Petra Mayer
Petra Mayer (she/her) is an editor (and the resident nerd) at NPR Books, focusing on fiction, and particularly genre fiction. She brings to the job passion, speed-reading skills, and a truly impressive collection of Doctor Who doodads. You can also hear her on the air and on the occasional episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour.
Previously, she was an associate producer and director for All Things Considered on the weekends. She handled all of the show's books coverage, and she was also the person to ask if you wanted to know how much snow falls outside NPR's Washington headquarters on a Saturday, how to belly dance, or what pro wrestling looks like up close and personal.
Mayer originally came to NPR as an engineering assistant in 1994, while still attending Amherst College. After three years spending summers honing her soldering skills in the maintenance shop, she made the jump to Boston's WBUR as a newswriter in 1997. Mayer returned to NPR in 2000 after a roundabout journey that included a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a two-year stint as an audio archivist and producer at the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. She still knows how to solder.
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Debbie Macomber's books don't get a lot of critical attention, but they've sold in the hundreds of millions. Her fans feel like they know and love the woman behind the words, so her publisher threw a party for them. -
Marcus Sakey's new novel, Brilliance, imagines an America where superhumanly talented savants are hunted by a rogue government agency. Sakey says the titular "brilliants" are "objectively superior to the rest of us. Which is a scary concept to normal people."
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NPR Books is replete with readers of grown-up books, but editor Petra Mayer prefers a good YA novel any day. She picks five (well, really six) of her favorite summer YA reads, from first love in 1980s Omaha to far-future Brazil and beyond. -
Food porn and pirate adventure are two great tastes that taste great together in Eli Brown's Cinnamon and Gunpowder. When a pirate kidnaps a chef to serve her own gustatory pleasures, his creativity is taxed as he prepares feasts — like a Regency-era Iron Chef — using only shipboard supplies.
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Do animals grieve? A new book says yes: While there's little clinical research on animal grief, observation suggests that many animals, including ducks, cats, rabbits, horses and more, are capable of loving other animals, and grieving their loss.
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A grad student with a temp job surveying bird populations finds his way to adulthood in a series of linked stories. Filled with quirky characters and offbeat humor, Brian Kimberling's Snapper is a love letter to the wilds of Indiana.
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Alaya Dawn Johnson's new young-adult novel, The Summer Prince, follows three friends in a far-future Brazilian city as they deal with questions of art, love and technology. Reviewer Petra Mayer says Johnson "walks the line between literary lyricism and good old-fashioned science fiction storytelling."
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After more than 20 years, The Wheel of Time series is ending with the release of the 14th volume, A Memory of Light. NPR's Petra Mayer has read all of the books — plus the prequel — and she says that while the writing is workmanlike, the vast world that author Robert Jordan created will suck you in. -
Photographer Edward Curtis decided to chronicle the experience of the vanishing Native American tribes at the end of the 19th century. It was an unbelievably ambitious project that would define Curtis, his work and his legacy. -
Author Jasper Fforde is well known for his Thursday Next series of literary fantasies. Reviewer Petra Mayer says his first book for young adults may feel familiar to Thursday fans, but it's still an enjoyable mixture of magic, emotion, everyday absurdity, and the occasional illusory moose.
