Audience Picks: 100 Best Beach Books Ever
Almost 16,000 of you voted in our Best Beach Books poll. Whether such a vote can determine literary quality, who can say? But if there's one thing a multitude of book-loving NPR types can definitely do, it's pick books that appeal ... to book-loving NPR types.
iStockphoto.comStranger Than Fiction: Summer Science Books
Our search for the most fascinating new science books finds true tales of Aztec super-athletes, criminal butterfly collectors, Isaac Newton's unknown detective career and the mysteries of the human stomach and brain.
On The Hunt For Fabulous Fiction
All too often, "summer reading" is synonymous with brainless and poorly constructed novels that leave you unsatisfied. But here are five books that will suit your palate just fine this summer.
Critics' Lists: Summer 2009
Books Set On Beaches Capture Seaside Scene
The waves are lapping the shore, and you are ... madly turning pages — the best beach reads ever.
Librarian Nancy Pearl Picks Summer's Best Books
Looking to cozy up with some good books? Librarian Nancy Pearl has some great suggestions.
Summer Nonfiction: True Tales Enlighten, Delight
These five works of history, journalism and biography will shock, inform and delight.
Independent Booksellers Pick Summer's Best Reads
This year's selections take readers from the great outdoors to the inside of a Scrabble factory.
For Summer Sleuths: Best Mystery, Crime Novels
From serial killers to stashed jewels to snakes on the loose, these mysteries have it all.
Alan Cheuse's Summer Book Picks
Alan Cheuse recommends seven works of poetry and fiction for the dog days of summer.
Best Fiction For Every Kind Of Summer Day
Although this list includes mystery, sci-fi and a comic, these are not frothy, forgettable reads.
On The Hunt For Fabulous Fiction
All too often. "summer reading" means brainless beach reads, but these five books buck the trend.
Books We Like
Brave, Brainy, Changeable — Zadie Smith Revealed
The payoff in Zadie Smith's book, Changing My Mind, comes in three essays about her father.
A Reluctant Femme Fatale In Postwar London
In her new novel, War Damage, Elizabeth Wilson entangles her heroine in a web of murder and scandal.
My Guilty Pleasure
A Guilty Venture Into Baseball 'Fantasyland'
When Tony Horwitz wants a little story with his stats, he picks up Fantasyland, by Sam Walker.
'Jaws': Celebrating Sand, Sex And A Really Big Fish
Forget the Steven Spielberg fish tale. Author Lizzie Skurnick prefers Peter Benchley's salty novel.
You Must Read This
A Wild, 'Burning' Journey Back To Old Mexico
Author Oscar Casares never considered himself a reader until he discovered The Burning Plain.
Loving This Book 'Warps The Mind A Little'
Author Julia Glass fell for John Dufresne's "funny-sad novel" despite herself.
Cookbooks and Recipes
The 10 Best Summer Cookbooks Of 2009
This year's crop of spring and summer cookbooks is a sprawling, eclectic and delicious collection.
Excerpts: Recommended Books
Excerpt: 'Brat Farrar'
Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar features a young man masquerading as the heir to a fortune.
Excerpt: 'A Darker Domain'
Detective inspector Karen Pirie finds herself working with two cases that originated in the 1980s.
Excerpt: 'The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie'
Alan Bradley's first novel is gore-free, very funny in places and narrated by a real charmer.
