia, a young doctor in an unnamed Balkan country still recovering from war, who starts investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of her grandfather who raised her. As she investigates his death, the complexities of life, war, and her grandfather’s life come to light.

Share your thoughts and questions and tune in on Wednesday, February 8, at 12:30, when Téa joins Leonard in the studio to discuss The Tiger’s Wife, which was named one of the ten best books of 2011.

Margot Livesey talks about her new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy . Set in Scotland and Iceland in the 1950s and 1960s, the novel is a captivating homage to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Krys Lee talks about her collection of short stories, Drifting House. Her stories illuminate the Korean immigrant experience—from children escaping famine in North Korea to recent arrivals in America, whose lives play out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls.

Adam Johnson describes his latest novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, which follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and spy chambers of North Korea, the world’s most mysterious dictatorship. Part thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, the novel is a portrait of a world hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, beauty, and love.

Robert Harris talks about his international bestselling novel, The Fear Index, which gives a glimpse into an all-too-recognizable world of greed and panic.

Elmore Leonard talks about bringing back U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the hero of Pronto, Riding the Rap, and the hit FX series Justified, in his latest novel,  Raylan.

Alex Gilvarry discusses his debut novel, From the Memoirs of a Non-enemy Combatant, a story in which high fashion and homeland security clash. A flamboyant fashion designer named Boyet unexpectedly winds up in Gitmo, locked away indefinitely on suspicion of being linked to a terrorist plot.

Ben Marcus talks about his novel The Flame Alphabet, about what happens when the sound of children’s speech becomes lethal and causes an epidemic. Parents across the country are struck down by illness at the sound of their children’s voices, and many flee, leaving their children to fend for themselves.

Shalom Auslander talks about his novel Hope: A Tragedy, a humorous and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, and a compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts which haunt our present lives.

Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, talk about joining forces to write a novel. Lunatics is about two men: Philip Horkman, a happy man who owns a pet store and is a referee for kids' soccer, and Jeffrey Peckerman, the sole sane person in a world filled with jerks and morons, who is having a really bad day. The two collide in a swiftly escalating series of events that sends them running for their lives.

Our first book club pick of 2012 is Gary Shteyngart’s novel, Absurdistan. It tells the story of Misha Vainberg, a young Russian immigrant whose hopes of a U.S. visa are dashed by his father. Forced to leave New York, Misha moves to Absurdistan, a tiny, oil-rich nation where he finds, among other things, civil war, corruption, and love. Get your copy today and start reading this slapstick satire, which the New York Times named one of the 10 best books of 2006!

Share your thoughts and questions about the book, and tune in on January 10, when Gary Shteyngart will be here to discuss Absurdistan.

Swedish crime thriller writers Arne Dahl, Anders Roslund, and Borge Hellstrom discuss their work and the specific culture of Scandinavian mystery writing. Dahl talks about Misterioso, the first novel in his Intercrime series, which follows Detective Paul Hjelm in the suburbs of Stockholm. Roslund and Hellstrom, are the authors of Three Seconds and Cell 8, both about Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens.

We are accustomed to hearing about violence and instability in Pakistan, yet it remains a faraway place to most Americans. Yet what if Pakistan was home and its violence and uncertainty were part of the fabric of your life? And what if that violence one day claimed someone close to you? As a writer and as a Pakistani, Aatish Taseer has struggled all his life to understand his relationship with his country, with his ethnic homeland Punjab, and with his politically prominent father Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province. A year ago this week his father was assassinated just as he was finishing his first novel "Noon." 

Bestselling writer Lee Child talks about his latest crime thriller, The Affair. Elite military cop Jack Reacher sets off on an undercover mission to solve the mystery of a murder of a young woman in Carter Crossing, Mississippi, way back in 1997.

Russell Banks talks about his new novel, Lost Memory of Skin. Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of the story must create a life for himself after he’s released from jail. With nowhere else to go, he takes up residence under a south Florida causeway.

Aatish Taseer talks about his latest novel, Noon. Set against the background of a turbulent Pakistan and a rapidly changing India, it addresses some of the most urgent questions of our times—about nationhood and violence, family and identity.

Michael Connelly, one of the best known writers of detective and crime fiction in America, talks about his Harry Bosch series. In the latest book, The Drop, Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn discusses his father Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Apricot Jam and Other Stories, available for the first time in English. After years of living in exile, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 and published this series of stories, all focusing on Soviet and post-Soviet life, illuminating the Russian experience under the Soviet regime.

Ann Beattie discusses Mrs. Nixon, an imagining of the life of one of our most mysterious and intriguing public figures, the only modern First Lady who never wrote a memoir. Beattie reconstructs dozens of scenes in an attempt to see the world from Mrs. Nixon’s point of view, to explore what it must have been like to be married to such a spectacularly ambitious and catastrophically self-destructive man.

Happy Ending Music & Reading series host and curator Amanda Stern decided on “Frustration” as the theme of her series opener, inviting authors Seth Fried, Jesse Ball, and Paul La Farge to vent. Listen to the audio here.