Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. It's a simple bummer of a fact that sometimes

families just don't stick together. Sometimes it's because of a big explosive blowup where someone

says something or does something they can't ever take back. Other times it's more boring. You know, a kid leaves home to go to college or something

and people call fewer and fewer times

until that thread of connection gets pretty thin.

In a bit, we'll hear about a family dealing with the latter

from a Titan of Family Literary Fiction, and Tyler.

But first, Pung Shepard's new thriller,

the cartographers, focuses on

Nell, who's been estranged from her father for seven years. The only remaining connection between

them is that they're both cartographers. And when he turns up dead, sure, the thrust of any

thriller is the whodunits and the wise of the matter. But as Shepard tells the NPR's

Alyssa Nadwarnie, the book is also about their shared obsessions and really finding out

what they're a stand-in for. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

A cartographer at the New York Public Library is found dead in his office. No one suspects

murder, but then his daughter, Nell, finds something hidden in a secret compartment of his desk.

Why would one of the world's most respected cartographers save a cheap, mass-produced gas station

highway map? The cartographers is the latest thriller from-produced gas station highway map.

The cartographers is the latest thriller from Pung Shepard, who also wrote The Book of M.

...