"There were families that couldn't afford to pay the fines and therefore couldn't return the materials," Chicago Public Library Commissioner Andrea Telli said. "So then we just lost them as patrons."Read More
The novelist and poet joined Sarah M. Broom, László Krasznahorkai, Ottilie Mulzet, and Martin W. Sandler as winners Wednesday night — receiving $10,000 and a medallion for their front covers.Read More
Macmillan Publishers Ltd. will begin restricting sales of new e-books to libraries to one per library system for the first eight weeks after publication. Libraries are fighting back.Read More
Wilson's new novel centers on a young woman taking care of two kids with a disturbing ability: When upset, they burst into flames. But in Wilson's hands, what could be scary is funny, even beautiful.Read More
The anthology demonstrates that American women are just now at the starting line of exploring and understanding their anger; it's more about how they live with anger than about what makes them angry.Read More
Throughout his career, Edmund Morris repeatedly showed boredom, even disdain, for the traditional biography. In turn, he sometimes injected his books with an artistic flair that got in the way.Read More
Richard Bell's true tale details how even as the Underground Railroad ferried enslaved people north towards freedom, free black people vanished from northern cities to be sold into plantation slavery.Read More
In Girl, a young woman in Nigeria is abducted by Boko Haram — and that's just the beginning. For nearly 60 years, its Irish author has written about women "both as victims and as fighters, combined."Read More
Jones grew up black, gay and isolated in Texas. He chronicles his wobbly path to self-affirmation in the raw and eloquent new memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives.Read More
Aarti Shahani reports on Silicon Valley for NPR. But, as she details in her memoir, she's also from a family that followed a contorted, painful path to citizenship.Read More
"Growing up I would hear about our peoples being 'discovered' ... " says author Brittany Luby. "I would go home and my parents would tell me: That's not actually how things happened."Read More
Critic Ian Sansom's deeply informed and unapologetically digressive new book dives into Auden's life — as well as the life of his singular poem.Read More
The Dog Who Lost His Bark is a story in two halves, says author Eoin Colfer: "In the first half the boy heals the dog, and in the second half the dog heals the boy." It's illustrated by P.J. Lynch.Read More
Jacqueline Woodson's exquisitely wrought new novel follows two black families of different classes whose lives become intertwined when their only children conceive a child together in their teens.Read More
When today's children someday ask what Sept. 11 was really like, Garrett Graff's book will be the answer: He vividly recounts the most upsetting and totemic moments — and critical, little-told others.Read More
It could be argued that Quichotte is a novel that aims to reflect back to us the total insanity of living in a world unmoored from reality — but it's about the power of believing more than anything.Read More
In this recording, exclusive to NPR, Atwood returns to the world of The Handmaid's Tale, reading from her long-awaited sequel. Some 15 years after the first book, it introduces a few new voices.Read More
Atwood made the list for her sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, and Rushdie for his re-imagining of Don Quixote. Chigozie Obioma, Elif Safak, Lucy Ellmann and Bernardine Evaristo round out the finalists.Read More
In Stacey Lee's new novel, an opinionated and talented Chinese American girl makes her way in Reconstruction-era Atlanta while preserving her secret work as an advice columnist in the local paper.Read More
Téa Obreht's new novel is set against a familiar old West backdrop, but it tells a fresh story of two people, both haunted in their own ways — a tough frontier woman and an immigrant camel driver.Read More
When the bell rings, it's reading time. At over 70 chapters around the world, people gather at Silent Book Clubs to read whatever they like, as long as it's in silence.Read More
As the U.S. becomes more brown and black — resulting in a xenophobic backlash and nostalgia by some for white European immigrants — the ideas in Sarah Valentine's memoir become even more necessary.Read More
Whether you're extremely online or still confused by how a simple period can be interpreted as passive-aggressive, linguist Gretchen McCulloch has a guide to how our on-screen speech is morphing.Read More
Even if we weren't in need of another road-trippy-addiction memoir, Peter Kaldheim's book recounts his very human efforts to swim to shore with compassion and gratitude.Read More
Silvia Moreno-Garcia's novel is set in an alternate Jazz Age Mexico, where gods and monsters from Mayan mythology walk the Earth and war with each other for dominion over Xibalba, the land of death.Read More
