New Books Network

Groundbreaking discoveries in reproductive biology and regenerative medicine are reshaping our ideas of conception, fertility, and the origins of disease. In Embryo: The Science of Becoming Human (Prometheus, 2026), world-leading developmental biologist Alfonso Martinez Arias traces the embryo's formation over its first fifty days while exploring how new technologies are changing how we view our origins, ourselves, and our future. The events that shape our lives happen in secret, inside our mother’s wombs, but Martinez Arias’s research with stem cells has laid them all out in the open. His work has shown that during the first fifty days after conception, a blueprint is created through a conversation between genes and cells in which the cells, not the genes, dictate what happens next. Many diseases have their origins during these early days and research has opened the door to their cure. But it has also opened a Pandora’s box of ethical questions associated with whether we should allow the genetic modification of embryos, or what would happen if we are to create a human being in the laboratory. What exactly are we doing? How far should we take this research? Beyond establishing new paths for the study of human development, Martinez Arias is also a vocal advocate on the need to address outstanding issues of the ethical and legal aspects of human embryology. This brilliant and breath-taking book tackles these existential questions by revealing the cutting-edge developments happening at the frontier of development biology, from In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and artificial wombs to the impact of stem cells, three-parent babies, CRISPR, and the potential for lab-grown embryos. Embryo tells the story that raises these urgent questions and looks into a future that a few years ago would have sounded like science fiction. It is a definitive account of the state-of-the-art in our understanding of the earliest stages of our existence, brought to life through vivid stories blending scientific discovery, history, and real people.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Since the arrival of Columbus, thousands of perpetrators have gotten away with murder, burying evidence of their crimes in police reports and court testimony. How Settlers Get Away with Murder: The Killing of Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit People in the Americas (Beacon, 2026) unearths that hidden evidence to expose the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people (MMIW2S).

Historian and citizen of Cherokee Nation Liza Black examines five cases in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, from 1908 to 2017. Rejecting narratives that blame victims’ poverty or trauma, Dr. Black dissects police files, coroners’ reports, and court records to uncover a harsh historical reality: The evidence of settler violence has been hiding in plain sight.

This landmark work delivers a damning verdict: The same systems of law and policing that have targeted Native people for centuries have also shielded their killers. Through meticulous archival interrogation, Dr. Black demonstrates how police, courts, and coroners have functioned not as instruments of justice but as pillars of a system designed to protect settler violence.
Guest: Dr. Liza Black is a historian who employs forensic archival methods within 19th and 20th century North America. As a 2024–25 Racial Justice Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, she excavated institutional and state-sanctioned archives to trace asymmetrical sovereignty. Her research there resulted in How Settlers Get Away with Murder: The Killing of Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit People in the Americas (Beacon, 2026).
Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an experienced writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore the stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.
Playlist for listeners:
Whiskey Tender
A Calm and Normal Heart
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
Night of the Living Rez
The Diné Reader
Living Resistance
Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Reframing Dynamism: Indic Philosophies of Being, Time and Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2026), the first book to explore the philosophy of dynamism from classical India, Sthaneshwar Timalsina interrogates central metaphysical questions about the nature of reality.

Timalsina argues for change and time as intrinsic to being. Exploring instances from Yaska to Abhinavagupta, and reading philosophical and cultural texts in a comparative light, he reveals the absolute being as inherently dynamic. Alongside Bergson and Husserl, his study directs attention to the importance of the arguments of classical Sanskrit grammarians such as Yaska, Bhartthari, and Kauna Bhatta.

By engaging with schools and other Sakta philosophies that have not received serious engagement, Timalsina reinvigorates the conversation on creativity, freedom, dynamism, temporality, and the dynamism of being. His cutting-edge view of time as a fundamental element of reality is necessary reading for scholars of classical Sanskrit traditions, consciousness and the philosophy of life.

