Books

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Arts

Best Of The Summer: 6 Books The Critics Adore

4:30pm March 18, 2014

by Lynn Neary

Have you ever found yourself in the library or a bookstore, about to go on vacation, with no idea what books to bring? NPR's Lynn Neary talks to three book critics about the best reads of the summer.

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Illustration: sculpture of a book on a pedestal.

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Lost And Found: 5 Forgotten Classics Worth Revisiting

4:25pm March 18, 2014

It's a tragedy, perhaps, but books do go out of print. Reviewer and editor Parul Sehgal recommends five that have come back to life.

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Penelope Lively's other books include A Stitch In Time, Astercote and The Road To Lichfield.

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Author Penelope Lively Shares 'The View From Old Age'

1:52pm March 17, 2014

In Dancing Fish And Ammonites, the British writer reflects on growing older. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about adjusting to her husband's death and losing the desire for new things.

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Novel Reflects Desperate But Futile Search For Answers

6:35pm March 16, 2014

by Jonathan Evison

Inspired by the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, author Jonathan Evison recommends the novel Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan, as a book with something to say about mysterious disappearances.

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A Vietnamese Air Force plane returns from a search operation over Vietnam's southern sea.

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Malaysia Flight 370 And The World's Attention

6:33pm March 14, 2014

After a week spent searching for and wondering about the missing plane, author Alan Heathcock revisits the young adult novel Hatchet, and Jonathan Evison suggests Songs for the Missing.

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Joshua Fattal (from left), Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer were on a hike in 2009 when they unknowingly crossed a road that bordered to Iran. They were stopped by border patrol and imprisoned in Tehran.

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In 2009, 3 Americans Went For A Hike, And Ended Up In A Tehran Prison

11:27am March 14, 2014

by NPR Staff

In their memoir Sliver of Light, Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal explain how they were captured on a road that bordered Iran, accused of spying and imprisoned for two years.

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We love our morning coffee, but what's really in that piping hot cup of java? It's a powerful drug called caffeine.

Wake Up And Smell The Caffeine. It's A Powerful Drug

8:31am March 14, 2014

by NPR Staff

Around the world, many of us start our day with a drug derived from a natural insecticide: caffeine. Murray Carpenter tells the tale in Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts and Hooks Us.

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Grid of sticky notes with To Do lists on them.

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For Working Moms, Key To Balance May Lie In Elusive Leisure Time

5:33pm March 12, 2014

If waiting for help when your car breaks down doesn't strike you as a leisurely activity, it may be time to reconsider. A new book looks at time management challenges of being a working parent.

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Walter Kirn's novels include Up in the Air, Mission to America and The Unbinding.

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'Blood Will Out' Reveals Secrets Of A Murderous Master Manipulator

3:02pm March 10, 2014

Author Walter Kirn thought he was befriending an eccentric Rockefeller, but his pal turned out to be an impostor wanted for murder. Kirn's new book explores the depths of that deception.

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Martin Luther King Jr., shown here with Stokely Carmichael during a voter registration march in Mississippi in 1966, regarded the younger Carmichael as one of the civil rights movement's most promising leaders.

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Stokely Carmichael, A Philosopher Behind The Black Power Movement

12:26pm March 10, 2014

by Karen Grigsby Bates

A new biography traces Carmichael's evolution from civil rights activist to an early proponent of the black power movement and international human rights advocate.

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