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Jeffrey Eugenides' 'Fresh Complaint' Makes For Absorbing Fiction

10:00am October 03, 2017

by Heller McAlpin

While they tend towards traditional rather than edgy, the stories in Fresh Complaint will remind readers what they like about Eugenides' writing: His sensitivity and compassion for flawed people.

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'Mental,' 'Gorilla And The Bird': Two Starkly Different Accounts Of Bipolar Disorder

7:01am October 03, 2017

by Glen Weldon

Both books vividly capture the dizzying highs of mania and the shattering lows of depression that mark the disease. Mental's approach is comprehensive, Gorilla and the Bird's more intimate.

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Arts

James McBride Says Fiction Writing Allows Him More Freedom

4:37pm October 02, 2017

by Michel Martin

Journalist, writer and musician James McBride discusses his collection of short stories, Five-Carat Soul, his first work of fiction since winning the 2013 National Book Award for The Good Lord Bird.

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Going into Town includes a section on New York City's infamous water bugs, which are even bigger than cockroaches.

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Cartoonist Roz Chast Draws A 'Love Letter' To New York City, Cockroaches And All

3:00pm October 02, 2017

by Terry Gross

The New Yorker cartoonist channels her affection for the city into a new tongue-in-cheek guidebook, Going Into Town. "It's just fun," Chast says of New York. "Everything seems to suggest stories."

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Arts

How An Epic Poem Helped Transform A Difficult Father-Son Relationship

2:34pm October 02, 2017

Author David Mendelsohn says having his 81-year-old father in the college seminar he was teaching on Homer's Odyssey led to an unexpected bonding.

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Maureen Scalia holds one of her favorite photos of her and her husband, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in their home in Virginia.

Antonin Scalia's Less Well-Known Legacy: His Speeches

10:08am October 02, 2017

by Nina Totenberg

Scalia Speaks is an anthology of the late justice's speeches on everything from the arts, turkey hunting, games and sports, faith and judging — and even the "Italian view of the Irish."

Fitting Memphis Into The Southern Narrative

8:09am October 01, 2017

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to writer and sociologist Zandria Robinson about the racial tensions that still exist in Memphis.

Pussy Riot's Masha Alyokhina Recounts Time In Prison In 'Riot Days'

8:09am October 01, 2017

Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with Masha Alyokhina, a member of the band Pussy Riot, who was sentenced to two years in prison after playing a protest song in a Moscow cathedral in 2012.

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Arts

Jeffrey Eugenides Calls Short Stories 'Maddening' — And Now He Has A Collection

8:09am October 01, 2017

by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

"You get it going and then you have to shut it down," Eugenides says. "And I am a novelist by inclination." His new short story collection is called Fresh Complaint.

The Language of Thorns, by Leigh Bardugo

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Arts

'The Language Of Thorns' Will Ensnare You With Dark Magic

7:00am October 01, 2017

by Jason Sheehan

Leigh Bardugo's new The Language of Thorns is a collection of fairy tales set in the world of her Grishaverse books — a world of dangerous magic where happy endings may just involve minimal murder.