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 41 - 60 of 283  There are a total of 283 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The catch"
Star rating for The catch
Description:
"Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. As infants they were adopted into different families, Clara sent to live with a successful, upper-class couple, and Dempsey with a sullen, unaffectionate city councilor. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London....
Book cover for "The cemetery of untold stories"
Star rating for The cemetery of untold stories
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives."--...
Book cover for "Chokepoints"
Star rating for Chokepoints
Description:
"The epic story of how America turned the world economy into a weapon, upending decades of globalization to take on a new authoritarian axis-Russia, China, and Iran. It used to be that ravaging another country's economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into...
Book cover for "Circle of Hope"
Star rating for Circle of Hope
Description:
"Americans have been leaving their churches. Some drift away. Some stay home. And some have been searching for--and finding--more authentic ways to find and follow Jesus. This is the story of one such 'radical outpost of Jesus followers,' dedicated to service, the Sermon on the Mount, and working toward justice for all in this life, not just salvation for some in the next. Part of a little-known yet influential movement at the edge of American evangelicalism,...
Book cover for "The city in glass"
Star rating for The city in glass
Author:
Description:
"In this new standalone novel, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin. A demon. An angel. A city. The demon Vitrine - immortal, powerful, and capricious - loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city...
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 "Cloistered"
Star rating for Cloistered
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Catherine Coldstream's memoir of life inside the world of a traditional Carmelite monastery and the intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity and obedience.
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 "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 "Conversations with people who hate me"
Star rating for Conversations with people who hate me
Description:
"Dylan Marron's work has racked up millions of views and worldwide support. From his acclaimed Every Single Word video series highlighting the lack of diversity in Hollywood to his web series Sitting in Bathrooms with Trans People, Marron has explored some of today's biggest social issues. Yet, according to some strangers on the internet, Marron is a "moron," a "beta male," and a "talentless hack." Rather than running from this online vitriol, Marron...
Book cover for "Dear writer"
Star rating for Dear writer
Description:
"Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts"--
Book cover for "Death of the author"
Star rating for Death of the author
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister's lavish Caribbean wedding, she's unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides...
Book cover for "Defectors"
Star rating for Defectors
Description:
"An award-winning journalist's deeply reported exploration of how race, identity, and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, and how this group can shape American politics. Democrats have historically assumed they can rely on the Latino vote, but recent elections have shown this to be far from the case. In fact, despite his vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric and disastrous border policies, Trump won a higher...
Book cover for "Desi Arnaz"
Star rating for Desi Arnaz
Description:
"An illuminating biography of Desi Arnaz, the visionary, trailblazing Cuban American who revolutionized television and brought laughter to millions as Lucille Ball's beloved husband on I Love Lucy, leaving a remarkable legacy that continues to influence American culture today. Desi Arnaz is a name that resonates with fans of classic television, but few understand the depth of his contributions to the entertainment industry. In Desi Arnaz, Todd S....
Book cover for "A different kind of power"
Star rating for A different kind of power
Description:
"What if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made political history and changed our assumptions of what a global leader can be."--
Book cover for "The director"
Star rating for The director
Description:
"G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself...
Book cover for "Djinn patrol on the purple line"
Star rating for Djinn patrol on the purple line
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Nine-year-old Jai watches too many reality police shows, thinks he's smarter than his friend Pari (even though she gets the best grades), and considers himself to be a better boss than Faiz (even though Faiz is the one with a job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places...
Book cover for "Don't forget me, little Bessie"
Star rating for Don't forget me, little Bessie
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world. Watching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing...