Before Eric Ripert worked in Michelin-starred restaurants, he struggled to make a simple hollandaise sauce. He talks to NPR's Scott Simon about his new memoir, "32 Yolks."
Sebastian Junger's new book, "Tribe," looks at soldiers returning home from war. He tells NPR's Scott Simon that veterans often don't feel like they belong to the society they fought for.
Young adult author Robin Wasserman's new novel is definitely just for grown-ups — it's a tangled, thrilling story of two friends gone very wrong; hard to put down, with a twist you won't see coming.
Philip Gelb once toured with top musicians. Now he's a chef who hosts intimate dinner parties where the entertainment, by innovative world musicians, is as experimental as the ever-changing fare.
Pamela Erens' new novel takes place in the maternity ward of a New York hospital as a pregnant nurse assists in another woman's labor. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a fierce read.
Rivka Galchen's meditation on motherhood is wry, low-key and non-linear, inspired by the 11th-century Japanese classic The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon — and the sleep-deprived brains of new parents.
Jennifer Mason-Black's new novel has echoes of TheOdyssey. It follows a young musician who makes a deal with a devil at the crossroads: her voice, in exchange for a way to find her missing sister.
Herta Müller's remarkable novel tells the story of a young schoolteacher who becomes convinced, through gruesome clues, that the Romanian dictator's secret police are closing in on her.
Nguyen and his family fled their village in South Vietnam in 1975. He won the Pulitzer Prize this year for The Sympathizer, a spy novel set during and just after the war in Vietnam.
Jill Lepore digs into the story of Joe Gould, a legendary Greenwich Village writer and eccentric — and discovers that his missing magnum opus, long thought imaginary, may actually have existed.