May 17, 2012 "She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door." This moment would now be frozen in time. Her head still swayed and her eyes still clouded with tears. Her mind swirled with a million thoughts as she shivered with the gravity of what had just occurred.

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May 17, 2012 Novelist Tayari Jones explores a father's deception of his family, while historian David McCullough looks at 19th-century Americans in Paris, Roy Blount Jr. revels in verbal curiosities, writer Bill James reflects on true-crime stories, and journalist Diana Henriques probes the Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff.

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May 16, 2012 "It was written for the masses," says the director of a New York organization raising money to bring Shakespeare's work to new audiences.

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May 16, 2012 In her new book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, Florence Williams offers her take on why breasts are getting bigger and developing earlier, why tumors seem to gravitate toward the breast, and how toxins from the environment may be affecting hormones and breast development.

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On Fresh Air from WHYYPlaylist

May 15, 2012 Over his long academic career, Bernard Lewis has arguably become the world's greatest historian of the Middle East. Now, at 96, Lewis turns his attention inward in Notes on a Century, a memoir that looks back on his life, work and legacy.

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On Talk of the NationPlaylist

May 16, 2012 Carlos Fuentes, one of the most influential Latin American writers, died Tuesday at a hospital in Mexico City at the age of 83. He was instrumental in bringing Latin American literature to an international audience, and he used his fiction to address what he saw as real-world injustices.

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On Morning EditionPlaylist

May 16, 2012 After a museum conservator's lover dies, she becomes consumed with reanimating a 19th-century silver swan automaton. Critic Heller McAlpin says that Peter Carey's new novel is part historical, part fanciful and completely wonderful.

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May 15, 2012 Toni Morrison's latest novel revisits the story of the prodigal son, as a Korean War veteran returns to his hometown in the pre-civil rights era South. Critic Heller McAlpin says Home is as accessible and visceral as anything Morrison has written.

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May 15, 2012 Fuentes was one of the premiere and most prolific authors in the Spanish language. Along with contemporaries like Gabriel García Márquez, Fuentes shone a global spotlight on Latin American culture.

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May 14, 2012 In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine with his family at the White House. News of the dinner became the subject of inflammatory articles and cartoons and shifted the national conversation around race at the time. Deborah Davis tells the story in Guest of Honor.

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On Talk of the NationPlaylist

May 14, 2012 Mario Puzo isn't known for his strong female characters — but if you've read his pre-Godfather work, The Fortunate Pilgrim, you might think otherwise. Author Zoe Ferraris recommends this book, which is based on Puzo's own mother. Do you have a favorite literary matriarch? Tell us in the comments.

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