A true smorgasbord is on offer for readers this week. Care for an inspirational memoir? Reminders of the precarious position of civilization? Early summer read? They're all here.
These books confront readers with the recent past and distant future, bring them to southeastern Africa and an alternative Japan, and bedeck their pages with subversive cartoons and lush landscapes.
A brave hummingbird does what she can to fight a fire in Sascha Alper's new book. It was one of the last projects illustrator Jerry Pinkney worked on before he died. His son Brian finished it for him.
The awards, which come with a $50K purse, have helped launch the writing careers of many now well-known authors, including Colson Whitehead, Ocean Vuong, Alice McDermott and Jia Tolentino.
When we worry about the declining rates of literacy and a lack of reading skills, it's often about children. But how often are adults reading these days? And what are we reading? A new NPR/Ipsos poll finds out.
Organized pressure groups, not individual parents, are leading the fight to remove books from shelves, according to a new report from the American Library Association.
New on the shelves this week: An obit writer writes — and drunkenly publishes — his own obituary. A Hungarian teen stumbles into adulthood. And geriatric sleuth Vera Wong returns.
This week's new releases include a memoir from Amanda Knox reflecting on her murder case and exoneration, a biography of Yoko Ono, new fiction from Column McCann, and the latest Wicked book Elphie.
Following his multi-generational, statement-making novel Afterlives, Abdulrazak Gurnah's new book Theft is a quieter, more intimate look at friendship and power.
Care and Feeding chronicles life in the culinary world. All the Other Mothers Hate Me follows a mom turned amateur detective. Plus, Karen Russell's first full-length novel since Swamplandia!
The Los Angeles Public Library stores thousands of index cards with staff reviews of books dating back to the 1920s. A librarian explains how they were used and what we can learn from them today.
