Books

Books
Arts

Playful And Serious? 'How To Be' Is Both

6:45am December 06, 2014

by Heller McAlpin

Ali Smith's new How To Be Both combines inventive structural trickery and warm, sardonic writing in in parallel tales of a bereaved modern teenager and an Italian renaissance fresco painter.

After The California Downpour, 'The Drought' Offers Some Dry Reading

6:03pm December 05, 2014

by Jason Heller

It rained in California this week. That might not sound like news, but the state is experiencing a record-setting drought. Jason Heller turns to science fiction to reflect on the strange weather.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Week Of December 4, 2014

10:10am December 05, 2014

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

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Paperback Nonfiction, Week Of December 4, 2014

10:08am December 05, 2014

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recounts his life as both a civilian and a distinguished marksman in American Sniper. It appears at No. 12.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Paperback Fiction, Week Of December 4, 2014

10:07am December 05, 2014

A mysterious package compels a reclusive bookstore owner to reconsider his approach to life in Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. It appears at No. 13.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Hardcover Nonfiction, Week Of December 4, 2014

9:46am December 05, 2014

Debuting at No. 15, You Can't Make This Up details sportscaster Al Michaels' life and career.

Books

NPR Bestsellers: Hardcover Fiction, Week Of December 4, 2014

9:43am December 05, 2014

The latest installment of James Patterson's Alex Cross series has detective Cross contending with a mad genius who has kidnapped his family. Hope to Die debuts at No. 10.

Ayn Rand's Novel 'Ideal' To Be Published Next Year

1:00am December 05, 2014

by Krishnadev Calamur

Rand wrote Ideal as a novel in 1934, but didn't like it and set it aside. Later, she reworked it as a play. The New American Library says Ideal will be published in the form in which Rand intended it.

Books
Arts

I'm Not Scary, I'm Just Drawn That Way: Great Comics For Halloween

9:46pm December 04, 2014

Ready for a Halloween scare? Reviewer Etelka Lehoczky says these graphic novels and compilations — packed with creepy cults, alien monsters, gravediggers and ghosts — are just the ticket.

Ron Rash is a poet, novelist and short-story writer whose 2009 novel Serena was a New York Times bestseller. Rash's signature subject is life in Appalachia, past and present.

Books
Arts

Set In Appalachia, This Rewarding Story Collection Is 'Rich And Strange'

3:29pm December 04, 2014

by Maureen Corrigan

Ron Rash's best short stories from the past 20 years take you to a land apart psychologically and geographically. His writing is powerful, stripped down and very still.

Queue Listen Now