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'Girl On The Train' Pays Homage To Hitchcock

2:58pm January 13, 2015

by Michael Schaub

Paula Hawkins' gripping new thriller begins with bitter, dissolute Rachel, who sees what she believes to be a perfect couple, every morning on the train to work — and then one day, the wife is gone.

Books

Author Robert Stone, Known For 'Dog Soldiers,' Dies At 77

8:01am January 13, 2015

by Petra Mayer

National Book Award-winning author Robert Stone was on the fringes of the utopian counterculture of the 1960s — but he preferred to write about what happened when that dream went sour.

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There's Nothing Sketchy About This 'Outline'

7:03am January 13, 2015

by Heller McAlpin

Reviewer Heller McAlpin says Rachel Cusk, known for her lacerating memoirs, begins to bring her fiction and nonfiction closer together in Outline, an "impressive deepening" of her work.

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Miranda July Balances Weirdness And Reality In Debut Novel

6:45pm January 11, 2015

by NPR Staff

The director and artist says one of the challenges of writing The First Bad Man was shaping her main character's odd psyche. Then, she says, she realized, "I can always take it back if it's too much."

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After Silence, An 'Outline' Of A Life In Fragments

11:26am January 11, 2015

by NPR Staff

Rachel Cusk's new novel Outline reflects the fragmentation of her own life in the story of a writer coming to terms with her dissolving marriage while on a summer teaching trip to Greece.

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This Weekend, Visit San Francisco's Famed Forbidden City In 'China Dolls'

11:26am January 11, 2015

by NPR Staff

In this installment of Weekend Reads, Jean Kwok recommends Lisa See's novel China Dolls, about the unlikely friendship formed by three young women on vaudeville's all-Asian "Chop Suey Circuit."

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'Blood Of The Tiger': Shedding Light On China's Farmed-Tiger Trade

6:47pm January 10, 2015

by NPR Staff

The endangered animals are bred for luxury items, like tiger bone wine and tigerskin rugs. By raising the demand for these goods, the farms pose a threat to wild tigers, says author J.A. Mills.

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Australian Cyberthriller 'Amnesia' Echoes Julian Assange Story

11:31am January 10, 2015

by NPR Staff

Peter Carey's novel opens as a hacker's computer virus is unlocking prison cells around the world. He says, "Assange was the reason I started writing the book, but I didn't want to write about [him]."

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Books

NPR Bestsellers: Week Of January 8, 2015

4:03pm January 09, 2015

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

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Hardcover Fiction, Week Of January 8, 2015

4:03pm January 09, 2015

In Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Effect, a new husband prepares for fatherhood the only way he knows how: research. It debuts at No. 6.