Vimarsha Foundation website

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The experience of illness is a universal and substantial part of human existence. Like death, illness raises important philosophical issues. But unlike death, illness, and in particular the experience of being ill, has received little philosophical attention. This may be because illness is often understood as a physiological process that falls within the domain of medical science and is thus outside the purview of philosophy. In Phenomenology of Illness (Oxford UP, 2016) Havi Carel argues that the experience of illness has been wrongly neglected by philosophers and proposes to fill the lacuna. Phenomenology of Illness provides a distinctively philosophical account of illness. Using phenomenology, the philosophical method for first-person investigation, Carel explores how illness modifies the ill person's body, values, and world. The aim of Phenomenology of Illness is twofold: to contribute to the understanding of illness through the use of philosophy and to demonstrate the importance of illness for philosophy. Contra the philosophical tendency to resist thinking about illness, Carel proposes that illness is a philosophical tool. Through its pathologising effect, illness distances the ill person from taken for granted routines and habits and reveals aspects of human existence that normally go unnoticed. Phenomenology of Illness develops a phenomenological framework for illness and a systematic understanding of illness as a philosophical tool.
Havi Carel is professor at the University of Bristol where she teaches in both the philosophy department and the Bristol medical School. Broadly, Havi’s research comes under the umbrella term Medical Humanities, and specifically for Havi this includes the philosophy of medicine, the phenomenology of illness, the philosophy of death, epistemic injustice, the philosophy of children’s health, and the philosophy of film.
Dr. Anya Daly is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics in the School of Arts and Society, University of Tasmania. Interdisciplinary collaborations are at the core of Anya’s research interests. She investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of psychiatry, embodied and social cognition, enactivism, ethics, aesthetics and Buddhist Philosophy.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Eve Christie about her Cross Out Club series (Penguin Random House, 2026): British Manor Murder Mystery Puzzle, A Montana Ranch Murder Mystery Puzzle, and A Capri Cruise Murder Mystery Puzzle. This series is an exciting screen-free adventure for mystery lovers.
Combining logic grids, hidden-object discovery and immersive storytelling, Cross Out Club transforms readers into detectives in a one-of-a-kind murder mystery experience. Following the breakout success of the Murdle series and the growing appetite for interactive puzzle books, Cross Out Club offers a richer, more immersive deduction challenge for mystery lovers.
Cross Out Club turns the classic whodunit into an interactive puzzle experience. Rather than simply asking readers to identify the killer, each book challenges them to determine who committed the murder, how it was done, and where it took place. Working through fictional ledgers and logbooks containing 50,000 names, readers follow ten clues, search for five possible murder weapons and five potential crime scenes, and uncover three hidden leads before piecing together the entire case.
In A British Manor Murder Mystery Puzzle, wealthy aristocrat Arthur Ashcroft announces a surprising change to his will during a lavish Midsummer party at his country estate—and is dead by morning. His estate ledger becomes the evidence in a mystery filled with inheritance, suspicious guests, and golden-age atmosphere.
In A Montana Ranch Murder Mystery Puzzle, legendary cattleman Cole Cassidy is killed only hours before he is due to testify at a public hearing that could determine the future of his ranch, bringing Western noir and a bitter land dispute into the puzzle.
A Capri Cruise Murder Mystery Puzzle raises the stakes at sea. During the annual voyage to Capri aboard The Grand Empress, Captain Calvin Cross witnesses a passenger being pushed overboard. Before he can reveal what he saw, he becomes the next victim, leaving readers to use his logbooks to solve two murders and identify the single killer behind them.
Eve Christie is the creator of the Cross Out Club series of interactive murder mystery puzzle books. Born in Northampton, England, she grew up loving classic whodunits, inspired by evenings watching Murder, She Wrote with her mum. For more than twenty years, Christie has worked in consumer product development across toys, games, and publishing, creating products designed to entertain, engage, and challenge audiences. She brings that experience together with her passion for mystery fiction in Cross Out Club, combining deduction, logic puzzles, and immersive storytelling. She lives in Toronto.
Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.