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A Cool, Painstaking Account Of A Difficult Past In 'Fatherland'

2:14pm January 21, 2015

by Etelka Lehoczky

Nina Bunjevac tackles two troublesome subjects in Fatherland: Her Serbian nationalist father, and the occasionally violent, extremist history of his country — all in a controlled, icy-cool style.

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'Gateway To Freedom': Heroes, Danger And Loss On The Underground Railroad

11:35am January 21, 2015

While writing his new book, historian Eric Foner relied on a recently discovered record of slaves' escapes. He says the documents paint a "revealing picture" of life on the Underground Railroad.

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Three-Minute Fiction Round 10: Leave A Message After The Beep

11:07am January 21, 2015

by NPR Staff

This round of the short story contest for weekends on All Things Considered will be judged by author Mona Simpson. For Round 10, she wants original fiction with the "texture of voice."

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Resurrections, Do-Overs, And Second Lives: A 2015 Poetry Preview

3:23pm January 20, 2015

After the troubles of 2014, critic Craig Morgan Teicher offers up a full shelf of poetry for a brand new year — offering no solutions, but full of ambivalence and precision, balm and fire.

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Exclusive First Read: Scott McCloud's 'The Sculptor'

2:35pm January 20, 2015

by NPR Staff

Understanding Comics creator Scott McCloud is sometimes called the "Aristotle of comics" for his analysis of the medium. The Sculptor, a meditation on love, art and death, is his first graphic novel.

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'Whipping Boy' Is Part Memoir, Part Crime Thriller

12:03pm January 20, 2015

by Jason Heller

Allen Kurzweil's new book Whipping Boy starts out as the story of his obsessive 40-year search for the boy who bullied him at boarding school — but it becomes something much deeper and stranger.

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Book Club: Hector Tobar Answers Your Questions About 'Deep Down Dark'

11:50am January 20, 2015

by NPR Staff

Tobar says it was a "great honor" to interview the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days in 2010. They lived "one of the great adventure stories of the 21st century," he says.

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A trader stands outside the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 31, 2012.

Markets May Stumble Or Skyrocket, But This Economist Says Hold On Tight

11:00am January 20, 2015

by NPR Staff

It's been more than four decades since Burton Malkiel published A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Eleven editions later, Malkiel hasn't wavered in his mantra of patience and broad investing.

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How A Skeptic Learned To Love Meditation

8:35pm January 19, 2015

Fancy feeling happy in 2015? Dan Harris, co-anchor of ABC's Nightline, has written a book called 10% Happier. He shares with NPR's Rachel Martin the reasons that drove him to write a self-help book.

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Dark, Disturbing And Playful, 'Seventh Day' Takes On Modern China

3:06pm January 19, 2015

by Nishant Dahiya

In Yu Hua's new novel, a recently dead man decides to attend his own funeral and ends up wandering a strange sort of afterlife, full of characters whose stories reflect the troubles of modern China.