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Nearly 1 billion people speak Mandarin Chinese. NPR Short Wave host Emily Kwong is not among them. As a third-generation Chinese-American, her "heritage language" was lost through the generations.

In an interview with NPR, the former vice president said no one warned him about the optics of his son working in Ukraine. Biden also defended calling a voter a "damn liar" in Iowa last week.

At Christmas, they performed The Nutcracker. As Easter approaches, they and their mom are among millions who've been scattered by violence, separated from their old lives, facing an uncertain future.

The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell, is the fictional first-person memoir of a cultured German who loves Bach, cherishes great literature — and also happens to be a former Nazi exterminator.

Biographer Frances Wilson discusses the intense connection between William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy — and the "vortex of poetry" in which they lived.

In her book Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank, Randi Hutter Epstein describes doctors who made great medical advances, but who had surprising flaws. Dr. J. Marion Sims, who is credited with curing vaginal fistulas, practiced on slave women, "stitching them up over and over and over again."

Who hasn't dreamed about taking off on a motorcycle, with nothing but the open road ahead? Commentator Jonathan Bastian did just that, and recommends three reads that helped him along the way.

Mystery writer Julie Smith offers a tour of the hauntingly Gothic city she calls home. New Orleans, says Smith, is a great place to write mysteries — not because of the city's crime, but because of its secrets.

NPR's Juana Summers talks with Neal Baer, former executive producer of Law and Order: SVU, about American audiences' fascination with crime stories.

Jenny Offill's sparse and experimental novel Dept. of Speculation is a reminder that bigger isn't always better. Through short vignettes, Offill builds a narrative about an unnamed husband and wife. It's a sly, profound glimpse into a fragile domestic sphere — and, while the form may be unusual, the book is highly readable.