A podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. Updates Mondays.
Overdue is a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. Join Andrew and Craig each week as they tackle a new title from their backlog. Classic literature, obscure plays, goofy murder mysteries: they'll read it all, one overdue book at a time.
What starts as a dismaying story about a wrongful conviction turns into a deep meditation on loyalty, marriage, and independence. Given the subject matter, you might expect a mystery or a courtroom drama. Instead, Jones offers up a moving account of a couple just trying to find a future that will have them.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
Our newest BSC member, Dawn, has a lot to juggle in her debut as a series protagonist. Her mom is dating Mary-Anne's dad. She's low-key feuding with Kristy, the BSC President. And she's been hired by a mother of three who just does NOT have her life together. What a trial by fire!
These episodes posted first for our Patreon supporters! If you want to hear the rest of them ahead of time (and a bunch of other stuff besides), visit Patreon.com/overduepod.
Here's the full Sit Me Baby One More Time reading list:
Kristy's Great Idea
Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls
The Truth about Stacey
Mary Anne Saves the Day
Dawn and the Impossible Three
Hello, Mallory
Jessi's Secret Language
Welcome to the BSC, Abby
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
A story about a young woman trapped in an underground prison with 39 other women sounds like it could be a stone cold bummer, and it isn’t not that. But this translated French novel from 1995 also hits some affirming, human notes, and it’s those aspects of it that help explain why it’s found new life via word of mouth and BookTok.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
Perhaps befittingly, Ann Patchett's fourth novel changed the trajectory of her career. The award-winning Bel Canto centers on 58 people (a combination of hostages and militants sequestered in an unnamed country), many of whom spend the time cut off from the outside world meditating on the paths their lives did and didn't take. Many welcome the opportunity to sit, reflect, grow, and change — all without the added pressure of the real world. But the tragedy, of course, is that they cannot keep the outside world at bay forever.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
Did you ever wonder why the name "Jeeves" has always been inseparable from the concept of "a very good butler"? It's because of these short stories (plus more short stories, plus several novels) by English novelist P.G. Wodehouse.
Hapless gadfly Bertie Wooster relies on his man Jeeves for just about everything, from clothing advice to getting his various dim-bulb friends out of money-related scrapes. And if they fight sometimes, that's OK, because Bertie always eventually realizes that Jeeves was right to be upset about whatever they were fighting about.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
Did you know that the classic 1997 slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer was actually based on a propulsive young adult thriller from 1973? Lois Duncan's original novel isn't too interested in bloody kills, however. It's more focused on how young people build their identities: around their regrets, around their parents, and around tragedies.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
Fresh off their victory over the Baby-Sitters Agency, the girls of the BSC turn on each other in this month's entry. Quiet Mary Anne has to get the group back together, negotiate with her well-meaning but strict single father, make and repair a new friendship, and engineer an unlikely meet-cute. And, of course, she needs to tend to some babysitting, including one job that will prove to be her toughest yet!
Here's the full Sit Me Baby One More Time reading list:
Kristy's Great Idea
Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls
The Truth about Stacey
Mary Anne Saves the Day
Dawn and the Impossible Three
Hello, Mallory
Jessi's Secret Language
Welcome to the BSC, Abby
These episodes posted first for our Patreon supporters. To hear our long-read project episodes when they first come out (or hear the rest of Sit Me Baby... right now), visit patreon.com/overduepod.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
An official offshoot of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure series, the Choose Your Own Nightmare books cropped up for a couple of years in the mid-90s, an (alleged) response to the popularity of our old friend RL Stine’s Goosebumps series. Stine’s somewhat longer-lived Give Yourself Goosebumps sub-series would launch just months after the first Choose Your Own Nightmare book, but it’s fun to read CYOA originator Edward Packard take a stab at something more explicitly spooky than the original series.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
Everybody loves our old friend Ray Bradbury! This time we’re taking a spin with his first short story collection Dark Carnival, a smattering of spooky tales that wound up scattered across a number of other collections throughout Bradbury’s career.
Stories discussed in this episode include:
The Small Assassin
The Dead Man
Skeleton
The Scythe
The Emissary
The Homecoming
Uncle Einar
The Lake
The Jar
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
A buzzy title that came to life thanks to BookTok but came to our attention because of a good-old bookstore shelf display, this week’s book (and the kickoff to Spooktober 2025) is what it says on the cover: it’s about monsters and also computers. If you didn’t associate either of these things with “found family,” then it’s also here to challenge some of your preconceived notions.
Support the show! Buy the book on Bookshop.org.
