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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.
Author Interviews
Siblings' Separation Haunts In 'Kite Runner' Author's Latest
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.
Author Interviews
Stories Of Hope Amid America's '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.
Movie Interviews
One Couple, Nearly 20 Years, All 'Before Midnight'
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.
Sunday Puzzle
Put On Your Thinking Hat
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.
You Must Read This
Ghost Ships, Murders, Bird Attacks: Stories To Keep You Awake
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.
Three-Minute Fiction
Three-Minute Fiction: Ten Ring Fingers
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.
Three-Minute Fiction
Three-Minute Fiction: Ghost Words
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.
Movie Reviews
New 'Trek' Goes 'Into Darkness,' But Not Much Deeper
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.
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.
Author Interviews
'Waiting To Be Heard' No More, Amanda Knox Speaks Out
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.
Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!
Not My Job: Three Headless Chicken Questions For 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.
Code Switch
'Scandal': Preposterous, Unmissable, Important
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.
Author Interviews
Dan Brown: 'Inferno' Is 'The Book That I Would Want To Read'
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.
Author Interviews
'That's That': A Memoir Of Loving And Leaving Northern Ireland
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.
