Books

Alice McDermott, who won the National Book Award for her 1997 novel "Charming Billy," has come out with her ninth novel. It's called "Absolution," and our book critic Maureen Corrigan says it leaves the old neighborhood far behind.

The late spy novelist is the subject of a new documentary by Errol Morris, The Pigeon Tunnel. Le Carré worked for MI5 and MI6 early in his career. Originally broadcast in 1989 and 2017.

Author Scott Eyman explains how Chaplin was smeared in the press, scandalized for his affairs with young women, condemned for his alleged communist ties and banned from returning to the U.S.

David Grann's 2017 book chronicled how members of the Osage Indian Nation were murdered in the 1920s by white people who wanted to take control of their land. Originally broadcast April 17, 2017.

"I love the way that Texans talk," Wright says. His novel centers on a naïve rancher who lucks into a seat in the state legislature, where he meets lobbyists, veteran politicians and power brokers.

When Helen Garner published her first novel, "Monkey Grip," in 1977, it made her a literary sensation in her native Australia. She's been a famous writer there ever since. The American publisher Pantheon has begun releasing her most popular books, starting with her 1984 novel "The Children's Bach" and her 2014 true crime book "This House Of Grief." Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says that Garner is one of his favorite writers and that these books offer the ideal introduction to a woman who's forever grappling with the hard stuff of life.

Safiya Sinclair, grew up in a Rasta family in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her father is a reggae singer and guitarist. Her hair was twisted into dreadlocks until she was 19. She came to realize that for her, being Rasta meant living in a cage. It was through reading and writing poems that she came to better know herself and to break out of the cage and enter the larger world.

Cat Bohannon is the author of the book "Eve" How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution". The book attempts to trace the evolution of women's bodies and how that evolution has shaped our lives.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says given that it's a novel about the struggle to fend off deprivation and extinction, 'Land of Milk and Honey' is gloriously lush. Zhang's sensuous style makes us see, smell and, above all, taste the lure of that sun-dappled mountain enclave.

In her new novel called "The Vaster Wilds," Lauren Groff, who's been a finalist for the National Book Award three times, tells a harrowing story of an escape from Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World.