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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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Arts

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.

Cover detail of The Girl from Human Street.

A Memoir Of A Family's Diaspora, And A Mother's Depression

11:25am January 19, 2015

by NPR Staff

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen looks back on his life and asks: Could a family's constant movement — four countries in four generations — contribute to a mother's struggle with mental illness?

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It's A Chump's Life In 'Amnesia'

5:52am January 18, 2015

by Jason Sheehan

Peter Carey's new novel starts with a sad-sack disgraced reporter tasked with writing the biography of a notorious hacker, but reviewer Jason Sheehan says there's a jarring change of gears halfway.

A year after his cancer diagnosis, Henning Mankell is working on a new novel, and he just directed Shakespeare's Hamlet in his adopted country of Mozambique.

'Wallander' Author Henning Mankell On The Catastrophe Of Cancer

9:11pm January 17, 2015

by Martin Scholz

The famed Swedish author of the Kurt Wallander mystery novels was diagnosed a year ago — "a catastrophe for me," he says; since then, he's talked more about the disease than the drama of forensics.

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom cover detail

Books
Arts

Illustrated Memoir Recalls Marching In Selma At Just 15

6:59pm January 17, 2015

by NPR Staff

Lynda Blackmon Lowery was still a child when she joined the legendary 1965 march. Now she's written a book for young readers about the experience, called Turning 15 On The Road To Freedom.

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