Sang Young Park's novel can be read as an anthropological approach to Seoulite queer lives in the 21st century: Its four linked stories capture the experience of being both visible and unacknowledged.
Turkish American writer Mina Seçkin's debut is an engrossing exploration of national identity, the meaning of family and loss, and what happens when a family hides its central secret.
NPR's talks with Didion date back to 1977, where the author described what she meant when she wrote "writers are always selling somebody out" in the introduction of Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
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.
Faith Jones' grandfather founded the Children of God cult. She was taught sex was a service to God and that women should freely "share" their bodies, regardless of whether they wanted to or not.
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.
Tuesday is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. That means from now till June, each day will be a little bit longer — and brighter. Here are some ways you can celebrate the season.
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.
Ashli St. Armant plays funky New Orleans-style fare for kids with her band, Jazzy Ash and the Leaping Lizards, and spins mysterious tales in her Viva Durant audiobook series.
The day after her beloved Baba Bazorg dies, a little girl remembers some of her favorite things about him: his striped slippers, the mints in his pockets and the fig cookies he always shared.
Books We Love, formerly known as NPR's Book Concierge, is back for 2021. Here are a handful of romance novels that NPR staffers and independent critics named as some of their favorites of the year.
A groundbreaking feminist thinker, writer and activist, bell hooks was clearly uninterested in being safe, respectable or acceptable, and charted a career on her own terms.