Read at night, at the end of a too-long day, and characters will enter and exit the rooms of memory, trailing the scent of cigarette smoke and faded perfume. With Simon Van Booy's new novel, Night Came With Many Stars, open in front of me, I know the smell of summer afternoons and the pattern of paint spattered on a workingman's boots. I can hear the bugs in the dark and Read More
With the sale of print books rising just over 8% and all unit sales of books surpassing 750 million, Black bookstores would play an integral role in feeding the nation's "sudden" appetite in the plight of Black people.Read More
In the past year, and throughout history, narratives surrounding Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been rife with violence, hardship and grief. Yet they are so much more than their experiences of suffering — beyond tales of war and isolation, there is joy, confusion, anger and relief.Read More
In a virtual ceremony, Louise Erdrich was named the winner of this year's Aspen Words Literary Prize, for her novel The Night Watchman. The $35,000 prize goes to a work that "illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture."Read More
Ambreen Tariq's new children's book, Fatima's Great Outdoors is a story about an Indian immigrant family's first time exploring the outdoors, and it's as much a story about curiosity and adventure as it is about trying to assimilate as an immigrant in this country. Tariq says Fatima's story is her own story. "Every moment in that book is real. Every snippet, every story."Read More
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with British writer Robert Harris about the legacy of John le Carré, whom he's called "one of the great post-war British novelists" and who died Saturday at age 89.Read More
Manuel Vilas' quiet, intensely sad new, about a middle-aged man trying to connect with his estranged family while thinking a lot of deep thoughts about death, requires patience, but it's worth it.Read More
The third volume in Kuang's Poppy War series is out now. She grounded the story in history, both her own and China's; it follows a passionate, ruthless young woman who becomes a military leader.Read More
This year's National Book Awards — announced in a first-ever virtual streaming ceremony — went mostly to writers of color, as the foundation that gives the prizes vowed to be more inclusive.Read More
The British author writes beautifully of her own recent bout with a personal winter, a period when she felt low and overwhelmed — and aims to help others to embrace their winters.Read More
Jess Walter's new novel an adventure tale based on actual events in the early days of the last century's labor movement — which was much wilder and bloodier than most people remember.Read More
Mike Curato's new young adult graphic novel Flamer follows a teenager struggling with self-hate and all the different parts of his identity — being a Catholic, a Boy Scout, and being gay.Read More
Robinson's latest Gilead novel centers on prodigal son Jack, newly released from prison and in love with a Black woman — a crime in 1950s Missouri. But it's not a pat tale of love overcoming racism.Read More
The 2020 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to U.S. poet Louise Glück "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."Read More
As the central character struggles with grief and shock at her late husband's infidelity, author Sue Miller keeps deftly shifting what readers might anticipate to be the ending of this novel. Read More
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through collects the work of more than 160 poets. "A poem opens up time, it opens up memory, it opens up place," says Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate.Read More
In her first book since the critically acclaimed H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald urges us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world — and fight to preserve it.Read More
Alexis Daria's soapy, sizzling new novel follows two telenovela actors who fall for each other while playing bitter exes — and have to figure out how to balance private love and public stardom.Read More
New ‘Twilight’ Book Will Boost Olympic Peninsula Vampire Tourism, If COVID Doesn’t Put A Stake In It
The Twilight phenomenon gets an injection of fresh blood this Tuesday with the release of a new installment in the bestselling vampire saga from author Stephenie Meyer. The series of novels and subsequent hit movies spurred legions of fans to visit the fictional story's real-life setting on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. But a predicted "renaissance" in vampire tourism Read More
The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die, by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, centers on an Indian family haunted by a jealous ghost. And S. A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland is a noir thriller — with muscle cars.Read More
In the world of Blue Ticket, girls are issued either blue tickets or white ones on the day of their first periods. Blue tickets grant a career but no children; white tickets mean home and family.Read More
Hana Tooke creates a memorable villain, Matron Gassbeek, who menaces the feisty orphans of The Unadoptables in the grand tradition of awful authority figures like Miss Trunchbull and Viola Swamp. Read More
A young woman tries to free her cousin from a dangerous living situation in a crumbling family mansion in Silvia Moreno-Garcia's new novel. Mexican Gothic injects fresh blood into a classic genre.Read More
Anaya's 1972 classic Bless Me, Ultima — about a young Mexican American boy and his curandera mentor in New Mexico in the 1940s — inspired a generation of Chicano writers.Read More
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir's atmospheric novel, about a young writer and her outcast friends in 1963 Iceland, will transport you to another time and place, though not necessarily a rosier time and place.Read More
Tamani's new young adult novel follows two high school basketball stars who fall in love at first sight — but then have to deal with their own issues and secrets to build a lasting relationship.Read More
In Amanda Sellet's charming young adult romance, a teenage bookworm transfers to the local public high school and discovers that the literary classics she lives by aren't quite a match for real life.Read More
"Twilight" author Stephenie Meyer announced Monday that she will release "Midnight Sun," the prequel to the popular series, after originally calling off the book's release more than 10 years ago.Read More
Kaouther Adimi's novel tells the real-life story of Edmond Charlot, the Algerian bookseller and publisher who witnessed his country's independence struggle — and famously discovered Albert Camus.Read More
Kwame Alexander, NPR's poet in residence, reads the latest crowdsourced poem, this one focused on how you've been affected by and coping during the global coronavirus pandemic. Read More
Former NPR journalist Lulu Miller was inspired by a scientist who started again when his life's work was destroyed. Now, she writes about what she can take from his story, even when it's not all good.Read More
The independent book business has been battered in recent decades, as locally owned sellers strained to compete with the online-giant Amazon. But the COVID-19 crisis has forced many to close their doors, depriving both readers and writers the spaces they thrive on.Read More
Christy Lefteri's novel of the Syrian refugee crisis won the third annual award, which doles out $35,000 for fiction that illuminates a pressing social issue.Read More
The horror writer says he understands why fans have said the COVID-19 pandemic feels like living inside one of his novels. King says he doesn't feel panic or terror, but rather, a "gnawing anxiety."Read More
C Pam Zhang's debut novel follows a brother and sister, children of Chinese laborers, as the search the dusty hills of Gold Rush-era California for a place to bury their father's body.Read More
Julia Alvarez returns to adult fiction with Afterlife, which she calls her first novel as an "elder." It's about a newly retired woman whose comfortable life is upended when her husband dies.Read More
In Samantha Mabry's new novel, three prickly sisters are haunted, maybe literally, by their fourth, who's died in an accident. She has a message for them, but they may be too sunk in grief to hear it.Read More
In her first novel since the hit pandemic tale Station Eleven, Mandel introduces a troubled brother and sister who get involved with a crooked hotel magnate, changing their lives in unexpected ways.Read More
Barnes & Noble suspended its campaign to reissue classic books with covers depicting protagonists as people of color after many authors, including McKinney, criticized the initiative.Read More
Sarah Gailey's new novella is set in a dystopian future where the United States resembles the Old West, and bands of women on horseback distribute government-approved media to distant villages.Read More
Latinx writers and critics are speaking out against Jeanine Cummins' new book American Dirt, calling its depiction of the migrant experience inauthentic and harmful. We asked Cummins to respond.Read More
Stafford is often remembered as wife No. 1 in the many biographies and studies of poet Robert Lowell. But a new Library of America edition of her three novels showcases her masterful writing.Read More
Gerwig gives us the warm, homespun pleasures of Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel, but she also holds the well-worn text up to the light to consider some of its flaws and compromises.Read More
"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
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
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
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
Morrison was the author of Beloved, Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.Read More