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With Wendy and the Lost Boys, Julie Salamon has written the perfect biography for playwright Wendy Wasserstein's legions of fans, a book as entertaining and personable as its subject.

Husband and wife doctor team Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband have joined forces to help patients navigate the daunting and dysfunctional world of medicine. Doctors must be more patient, they say, and patients, better informed.

Kevin Wilson's "strange and wonderful" debut novel, The Family Fang, arrives, along with Adrian Burgos Jr.'s biography of a colorful Negro League owner, memoirs by hacker Kevin Mitnick and mother of nine Melissa Faye Greene, plus journalist Doug Saunders' look at world migration patterns.

It's a rich week for fiction, with new novels from Ann Patchett and Jennifer Weiner, and a debut by Chad Harbach that marries a literary sensibility with a love of baseball — plus Jorie Graham's new poetry collection. In nonfiction, Erik Larson is back with the story of an American ambassador in Germany in 1933.

St. Louis has asked Black clergy to encourage church members to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Pastors are preaching about it, talking it up at Bible study and even offering churches as vaccination sites.

In the nominations announced Tuesday, Martin Scorsese's film Hugo received the most this year — 11, including best picture and best director.

The Republican presidential candidates debated in Florida Monday night and it was a relatively civil affair. But there were plenty of sharp attacks — most of them launched by former front-runner Mitt Romney against the man who has at least for the moment, passed him in the polls former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

A year after the first major coronavirus relief package passed, the Justice Department has charged defendants over exploiting loan and unemployment programs as well as with fraud targeting consumers.

The U.S. Capitol Police says it is aware of and preparing for a threat by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol complex on Thursday.

By refusing to serve up even one likable main character, Zoe Heller's new novel raises implicit questions about readers' expectations about fiction. Reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls The Believers a "smart, caustic novel."

Public intellectual George Scialabba contemplates the role of great — and not so great — thinkers in his new collection of essays, What Are Intellectuals Good For? Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it "a pleasure to read."

Author Richard Yates is best known for his novel Revolutionary Road, which has been adapted to a movie to be released in January. But a life defined by drunken nights left Yates' own life journey as rocky as it was revolutionary, says Alan Cheuse.

The late Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's With My Dog-Eyes chronicles a mathematics professor's descent into madness after a mystical vision. Critic Juan Vidal says it's a pleasure to see and read.

Calm down, Scrabble purists. Turns out rumors about allowing proper nouns in the beloved board game were just rumors. Scrabble expert Stefan Fatsis says the rules have remained virtually unchanged since the game was first marketed in 1948 — and after 62 years of consistency, no one can mess with the game that easily.

In April of 1943, the body of a British Royal Marine washed ashore in Spain, carrying top secret letters about Allied plans to invade Greece and Sardinia. Or so it seemed. In reality, the body was that of a homeless Welsh laborer, and the letters were fakes designed to direct German attention away from the real Allied invasion target: Sicily.

Literary critic Harold Bloom has co-edited a new anthology called American Religious Poems. In a conversation with Linda Wertheimer, Bloom elaborates on the premise of his book and notes some unexpected examples.

NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with attorney Benjamin Crump, who leads the George Floyd family's legal team, on the Chauvin trial proceedings.

Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II says his office wants the footage related to the killing of the 42-year-old Black man to be made public. The local NAACP is demanding Wooten's resignation.

Carter defeated fellow Democrat Karen Carter Peterson in the special election for Louisiana's only Democrat-held seat in Congress after Peterson planted herself firmly in the progressive camp.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley also said he wanted to understand "white rage" in a tense exchange that Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz had with him and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.