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Our top twenty most listened-to interviews, updated hourly.
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1
Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper A teenage girl who has survived a rare form of leukemia now needs a kidney transplant, in Jodi Picoult's novel. There's no trouble finding a perfect match, though, because the girl's parents conceived a little sister for their daughter specifically to provide a donor match. But there is a problem: the little sister, who's 13 now, has decided she would rather not be forced to donate a kidney. And she's hired a lawyer.
2
Rebecca Flowers Nice to Come Home To First she loses her job, then her fiancee dumps her. At age 36, Prudence Whistler is not having a good week. In her debut novel "Nice to Come Home To," Rebecca Flowers surrounds Pru with a retinue of friends and relatives, and soon enough the doors that closed don't look nearly as attractive as the window that has opened.
3
Rick Bragg The Prince of Frogtown Having a child changes everything. In journalist Rick Bragg's case, becoming stepfather to a somewhat delicate 10-year-old son led him to reevaluate the childhood he remembered, of growing up in East Alabama with an abusive, alcoholic father. Bragg has written two previous memoirs, and in "The Prince of Frogtown" he makes some measure of peace with his father, his stepson, and himself.
4
Christian Lander Stuff White People Like Coffee is Number One on the list. Barack Obama is number eight, Grammer is number 99, and Girls With Bangs is 104. It's "Stuff White People Like," the blog phenomenon-turned-bestselling book by aspiring comedy writer Christian Lander. In its first six months, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com recorded 35 million hits. But Lander tells us it's not what some people apparently think it is.
5
Jeff Sharlet The Family One blurb on journalist Jeff Sharlet's book "The Family" says "The Christian Right will never look the same again." Sharlet has taken the covers off an elite organization, a network of powerful dedicated to maintaining power. They are a "family" of Congressmen, generals, and even foreign dictators who look to figures like Hitler, Lenin and Mao as leadership models. Described as part history, part investigative journalism, "The Family" is a startling look inside the other half of American fundamentalist power.
6
Richard Florida The Flight of the Creative Class The United States is facing a brain drain. Increasing numbers of the world's most intelligent and creative people are choosing to live and work elsewhere, says Richard Florida, a professor of urban planning and a leading voice in regional economic development. In 2002 he described what he called The Rise of the Creative Class, in a book by that name. Now he's describing something much more alarming.
7
Howell Raines The One That Got Away By 2001, veteran newspaperman Howell Raines had reached the top of his profession, with his appointment as executive editor of the New York Times. Within less than two years, Raines was painfully pulled down from that lofty perch by the Jayson Blair scandal at the Times, an episode that forced him to reassess his life and his career. One result of his rumination is his new memoir "The One That Got Away."
8
Phillip Margolin Executive Privilege What if the President of the United States was a serial killer? On the face of it, it seems wildly implausible - how would a person who is surrounded by Secret Service and the media ever have the opportunity to slip away and commit one murder, let alone more than one? But veteran thriller writer Phillip Margolin makes it seem not just plausible, but possible, in his book "Executive Privilege."
9
Harry Turtledove The Man With the Iron Heart Every good novel is, at its heart, a story of "what if" - but alternate history is an entire "what if" unto itself. In the case of Harry Turtledove's book "The Man With the Iron Heart," it's this: what if V-E Day didn't actually end the Second World War in Europe? What if some Nazis decided to keep on fighting a guerrilla war, leading to a grinding, protracted conflict played out .. well, played out much like what we're in now, in Iraq? It's a new and different kind of challenge for the man known as the Master of Alternative History.
10
Robert Crais Chasing Darkness Elvis Cole, accomplice to murder? Not likely, as readers of the Robert Crais series know. But as "Chasing Darkness" begins, a man whom Cole once helped clear of a murder charge appears to be guilty of at least two more subsequent killings, and it leaves Cole badly shaken. It gets worse. The man is now dead, an apparent suicide. And Cole must begin from scratch, trying to piece together details of a string of murders - and what indirect role he played in two of them.
11
Stephanie Klein Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp Stephanie Klein was once known as Moose. Not, of course, by choice - it was when she was in eighth grade, and had a .. ahem .. weight problem. She's long past that now, but during her pregnancy a couple of years ago, her doctor told her she needed to gain weight, and that advice brought forth a cascade of memories of a more painful time. Using writing as therapy, Stephanie Klein's book is called "Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp."
12
Christopher Reich Rules of Deception What if, by this time tomorrow, everything you thought you knew about your spouse, and the life you had together, turned out to be a lie? And what if it got worse: what if determined and powerful people were out to kill you because of this new reality you've been plunged into? That's the personal hell facing a doctor named Jonathan Ransom, in the Christopher Reich thriller "Rules of Deception."
13
David Wroblewski The Story of Edgar Sawtelle It is a rare writing debut that inspires the sort of adulation that David Wroblewski has received for his first novel "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle." The title character is a mute Wisconsin farm boy, whose unique coming of age takes place largely in the wild, with three dogs as his companions. But then again, it would be thoroughly misleading and incomplete to characterize this as either a dog story, a coming of age story, or even a family drama.
14
Diana Gabaldon Lord John and the Private Matter Eighteenth century London is the backdrop for a murder mystery set in the context of a bestselling series of history-adventure novels. Author Diana Gabaldon has won the admiration of millions of readers with her Outlander series of books. This book focuses on the character of Lord John Gray, a minor player in the Outlander books.
15
Alex Kershaw Escape From the Deep The USS Tang was America's deadliest submarine in the Pacific Ocean in 1944. Tang and her crew sank 31 enemy ships and damaged two more in a career that lasted less than a year. On its last mission, in October 1944, the Tang's last torpedo malfunctioned, turning back in the water and destroying the sub. Half the crew was killed instantly. The survivors fought to stay alive 180 feet underwater. Ultimately just nine of the original 80-man crew made it out, where they were "rescued" by the Japanese, and taken to the infamous "Torture Farm." Their heartstopping story is now told in Alex Kershaw's book "Escape From the Deep."
16
Jeffery Deaver The Broken Window For most people who are victims of unscrupulous data-mining, it's just identity theft - in Jeffery Deaver's thriller "The Broken Window," a psychotic killer uses cutting-edge technology to find new victims, and set up an innocent person to take the fall. Series hero Lincoln Rhyme gets involved, when a long-lost cousin is accused of one of the killings.
17
E. Lynn Harris Just Too Good to be True Brady Bledsoe is a college football star, in line for a lucrative NFL career and a great life. That is, if secrets from his past -- and his mother's -- don't kill his plans. E. Lynn Harris worked on this novel for several years, trying some things as a writer he had never done before. The result is a story of football, friends, and family that he calls "Just Too Good to be True."
18
Stephanie Sarkis 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD If you thought attention deficit disorder is only a kids' problem, it may surprise you to learn that many adults have to deal with ADD, too. Dr. Stephanie Sarkis, a professional ADD coach who, herself, has ADD offers practical guidance in a book called "10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD."
19
Zane Nervous Jonquinette Pierce gets nervous around men. Sexually repressed, she avoids men when she can. Jude, on the other hand, is a highly-sexed woman who can't get enough of men, often in steamy anonymous settings. The hook in bestselling author Zane's novel is that Jonquinette and Jude are the same person.
20
Aaron Hamburger Faith for Beginners A middle-aged mother from the Midwest hopes that the Middle East is where her rebellious college-age son's transformation into a responsible adult will begin, in the novel by writer Aaron Hamburger called Faith For Beginners.
