Cary Regional-NPR Readers Corner-Radio/Podcast

Explore the best in literature with NPR's Readers Corner. Discover new authors, dive into thought-provoking conversations, and find your next great read. From fiction to nonfiction, and everything in between, we've got you covered. Browse our curated selection of book reviews, author interviews, and reading recommendations to fuel your love of reading.

Showing 1 - 20 of 27  There are a total of 283 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Among friends"
Star rating for Among friends
Author:
Description:
"What begins as a celebration takes a sudden turn when a shocking betrayal shatters the trust between families"--
Book cover for "Bear"
Star rating for Bear
Average Rating:
2.6 stars
Description:
Trapped on a remote Washington island with their dreams out of reach, two sisters clash when a mysterious bear arrives swimming in the channel, forcing them to confront their conflicting desires for escape and connection.
Book cover for "Black cake"
Star rating for Black cake
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking journey Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and...
Book cover for "The bright years"
Star rating for The bright years
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
"One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they're unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo. Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn't told Ryan about, and Ryan has...
Book cover for "A calling for Charlie Barnes"
Star rating for A calling for Charlie Barnes
Book cover for "Consider yourself kissed"
Star rating for Consider yourself kissed
Description:
"When she first meets divorced dad Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is sexy, witty, generous, and devoted, and the existence of his charming four-year-old daughter only adds to Coralie's thrill as the couple falls in love. Gradually, alongside Adam, Coralie builds the life she's longed for, including two babies, a wonderful stepchild, a continuing career, and a warm, safe home. Ten years on, however, something important...
Book cover for "The emperor of gladness"
Star rating for The emperor of gladness
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering...
Book cover for "Fellowship Point"
Star rating for Fellowship Point
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
The masterful story of a lifelong friendship between two very different women with shared histories and buried secrets, tested in the twilight of their lives, set across the arc of the 20th century. Celebrated children's book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy--to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic...
Book cover for "Help wanted"
Star rating for Help wanted
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"At a big-box store in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every day at 3:55 AM. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the days truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before customers arrive. When a golden opportunity for a promotion presents itself, the diverse members of Movement--among them a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging...
Book cover for "The husbands"
Star rating for The husbands
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"A novel about a woman who one day comes home to find her attic is magic and producing an endless supply of interchangeable husbands."--
Book cover for "I'll be right here"
Star rating for I'll be right here
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Immigrating alone from Paris to New York after the crucible of World War II, Gazala Benamar, still a teenager, becomes fast friends with two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala's lost, beloved brother Samir finally joins her in Manhattan, this contentious, inseparable foursome will last into the twenty-first century, becoming the beating heart of a multigenerational found family. These decades are marked by the business of everyday life...
Book cover for "Intermezzo"
Star rating for Intermezzo
Average Rating:
3.2 stars
Description:
"An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney. Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties--successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women--his enduring...
Book cover for "Long Island"
Star rating for Long Island
Average Rating:
2.4 stars
Description:
"Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony's parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to the town...
Book cover for "Long Island compromise"
Star rating for Long Island compromise
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"In [1980], a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of Long Island, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse for wear, and the family begins the hard work of trying to move on with their lives and resume their prized places in the saga of the American dream, coming to understand that though their money may have been what...
Book cover for "Mrs. Dalloway"
Star rating for Mrs. Dalloway
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
A poignant portrayal of the thoughts and events that comprise one day in a woman's life.
Book cover for "Nestlings"
Star rating for Nestlings
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Ana and Reid needed a lucky break. The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling: with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. That's about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to hear--affordable housing lottery. They've won an apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan's most revered buildings with beautiful vistas of Central Park and stunning...
Book cover for "Poor deer"
Star rating for Poor deer
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"A wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss--and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life"--
Book cover for "Real Americans"
Star rating for Real Americans
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao's Cultural Revolution. Despite all...
Book cover for "Run for the hills"
Star rating for Run for the hills
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it's just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it's a bit lonely, and a less exciting a life than she imagined for herself, it's mostly OK. Mostly. Then one day, Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she's his half-sister. Reuben--left behind by their dad thirty years ago--has hired a detective to track down...
Book cover for "Same as it ever was"
Star rating for Same as it ever was
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"At fifty-seven, Julia Ames is living an improbably lovely life. Despite her inclination toward self-sabotage and prickly alienation, she has found herself with a husband she loves, two happy children, and a quiet, contented existence in the suburbs. When she bumps into an old friend that she hasn't spoken to in years--a friend who almost ended her marriage decades prior--Julia finds herself reexamining her supposedly happy life. Compounded with a...