Karl Ove Knausgaard — famed for his epic memoir My Struggle -- goes for short and sweet in Autumn, a meditative seasonal reflection. But while there are lovely moments, the book strays into banality.
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The 1950 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame was adapted from a lesser-known 1947 novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, who belongs in the crime-writing pantheon. The novel's just been re-released.
Anne Gisleson was reeling from a series of family tragedies when she began meeting with friends to discuss books and life in post-Katrina New Orleans. Her new book chronicles a year of those meetings.
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Bruce Handy's new book takes an emotional, intuitive look at the world of children's books, from Goodnight Moon to Charlotte's Web, which he calls "a mastery novel of ideas" about life and death.
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N.K. Jemisin won Hugo Awards for the first two volumes of her Broken Earth trilogy. The Stone Sky is a powerful, timely finale to this story of a world built on oppression and exploitation.
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The stories in Jenny Zhang's powerful debut collection center on the violent, sometimes disturbing experiences of young Chinese-American girls growing up in Queens, NY.
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Sex is such an inextricable part of pop music, it's easy to overlook, but NPR Music critic Ann Powers rectifies that in her new book, a portrait of America's obsession with sex as it manifests in pop.
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The lazy days of August call for getaway reading, so we've got three romances that'll take you from old China to the small-town South, featuring couples who learn love is closer than they think.
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Camille Bordas keeps things light in her smart, charming new novel, but there are serious underpinnings to this story about the youngest member of a family of quirky, emotionally closed overachievers.
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Kamila Shamsie's new book — beautifully written and paced — updates the ancient story of Antigone to tell an explosive story of two families tangled together by love, grief and religious radicalism.
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Campbell's second collection of rants and ruminations is just as enjoyably smarmy as his first, though the actor's ruthlessly sardonic outlook has mellowed.
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Benjamin Rachlin's crisply-written new book tells the story of Willie Grimes, who spent 24 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit — and the tortuous legal struggle that eventually freed him.
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A former Paris bureau chief for Time, Tom Sancton is the perfect chronicler of l'affaire Bettencourt — the juicy swirl of scandal, bribery and dark doings that fascinated France for a decade.
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Philosophy professor and avid surfer Aaron James brings his two passions together in his new book, drawing connections between the surfer's state of mind and age-old philosophical conundrums.
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Laura Shapiro has likened her method of biographical research to "standing in line at the supermarket and peering into the other carts." Critic Maureen Corrigan says her resulting book is fascinating.
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Tom Perrotta's new novel about a divorced mom and her college-aged son addresses some serious issues with dark humor. The result is uncompromisingly obscene, but still somehow good-natured.
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As an adult, the Colombian painter Emma Reyes lived in Paris and befriended Frida Kahlo. But in a series of autobiographical letters, she describes a childhood of grinding misery and poverty.
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The GOP has "given into the politics of anger—the belief that riling up the base can make up for failed attempts to broaden the electorate," the senator says. "These are the spasms of a dying party."
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NPR's Ron Elving reviews a massive new tome on the life of Edwin Stanton, certainly one of the most contentious and controversial figures in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet of rivals.
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Kathleen Barber's debut novel is an on-trend mashup of murder, social media and Serial-style true-crime podcasting, but though well paced, it suffers from thin characters and a lack of context.
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