Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling was a paratrooper during WWII. After the war, he wrote a short story inspired by the experience. It's now being published for the first time in The Strand.(Image credit: Esther Cooper Serling)

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with author Juli Min about her new book Shanghailanders, which unspools the story of a family in reverse.

A new young adult novel called Blood at the Root follows a Black teen learning to harness his ancestral magic. Before it was a novel, it was a failed TV pilot. Before that, it was a tweet.

A heist with a social conscience, a father using magic for questionable work, an urban legend turned sleepover dare: These new releases explore protagonists embracing the magic within themselves.

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with author Tracie McMillan, whose journalistic memoir — The White Bonus — examines the cash value of institutional racism in the United States.

Daniel Olivas's novel puts a new spin on the age-old Frankstein story. In this retelling, 12 million "reanimated" people provide a cheap workforce for the United States...and face a very familiar type of bigotry.