Search results for

Some people, unlucky in love, turn to matchmaking services. Thomas Day, an 18th century British intellectual, adopted two girls from an orphanage in order to mold them into the women of his dreams. Reviewer Cord Jefferson says Wendy Moore's history is so adroitly written it reads like a novel.

A crackling new translation of Giorgio Scerbanenco's crime novel Private Venus has just been released. Critic John Powers read it in a single sitting.

The Daily Show correspondent recalls the impact American brunch had on his Indo-Muslim upbringing, and the benefits of resembling Michael Jackson as a teenager.

Robert McCloskey was a young artist when he brought a crate of ducks back to his studio apartment. Since then, the plucky Mallard family (Jack, Lack, Mack, et al.) has charmed its way into our hearts.

How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity might be the year's first essential new book. NPR's Renita Jablonski picks up the book, and her cat, to see if he has what it takes to be a star on the Web.

On the eve of what looked to be Nepal's largest pro-democracy demonstration so far, King Gyanendra reinstated the lower house of parliament. The lower house is far more important than the largely symbolic upper house under Nepal's constitution. The move appears to meet a key demand of the seven-party opposition.

Ken Kalfus' new novel about an astronomer obsessed with attracting the attention of Martians appears at first to be an homage to the scientific romances of H.G. Wells and the lost-world sagas of H. Rider Haggard. As the novel develops, however, its unique social commentaries emerge.

Kelly Oxford went from being a housewife and mother of three in Calgary to Internet fame. She reveals the secret to success in a new book, Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar — but her real story may be just as unbelievable.

Elizabeth Strout is best known for her short story collection Olive Kitteridge, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009. Her new book is a novel, and critic Maureen Corrigan says it's a different type of winner.

Bitter debates about the national debt date back to the earliest days of the Republic, economist Simon Johnson says. Back then, the nation's failure to borrow was the problem. In White House Burning, Johnson and co-author James Kwack explore the meaning of the national debt and prospects for managing it.