NPR's Book of the Day

Donal Ryan's new novel, The Queen of Dirt Island, centers its women characters. He tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that making the men peripheral wasn't his goal – "it just kind of happened." In today's episode, he explains how a childhood spent listening to his grandmother, sister and neighbors in his mom's kitchen inspired the voices in the book, and why he wrote with a strict word count in mind for each chapter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today's episode is a true story that reads like a novel. In 2006, author and labor organizer Saket Soni received a call from an Indian migrant worker. He was one of hundreds of men hired by Signal International to fix hurricane-ravaged oil rigs in Mississippi and asked to pay $20,000 under the impression it would go towards green card expenses. But as Soni explains in his new book, The Great Escape, that was far from the truth. He tells Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes about the harsh conditions workers were forced to live in, and how they eventually marched all the way to D.C. to demand justice.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ari Shapiro's voice might be familiar to listeners for a number of reasons. He's one of the hosts of All Things Considered; he also sings and tours with the band Pink Martini, sometimes in places with languages he doesn't speak – as he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. In today's episode, the NPR journalist talks about his new memoir, The Best Strangers in the World, and opens up about the way he brings his personal experiences to his professional and creative endeavors – from being one of the only Jewish kids in Fargo, MN to covering the Pulse nightclub shooting.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today's episode covers two very different stories involving personal loss and what comes after. First, author Laura Braitman tells NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer about her memoir, What Looks Like Bravery, and how her father's death earlier in life pushed her to unhealthily lean into academic and professional achievements as a coping mechanism. Then, NPR's Rachel Martin sits down with The Atlantic's Jennifer Senior. Her new book, On Grief, expands on her Pulitzer-Prize winning essay about the diary left behind by a 9/11 victim, and the conflict it created between his family and girlfriend.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In a small North Carolina town in 1976, three siblings are shot to death. That's the mystery at the center of De'Shawn Charles Winslow's new book, Decent People – and it's one the segregated town's white police officers aren't paying much attention to. In today's episode, Winslow tells NPR's Scott Simon about the heroine who takes it upon herself to solve the case, and why - the author feels a need to paint a nuanced portrait of even the antagonists in his books.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Author Azar Nafisi has written a love letter to literature and reading in Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. She does this in a series of letters to her late father who passed on in 2004. Nafisi says that reading can help us really live and also help us, and has helped her, survive challenging times. Nafisi told NPR's Scott Simon that literature's purpose is to let us experience new worlds: "to come out of yourself, and join the other."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From Notting Hill to the real-life relationships of several SNL writers with Hollywood starlets – to even the new Barbie movie tagline ("She's everything. He's just Ken.") – there's a recurring storyline in pop culture of ordinary guys dating up, falling in love with glamorous women who are seemingly out of their league. In her new book, Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld shakes up these gender dynamics. She tells NPR's Juana Summers why she wanted her career-focused heroine – a comedy writer – to stumble into a romance with a global pop star.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Amina Al-Sirafi, the protagonist of Shannon Chakraborty's new novel, commanded the Indian Ocean as one of its most notorious pirates during the 12th century. But when the story kicks off, Al-Sirafi is focused on raising her daughter, trying to live a peaceful life with her pirate days far behind her. The tale pulls Chakraborty's character back to her heyday in the waters – and as the author tells Here & Now's Kalyani Saxena, Al-Sirafi's Islamic faith plays a much bigger role this time around.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today's episode is all about the complexities of sibling relationships, especially when the family is surrounded by hostile circumstances. First, NPR's Miles Parks speaks with Ari Tison about her new novel, Saints of the Household, which follows two mixed-race brothers navigating high school under their white father's abuse. Then, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe gets to talking with Rachel Eve Moulton about her book The Insatiable Volt Sisters and the way trauma gets passed down through generations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Sathnam Sanghera's new book, Empireland, focuses on how British imperialism shaped the trajectory of that country's history. But as he emphasizes in his opening chapter, the U.S. – much like the rest of the world – is not exempt from being a part of that story. In today's episode, Sanghera speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about how he came to understand that fraught history through his own personal experiences as a Sikh man in Britain, and why that particular empire stands out from the rest for him.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy