Books

Jack Gantos recently won the Newbery Medal, the highest award in children's literature, for his novel Dead End in Norvelt.

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A Road Trip Sparks An Unlikely Friendship In 'Norvelt To Nowhere'

11:34am September 21, 2013

by NPR Staff

Young Jack hits the road with his cranky, elderly teacher Miss Volker (and a couple of cranky, elderly cars) in From Norvelt to Nowhere, the new young adult novel from Jack Gantos. The sequel to 2011's Newbery-winning Dead End in Norvelt is set in 1962, in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis.

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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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A Predictably Pynchonian Take On The Internet And Sept. 11

7:07pm September 19, 2013

by Meg Wolitzer

Elusive and iconic, author Thomas Pynchon may intimidate some readers, but he has a devoted following. Bleeding Edge, his new new novel, is about a spunky, Upper West Side mother and fraud investigator in the era between the dot-com boom and Sept. 11.

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Evan Mandery is also the author of three novels: Dreaming of Gwen Stefani; First Contact: Or, It's Later Than You Think; and Q: A Love Story.

Years After Historic Ruling, Execution Still A 'Random' Justice

3:44pm September 19, 2013

Evan Mandery's A Wild Justice is an account of the legal battles that led to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down capital punishment, then reversing course four years later. He says that today, prisoners who are sentenced to death have a 10 percent chance of actually being executed.

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Jeff Guinn's previous books include The Last Gunfight and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

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Bio Credits Manson's Terrible Rise To Right Place And Time

4:10pm September 18, 2013

California parolee Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco in 1967, when the city was full of young waifs looking for a guru. In Manson, Jeff Guinn argues that if the cult leader had instead been paroled in a place like Nebraska, he likely would not have been so successful.

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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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Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking cover

Kitchen Time Machine: A Culinary Romp Through Soviet History

9:38am September 17, 2013

Author Anya Von Bremzen's new memoir, Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking, is a tragic-comic history of a family and a nation as seen through the kitchen window. Everything we ate in the Soviet Union was grown ... by the party state," she says. "So, with the food, inevitably, you ingested the ideology."

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Barnard President: Today's 'Wonder Women' Must Reframe Feminism

4:06pm September 16, 2013

Many think of the feminist movement as a thing of the past, but Debora Spar says the battle isn't won yet. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the misinterpretation that got us where we are, and the need to improve support and pay for working women.

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'The Witness Wore Red': A Polygamist's Wife Finds A New Life

6:15pm September 14, 2013

by NPR Staff

Rebecca Musser was raised in an extremist, polygamist church. She tells the harrowing story of her childhood, her first marriage, and her escape in her autobiography.

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Terry McMillan is the best-selling author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back

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McMillan 'Asks' Readers To Empathize With A Family's Problems

11:28am September 14, 2013

by NPR Staff

Terry McMillan, the best-selling author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, tells NPR's Scott Simon that she writes because she wishes she were a magician. She shows off her tricks in Who Asked You?, a novel with many narrators — including a woman named BJ and her husband, children and grandkids.

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