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International timber trafficking is an estimated $100 billion business. A lab that usually focuses on endangered animal cases is using a sophisticated machine to identify contraband wood shipments.

The 2004 earthquake in Indonesia was so powerful, it sped up Earth's rotation by a fraction of a second each day. That detail inspired Karen Thompson Walker's debut novel, which imagines a world in which Earth has inexplicably begun to slow down, leading to a series of calamitous changes.

Philip Roth recently announced that he had written his last novel. Author Matthew Specktor explains why Sabbath's Theater, released in 1995, is not only Roth's most disgusting novel but also his best. Do you have a favorite book that breaks all the rules? Tell us in the comments.

Robert Hellenga's new collection contains nine searching, mature stories about grand passions, fleeting romantic adventures, and facing the end of life with few illusions.

Writer Helen Oyeyemi's new collection features nine stories all linked through the idea of keys that open rooms, doors, even hearts. She says she felt haunted by keys while working on the book.

Kurt Vonnegut once famously described book critics as donning armor to battle a hot fudge sundae. Jillian Tamaki takes on Harry Potter in SuperMutant Magic Academy, but she's tossing marshmallows.

In Abigail Thomas' What Comes Next and How to Like It, the aging process robs the 70-something of beauty and energy. In H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald trains a goshawk after her father dies.

When author Lucas Mann turned 13, his father gave him a copy of Portnoy's Complaint, a novel The New Yorker dubbed "one of the dirtiest books ever published." Mann says the book taught him that life is painful, sometimes gross, and often funny.

Dameron was a composer and pianist who fused the sophisticated arrangements of the Big Band era with bebop's complex harmonies. A new biography shines a light on the too-brief life of the man known as "The Architect of Bop."

In the bucolic setting of The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker, the joys and pitfalls of sibling rivalry are given new life. Author Amy Waldman says the book's sparse prose and stark setting provide the backdrop for a moving story of familial resentment.

It isn't just crafty marketing that draws us to that newest gadget, restaurant or travel destination. According to Winifred Gallagher's latest book, we're biologically predisposed to be attracted to novelty and change.

Rebels and the government of Nepal have signed a peace deal. The agreement ends a 10-year insurgency, and begins a new political era in the Himalayan nation. Wednesday has been declared a national day of celebration for the accord.

Is it possible that, one day, beef production will not require grazing land, feed lots or slaughterhouses? In Britain, burgers made from cow stem cells were put to the taste test on Monday.

For one year, on her daily walks, poet Harryette Mullen observed the collision of the natural world with the man-made environs of Los Angeles. She translated her impressions into a series of tankas, 31-syllable poems in the Japanese tradition. The resulting collection is called Urban Tumbleweed: Notes From a Tanka Diary.

As Thanksgiving draws near, many of us are thinking about what we're thankful for. Novelist and memoirist Anne Lamott says she is filled with "wonder at the just sheer beauty of creation." She discusses her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

What if the song "Baby Shark" stopped after just two stanzas? There's no Daddy Shark in sight at a Chicago-area zoo where an epaulette shark pup hatched this summer.

Italo Calvino's delightful "cosmicomic" stories have long been scattered — split into separate books and translated in pieces. Now, a collection new to the U.S. is finally bringing them together.

Meg Wolitzer's novel is about lifelong friendship tinged with jealousy. It begins at a summer camp in 1974 and follows a group of friends through middle age. Wolitzer says her teen years were a rehearsal for her adult life and that today she is "different" but "in the same shell."

NPR's Kelly McEvers talks to GOP Rep. Will Hurd about former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee about Russian influence in the 2016 election.

Kate Lynnes of Albuquerque, N.M., shares her "signature song," "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" by Marvin Gaye, which inspired her to become an environmental consultant.