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Lauren Sandler’s new book, “This Is All I Got,” follows one year in the life of Camila, a young homeless mother in New York City. The narrative follows closely along Camila’s path, but Sandler wrote it with the intention of saying something larger about the homeless crisis in New York and the entire country.

“This book was actually reported during the Obama era,” Sandler says on this week’s podcast. “It’s been a very interesting experience to report this book and write it through these rolling phases of America. I wrote this book imagining a Hillary Clinton-era readership, and then there was a Trump-era readership instead. I wrote this book imagining it was going to be released into a time of unprecedented prosperity. It was a book to shake people by their lapels and say: ‘Listen, this isn’t a luxury boom for everyone.’ And instead it’s come out into a moment when, in the past six weeks, over 20 million people have just lost their jobs. So it’s been a bizarrely prescient experience.”

Sarah Weinman visits the podcast this week to discuss her roundup of audiobooks of mysteries that have stood the test of time. She also talks about the history of crime fiction, and how she can still be surprised by twists and turns even after her voluminous reading in the genre.

“That’s one of the ways in which I know that a book really works for me, is that it does prompt that element of surprise, even if I might think I know where it’s going,” Weinman says. “To have that force, that jolt, it’s still thrilling.”

Also on this week’s episode, Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; and Tina Jordan and John Williams talk about what people are reading. Pamela Paul is the host.

Here are the books discussed in this week’s “What We’re Reading”:

• “The Saturdays” by Elizabeth Enright

• “Citizens” by Simon Schama

• “Every Song Ever” by Ben Ratliff

• “The Cook” by Maylis de Kerangal

• “The Heart” by Maylis de Kerangal

• “Dropped Names” by Frank Langella

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.