Book Review: 'Sympathy For The Devil' By Michael Mewshaw
Alan Cheuse reviews Sympathy for the Devil, Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal by Michael Mewshaw.
Books
'Girl On The Train' Pays Homage To Hitchcock
Paula Hawkins' gripping new thriller begins with bitter, dissolute Rachel, who sees what she believes to be a perfect couple, every morning on the train to work — and then one day, the wife is gone.
Author Robert Stone, Known For 'Dog Soldiers,' Dies At 77
National Book Award-winning author Robert Stone was on the fringes of the utopian counterculture of the 1960s — but he preferred to write about what happened when that dream went sour.
There's Nothing Sketchy About This 'Outline'
Reviewer Heller McAlpin says Rachel Cusk, known for her lacerating memoirs, begins to bring her fiction and nonfiction closer together in Outline, an "impressive deepening" of her work.
Miranda July Balances Weirdness And Reality In Debut Novel
The director and artist says one of the challenges of writing The First Bad Man was shaping her main character's odd psyche. Then, she says, she realized, "I can always take it back if it's too much."
After Silence, An 'Outline' Of A Life In Fragments
Rachel Cusk's new novel Outline reflects the fragmentation of her own life in the story of a writer coming to terms with her dissolving marriage while on a summer teaching trip to Greece.
This Weekend, Visit San Francisco's Famed Forbidden City In 'China Dolls'
In this installment of Weekend Reads, Jean Kwok recommends Lisa See's novel China Dolls, about the unlikely friendship formed by three young women on vaudeville's all-Asian "Chop Suey Circuit."
'Blood Of The Tiger': Shedding Light On China's Farmed-Tiger Trade
The endangered animals are bred for luxury items, like tiger bone wine and tigerskin rugs. By raising the demand for these goods, the farms pose a threat to wild tigers, says author J.A. Mills.
Australian Cyberthriller 'Amnesia' Echoes Julian Assange Story
Peter Carey's novel opens as a hacker's computer virus is unlocking prison cells around the world. He says, "Assange was the reason I started writing the book, but I didn't want to write about [him]."
NPR Bestsellers: Week Of January 8, 2015
The lists are compiled from weekly surveys of close to 500 independent bookstores nationwide.