The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books : NPR

We Read The Year's Best New Sci-Fi — So You Don't Have To

The 2014 Campbellian Anthology is a free download. hide caption

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We Read The Year's Best New Sci-Fi — So You Don't Have To

March 31, 2014 • The Campbell Award honors new writers in sci-fi and fantasy; this year's Campbellian Anthology features 111 authors and more than 860,000 words — and blogger K. Tempest Bradford has read all of them.

3 Bedtime Picture Books That Won't Put Parents To Sleep

March 30, 2014 • Librarian Margaret Willison offers tips for making repetitive reading more enjoyable, from choosing books with detailed illustrations to using word tricks.

3 Bedtime Picture Books That Won't Put Parents To Sleep

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'Sleep Donation': A Dark, Futuristic Lullaby For Insomniacs

Fresh Air

March 26, 2014 • Karen Russell's new book imagines a mysterious insomnia epidemic so serious that many are dying from lack of sleep. But the cure — sleep donations from babies — is hard to swallow.

'Sleep Donation': A Dark, Futuristic Lullaby For Insomniacs

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For Writer, 'The Hard Way' Meant Choosing To Stay In Akron, Ohio

Akron was once known as the rubber capital of the world. Mark Duncan/AP hide caption

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Mark Duncan/AP

For Writer, 'The Hard Way' Meant Choosing To Stay In Akron, Ohio

March 25, 2014 • David Giffels spent his whole life watching people — friends, colleagues, LeBron James — leave his hometown. In a new book, he reflects on the effects of those departures.

For Writer, 'The Hard Way' Meant Choosing To Stay In Akron, Ohio

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A Homecoming, Minus The Nostalgia, In Cole's Unsparing 'Thief'

Teju Cole is also the author of Open City. Teju Cole hide caption

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Teju Cole

A Homecoming, Minus The Nostalgia, In Cole's Unsparing 'Thief'

March 24, 2014 • Teju Cole writes of a young man's return to Nigeria in Every Day Is for the Thief. He says his narrator is "somebody who's been away a long time and doesn't want to pretty up the picture at all."

A Homecoming, Minus The Nostalgia, In Cole's Unsparing 'Thief'

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Book Club Meeting: Come Talk About 'Grapes Of Wrath,' Chapters 11-20

A family prepares to leave Oklahoma for California in 1939, just as the Joads did in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Russell Lee/Library of Congress hide caption

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Russell Lee/Library of Congress

Book Club Meeting: Come Talk About 'Grapes Of Wrath,' Chapters 11-20

March 24, 2014 • The I-Will-If-You-Will Book Club is reading John Steinbeck's Dust Bowl classic. (Some of us for the very first time!) Join us in the comments to discuss what we've read so far.

Jimmy Carter Issues 'Call To Action' Against Subjugation Of Women

Jimmy Carter's other books include Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Sharing Good Times and Our Endangered Values. Prakash Methema/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Prakash Methema/AFP/Getty Images

Jimmy Carter Issues 'Call To Action' Against Subjugation Of Women

March 22, 2014 • The former president joins NPR to talk about his new book, the state of human trafficking and whether religion can be a conduit for lasting change around gender.

Jimmy Carter Issues 'Call To Action' Against Subjugation Of Women

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Review

The World's Smallest Time Machine Is Still Pretty Big

March 19, 2014 • The Time Traveler's Almanac is a gigantic new compilation of — you guessed it — stories about time travel. Reviewer Jason Sheehan says the selection of stories and authors is very nearly perfect.

Cannibals And Colonialism: Solving The Mystery Of Michael Rockefeller

Michael Rockefeller, the youngest son of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, was reported missing on Nov. 21, 1961 AP hide caption

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AP

Cannibals And Colonialism: Solving The Mystery Of Michael Rockefeller

Fresh Air

March 18, 2014 • The son of one of America's wealthiest families disappeared off the island of New Guinea in 1961. Writer Carl Hoffman explains how he thinks Rockefeller died and why the truth was kept hidden.

Cannibals And Colonialism: Solving The Mystery Of Michael Rockefeller

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Review

What U.S. Learned From 'Heathen School' Wasn't Part Of The Lesson Plan

Fresh Air

March 18, 2014 • The 19th century Connecticut school sought to convert young men from Hawaii, China, India and the Native American nations and then send them home as Christian missionaries. It did not go as planned.

What U.S. Learned From 'Heathen School' Wasn't Part Of The Lesson Plan

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Review

All Sides Of A Divorce, Told In Fresh, Lively 'Papers'

March 18, 2014 • Susan Rieger's new The Divorce Papers is a modern epistolary novel, chronicling a crumbling marriage in court filings, emails and hand-written notes. Critic Alan Cheuse calls it serious yet charming.

All Sides Of A Divorce, Told In Fresh, Lively 'Papers'

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Author Penelope Lively Shares 'The View From Old Age'

Penelope Lively's other books include A Stitch In Time, Astercote and The Road To Lichfield. Robbin Matthew Photography/Courtesy of Viking hide caption

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Robbin Matthew Photography/Courtesy of Viking

Author Penelope Lively Shares 'The View From Old Age'

Fresh Air

March 17, 2014 • In Dancing Fish And Ammonites, the British writer reflects on growing older. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about adjusting to her husband's death and losing the desire for new things.

Author Penelope Lively Shares 'The View From Old Age'

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Not Enough Hours In The Day? We All Feel A Little 'Overwhelmed'

March 11, 2014 • Brigid Schulte and her husband planned to have an equal partnership. But years down the road, "I realized that we had both fallen into very traditional roles without even realizing it," she says.

Not Enough Hours In The Day? We All Feel A Little 'Overwhelmed'

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'Blood Will Out' Reveals Secrets Of A Murderous Master Manipulator

The FBI pulled fingerprints off decades-old immigration papers to find Clark Rockefeller's true identity. Lisa Poole/AP hide caption

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Lisa Poole/AP

'Blood Will Out' Reveals Secrets Of A Murderous Master Manipulator

Fresh Air

March 10, 2014 • Author Walter Kirn thought he was befriending an eccentric Rockefeller, but his pal turned out to be an impostor wanted for murder. Kirn's new book explores the depths of that deception.

'Blood Will Out' Reveals Secrets Of A Murderous Master Manipulator

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Stokely Carmichael, A Philosopher Behind The Black Power Movement

Martin Luther King Jr., shown here with Stokely Carmichael during a voter registration march in Mississippi in 1966, regarded the younger Carmichael as one of the civil rights movement's most promising leaders. Lynn Pelham/Time hide caption

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Lynn Pelham/Time

Code Switch

Stokely Carmichael, A Philosopher Behind The Black Power Movement

March 10, 2014 • A new biography traces Carmichael's evolution from civil rights activist to an early proponent of the black power movement and international human rights advocate.

Stokely Carmichael, A Philosopher Behind The Black Power Movement

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