Kirkus’ Best Books of 2022 are here! Every year our editors take on the tall task of selecting the top 100 titles in fiction, nonfiction, picture books, middle grade, and YA from thousands of industry-first reviews. In celebration of their hard work, over the next five weeks Fully Booked will feature one author from each of our Best Books lists, followed by a special conversation with that section’s editor. First up is fiction, followed by nonfiction (Nov. 22), children’s books (Nov. 29), middle grade (Dec. 6), and YA (Dec. 13).

On our inaugural Best Books episode, Julia May Jonas discusses Vladimir (Avid Reader Press, Feb. 1), one of Kirkus’ Best Books of 2022. Here’s a bit from our starred review of Jonas’ blistering novel: “When her husband is accused of sexual misconduct on campus, an English professor is overcome by scandalous drives of her own.…Like the man she shackles to a chair in the prologue, once this narrator has you, she won’t let go. A remarkable debut.”

Jonas and host Megan Labrise discuss Jonas’ “wonderful and surprising and exciting” publication year; the play as a durational form; the rules for a good novel; how reading can be like a drug; the aesthetic and material conditions of Vladimir’s unnamed narrator; how to get readers to turn the page; desire and disruption; Jonas’ year in reading; reading as religion; and much more.

You can listen to new episodes of Fully Booked every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or at kirkusreviews.com/podcast.