Jason Heller
[Copyright 2024 NPR]
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Kyle Craft's second album is full of unabashed odes to courtship, confusion and the timeless power of storytelling in song.
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Chandler Klang Smith's novel, set in a crumbling far-future metropolis menaced by dragons, is a dizzying, delirious crash of wonders and grotesqueries, spiked with crackling dialogue and detail.
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The American Southwest continues to inform Calexico's sprawling, cross-cultural indie rock, but here it's a more self-contained, even lonesome affair.
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The London post-punk band fortifies its buoyant, life-affirming jams with one of the most revolutionary forces of all: fun.
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David Eddings' beloved Belgariad (and several sequels), co-written with his wife Leigh, follows farm boy Garion and his magical destiny. It wrapped up 20 years ago; are its powers still intact?
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Ursula K. Le Guin's mastery of fiction has remained so consistent, it's easy to overlook her accomplishments in other forms — but her new nonfiction collection goes a long way towards fixing that.
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Arthur Herman's new book zooms in on Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, and the vast, conflicting historical forces they embodied — and which came to a head in the fateful year of 1917.
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Harvard professor Richard F. Thomas teaches a popular class on the importance of Bob Dylan, and now he's turned it into a book, full of stories, personal history and the occasional comparison to Ovid.
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The French singer (and actor) has made her first album in 7 years — a testament to the power of immaculate, effortless-sounding pop songcraft, even in the face of loss.
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Activist Bill McKibben answers his own call for topical fiction with Radio Free Vermont, a gently surreal tale about a septuagenarian troublemaker who inadvertently sparks a secession movement.