For decades, retired San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan covered the city's unhoused population.

In times of turmoil, do you turn to books for perspective or escape? Or to find connection?

Matthew Specktor grew up the son of a famous Hollywood agent. In The Golden Hour he serves up family saga, cultural criticism, fictionalized biography, history and lament for a vanishing world.

Memoirist and executive Daria Burke grew up in 1980s Detroit amid addiction and instability. She spent years trying to outrun that past by building a carefully curated, outwardly successful life.

The Secret Life of a Cemetery is a paean to the renowned Parisian cemetery, Père Lachaise. There, 10,000 visitors a day seek the graves of some 4,500 notable figures.

NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Knopf publisher Jordan Pavlin and Shelley Wanger, Joan Didion's longtime editor and one of her literary trustees, about the new book "Notes to John."

Sheila has grown so much she no longer fits in the book she lives in! NPR's Lauren Frayer talks with actor Geena Davis about her new picture book, "The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page."

NPR's Scott Simon talks to film historian Jason Bailey about his book, "Gandolfini: Jim, Tony and the Life of a Legend." It details how different he was from the gangster he portrayed on "The Sopranos."

Author Andrea L. Rogers and artist Rebecca Lee Kunz met by chance at the Cherokee National Holiday. Then they won the 2025 Caldecott Medal for their story about a helpful little boy named Chooch.

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Tina Knowles, the mother of artists Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Solange Knowles, about her new memoir, "Matriarch."