Books

From tweet to three-book deal, this author wants to transform the fantasy genre

5:28pm May 08, 2024

by Kathryn Fink

A new young adult novel called Blood at the Root follows a Black teen learning to harness his ancestral magic. Before it was a novel, it was a failed TV pilot. Before that, it was a tweet.

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Books
Arts

Magic, secrets, and urban legend: 3 new YA fantasy novels to read this spring

2:37pm May 08, 2024

by Caitlyn Paxson

A heist with a social conscience, a father using magic for questionable work, an urban legend turned sleepover dare: These new releases explore protagonists embracing the magic within themselves.

Books

What's the cash value of being white? A white woman poses the question about herself

5:18am May 08, 2024

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with author Tracie McMillan, whose journalistic memoir — The White Bonus — examines the cash value of institutional racism in the United States.

Colm Toibin vowed to never write a sequel. Until 'Long Island'

6:04pm May 07, 2024

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with author Colm Toibin about his new novel Long Island. His main character opens her front door to a stranger who accuses her husband of having an affair with his wife.

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Books
Arts

'Long Island' renders bare the universality of longing

3:24pm May 07, 2024

by Heller McAlpin

In a heartrending follow-up to his beloved 2009 novel, Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín handles uncertainties and moral conundrums with exquisite delicacy, zigzagging through time to a devastating climax.

Griner competes for Team USA on Aug. 8, 2021, during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Griner won gold medals in both Tokyo and in Rio de Janeiro.

Brittney Griner reflects on 'Coming Home' after nearly 300 days in a Russian prison

2:29pm May 07, 2024

by Terry Gross

The WNBA star, who is six feet, nine inches, says she felt like a zoo animal in prison. "The guards would literally come open up the little peep hole, look in, and then I would hear them laughing."

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Neoliberal economics: The road to freedom or authoritarianism?

6:30am May 07, 2024

by Greg Rosalsky

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz's new book argues the road to tyranny is paved not by too much, but by too little government.

Brittney Griner is still working on forgiving herself from guilt of detention

5:07pm May 06, 2024

NPR's Juana Summers speaks with WNBA star Brittney Griner on her new memoir Coming Home and returning to the U.S. after being detained in Russia.

Brittney Griner recounts 'degrading' and 'dirty' conditions of Russian detention

4:59pm May 06, 2024

NPR's Juana Summers speaks with WNBA star Brittney Griner about her new memoir, Coming Home.

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"The primary way plants communicate with each other is through a language, so to speak, of chemical gasses," journalist Zoë Schlanger says.

Plants can communicate and respond to touch. Does that mean they're intelligent?

2:58pm May 06, 2024

by Tonya Mosley

Climate journalist Zoë Schlanger says research suggests that plants are indeed "intelligent" in complex ways that challenge our understanding of agency and consciousness. Her book is The Light Eaters.

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