Books & Literature

The murder scene looked like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. That's the one thing that the multitudinous cast of witnesses, suspects and police detectives might agree on in We Keep the Dead Close, Becky Cooper's just published account of a murder at Harvard that took place in 1969 and remained unsolved until two years ago.

Jess Walter's sweeping new novel, which traces the adventures of two vagabond brothers, is set against the backdrop of the free speech demonstrations that erupted in Spokane, Wash., in 1909 and 1910.

As a young man, Joe Biden was fixated on a singular goal: "On his first date with his future wife, he told her mother that he wanted to grow up to be president," New Yorker writer Evan Osnos says. Osnos writes about the Democratic presidential candidate in his new book, Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now.

Nunez's latest novel, What Are You Going Through, is about facing the possible death of our planet from climate change — while also dealing with our mortality as individuals.

Rumaan Alam's latest novel, Leave the World Behind, centers on a white family and an older Black couple who find themselves together in a beautiful vacation house on Long Island while a power outage — and possibly something much worse — grips much of the East Coast. The novel, which is up for the National Book Award, explores class and race relations — and how we respond to crisis and fear

Tana French's crime novel is a slow burn of a suspense story. It lulls readers into basking in the rough beauty of Western Ireland — before unspooling enough secrets and sins to fill an entire bog.

"The big picture of survival is sometimes so hard to see," says cave diver and photographer Jill Heinerth. Her memoir is called Into the Planet. Originally broadcast Aug. 19. 2019.

Leave the World Behind is atmospheric and prescient: Its rhythms of comedy alternating with shock and despair mimic so much of the rhythms of life right now. That's more than enough to make it a signature novel for this blasted year.

Acclaimed novelist Sue Miller's new book Monogamy is in part about how the dead can go on revealing themselves to the living. It's about a woman who discovers things about her husband after his death.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar centers his new novel on a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, is the son of Pakistani immigrants living in Wisconsin.

Pollock worked in a paper mill and meatpacking plant for 32 years before becoming a writer. Netflix's film version of his novel, The Devil All the Time, drops Sept. 16. Originally broadcast in 2011.

Historian David Nasaw tells the story of more than a million people stranded in defeated Nazi Germany after World War II. Some felt they couldn't return to their home countries under Soviet control. Others were Jewish survivors who had no homes to return to. Nasaw's book is 'The Last Million.'

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new memoir by celebrated southern pastry chef and writer Lisa Donovan whose essays in the magazine Food & Wine have won the James Beard award for food writing.

Race and belonging are the central themes of Yaa Gyasi's work. Her 2016 debut novel, Homegoing, about slavery, won a National Book critic's circle award, and the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35 honor.
Gyasi's new novel, Transcendent Kingdom, draws on Gyasi's life as the daughter of immigrants from Ghana.

Alice Randall's new novel is a historical novel about the Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit, once a thriving center of black-owned businesses and nightspots.

The Miami Herald columnist's new novel is a mystery featuring wealthy widows, the president and first lady, a scrappy wildlife removal specialist, and some gigantic Burmese pythons.

Raven Leilani's novel centers on a young woman with a free-range libido who dreams of being a painter. Luster is a crackling debut about sex, art and the inescapable workings of race.

Maureen Corrigan reviews two new books that could easily be overlooked, but shouldn't be.

Natasha Trethewey has written before about the murder of her mother decades ago by her step father. She got a new window on her mother's life after getting access to the police files about her mother's case. Her new memoir is 'Memorial Drive.'