Book News & Features

Admirers ask Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- seated alongside his wife, Mercedes Barcha -- to sign books in Santa Marta, Colombia, in 2007.

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Writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Who Gave Voice To Latin America, Dies

8:06pm April 17, 2014

by Mandalit del Barco

The master of magic realism was the region's best-known writer. His novels were filled with miraculous events and characters; love and madness; wars, dreams and death. He died Thursday at 87.

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A Sheep Killer Is On The Loose In 'All the Birds, Singing'

1:26pm April 12, 2014

All The Birds, Singing is the second novel by Australian-British author Evie Wyld. NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Wyld about her sinister story revolving around the life of Jake, a sheep farmer.

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In 1917, the Harlem Hellfighters were first sent to train at Camp Whitman near Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

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The Harlem Hellfighters: Fighting Racism In The Trenches Of WWI

7:58pm April 01, 2014

by Hansi Lo Wang

The Harlem Hellfighters broke barriers as the first African-American infantry unit to fight in World War I. Their story is retold in a new graphic novel written by Max Brooks, author of World War Z.

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It Was The Best Of Sentences ...

2:41pm March 27, 2014

by NPR Staff

Editors at The American Scholar magazine picked the 10 best sentences from fiction and nonfiction, with authors ranging from Toni Morrison to James Joyce.

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Martin Luther King Jr., shown here with Stokely Carmichael during a voter registration march in Mississippi in 1966, regarded the younger Carmichael as one of the civil rights movement's most promising leaders.

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Stokely Carmichael, A Philosopher Behind The Black Power Movement

12:26pm March 10, 2014

by Karen Grigsby Bates

A new biography traces Carmichael's evolution from civil rights activist to an early proponent of the black power movement and international human rights advocate.

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Publisher Releases Lullabies From 'Goodnight Moon' Author

11:39am March 07, 2014

Goodnight Songs is a compilation of formerly unpublished lullabies and poems by the author of Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown. Linda Wertheimer talks to Amy Gary, who discovered the new material.

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'The Natural' Of 1952 Holds Lessons For Today's MLB

3:43pm February 26, 2014

A new edition of Bernard Malamud's classic baseball story, The Natural, was just released. NPR's Scott Simon talks to Howard Bryant of ESPN about how the 1952 novel is more relevant than ever.

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Remembering Activist Poet Amiri Baraka

9:02pm February 21, 2014

Baraka was one of the key black literary voices of the 1960s. The political and social views that inspired his writing changed over the years, from his bohemian days as a young man in Greenwich Village to his later years as a Marxist. He spoke to Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 1986.

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Romance Novels Sweep Readers Off Their Feet With Predictability

1:26pm February 10, 2014

by NPR Staff

At $1.4 billion, romance is by far the biggest sector of the publishing industry. Harper's editor Jesse Barron looked into the business of romance and its peculiarities for this month's issue. He says the key is copying the elements that made other authors successful — down to the cover model's pose.

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Published in 1943, The Little Prince is one of the world's most beloved books. AuthorAntoine Saint-Exupery wrote and illustrated the book in New York, between Long Island and Manhattan.

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Before He Fell To Earth, 'The Little Prince' Was Born In N.Y.

1:31pm January 25, 2014

by Margot Adler

Author Antoine Saint-Exupery was French, but his beloved book, The Little Prince, wasn't written in Paris. Saint-Exupery wrote it in New York, and even included references to the island in his original manuscript.

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