Books

Books
Arts

'Fates And Furies' Offers A Tour-De-Force Plot, Minus Compelling Characters

1:45pm September 22, 2015

by Maureen Corrigan

Lauren Groff's new novel paints a portrait of marriage from the clashing viewpoints of a husband and wife. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Fates and Furies is "a marvel" — but that it could be better.

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Joyce Carol Oates, pictured above on Easter, 1949. It is strange, she says, to live so long that you are older than your own parents were when they died. She uses the word "vertiginous" to describe the dizzying sensation of looking back on your life from

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Arts

Joyce Carol Oates' Memoir Revisits The Farm And The Family That Shaped Her

10:35pm September 21, 2015

by Lynn Neary

Oates grew up on a farm in upstate New York. In The Lost Landscape, she describes how her parents, her grandmother, and her school experiences made her into the writer she is today.

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Assessing The $100 Million Upheaval Of Newark's Public Schools

1:55pm September 21, 2015

In 2010, Mayor Cory Booker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg devised a plan to improve Newark's failing schools. Dale Russakoff recounts their efforts in The Prize.

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Arts

Author Jackie Collins Remembered For Impact On Steamy Fiction

1:49pm September 20, 2015

Jackie Collins, best-selling author of pulpy fiction, has died of breast cancer at the age of 77. Freelance journalist Annalisa Quinn tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer about Collins' influence.

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Arts

Finding Love And Self-Acceptance 'Under the Udala Trees'

6:55pm September 19, 2015

by NPR Staff

Chinelo Okparanta's new novel follows a Nigerian girl as she grows up during a violent civil war and struggles to come to terms with her sexuality.

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Arts

In 'Intro To Alien Invasion' College Students Transform Into Insectoids

6:00am September 19, 2015

by Etelka Lehoczky

Owen King and Mark Jude Poirier's new comic is a B-movie type portrait of college life interrupted by the arrival of alien beetles who feed on the shallowest kids.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Week Of September 17, 2015

4:03pm September 18, 2015

The lists are compiled from weekly surveys of close to 500 independent bookstores nationwide.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Hardcover Fiction, Week Of September 17, 2015

4:03pm September 18, 2015

Debuting at No. 14, Bill Clegg's Did You Ever Have a Family follows one woman's process of grieving after she loses her entire family in one tragic night.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Hardcover Nonfiction, Week Of September 17, 2015

4:03pm September 18, 2015

In Reckless, Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde looks back on her childhood and her band's rise to fame in the 1980s. It debuts at No. 10.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Paperback Fiction, Week Of September 17, 2015

4:03pm September 18, 2015

At No. 11, Sarah Waters' The Paying Guests follows a widow and her daughter in 1920s London.