Emily Bitto's new novel is set in the overheated avant-garde art scene of Depression-era Melbourne, where two girls — conventional Lily and sharp-tongued, exotic Eva — form a complicated bond.
(Image credit: Claire Harbage/NPR)
Emily Fridlund's electrifying debut novel History of Wolves is a contemporary coming-of-age story about a young woman — but it avoids the familiar story arc so common to other novels in that genre.
(Image credit: )
A new wave of romance novels features brainy heroines in science, technology, engineering and math — and the prejudices and obstacles they face on their way to a satisfying happy-ever-after.
(Image credit: )
Small publishers and big indie powerhouses alike showcased international voices this year — we pick out a few of our favorites, from a bitter marriage drama to the memoirs of a polar bear family.
(Image credit: )
Small publishers and big indie powerhouses alike showcased international voices this year — we pick out a few of our favorites, from a bitter marriage drama to the memoirs of a polar bear family.
(Image credit: )
Books make great last minute gift ideas. Here are a few tips for book shoppers with voids still to fill, helped by NPR's Book Concierge.
Poetry critic Tess Taylor reviews House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson.
Fantagraphics is the publisher that brought literary respectability to comics. Their mammoth 40th anniversary volume, We Told You So, tends towards self-congratulation — but deservedly so.
(Image credit: )
Every year, Fresh Air critic John Powers is haunted by all the terrific things he didn't get a chance to talk about on air. As 2016 winds down, he "un-haunts" himself with these six recommendations.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Turner)
In a new book, journalist and author John Pomfret tackles a relationship that stretches back to America's earliest years and is now more important — and challenging — than ever.
This new anthology of science fiction and fantasy, edited by Hassan Blasim, imagines Iraq 100 years after the invasion of 2003. Harrowing, necessary, often beautiful, it resists comfort and catharsis.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan says that if there's one word that characterizes her list this year, it's "serious." These books certainly aren't grim or dull, but they take on big, difficult subjects.
Dava Sobel's new book is a history of the unheralded women — called computers, rather than astronomers — who worked at the Harvard College Observatory, studying, cataloging and classifying stars.
Critic John Powers discusses the Italian documentary, Fire at Sea, and the novel, These Are the Names. The works take very different — but nonetheless poignant — approaches to the refugee situation.
Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's splendidly trippy, genderbent retelling of the Odyssey sets the story in space, as warlike Odyssia, "witchjack and wanderer" winds her way home to far Ithicaa.
Jason Diamond tried to write a biography of John Hughes, director of classic '80s teen movies, but along the way, the story became more about his search for Hughes than the elusive filmmaker himself.
Marianne Kirby's new novel is set in an America overrun by zombies — and also an America in which no one is judged on their appearance; her protagonist is fat and queer, and never hindered by that.
Chabon's new novel is a collection of stories in which a dying grandfather tells the secrets of his life to his grandson. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Moonglow "violent and very funny."
Audrey Coulthurst's tale of a princess who falls in love with her intended prince's sister will remind you of fantasy novels you loved as a child — all teen angst, horses and reluctant love.
Moonglow is a playful, fictional take on the family memoir. Set in 1990, it stars young author "Mike" Chabon, who's visiting his dying grandfather. Grandpa, it turns out, has led a remarkable life.
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
