Pre-Order Podcast

PreOrderPodcast

The Pre-Order Podcast, hosted by Bob Lingle of Good Neighbor Bookstore in Lakewood, NY highlights books that are coming out in the coming months.

Episodes

  1. Aug 24

    A Conversation with Katya Suvorova

    Pre-Order Here: https://goodneighborbooks.com/book/9798892426855 Description In this darkly funny and irreverent memoir, the daughter of a mail-order bride unpacks her undocumented childhood in America.The perfect read for fans of the jaw-dropping twists of 90 Day Fiancé and the emotional gut punch of I'm Glad My Mom Died.Growing up undocumented in Houston, Texas, Katya Suvorova learned that keeping her family together meant dodging the police, enduring her mother’s many husbands, and babysitting her younger sister instead of finishing the third grade.Her understanding of her life shifted dramatically at seventeen, when Katya discovered her mother’s advertisement in a forgotten Eastern European mail-order bride catalog from the 1990s. As she grew older, Katya came to better understand what her mother had risked when she smuggled herself and her then three-year-old daughter from Russia into the US. When your parents sacrifice their lives so yours can be better, to whom do you owe your future?Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter explores difficult questions and stories both shocking and hilarious across Katya’s childhood through to an adulthood estranged from the woman who sacrificed everything for her. Her sharp, dry wit engages readers in a deeply relatable take on the experience of being a child of immigrants and unraveling a landscape of family secrets and lies, sharing her unique story of being the undocumented daughter of a mail-order bride. Raised as an undocumented Russian immigrant in Texas, Katya Suvorova (she/her) is now a US citizen writing from Seattle. Her work is powered by strong coffee courtesy of her husband’s amateur barista phase, a cat so unruly she once earned a spot on the no-fly list, and a three-legged dog who moves through the world like she has five legs and no regrets. Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter is her debut memoir.

    A Conversation with Katya Suvorova
  2. Aug 9

    A Conversation with Ben Reeves

    About the Book NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A gorgeous reminder of what really matters. Prepare to be astounded.” —People • “One of the best, most moving books I have read in years.” —Scott Detrow, NPR • “This is one of the most affecting, original, and unforgettable novels I have ever read.” —Sarah Damoff, author of The Bright YearsFor fans of Fredrik Backman and Virginia Evans, an astonishing novel about finding beauty in the brevity of life, as narrated by the one who knows it best: Death.Travis is Death in the modern world. He lives with his cat in a small, gray town. His job is to offer people comfort in their final hours of life, which he does without complaint or judgement. He’s stoic, gentle, and a little naive, despite who he is, but he never tries to change anyone’s fate. He is responsible for maintaining the balance of nature, and every life must eventually end.Then Travis meets Dalia, a midwife, and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, who live across the hall, and despite his best attempts to keep his distance, he finds himself wholeheartedly embraced by other people for the first time. So it is with this seemingly unremarkable family that Travis begins to understand what it means to be truly alive—and what might be irrevocably lost in death.Written with radiant warmth, wisdom, and compassion, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt is a timeless and ultimately uplifting story about appreciating life, accepting its end, and finding our place in the universe—especially when it feels most impossible—that will resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost or worried about time’s passing. About the Author Ben Reeves lives in Peterborough, UK, with his wife and two children. An early draft of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt won the international 2024 Bath Novel Award. When he’s not writing, he paints, makes music, and works as a web designer for a book printing company.

    A Conversation with Ben Reeves
  3. Jul 25

    A Conversation with Tad Stoermer

    About the Event: Good Neighbor Bookstore presents a conversation with historian, Tad Stoermer. https://goodneighborbooks.com/book/9781586424367 About the Book:Revisit the Salem Witch Trials, the Underground Railroad, and other resistance movements of American history to get a bold new understanding of how resistance shaped our past—and how its principles can change our future. The United States was shaped by resistance—but not in the way we’ve been taught. The Revolution did not secure liberty; it opened the door to either liberty or oppression, where only white men enjoyed all of the benefits and protections of citizenship. In A Resistance History of the United States, public historian Tad Stoermer shows how from the very beginning, that tension—between the ideals of resistance and the realities of power—has defined America more than the Enlightenment ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Utililizing powerful storytelling to focus on key—and often lesser-known—moments in American history, this book reveals the truth of how resistance movements from Colonial times have opposed the powers that be. Stoermer covers an impressive roster of pivotal movements, with each chapter identifying a key resistance movement and principle meant to inspire contemporary readers, including: Bacon’s Rebellion/Metacomet’s War (1676)Salem Witch Trials (1692)The Black Loyalists (1783)The Underground Railroad (1850) Through these and many more examples, Stoermer dismantles the mythologies that pass for American history—exposing the curated nostalgia, moral evasions, and institutional silences that have long protected abusive power. What emerges is an essential look at how we can take lessons from the past to understand, and effectively respond to, the injustices we face today. About the Author:Tad Stoermer is a public historian who trained at the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard, with a particular focus on Colonial and Revolutionary America. He is also a former congressional staffer and speechwriter, and he served in the US Army and Reserves as a reconnaissance scout. He lives in Denmark.

