The Thread

The 20th season of Talking Volumes will feature interviews with Alice Hoffman, Saeed Jones, Tim O’Brien, Karen Armstrong, Lindy West and Tracy K. Smith.

Decades ago, John le Carré worked for British intelligence services MI5 and MI6. He has channeled that experience into more than 50 years of espionage thrillers.

Martin, who's working on the long-awaited sixth volume of his series A Song of Ice and Fire, rarely gives interviews — but NPR's Scott Simon recently caught up with him onstage at an awards ceremony.

Her latest book features a heroine who makes a series of bad decisions shows the power of knowing who to trust.

Christine Coulson has written her debut novel about the hidden life of the place where she worked for 25 years: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Richard Bell's true tale details how even as the Underground Railroad ferried enslaved people north towards freedom, free black people vanished from northern cities to be sold into plantation slavery.

After the 2001 al-Qaida attacks, the CIA ramped up counterterrorism operations. This included a surge in young, female recruits. Three have written new books about their secretive work.

The author of the magisterial work A Short History of Nearly Everything turns his sights inside, but without the magic touch of the past that made his very big books transcend the common textbook.

Ten years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, where ornery Olive is learning about compassion, connection, and her own self.

O'Brien's 19th novel is based on the real story of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist group Boko Haram in 2014. It's a painful and essential read that ends on a hopeful yet realistic note.