Between the Lines

A conversation about why the supernatural has fascinated people in every century and every culture — and why that fascination returns each fall as the nights grow longer and All Hallows’ Eve approaches. With ghost walks underway across Baltimore, Sharon explores what our ghost stories reveal about grief, memory, and the human need to believe that something of us remains.

She also shares the research behind her novels — the hours spent in centuries-old cemeteries, walking the ground her characters walked and reading the stones that hold their stories. The conversation closes with The Grays of Truth, her award-winning murder mystery drawn from true events in Reconstruction-era Baltimore, where an Edgar Allan Poe thread winds from West Point into the heart of the case.

A recent Atlantic cover story put a startling number on something many of us have felt: reading for pleasure in America has fallen more than 40% in just two decades. Bestselling historical fiction author Sharon Virts read that piece, found it heartbreaking, and decided to do something about it.

She joins us to talk about what we lose when we stop reading, what books give us that movies and television can't, and how joining a book club — including her own #ReadWithSharon — can be the easiest and most joyful way to rediscover the habit.