News on Books

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with author Juli Min about her new book Shanghailanders, which unspools the story of a family in reverse.

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.

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.

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.

Daniel Olivas's novel puts a new spin on the age-old Frankstein story. In this retelling, 12 million "reanimated" people provide a cheap workforce for the United States...and face a very familiar type of bigotry.

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.

Brittney Griner didn't know the flight she was taking to Moscow in February 2022 would upend her life. But even before she left for the airport, Griner felt something was off.

It was a premonition that foreshadowed a waking nightmare.

She had accidentally left two vape cartridges with traces of cannabis oil in her luggage. What followed was nearly 10 months of struggle in a cell, and diplomatic efforts from the U.S. to get her home.

Griner reflects on the experience in her new memoir, 'Coming Home' and discusses it in depth with NPR's Juana Summers.

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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.

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."

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