Books & Literature

Tana French's latest novel follows Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, a police detective with a rage for order, as he investigates a young family's murder in a suburban Dublin development gone bust. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Broken Harbor is as much social criticism as it is whodunit.

Ruby Sparks and Killer Joe tell of an author who conjures a woman from his typewriter and a corrupt detective hired to kill an aging mother, respectively. But Fresh Air's David Edelstein says the films share a common trait: both take their stories beyond common reality to more fascinating parts of the psyche.

The author's What Happened to Sophie Wilder features a convert to Catholicism and another character who struggles to understand her faith. Beta talks about his Catholic upbringing, iron's place in fiction and literature's therapeutic aspects.

In her essays, British columnist Caitlin Moran picks up funny feminism where Nora Ephron left off. She takes a fresh approach to hit topics from the past 40 years or so years of feminist writing: sexuality, marriage, division of housework, female body fat, abortion and sexism in the workplace.

In his new memoir, David McGlynn describes how his teenage years were disrupted by violence. McAllen was a swimmer who turned to evangelical Christianity in college. A Door in the Ocean is a compelling coming-of-age story marked by random tragedy and biblical tracts, church coffee and chlorine.

Brian Castner commanded two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units in Iraq, where his team disabled roadside IEDs and investigated the aftermath of roadside car bombings. He returned home a completely different man, which he details in his memoir, The Long Walk.

In Karen Thompson Walker's first book, climate change makes the Earth's rotation go more and more sluggish, but this melancholy page-turner is more than just a disaster plot.

The James Beard award-winning chef was the youngest ever to receive a three-star review from The New York Times. His memoir, Yes, Chef, explains what it takes to be a master chef — and describes his journey from Ethiopia to Sweden to some of America's finest restaurants.

Airline veteran and writer William McGee says airlines' aggressive cost-cutting hasn't just added fees and hassles. He says they're taking steps that compromise safety — and regulators are letting it happen.

Nora Ephron, the essayist, novelist, screenwriter and film director, died Tuesday night in Manhattan. She was 71, and suffered from leukemia. Fresh Air remembers the creator of Silkwood and When Harry Met Sally with excerpts from a 2006 interview from WHYY's Radio Times.

For the past 80 years, the Man of Steel has endured in books, movies, radio serials, comic books and cartoons. "Americans embrace Superman partly because he captured so many things that are part of our psyche and part of our sense of ourselves," says biographer Larry Tye.

Jess Walter's latest novel spans decades and traverses the Atlantic to create a kaleidoscopic collection of "beautiful ruins." Characters include a hotelier, a young script reader and real-life movie star Richard Burton. NPR's Maureen Corrigan says the book is a "literary miracle."

Henry Hill, the mobster-turned-informant portrayed by Ray Liotta in the film Goodfellas, died Tuesday at age 69. Author Nicholas Pileggi talks about the colorful figure he profiled in the 1986 book Wiseguy, which became the basis for Goodfellas.

Kristen Iversen spent her childhood in the 1960s in Colorado near the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons factory, playing in fields that now appear to have been contaminated with plutonium. In Full Body Burden, she investigates the environmental scandal involving nuclear contamination around her childhood home.

Comedian Joan Rivers hates a lot of things. Her new book, I Hate Everyone, Starting With Me, details the things Rivers can't stand, from her appearance to obituaries to younger comedians who steal her gigs.

Summer is a trying time for introverts, what with the barbecues and the graduations and the picnics by the pool. If you'd always choose a good book over a good party, critic Maureen Corrigan has a list for you.

"I'm never going to go to Mars but I've helped inspire ... the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars," Bradbury told Terry Gross in 1988. The science-fiction writer died Tuesday at the age of 91.

This interview was originally broadcast in 1988.

A dark and stormy night, an isolated manor house and a knock at the door all play a part in Sadie Jones' delicious romp of a novel. Set in Edwardian England, it tracks a noble but cash-strapped family whose lavish dinner plans go awry when they're asked to shelter a crowd of refugees.

Kin: Songs By Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell is a new collaboration between Karr, the bestselling author and poet, and the maverick singer-songwriter. Together, they've written 10 songs, which are performed on the album by a variety of singers, including Norah Jones, Rosanne Cash and Emmylou Harris.

In The Right-Hand Shore, Christopher Tilghman returns to the racially charged landscape and the crumbling plantations of his book Mason's Retreat. Fresh Air critic Maureen Corrigan calls the prequel "the real deal."