A poem on the page has its appeal — but poetry spoken aloud is a more intimate experience. And a new crop of podcasts are expanding poetry, giving context to poems and drawing in new audiences.
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One in five Americans have some experience with mental illness every year — and these three new memoirs dig into that experience, whether it's the author's own illness or that of a loved one.
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Journalists David Wolman and Julian Smith chronicle the history of Hawaii's cattle trade and profile a number of "paniolos" — every bit as tenacious and resourceful as their mainland cohorts.
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The novelist, who died last week at 91, was often slammed by critics as a frivolous sex-and-shopping writer. But her luxuries were meticulously researched and her sex scenes gloriously shameless.
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Author Massoud Hayoun has Moroccan, Egyptian and Tunisian heritage — and is also Jewish. He weaves in his family history with the politics that shaped their lives, including European oppression.
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Mary Beth Keane's novel opens in 1973 New York and follows two rookie cops and their families over four decades. Her closely-observed domestic tale transforms into something deep and universal.
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The collection of 32 mostly previously published essays by New Yorker TV Critic Emily Nussbaum includes a new consideration of the question "What should we do with the art of terrible men?"
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Claire Lombardo's sweeping family drama — fueled by power plays between spouses and between sisters — is a wonderfully immersive read that packs more heart and heft than most first novels.
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Elin Hilderbrand — known as the "Queen of Summer" — is back with another beachy tale of family secrets and intrigue (and tasty period details), set on Nantucket during the turbulent summer of 1969.
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NPR's new kids' fiction column — by Juanita Giles, founder of the Virginia Children's Book Festival — kicks off with an explanation of why the epic poem Beowulf is the perfect bathtime read.
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Richard Kadrey — known for his Sandman Slim series of supernatural noirs — reinvents himself in grand fashion with The Grand Dark, a diesel-punk fantasy set in a simulacrum of Weimar Germany.
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This debut story collection from Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of the TV show BoJack Horseman, has some excellent, risk-taking work in it — but stumbles sometimes over its higher concepts.
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Craig Laurance Gidney's debut adult novel is set in a marshy, mysterious rural town where a community of artists, students and townspeople are united by visions of a strange, pinkish-purple color.
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The new edition is in some ways like the retelling of a familiar tale for a new generation; but parts of the discussion that the book first inspired have moved beyond what an update can encompass.
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The pseudonymous Reed King's new novel is a loopy, violent, funny Technicolor road trip across a post-apocalyptic America. There are robots, talking goats, and even the occasional lone songbird.
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Mark Haddon's new novel uses Shakespeare's Pericles and its founding myth of the villainous king Antiochus to explore aberrant family relationships, loss, depression, judgment and cowardice.
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From Nazis and narcos to mistresses and mysterious ship wrecks, Ellroy's This Storm and Mina's Conviction offer plot twists and zig-zags that take readers on a wild ride.
Daniel Brook has written a book that goes a long way to injecting thoughtfulness into popular notions of the history of race and racism in America, but doesn't delve far enough into class conflict.
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut novel seems like a Portnoy-esque tale of a lovable lout, but halfway through, the story shakes itself up and reorients itself in a completely different direction.
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This month, we've got love stories about teenage girls who pull patriarchy-smashing pranks, a realistic discussion of female biology and a story about learning how to be your own Tom Hanks.
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