In Naomi Hirahara's mystery novel, a Japanese American family interned during the war returns home to a changed city. They're still settling in when their daughter is caught up in a murder.
Nolan's film tells the story of Robert Oppenheimer, the man who spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb. "Of all of the subject matter I've dealt with, it's certainly the darkest," he says.
Set in a neighborhood where Blacks and immigrant Jews have lived next to each other for decades, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is one of the best novels critic Maureen Corrigan has read this year.
When Shane McCrae was almost 4 years old, his maternal grandparents, who were white supremacists, took him from his father, who is Black. His new memoir is Pulling the Chariot of the Sun.
A narcissistic film director leaves his husband for a woman in Ira Sachs' new drama. But ending a marriage is rarely clean or easy — as this thrilling, tempestuous film proves.
Andrew Leland started losing his sight 20 years ago. He's now legally blind, although he still has a narrow field of vision, which allows him to see about 6% of what a fully-sighted person sees.
Grant was married to Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach, for 35 years. He writes about their relationship and her death from cancer in the new memoir A Pocketful of Happiness.
"It took me a long time to find my audience ... but I always knew they were out there," says Morgan, who started doing stand-up as a mom in her mid-30s. Her new Netflix special is I'm Every Woman.
Jay Wellons has operated on kids' brains and spinal cords. He writes about the anguish of losing a patient and the exhilaration of saving a life in All That Moves Us. Originally broadcast July 2022.
Two films take on the horror of grief: While Disney's live-action comedy is neither funny nor frightening, the Australian horror-thriller about teenagers dabbling in the occult is terrifically creepy.
Set in New Mexico in the 1970s, Dark Winds stars, is written by, and is largely directed by Native Americans. The resulting series treats Navajo culture not as sociology but as lived experience.
The legendary crooner, who died July 21, told Terry Gross in 1991 he never got tired of singing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco": "I'm very grateful for that song."
Cosby's novel All the Sinners Bleed centers on a Black sheriff in a small Southeast Virginia county. The novel was inspired by his own experiences growing up in the shadow of the Confederacy.
Maureen Corrigan recalls playing with the iconic doll on the sidewalk in Queens in the 1960s. She says Barbie didn't teach girls to be of service; she taught the giddy pleasures of a seeming autonomy.
"My early '70s New York is dingy and grimy," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author says. Whitehead's sequel to Harlem Shuffle centers on crime at every level, from small-time crooks to Harlem's elite.
