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After Crashing In Canadian 'Abyss,' Four Men Fight To Survive

11:13am May 21, 2013

by NPR Staff

On an icy night in 1984, a commuter plane crashed in the wilderness. Six passengers died, but four survived: the pilot, a politician, a policeman and a prisoner. Carol Shaben's Into the Abyss describes their fight to make it through that frigid night alive.

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Three-Minute Fiction: 'Ten Ring Fingers' And 'Ghost Words'

6:18pm May 19, 2013

NPR's Bob Mondello and Susan Stamberg read excerpts of two of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. They read Ten Ring Fingers by Tamara Breuer of Washington, D.C., and Ghost Words by Matheus Macedo of Winthrop, Mass.

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Unacceptable Anger From 'The Woman Upstairs'

6:18pm May 19, 2013

by NPR Staff

"Women's anger is very scary to people," author Claire Messud says. Her new novel, The Woman Upstairs, features a seething main character, a young woman whose anger is unsettling.

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Decades Later And Across An Ocean, A Novel Gets Its Due

6:18pm May 19, 2013

by NPR Staff

John Williams' Stoner sold just 2,000 copies when it was originally published in 1965. It's now acknowledged as a classic work, is a best-seller across Europe and the No. 1 novel in the Netherlands.

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Three-Minute Fiction Reading: 'Plum Baby'

7:47pm May 18, 2013

NPR's Susan Stamberg reads an excerpt of one of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. She reads Plum Baby by Carmiel Banasky of Portland, Ore.

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'Waiting To Be Heard' No More, Amanda Knox Speaks Out

7:47pm May 18, 2013

by NPR Staff

Less than two months into her study abroad program in Italy, Amanda Knox was accused and eventually convicted of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher. After her conviction was overturned, Knox returned home to Seattle — and now faces a potential retrial. Knox tells her story in a new memoir.

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Karen Russell's debut novel, Swamplandia! was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2012. Her most recent work is a collection of short stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

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Three-Minute Fiction Round 11: Finders Keepers

6:30am May 18, 2013

by NPR Staff

For this round of our short story contest, write a piece of original fiction in which a character finds something he or she has no intention of returning.

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Insects May Be The Taste Of The Next Generation, Report Says

11:23am May 17, 2013

A report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says insects offer a huge potential for improving the world's food security. Peter Menzel, co-author of Man Eating Bugs, describes some insect-based cuisine and the western aversion to creepy-crawly snacks.

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Resetting the Theory of Time

11:23am May 17, 2013

Generations of physicists have claimed that time is an illusion. But not all agree. In his book Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that time exists--and he says time is key to understanding the evolution of the universe.

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Coming To 'Americanah': Two Tales Of Immigrant Experience

2:34pm May 15, 2013

by Maureen Corrigan

The new book from Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a knockout of a novel about immigration that transcends genre. It's everything from a coming-of-age novel to a romance to a comic novel of social manners to an up-to-the-minute meditation on race.

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