Colson Whitehead's deeply affecting new novel is based on the true story of a segregated reform school in Florida where African American boys were brutalized and possibly murdered.Read More
Pablo Medina's The Cuban Comedy walks a fine line between poetry and political satire. It follows a woman in rural 1960s Cuba who longs to be a poet, and the troubles she faces when she succeeds.Read More
The school is fictional but the anxiety is real — the plot bears striking resemblance to actual college admissions scandals. "There's a sense that parents will stop at nothing," says Bruce Holsinger.Read More
Caite Dolan-Leach's new novel follows a young woman who gets kicked off a reality TV show and ends up on a 1960s-style commune, where utopian ideals soon fall prey to some very human foibles.Read More
Journalists David Wolman and Julian Smith chronicle the history of Hawaii's cattle trade and profile a number of "paniolos" — every bit as tenacious and resourceful as their mainland cohorts.Read More
Daniel Brook has written a book that goes a long way toward injecting thoughtfulness into popular notions of the history of race and racism in America but doesn't delve far enough into class conflict.Read More
One day, Toby Fleishman's ex-wife drops off the kids and disappears. Author Taffy Brodesser-Akner says too many people are "locked into" marriage; her new novel explores wedlock, and what comes after.Read More
Relying on a wealth of research and documents, Casey Rae deftly maps out how one of America's most controversial literary figures transformed the lives of many notable rock musicians.Read More
Elliot Ackerman served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He sees the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East as "all one war" and explains why that's particularly tough on his generation of veterans.Read More
Jill Lepore, author of These Truths, argues that supporters of free and fair liberal government can't just hold their noses and wait for voters to realize that democracy is better than autocracy.Read More
Penguin Classics has released paperback editions of four mid-20th century novels by Asian American authors: America Is in the Heart; The Hanging on Union Square; East Goes West and No-No Boy.Read More
Gifted writers Dan Abrams and David Fisher, who previously brought us Lincoln's Last Trial, are clearly fascinated by how Teddy Roosevelt's court case played out — bringing an enthusiasm to readers.Read More
Using personal papers, telegrams, biographies, unpublished interviews and letters, author Brian Jay Jones gives readers a comprehensive view of the complex, multifaceted creator who became a giant.Read More
The waters of genetic meddling are murky; in a new book, technology futurist Jamie Metzl reviews where we've been in the past as a guideline for where we might be headed.Read More
Sally Rooney avoids a sophomore slump with Normal People, a will-they-won't-they love story with sympathetic protagonists whose lives are complicated by economic uncertainty and class differences.Read More
Christopher Cantwell's new graphic novel follows teenaged Luna, who's struggling with mental health issues and finds a kind of hope in the appearance of a mysterious flying woman in the Chicago skies.Read More
A new book by Mallory O'Meara explores the life of artist Milicent Patrick, who worked on Fantasia and costumed a legendary Hollywood monster — and then ran afoul of misogyny in the workplace.Read More
The depth of Margaret Leslie Davis' research on the tome's history cannot be understated — her writing is straightforward and, at times, heartbreaking, but outstanding reporting lies at the core.Read More
Garth Ennis' new graphic novel creates a fictional character to flesh out the stories of the real Night Witches, Soviet female pilots who dropped bombs on the Nazis from rickety old biplanes.Read More
Historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman shines a new light on Pocahontas, showing how she made her way as a go-between for her two cultures, and introducing us to her long-forgotten English counterparts.Read More
In his new book, Nick Estes points a way forward, with solidarity and without sentimentality, to an idea of Indigenous land alive with ancestry and renewal.Read More
Ann Leckie's new fantasy novel is packed with family intrigue, throne-room maneuvering and nods to Hamlet in its story of a son who comes home to find his father missing and his uncle in power.Read More
In a new book, Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code joins a chorus of voices warning of devastating consequences if girls don't partake in tech — and suggesting girls should be encouraged to take risks.Read More
The former New York Times editor's examination of four news outlets pits new against old, mercenary versus honorable — and is unlikely to inspire the next generation of journalists.Read More
Author David Treuer calls his new book a "counternarrative" to Dee Brown's 1970 classic. "I have tried to catch us not in the act of dying but, rather, in the radical act of living," he writes.Read More
