Tom Beer and Michael Schaub return for our annual literary gabfest.

Happy New Year, listeners! On this special episode, we’re celebrating another wonderful year of Fully Booked with editor-in-chief Tom Beer and contributing writer Michael Schaub. First up, we revisit some of the weirdest, wackiest book news of 2025, followed by the unveiling of the year’s most popular episode.

Seen & Heard columnist Schaub leads our look back at 2025’s most curious collaborations, ribald rivalries, and hilarious hijinks. From bestselling author and New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s turn as a J. Crew model to journalist Marco Buscaglia’s AI-assisted Chicago Sun-Times summer reading roundup, which contained a bevy of books that don’t actually exist.

Then we announce the year’s most popular episode, featuring…V.E. Schwab! The No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of the Shades of Magic series, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and The Fragile Threads of Power, joined us on our first ever Science Fiction and Fantasy episode in June to discuss Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (Tor, June 10). Kirkus calls Schwab’s dreamy vampiric saga a “beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop” (starred review). She shares why she signed every copy of the first edition (all 300,000), queer identity and vampirism, female rage, immortality, braided narratives, and much more.

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Fighting Bullies by William T. Reid, IV

Harlo by Brian Petersen

Bailing Out by Leonard Ruhl

The Nameless Dead by Leta Serafim 

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.