Today's episode features two novels intertwining family and wartime history. First, Anne Berest speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about The Postcard, based on the real-life holiday card her family received of relatives who'd been killed at Auschwitz years prior, and the journey that unfurled more than decade later to determine where the image came from. Then, Simon is joined by Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Good Night, Irene, who explains how his mother's real-life experience feeding and cheering on American soldiers during the war fueled his novel about the brave women on the frontlines of battle.

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As an NPR critic, Pop Culture Happy Hour host Aisha Harris helps make sense of how movies, music and TV inform our everyday lives. In her new book of essays, Wannabe, Harris applies that practice inward, reflecting on the impact Stevie Wonder and Sex and the City have had on her own upbringing. In today's episode, Harris speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about how relating her name to a certain pop song forced her to tackle some of her own discomforts with Black identity, and the challenges that come with being a Black critic reviewing work by Black creators.

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Greg Marshall grew up with parents battling health issues: cancer and ALS. Marshall had his own health scares – he struggled with his leg and mobility his whole life, which his mom and dad said was a result of tight tendons. As an adult, he found out he'd actually been diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth. His memoir, Leg:The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It, is an intimate, funny and honest look at Marshall's journey with his body and sexuality. He tells NPR's Scott Simon why he wanted to open up about living with a disability and why he wanted his leg to be the star of the show.

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In her new novel Loot, Tania James writes of a 17-year-old woodworker who's commissioned to build a tiger automaton for the Indian ruler Tipu Sultan in the 18th century. The story is inspired by the real-life Tippoo's Tiger, one of the most famous sculptures in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. James' tale of colonization, war, love and art stretches across India and Europe – and as she tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, it continues to raise questions about historical artifacts and who should own them.

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Between 1963 and 1964, The Beatles blew up to become one of the most internationally renowned bands in history. Though images of the screaming fans and the four musicians' swooping haircuts are part of pop culture, a new book shows that time period through Paul McCartney's perspective. 1964: Eyes of the Storm features photographs the guitarist took through many of those international performances. As McCartney tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, the band's first visit to the U.S. came amidst a period of charged political change.

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Today's episode features interviews with two authors who are very invested in the English language. First, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Hana Videen about her new book, The Wordhord, which collects words and phrases from Old English – like Beowulf – to examine and understand life during medieval times. Then, Here & Now's Robin Young is joined by linguist Valerie Fridland to discuss Like, Literally, Dude, which makes the case for how "like" and "um" are leading the charge of modernizing our language.

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When Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Darrin Bell was six years old, he had an encounter with a police officer. That event, which he kept secret for much of his life, reaffirmed "the talk" he'd just had with his mother about the way white people and systems of power can cast hostility and harm onto Black children. That conversation – the way it shaped his own childhood, schooling and adulthood – is at the heart of Bell's new graphic memoir, The Talk. He spoke with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about his own approach to discussing race and how it's led him to parent his own child.

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When P-22 – the puma that lived in LA's Griffith Park – died in December, Angelenos mourned the loss of one of their wildest celebrities. In his new book, Open Throat, Henry Hoke pays homage to the late cat in a different way; he takes on the voice of a mountain lion living beneath the Hollywood sign, pondering community and climate change and gender identity. In today's episode, Hoke speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about what P-22 represented for Los Angeles residents, and why writing from his perspective raises so many questions about our own humanity and isolation.

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The summer after high school graduation is full of promise. But for twin sisters Amira and Lina, the return of their brother from prison complicates some of those teenage plans. In Aisha Abdel Gawad's new novel, Between Two Moons, the sisters' family finds it's struggling with tensions in and outside of the home during the holy month of Ramadan. In today's episode, Gawad speaks with NPR's Ari Shapiro about why she wanted to paint a nuanced portrait of the Muslim-American experience and how real-life NYPD surveillance of Arab communities played a role in her writing.

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Oklahoma state Rep. Regina Goodwin is a descendant of survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The racist violence, which killed hundreds of Black Tulsans and burned the city's Greenwood District – known as Black Wall Street – is the subject of journalist Victor Luckerson's new book, Built from the Fire. In today's episode, both Goodwin and Luckerson join NPR's Michel Martin to discuss how for more than a century, Greenwood residents have rebuilt their community time and time again, even in the face of urban renewal policies and gentrification practices.

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