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September 12, 2020 8:00 AM

A West African fantasy with enveloping world-building

This week, bookseller Linda Stack-Nelson of Wild Rumpus Books for Young Readers in Minneapolis recommended the debut young adult novel “Raybearer” by Nigerian-American author Jordan Ifueko.

by Emily Bright

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September 11, 2020 11:48 AM

In 'On All Fronts,' CNN's Clarissa Ward showcases gravity, costs of a reporting life

Ward says she didn't know as a journalist she would "have my heart broken in a hundred different ways, that I would lose friends and watch children die and grow to feel like an alien in my own skin."

by Annalisa Quinn

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September 10, 2020 4:53 PM

Jacqueline Woodson wants kids to know the beauty — and the danger — of football

Woodson's new novel in verse “Before the Ever After” follows a 12-year-old boy whose football star father is beginning to show the damaging effects of too many blows to the head.

by Sacha Pfeiffer

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September 10, 2020 3:56 PM

Author traces what happened to WWII's 'Last Million' displaced people

Historian David Nasaw tells the story of the concentration camp survivors, POWs and other displaced people who remained in Germany following the war. Many had no home to return to.

by Dave Davies

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September 10, 2020 7:27 AM

Woodward defends decision to withhold Trump's virus comments

Bob Woodward says he needed time to be sure that President Donald Trump's private comments from February were accurate. On Twitter and elsewhere online, commentators accused Woodward of valuing book sales over public health.

by The Associated Press

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September 9, 2020 12:36 PM

Author Yaa Gyasi says writing can be 'an act of love and justice'

Gyasi's debut novel, “Homegoing,” won a PEN/Hemingway Award. Her follow-up, “Transcendent Kingdom,” draws on Gyasi's life as the daughter of immigrants from Ghana.

by Terry Gross

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September 9, 2020 6:13 AM

Attachment brings joy, and inevitably, loss in 'What Are You Going Through'

Sigrid Nunez's new novel follows an unnamed narrator who agrees to keep a dying friend company until the end — but despite encompassing all kinds of sadness, the story is never grim.

by Heller McAlpin

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September 8, 2020 6:07 AM

Trump fired a 'faux-Bama,' Michael Cohen says in tell-all memoir

In his book “Disloyal: A Memoir,” President Donald Trump's former personal attorney catalogs a laundry list of accusations, ranging from racism and sexual misconduct to financial misdeeds.

by Anastasia Tsioulcas

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September 7, 2020 3:27 PM

Often, it's not what you say, but 'how you say it'

Psychology professor Katherine Kinzler's new book looks at how people sound when they talk — and how that affects the way they're perceived. She says even children form biases around language use.

by Audie Cornish

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September 7, 2020 7:05 AM

'World Of Wonders' urges us to take a breath and look around

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil's new book aims to show readers how the natural world can support, educate and inspire us; it's inspired by her peripatetic childhood and the plants and animals she loved.

by Rachel Martin

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