Here are some NPR and related links that might be of interest to you.
Stephanie Plum, Trenton's Scrappy Bounty Hunter
When the Garden State's seediest crooks skip bail, it's up to lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter Stephanie Plum to track 'em down. Novelist Janet Evanovich sets her satirical thrillers in Trenton, N.J., a city Evanovich remembers from her youth. In her best-selling novels, she portrays neighborhoods with strong ethnic identities, a lot of attitude — and plenty of food.
One Nightstand, Six Affairs: Novels of Illicit Love
Summer is the time for flings and affairs, a season that evokes daydreams about what could have been . But if you don't fancy yourself straying, books are an ideal way to live vicariously. You can explore all the naughty things you can't quite bring yourself to do, fantasize about the love you long for, or, on the more serious side, plumb the pages for truths about our human capacity for ecstasy and pain.
It's a luxury to ride the crest of a character's emotional life, from the agony of betrayal , to passion's joys. Here are some recent titles that take a fresh look at illicit love.
Amazon Reveals Sleeker, Faster Kindle and New $140 Wi-Fi Only Version
Amazon today announced the new Kindle e-book reader, which, in accordance with its past naming traditions, is simply called the Kindle. The name hasn't changed, and there are no crazy new advances--color e-ink and video are still years off, and may never be worth the trade-offs in price and quality over LCD--but this is definitely the most lust-worthy Kindle yet.
Booksellers' Picks: 15 Soaring Summer Reads
As days get longer and the sun's rays get stronger, books that are lighter and brighter stand a better chance of squeezing into packed beach bags and suitcases. But that doesn't mean summer books need to be weightless. Finding the perfect balance in a single bound edition can seem impossible, but it's a challenge that's just right for independent booksellers like Rona Brinlee of The BookMark in Atlantic Beach, Fla., Daniel Goldin of Boswell Book Co. in Milwaukee, and Lucia Silva of Studio City, Calif.'s Portrait of a Bookstore. Among the three of them, they've managed to find 16 books that fit the bill. Showoffs!
This summer's rays of literary sunshine come from 15 authors whose topics range from loaves of bread to small-town life in the Texas Hill Country. There's fiction from Sarah Blake, Hilary Thayer Hamann and Brady Udall, whose 600-page novel, The Lonely Polygamist, about a man with four wives who finds himself drawn to a fifth woman, was picked by two of our booksellers. There's also poetry (and a memoir) from quadriplegic writer Paul Guest, the story behind the making of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, and a first-person, nonfiction book from Ander Monson that's definitely Not a Memoir. The title even says so.
