Books & Literature

Adichie writes she "came undone" when she learned of her dad's death. Her new book is a charged account of his passing — and also a narrative of mourning in the time of pandemic.

The son of a Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother, Goldman grew up mostly in working class suburbs of Boston. His new novel draws on his own experiences, including being physically abused by his dad

Fresh Air celebrates Mother's Day with stories of mom from past interviews with Noah, Scorsese and filmmaker Albert Brooks. Plus, Lorna Luft remembers her mother, Judy Garland.

Mbue's novel was inspired in part by her own experiences growing up in Cameroon. Set in a fictional African village in the 1980s, it follows a group of villagers who take on an American oil company.

You fall in love with a person, but you get a package deal. That's one of the big messages of two new novels that ruminate on love and family, particularly the family that's thrust upon you when you happen to mate with one of their kith or kin.

Stephen Colbert reflects on life and doing his show during the pandemic, and surviving the Trump presidency.

Maureen Corrigan reviews an offbeat little novel called Nives by Italian writer Sacha Naspini.

Writer Lauren Hough grew up in a nomadic doomsday Christian cult called the Children of God. She says she remembers being taught animals could talk to Noah — that's how he was able to get them on to the ark — and that heaven was located in a pyramid in the moon. Her new collection is 'Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing.'

Julie Lythcott-Haims's new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, is a handbook on adulthood. Her 2017 memoir, Real American, is the story of her coming to terms with her biracial identity.

The first volume of Kaoru Takamura's 1997 eccentric crime thriller has just been translated into English. Inspired by a real-life case, Lady Joker reveals its world in rich, polyphonic detail.

The story of the Sackler dynasty--the family that owns Purdue Pharma, which created oxycontin, the drug marketed to relieve acute and chronic pain, that played a major role in creating the opioid epidemic. Patrick Radden Keefe's new book is Empire of Pain. It’s based in part on leaked documents and private emails that reveal the Sacklers knew about how addictive oxycontin is--before they admitted it, and they used deceptive practices to keep selling more of the drug.

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, is the debut novel by Dawnie Walton. It's set in the rock music world, and is about music, race, and family secrets.

Promising Young Woman marks the directing debut of Emerald Fennell. The movie has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including best director and best original screenplay. Fennell describes the film as "a kind of fantasy — with wish fulfillment" but also as something "much darker and, I hope, more honest than that."

Libertie, a new novel by Kaitlyn Greenidge, is inspired by the life of Dr. Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, the third African American woman to earn a medical degree in this country.

What do Soul Train and Whitney Houston tell us about race in America? In his book, A Little Devil in America, the culture critic traces the history of Black performance through moments in pop culture.

Best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, McMurtry wrote more than 30 books and screenplays, many set in the West. He died on March 25. Originally broadcast in 1995.

The Oscar-nominated movie Soul tackles passion, purpose and the meaning of life — topics that aren't usually addressed in animated films, a talk with the co-writers and directors Pete Docter and Kemp Powers.

Maureen Corrigan says 'The Life of the Mind' is one of the wittiest, most deliciously farcical novels she's read in a long time.

MIT professor Sherry Turkle was 27 when she learned that her estranged father had conducted psychological experiments on her when she was a child. She looks back on her childhood in a new memoir.