In Claire Keegan's feminist take on Dickens, a boy born to an unwed teen builds a life as a coal merchant, husband, and father to five daughters, and faces crises of faith and conscience.
The 19th century historical fantasy wherein magic is a layer over the already complicated strata of society is a fairly common genre, but Freya Marske makes it feel fresh in this treat of a book.
Wanda M. Morris' All Her Little Secrets is a carefully constructed thriller wrapped in a narrative about racism, gentrification, and being the only Black person in an all-white environment.
Tabitha Lasley spent six months in Aberdeen, Scotland, interviewing men who work on offshore oil rigs. Along the way, she had an all-consuming affair with one of the very first men she interviewed.
Siri Hustvedt's essays bring into focus the profound contradictions of motherhood — often eclipsed by the cultural idealization of mothers as the model of self-sacrificing nurturance.
Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan says 2021 was a spectacular year for literary fiction. As such, her annual Best Books list is exclusively composed of novels and short story collections.
As the year draws to a close, critic John Powers singles out seven revelatory people or things that made 2021 a little brighter. At the top of his list? Basketball star Steph Curry.
Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Nair were under lockdown in Paris only miles apart from each other. A Different Distance compiles the almost daily poems they wrote from March 2020 to March 2021.
A thousand pages is a lot. But there's Ken Liu's voice to hold onto in this third installment of his epic — beautifully deployed and fully in command of the language of his imaginary universe.
Most readers spend a lot of time happily immersed in words. But for a change of pace, these gorgeous art books provide hours of blissful visual diversion.
The youngest presidential inaugural poet writes about how looking at our history tells us what our bodies are made of – and of how collective memory of strength re-energizes us in our darkest moments.
Faith Jones, a successful lawyer, is the granddaughter of David Berg, founder of The Family. She tells of how she was raised in the cult from infancy until managing to leave it in her early 20s.
Books We Love, formerly known as NPR's Book Concierge, is back for 2021. Here are a handful of books that NPR staffers named as some of their favorites of the year.