    A Conversation with Tad Stoermer
  4. Apr 22

    Terrible Beauty: A Conversation w/ Auden Schendler (live in front of a studio audience)

    Buy the book: https://goodneighborbooks.com/book/9781647829759 Description A firsthand, trench-view story of the failure of the modern environmental movement--and an inspiring prescription for change. Something's gone badly awry with environmentalism. We faithfully separate our waste into different streams, but wonder whether it really makes a difference. Global companies announce their commitment to carbon negativity while simultaneously sponsoring oil conferences. American businesses, communities, and individuals assiduously measure their carbon footprints, then implement voluntary emissions-reduction programs, all while trumpeting their do-gooderism. The problem is, none of this--whether individual efforts or corporate sustainability tactics--will make a dent in solving the civilizational threat of climate change. We only pretend it will, at our peril. As sustainability veteran Auden Schendler argues in this provocative, powerful book, we're living a big green lie. The hard truth is that much of the modern environmental road map could have been written by the fossil fuel industry specifically to avoid disrupting the status quo. We have become somehow complicit. But there is another truth: while ineffective or duplicitous environmentalism has become standard practice, we all have friends and family we love and care about, whose future depends on solving the problem of climate change. Conscience tells us we have an obligation to repair the world. How can our common dreams be so at odds with our daily practice? And how might we meld our spirit and our passion to create a better future? Schendler meets this profound contradiction head-on--with a bracing critique, moving personal stories of parenthood and service, and innovative, real-world methods to tackle climate change at the corporate, community, and individual levels. Terrible Beauty is a unique and inspiring call for a new environmentalism, showing us that the key to saving the planet is to tap into our own humanity. Auden Schendler has spent twenty-five years running sustainability programs at Aspen One, focusing on clean-energy development, climate policy, advocacy, and activism. He publishes widely on climate change, parenting, and the outdoors and was named a "climate innovator" by Time magazine and a "climate saver" by the EPA. He is the author of the book Getting Green Done. He lives in Basalt, Colorado, with his wife and two children. About the Author

  5. 10/18/2025

    Wreck: A Conversation with Catherine Newman

    Pre-Order Here: https://goodneighborbooks.com/book/9780063453913Description“Wreck is a delight. What an absolute joy to be reunited with Rocky and her family, the characters we all fell in love with in Sandwich. Newman's prose is laugh-out-loud funny. It's also profound. I couldn't stop reading, even though I didn't want it to end.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs“Wreck is the kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep—equal parts hilarious, sharp, and achingly sincere. I didn’t just read it—I felt known by it. A luminous, laugh-out-loud triumph.”—Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding PeopleThe acclaimed bestselling author of Sandwich is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn’t go as planned.If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry—and relate.) Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky’s widowed father, has moved in.It all couldn’t be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them—and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won’t affect them at all.With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people—no matter how much you love them—are not always exactly who you want them to be.About the AuthorCatherine Newman is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, the kids’ craft book Stitch Camp, the best-selling how-to books for kids How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?, and the novels We All Want Impossible Things, Sandwich, and Wreck (forthcoming from HarperCollins). Her books have been translated into a dozen languages. She has been a regular contributor to the New York Times, Real Simple, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She writes Crone Sandwich on Substack and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

  6. 04/03/2025

    Hannah Pittard: If You Love It, Let It Kill You

    Place your pre-order today at goodneighborbooks.com and save 20% off, If You Love It, Let It Kill You Description A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of the YearA refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the twenty-first-century female experience, by the acclaimed writer Hannah PittardDivorced and childless by choice, Hana P. has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the university, living with her boyfriend (a fellow academic) and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. Her sister’s sprawling family lives just across the street, and their long-divorced, deeply complicated parents have also recently moved to town.One day, Hana learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently—and soon—in her ex-husband’s debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news—she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains—but the morning after baking mac ’n’ cheese from scratch for her nephew’s sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat, a visit to the dean’s office, a shadowy figure from the past, a Greek chorus of indignant students whose primary complaints concern Hana’s autofictional narrative, and a game called Dead Body.Steeped in the subtleties and strangeness of contemporary life, If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership, and artistic expression for readers of Miranda July’s All Fours and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend. Hannah Pittard is the author of the novels Listen to Me and The Fates Will Find Their Way. She is a winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a MacDowell fellow, and the Guy M. Davenport Professor in English at the University of Kentucky. She lives with her boyfriend and stepdaughter in Lexington. Much of her family lives nearby.

About

The Pre-Order Podcast, hosted by Bob Lingle of Good Neighbor Bookstore in Lakewood, NY highlights books that are coming out in the coming months.