Search results for

Junot Diaz's third book, This Is How You Lose Her, is a collection of stories, many narrated by recurring character Yunior. Diaz's voice-driven prose describes characters who are simultaneously appealing and appalling, says NPR critic Carmen Gimenez Smith.

Attica Locke was inspired to write her new novel after attending an interracial couple's wedding on a plantation. The Cutting Season tells the story of two murders set a century apart. The past, Locke says, "walks with us still."

Atlantic writer Hanna Rosin has expanded her cover story on women's new economic dominance into a full-length book. Reviewer Annalee Newitz says it's a good snapshot of a major cultural shift — but frustratingly contradictory in its approach.

In his new book, Ascent of the A-Word, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg looks at how the term took root among griping World War II GIs — and how its meaning evolved in the '60s and '70s. He tells Fresh Air that crude words are "wonderfully revealing."

Michael Chabon's eighth novel, Telegraph Avenue, delves deeply into issues of art, race and sexuality. The book started with a "very tiny world," Chabon says, a vinyl record shop not unlike a Berkeley store that inspired him in the late '90s.

Five-hundred feet underground in a coal mine in Ohio, Jeanne Marie Laskas realized how dependent Americans are on the work of "unseen" people. In Hidden America, she illuminates those whose jobs are nearly invisible to most of us, from miners to migrant workers to professional football cheerleaders.

Elissa Schappell was 13 and in search of a delicious romance novel when she stumbled on Erica Jong's feminist call to arms, Fear of Flying. It didn't resonate with her at the time, but later she appreciated its message. Is there a book you've changed your mind about? Tell us in the comments.

Elissa Schappell was 13 and in search of a delicious romance novel when she stumbled on Erica Jong's feminist call to arms, Fear of Flying. It didn't resonate with her at the time, but later she appreciated its message. Is there a book you've changed your mind about? Tell us in the comments.

The traditional mother-daughter dynamic turned on its head for New York Times columnist Alex Witchel in the wake of her mother's struggle with dementia. But Witchel's memoir, despite its raw honesty, fails to provide the depth needed to make it a standout in a trendy genre.

T.C. Boyle's past work is largely satirical and tough on his characters. In San Miguel, readers will find the same biting tone, but none of the irony. Loosely based on ranchers' memoirs of a grim California island, this chillingly written novel exposes a bleak and savage reality.