Books & Literature

Peter Cameron's new novel about a young nurse is consummate English country home novel. Put the kettle on and settle in -- but don't get too comfortable: Cameron's writing is full of sharp angles an unanticipated swerves into the droll and the downright weird.

Writer Nick Flynn was working in a homeless shelter in his 20s when his father — an alcoholic and self-proclaimed writer who left when Flynn was a baby — showed up as a client. His story is now a movie called Being Flynn, starring Paul Dano and Robert De Niro.

A new book follows an American basketball veteran as he coaches a struggling Chinese pro basketball team. Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Yardley has a courtside seat from which to observe China's frantic capitalist expansion and its ambivalent fascination with all things American.

The book publisher who championed the works of beat poets and Samuel Beckett, and who defied censors with the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover and Tropic of Cancer, died Tuesday at age 89. Fresh Air remembers Rosset with excerpts from a 1991 interview.

This interview was originally broadcast on Apr. 9, 1991.

Advertisers collect information with every digital move people make. They then target ads based on that information. Communications scholar Joseph Turow worries that advertisers will use such data to discriminate against people and put them into "reputation silos."

Helen Simpson once said that when it comes to short stories, "Something's got to happen, but not too much." Her latest short story collection, In-Flight Entertainment, may seem bleak and mundane — with subjects like mortality, infidelity and climate change — but it's also bursting with British wit.

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander writes about his own faith — and what it means to be Jewish — in stories that explore religious tension, Israeli-American relations and the Holocaust.

Tupelo Hassman's debut novel stars Rory, a resilient, if ragged, life force raised in a Reno trailer park who adopts a tattered copy of The Girl Scout Handbook as her Bible. Rory endures sexual abuse, the death of loved ones, and everyday invisibility — all without playing for our sympathy.

The protests that led to the Egyptian revolution last year were organized in part by Wael Ghonim, who used an anonymous Facebook page to coordinate the demonstrations. In his new book, Ghonim explains how social media helped transform his country.

The 83-year-old former poet laureate reflects on how life has changed as he's grown older. "My body causes me trouble when I cross the room, but when I am sitting down writing, I am in my heaven — my old heaven," he says.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo spent more than three years in Mumbai's Annawadi slum. In her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, she profiles people living in extreme poverty — right in the shadow of luxury hotels.

Unlike the Great Depression, our current recession hasn't yet produced much memorable literature, but book critic Maureen Corrigan says that situation, like the economy, seems to be changing.

From the comedian and digital director of The Onion, a satirical self-help book for anyone who has a black friend, wants to be the next black president or speak for the black community.

Hilma Wolitzer's finely observed comedy of manners follows the romantic misadventures of recently widowed 62-year-old Edward Schuyler as he re-enters the dating pool with a splash.

The Inquisition revolutionized record-keeping and surveillance techniques that are still used today, says Cullen Murphy. His new book God's Jury draws parallels between some of the interrogation techniques used in previous centuries with the ones used today.

Ayad Akhtar's debut novel, American Dervish, tells the story of a Pakistani-American boy in Milwaukee coming to terms with his religion and identity. Akbar drew on his own experiences exploring the Muslim faith as a teenager growing up in Wisconsin.

Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy takes on genocide, identity politics and Anne frank (now elderly and squatting in a farmhouse in upstate New York) with grim humor and daring irreverence.

In New York Diaries, editor Teresa Carpenter presents 400 years of diary excerpts written by people who've lived in or just passed through one of the greatest cities in the world.

Country singer-songwriter Darrell Scott grew up performing with his father, Wayne. Last month, Darrell was in Texas in between gigs when he learned that his father had died in a car accident. Here, he reflects on his father's life and death, and reads a poem he wrote about his dad.