Barrie Hardymon
Barrie Hardymon is the Senior Editor at NPR's Weekend Edition, and the lead editor for books. You can hear her on the radio talking everything from Middlemarch to middle grade novels, and she's also a frequent panelist on NPR's podcasts It's Been A Minute and Pop Culture Happy Hour. She went to Juilliard to study viola, ended up a cashier at the Strand, and finally got a degree from Johns Hopkins' Writing Seminars which qualified her solely for work in public radio. She lives and reads in Washington, DC.
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Passing along a book that no one has heard of is like telling a really good secret. NPR's Barrie Hardymon recommends a hot Southern thriller, a scathing evisceration of the newspaper biz, a slightly ridiculous, totally gratifying romance, and one extra gem that's been hiding in plain sight.
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Home from a long stay in a mental hospital, the hero in Matthew Quick's debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, embarks on a hapless campaign to win back his former wife.
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When her sister drowns, 13-year-old Nico must navigate grief and growing up at the same time. Francine Prose's Goldengrove captures the confusion of adolescence tenderly and without condescension.
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Modernizing a familiar novel is a literary parlor trick. Crafting a fresh, moving interpretation of one of literature's great narratives is an achievement. Irina Reyn's What Happened To Anna K. is unquestionably a case of the latter.
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In a delightful new book, journalist Susan Squire traces the first 5,000 years of marital behavior and reveals just how much of a historical odd couple love and marriage are.
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To solve the murder of her own doppelganger, Detective Cassie Maddox assumes the dead woman's identity and enters into the complex, collective psychology of a charismatic group. Barrie Hardymon has a review.
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Almost every word of Chris Hannan's debut novel is a toothy treat. The rollicking tale of Dol McQueen is so festooned with 1862-era Wildly Western jargon it's tempting to read the whole thing aloud — in a brogue.
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Rivka Galchen's debut novel opens on a psychologically dark and stormy night: "Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife." Reviewer Barrie Hardymon says the emotionally devastating novel "hits like a thunderbolt."
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Like most things that happen in the bedroom, the collection of essays found in Dirty Words is fun, naughty and totally inappropriate for the eyes of children.