Book News & Features

Jayne Anne Phillips' previous novel, Lark and Termite, was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2009.

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'Quiet Dell' Revives A Depression-Era Murder Story

6:12pm October 15, 2013

by Lynn Neary

In 1931, Harry Powers killed two women and three children at his home in Quiet Dell, W.Va. Writer Jayne Anne Phillips learned about the murders from her mother, who was a child when the deaths became a media sensation. Phillips' new novel retells the tragedy through the eyes of a young reporter.

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Canadian Alice Munro Wins Nobel's Literature Prize

7:39am October 10, 2013

Alice Munro, "master of the contemporary short story," has won the Nobel Prize in Literature," the Royal Swedish Academy announced Thursday morning. In 2009, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime work.

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Book News: North Carolina County Bans 'Invisible Man'

9:24am September 20, 2013

by Annalisa Quinn

Also: Valerie Plame has reportedly written a spy novel called Blowback; Russian literature as sex education; a poem by Dorothy Wordsworth.

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National Book Awards Look To Raise Profile ... And It's Not The First Time

2:19pm September 17, 2013

by Lynn Neary

When most people think "NBA," they think of the National Basketball Association. This year, in an attempt to maximize coverage, the National Book Foundation is releasing "long lists" of NBA nominees in different genre categories, one day at a time for a week.

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Ben Winters wrote the best-selling Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters, as well as Bedbugs, Android Karenina and several books for kids. So far, he's published two books in the Last Policeman series.

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Awaiting The Apocalypse In The Quiet Town Of Concord

12:43pm August 22, 2013

by Neda Ulaby

Ben Winters' mystery novels are set in the capital of New Hampshire, a community hardly known for its crime or intrigue. The twist? In his books, the planet is about to be hit by an asteroid, and everyone knows they're soon going to die. Amid the chaos, one Concord cop fights for law and order.

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Elmore Leonard, The 'Dickens Of Detroit,' Dies At 87

5:22pm August 20, 2013

by Noah Adams

Legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard published 46 novels, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. His works were adapted countless times for film and TV. Noah Adams remembers the man whose advice to other writers was "try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."

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Debbie Macomber's latest book is Rose Harbor in Bloom.

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Fans Are Like Friends To 'Reigning Queen' Of Women's Fiction

6:12pm August 18, 2013

by Petra Mayer

Debbie Macomber's books don't get a lot of critical attention, but they've sold in the hundreds of millions. Her fans feel like they know and love the woman behind the words, so her publisher threw a party for them.

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E-Books Strain Relations Between Libraries, Publishing Houses

2:23pm August 13, 2013

by Lynn Neary

E-books have changed the world of publishing in fundamental ways. The business model that encouraged publishers to support the work of public libraries has changed to such an extent that this relationship has been stressed to the point of non cooperation.

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A small, child-like creature in a cone hat peers into a toy shop, happy at the sight of a snow globe, in a vignette called "Tininess" in Darkness Outside the Night, a graphic novel illustrated by Xie Peng. Find out what happens in the excerpt below.

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For China's Youth, A Life Of 'Darkness Outside The Night'

4:48pm July 20, 2013

by Louisa Lim

In his haunting new graphic novel, cartoonist Xie Peng, 36, captures a psychological journey into the world of young Chinese. He worked for six years on the book, which renders a landscape of competition, anxiety and stress, and where everything, including dignity, is a commodity.

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Use The Books, Fans: 'Star Wars' Franchise Thrives In Print

10:56am July 16, 2013

by NPR Staff

More than 200 novels, the Star Wars' book series spans 25,000 years, from the beginning of the Jedi Order to 40 years beyond where the original trilogy left off. According to The Wall Street Journal's Alexandra Alter, the books help keep fans interested between movies.

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