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 21 - 40 of 283  There are a total of 283 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Birding with benefits"
Star rating for Birding with benefits
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Newly-divorced, almost-empty-nester Celeste is finally seeking adventure and putting herself first, cliches be damned. So when a friend asks Celeste to "partner" with his buddy John for an event, Celeste throws herself into the role of his temporary girlfriend. But quiet cinnamon roll John isn't looking for love, just birds-he needs a partner for Tucson's biggest bird-watching contest if he's ever going to launch his own guiding business. By the...
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 "Black in blues"
Star rating for Black in blues
Description:
"A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue and its ... role in Black history and culture"--
Book cover for "Blood of the old kings"
Star rating for Blood of the old kings
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"From award-winning Korean author Sung-il Kim & translated by the world-renowned Anton Hur, Blood of the Old Kings begins an epic journey unlike any other There is no escaping the Empire. Even in death, you will serve. In an Empire run on necromancy, dead sorcerers are the lifeblood. Their corpses are wrapped in chains and drained of magic to feed the unquenchable hunger for imperial conquest. Born with magic, Arienne has become resigned to her dark...
Book cover for "The bog wife"
Star rating for The bog wife
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a "bog-wife." Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails--or refuses--to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys,...
Book cover for "The bone shard daughter"
Star rating for The bone shard daughter
Series:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands. Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden...
Book cover for "The bone shard emperor"
Star rating for The bone shard emperor
Series:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
The Emperor is Dead. Long live the Emperor. Lin Sukai finally sits on the throne she won at so much cost, but her struggles are only just beginning. Her people don't trust her. Her political alliances are weak. And in the north-east of the Empire, a rebel army of constructs is gathering, its leader determined to take the throne by force. Yet an even greater threat is on the horizon, for the Alanga--the powerful magicians of legend--have returned to...
Book cover for "The bone shard war"
Star rating for The bone shard war
Series:
Description:
"Lin Sukai has won her first victory as Emperor, but the future of the Phoenix Empire hangs in the balance--and Lin is dangerously short of allies. As her own governors plot treason, the Shardless Few renew hostilities. Worse still, Lin discovers her old nemesis Nisong has joined forces with the rogue Alanga, Ragan. Both seek her death. Yet hope lies in history. Legend tells of seven mythic swords, forged in centuries past. If Lin can find them before...
Book cover for "The book of love"
Star rating for The book of love
Author:
Description:
"Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves confused and disembodied, blinking under the fluorescent lights of their high school music room. They are greeted by the man they know as their music teacher, who restores the ghostly teens to their corporeal forms with a flick of his fingers and explains: nearly a year ago they went missing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, and have long been presumed...

30. Bride

Book cover for "Bride"
Star rating for Bride
Series:
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast--again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange. Again. Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception....
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 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 "The buffalo hunter hunter"
Star rating for The buffalo hunter hunter
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who...
Book cover for "The bullet swallower"
Star rating for The bullet swallower
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He's good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he's also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it, with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed...
Book cover for "The butcher of the forest"
Star rating for The butcher of the forest
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"At the northern edge of a land ruled by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild, forbidden forest ruled by powerful magic. Veris Thornthe only one to ever enter the forest and surviveis forced to go back inside to retrieve tyrant's missing children. Inside await traps and trickery, ancient monsters, and hauntings of the past. One day is all Veris is afforded. One misstep will cost everything"-- "At the northern edge of a land ruled...
Book cover for "By the fire we carry"
Star rating for By the fire we carry
Description:
A "work of reportage and American history in the vein of Caste and How the Word Is Passed that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the '90s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land over a century later"--
Book cover for "Cahokia jazz"
Star rating for Cahokia jazz
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"Like Golden Hill, Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, and like Golden Hill it has a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot set within a fully imagined world. Only this world is full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, and dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly heroic proportions, and a troubled soul to fall in love with. One snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner...
Book cover for "A calling for Charlie Barnes"
Star rating for A calling for Charlie Barnes
Book cover for "Careless people"
Star rating for Careless people
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
An insider account charting one woman's career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
Book cover for "Catalina"
Star rating for Catalina
Description:
"Catalina is trying to work out her own life as she leaves her undocumented family behind to enter Harvard. Suffering from bouts of PTSD, she struggles to connect to her new world just as she struggled to make sense of her old one. She infiltrates the subcultures of elite undergrads-internships and college newspapers, parties and secret societies-and observes them like an anthropologist, but then falls in love, or something like love, with a fellow...