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 40  There are a total of 283 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "All fours"
Star rating for All fours
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey"--
Book cover for "All the other mothers hate me"
Star rating for All the other mothers hate me
Average Rating:
2.7 stars
Description:
"Luckiest Girl Alive meets A Simple Favor in this voice driven, stylish, and darkly comedic debut thriller about a pop star turned bad mom who will do anything to save her son after he becomes the prime suspect in his classmate's disappearance, from the winner of the Lucy Cavendish Prize for Fiction. Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her...
Book cover for "Anita de Monte laughs last"
Star rating for Anita de Monte laughs last
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Notes:
NPR categorizes this book as suspense/ thriller.
Description:
"Who gets to leave a legacy? 1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn't. By 1998 Anita's name has been all but forgotten - certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by progeny of film producers, C-Suite executives, and international art-dealers, most of whom float through...
Book cover for "The antidote"
Star rating for The antidote
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"A ... Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraska town"--
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 sword"
Star rating for The bright sword
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Collum, a brilliantly gifted young knight from the provinces, arrives at Camelot two weeks after the Battle of Camlann, hoping to compete for a spot on the Round Table. But he finds the city empty, King Arthur dead, and the Table destroyed. The remaining six knights aren't the mighty heroes, the legends, like Lancelot and Gawain and Tristram and Galahad. These are the survivors, a grab-bag of minor oddball knights from the margins. ... Arthur's death...
Book cover for "The city we became"
Star rating for The city we became
Series:
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even...
Book cover for "The cliffs"
Star rating for The cliffs
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"The crumbling Victorian had been abandoned long before Jane ever discovered it as a child. It was painted a sweet violet color, and the gingerbread trim was blue and green, but inside was shambles--broken glass, a dollhouse ravaged by mice, bedsheets twisted as though someone had left in a hurry. Still, the house became a hideaway whenever Jane needed to escape her volatile mother. Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to...
Book cover for "Colored television"
Star rating for Colored television
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend's luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane's sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu--the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her 'mulatto War and Peace'--she'll have tenure and...
Book cover for "The compound"
Star rating for The compound
Description:
"Lily--a bored, beautiful twenty-something--wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles,...
Book cover for "The dream hotel"
Star rating for The dream hotel
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center,...
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 "The god of the woods"
Star rating for The god of the woods
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"When Barbara Van Laar is discovered missing from her summer camp bunk one morning in August 1975, it triggers a panicked, terrified search. Losing a camper is a horrific tragedy under any circumstances, but Barbara isn't just any camper: she's the daughter of the wealthy family who owns the camp--as well as the opulent nearby estate, and most of the land in sight. And this isn't the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared in this region. Barbara's...
Book cover for "Good night, Irene"
Star rating for Good night, Irene
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head...
Book cover for "How to end a love story"
Star rating for How to end a love story
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Helen Zhang hasn't seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She's even scored a coveted spot in the writers' room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer's block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh...
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 "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 "Listen for the lie"
Star rating for Listen for the lie
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"What would you do if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thinks so too? What if the truth doesn't matter? As Lucy Chase's Texas hometown begins to tell versions of what happened and who Lucy is to a nationwide, true crime obsessed audience, at the bequest of her grandmother, she returns to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend's murder, even if she is the one that did it"--
Book cover for "The lonely hearts book club"
Star rating for The lonely hearts book club
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Sloane Parker lives a small, contained life as a librarian in her small, contained town. She never thinks of herself as lonely...but still she looks forward to that time every day when old curmudgeon Arthur McLachlan comes to browse the shelves and cheerfully insult her. Their sparring is such a highlight of Sloane's day that when Arthur doesn't show up one morning, she's instantly concerned. And then another day passes, and another. Anxious, Sloane...
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...