Reader Advisory: 'Shining Girls' Is Gruesome But Gripping

Borrow from Stephen King a house with a wormhole that somehow allows for time travel, re-create the monstrous chilliness of scenes between a serial killer and his female victims in The Silence of the Lambs, and you could easily end up with a pretty derivative thriller. But talented Cape Town writer Lauren Beukes has managed to turn such borrowing and theft into a triumph in her new novel, The Shining Girls. It's her third book, and a marvelous narrative feat that spans the history of Chicago from the 1930s to the 1990s.

Home-Schooled Students Fight To Play On Public School Teams

Legislative battles are being fought around the country over whether or not to let home-schooled students play on public high school teams.

Roughly half of U.S. states have passed laws making them eligible to play on the teams. Advocates have dubbed them "Tim Tebow bills," after the NFL quarterback who was home-schooled when he played on a high school team.

But an attempt by Indiana to find a middle ground may not have solved the problem in that state.

Somewhere In The Middle

House Passes Bill That Would Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks

The House has passed one of the most far-reaching abortion bills in decades. But it's unlikely to ever become law.

By a mostly party-line vote Tuesday of 228-196, lawmakers passed the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," which would ban nearly all abortions starting 20 weeks after fertilization.

How The Civil Rights Movement Was Covered In Birmingham

As the Civil Rights Movement was unfolding across the US in 1963, the entire nation had its eyes on climactic events taking place in Southern cities like Birmingham, Ala., and Jackson, Miss. But there's a stark difference between how the national press covered the events in Birmingham and how Birmingham's papers covered their own city.

Change Is On The Horizon For London's Famous Skyline

Cities are defined by their skylines — while Paris is composed mostly of low-rise apartment buildings, New York is a city of tall office towers. But London is a city in transition. On Tuesday, Boris Johnson, the mayor of the British capital, attends a "topping out" ceremony for one of London's latest skyscrapers in a city where tall buildings cause a lot of controversy.

Until recently, London has been a low-rise city.
 Even now, a 12-story building is considered rather tall.
 But a spate of new skyscrapers is raising questions about the kind of city London should be.

Samberg, Taccone And Schaffer: Three's Not A Lonely Island

With digital shorts like "D--- in a Box," "Mother Lover" and "Three-Way," the parody trio The Lonely Island is responsible for some of Saturday Night Live's funniest bits in recent memory, as well as funny collaborations with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar. When Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone's SNL video debut, "Lazy Sunday," first went viral, it seemed like the three came out of nowhere.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Making Old Songs New Again

Singer Cécile McLorin Salvant was born in Miami to French and Haitian parents, and started singing jazz while living in Paris. Back in the U.S., she won the Thelonious Monk vocal competition in 2010. The 23-year-old's first album, WomanChild, is now out — and few jazz debuts by singers or instrumentalists make this big a splash.

Spy Reporter Works Her 'Sources' To Write A Thriller

Mary Louise Kelly used to cover the national security beat for NPR, but lately she's turned her attention to teaching and writing fiction. Her new novel, Anonymous Sources, follows rookie journalist Alexandra James as she investigates a shady banana shipment and a clandestine nuclear plot. The tale is fiction, but it draws on Kelly's own experiences reporting on the spy beat, including things she couldn't say when she was a journalist.

Why The FISA Court Is Not What It Used To Be

The furor over recently exposed government surveillance programs has posed an abundance of political challenges for both President Obama and Congress. Relatively unmentioned in all of this, however, is the role of the courts — specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, and how its role has changed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Libyan Radio Station Promotes Democracy, One Rap At A Time

Many of the militia fighters who rose up and ousted former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 have refused to lay down their arms and are still challenging the post-revolutionary government.

Yet the militias are facing a challenge of their own. They now come under verbal attack on one of Libya's newest radio stations, Radio Zone.