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Sunday, May 19, 2013

From Our Listeners

Three-Minute Fiction: 'Ten Ring Fingers' And 'Ghost Words'

NPR's Bob Mondello and Susan Stamberg read excerpts of two of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. They read Ten Ring Fingers by Tamara Breuer of Washington, D.C., and Ghost Words by Matheus Macedo of Winthrop, Mass.

Summary

Author Interviews

Siblings' Separation Haunts In 'Kite Runner' Author's Latest

Image of mountains

Khaled Hosseini's new novel, like his two earlier works, is set partly in Afghanistan — but this time, political turmoil isn't a major element of the plot. Instead, And The Mountains Echoed is a story of a family's loss that spans decades and continents.

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Author Interviews

Stories Of Hope Amid America's 'Unwinding'

Cover of The Unwinding

When the factory she worked at closed down, Tammy Thomas reinvented herself as a community organizer; and when Dean Price's truck stop business went belly up, he became a champion of biofuel. In a new book, George Packer examines how ordinary people are adapting to a new America.

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Movie Interviews

One Couple, Nearly 20 Years, All 'Before Midnight'

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke star in Before Midnight, the third film in a series that follows near 20 years of a relationship.

We've already met Jesse and Celine, twice. In the 1995 film Before Sunset, they had a romantic encounter in Vienna. Nine years later, they found each other in Paris. In a third film, their relationship has progressed another nine years. The romance hasn't left, says director Richard Linklater, it's simply changed.

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Sunday Puzzle

Put On Your Thinking Hat

Sunday Puzzle.

Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word starts with H-A and the second word starts with T.

Summary

You Must Read This

Ghost Ships, Murders, Bird Attacks: Stories To Keep You Awake

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Author Ethan Rutherford started reading Daphne du Maurier's collection of stories, Don't Look Now, while it was still light out and didn't move from his chair until dark. Each one features characters who endure the strange and the extreme, and who are forever changed by the events that befall them.

Summary

Three-Minute Fiction

Three-Minute Fiction: Ten Ring Fingers

wedding bands

She found the first ring on a night that smelled of body odor and beer. The bar's last customers had finally given up hope of taking her to bed and staggered away, leaving her to clean the stains of their desperation.

Summary

Three-Minute Fiction

Three-Minute Fiction: Ghost Words

pink envelope

The letter smelled of lavender and vanilla, like she couldn't decide which perfume to use so she used both. Her hand-writing had been drawn with the careful precision only seventh-grade girls in love have patience for.

Summary

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Movie Reviews

New 'Trek' Goes 'Into Darkness,' But Not Much Deeper

Zachary Quinto as Spock, with Chris Pine as Kirk, in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

May 18, 2013 NPR's Bob Mondello says J.J. Abrams' latest Star Trek film knows how to make the sparks and feelings fly, but doesn't bother making the sparks and feeling matter very much.

Transcript

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From Our Listeners

Three-Minute Fiction Reading: 'Plum Baby'

May 18, 2013 NPR's Susan Stamberg reads an excerpt of one of the best submissions for Round 11 of our short story contest. She reads Plum Baby by Carmiel Banasky of Portland, Ore.

Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

Author Interviews

'Waiting To Be Heard' No More, Amanda Knox Speaks Out

Amanda Knox enters an Italian court on Oct. 3, 2011, just before being acquitted of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher.

May 18, 2013 Less than two months into her study abroad program in Italy, Amanda Knox was accused and eventually convicted of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher. After her conviction was overturned, Knox returned home to Seattle — and now faces a potential retrial. Knox tells her story in a new memoir.

Transcript

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Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Not My Job: Three Headless Chicken Questions For Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper

May 18, 2013 We've invited the heavy metal rocker to answer three questions about Mike, a chicken in the 1940s who lost his head and still went on to achieve fame and fortune.

Summary

On Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!Playlist

Code Switch

'Scandal': Preposterous, Unmissable, Important

Kerry Washington from ABC's Scandal is shown on a TV monitor as an iPad displays the show page.

May 18, 2013 The show has become a social event for a large and varied crowd of African-Americans and others on Twitter, for reasons mysterious, complex and worth exploring.

Summary

Author Interviews

Dan Brown: 'Inferno' Is 'The Book That I Would Want To Read'

Cover of Inferno

May 18, 2013 Dan Brown, author of the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, is back with his first novel in four years. Inferno follows academic hero Robert Langdon on a chase through Italy as he attempts to avert a biological catastrophe.

Transcript

On Weekend Edition SaturdayPlaylist

Author Interviews

'That's That': A Memoir Of Loving And Leaving Northern Ireland

Cover of That's That

May 18, 2013 Colin Broderick's new memoir, That's That, chronicles his childhood in Northern Ireland during the modern-day "Troubles." Broderick says growing up in what was essentially a war zone seemed normal to him at the time.

Transcript

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