Search results for

During the past four decades, Paul Theroux has produced more than two dozen works of fiction and half as many widely read travel books. His latest work of fiction, The Elephanta Suite, is composed of three novellas set in modern India.

Modern Los Angeles serves as the setting for 13 stories in a new book from writer and poet Wanda Coleman. The collection is called Jazz & Twelve O'Clock Tales: New Stories.

In a stark change to conventional Indian literature, chick-lit novels are gaining popularity in Indian society. As a part of the program's Next Big Thing series, author Swati Kaushal discusses her novel, which many call the first Indian chick-lit, and the necessity for this genre in Indian culture.

Vincent Virga's Cartographia is a rare collection of 250 color maps and illustrations drawn from the world's largest cartographic collection at the Library of Congress. The collection spans everything from maps of ancient Mesopotamia, to maps of the human genome.

Nancy Pearl had a hard time compiling a short list of her favorite science fiction and fantasy books. There are too many good ones, she says. But one title seemed a natural to the Seattle librarian: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians.

Although the genre has acquired a trashy reputation, pulp fiction is full of language worth relishing, says Otto Penzler editor of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps. Magazines that sold for just a few cents in the '20s killed excessive prose and gave us the hard-boiled detective that continues to fill pop culture today.

Everyone, it seems, knows of someone who never pays his or her share following dinner at a restaurant, or someone who never repays money borrowed from a family member. NPR contributor Michelle Singletary, an expert on personal finance, and Jeanne Fleming, co-author of Isn't It Their Turn to Pick Up the Check?, offer tips on showing tough love when it comes to money.

The ambitious new work 30,000 Years of Art celebrates human creativity from 28,000 B.C. to the present day. From primitive carvings to masterpieces by Velazquez and others, the tome presents 1,000 works in chronological order.

On the short list for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction was a novel by New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones. The brilliant and compelling Mister Pip is set on a remote South Pacific island called Bougainville as civil war breaks out.

Alan Cheuse makes a prediction for forthcoming novels from John Grisham and Stephen King. Grisham's The Appeal centers on a $41 million jury award to a Mississippi woman whose family died at the hands of a chemical company; King's Duma Key features an evil genie who goes after a man in the Florida Keys.