Books

Strong Inside tells the story of the first black player in college basketball's Southeastern Conference. Wallace says the hard work of integration is "a gritty, dirty, ugly business."

Alan Cheuse reviews Sympathy for the Devil, Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal by Michael Mewshaw.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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.

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]."