Connect with a community of book lovers on our quest for the next best read.
Our Story
Hello and welcome to The Book Swap Podcast, co-hosted by Cassandra Berger and Liza Hamm. In 2024, we met at The Cosmopolitan Club, a social club in New York City. We’re both avid readers, so we volunteered to work on the Library Committee (yes, we know, very sexy stuff!) We got to lead book club discussions, interview award-winning authors, and help choose brand new books for the club’s beautiful library. Cassandra was a lawyer, then a stay-at-home mom, and now an empty nester. Liza had a busy career as a journalist at People magazine for 17 years and later explored the burgeoning new world of podcasts. We were both looking for a new adventure and bonded over the idea of transforming a love of reading into a podcast dedicated to books, writers, and a community of readers.
Season One: Hidden Gems
This season, we are focusing on underrated fiction that we believe deserves more readers. Have you ever noticed how only a few books often get all the hype? Sometimes the buzz makes total sense, but other times… they just got lucky while other very worthy novels struggle to get any publicity and end up sitting on the bookshelf.
Our goal is to uncover these hidden gems, so we launched Operation Book Swap and asked friends, family members, and even some bookstore employees to tell us their favorite book that no one else has read—or even heard about. We received over 100 recommendations. (Yes, we have been very busy reading.) Each week, we will post one spoiler-free episode featuring a main novel that we both loved. And that book selection inspires the two of us (and some guests) to share what we’re calling B-Side Books - similarly-themed stories. We hope you will discover some new favorites, too.
Join our Listener Community:
Hey, we’d love to hear from you!
Do you have a favorite hidden gem? Love an up-and-coming author or an unsung writer? Share with our book swapping community!