Book Reviews : NPR

Poet Iman Mersal's book is a memoir of her search for knowledge about the writer Enayat al-Zayyat; it's a slow, idiosyncratic journey through a layered, changing Cairo — and through her own min...

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/01/1247835019/poet-iman-mersal-book-traces-of-enayat

Many philosophical ideas get an airing in Rachel Khong's latest novel, including the existence of free will and the ethics of altering genomes to select for "favorable" inheritable traits.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/30/1247785191/rachel-khong-real-americans-book-review

April always brings some of the years' biggest poetry collections. So as it wraps up, we wanted to bring you two favorites — retrospective collections from Marie Howe and Jean Valentine.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/29/1247554487/collections-from-poets-marie-howe-jean-valentine-for-national-poetry-month

The Letters of Emily Dickinson collects 1,304 letters, starting with one she wrote at age 11. Her singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/25/1246249850/emily-dickinsons-letters-review

Novelist Amy Tan's The Backyard Bird Chronicles centers on an array of birds that visit her yard, as Trish O'Kane's Birding to Change the World recalls lessons from birds that galvanized her teac...

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/22/1245849320/amy-tan-the-backyard-bird-chronicles-trish-okane-birding-to-change-the-world

Myah Ariel's debut is like a fizzy, angsty mash-up of Bolu Babalola and Kennedy Ryan as the challenges of doing meaningful work in Hollywood threaten two young lovers' romantic reunion.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/18/1245560837/myah-ariel-debut-romance-novel-when-i-think-of-you

These new books will take you from murder in present-day Texas to cryptography in Cold War Berlin to an online community that might hold the solution to a missing-person case.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1239716585/5-new-mysteries-and-thrillers-spring-2024-reading-list-recommendations

A very sinister thriller with a dash of science-fiction and full of inscrutabilities, Sarah Langan's novel is as entreating and creepy as it is timely and humane.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244788857/sarah-langan-novel-thriller-a-better-world

NPR's Books We Love is a roundup of favorite books of the year, sorted and tagged to help you find exactly what you're looking for. From the meet cutes to the happy endings and through all the u...

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/17/1197963854/books-we-love-love-and-romance

Ursula Villarreal-Moura's debut novel movingly portrays its protagonist coming to terms with an imbalanced, difficult, and sometimes harmful friendship that was also a key part of her life for ye...

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/12/1244151930/ursula-villarreal-moura-like-happiness-debut-novel