If you remember your grade school English lessons, then you know that “man vs. nature” is one of the standby plotlines for storytellers, from “To Build a Fire” to “The Martian.” For readers, the appeal of such stories often lies in the “nature” side of that equation: The more daunting the conditions, the more fun it is to read about the hero’s attempt to survive them. Cue “Whalefall,” Daniel Kraus’s gripping new thriller, in which a teenage scuba diver is inadvertently swallowed alive by a 60-ton sperm whale. Sarah Lyall reviewed the book on our cover recently, and on this week’s podcast she discusses its somewhat disgusting charms with the host Gilbert Cruz. “There’s a lot of viscera and gore and gunk and gelatinous things in this book,” Lyall says. “He’s in a gelatinous sea of crud, and the question is, Can he get out?”Also in this episode, Joumana Khatib takes a look at some of the other August books we’re most excited about.

---

Persons: ” Daniel Kraus’s, Sarah Lyall, Gilbert Cruz, “, ” Lyall, Joumana Khatib