In the news: 9 books that dig deeper into April’s top headlines

by Elise Ann Allen

🎧 Audiobook

A deeply personal biography of Pope Leo XIV, featuring his first-ever public interview as pope, from Elise Ann Allen, journalist and Rome correspondent for Crux. This is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the Church’s pastor—his priorities, convictions, and vision for the future of faith.

📰 Headline: Pope Leo downplays feud with Trump, says 'not in my interest' to debate him

by Victor Sebestyen

🎧 Audiobook

A vivid and enthralling account of the historical and cultural events that defined Budapest, a unique city in the heart of Europe, on the fault line between East and West—from the critically acclaimed author of Lenin.

📰 Headline: Hungary’s Magyar says new government could take power at beginning of May

by Des Linden

🎧 Audiobook

Featuring both the story of an historic, unforgettable win and insight into the life of an indelible champion, Choosing to Run is a truly inspirational memoir from Boston Marathon winner and Olympian Des Linden, sharing her personal story and what motivates her to keep showing up.

📰 Headline: John Korir runs fastest Boston Marathon time in history to repeat

by Abraham Josephine Riesman

🎧 Audiobook

This definitive biography of Vince McMahon, former WWE chairman and CEO, as it charts his rise from rural poverty to the throne of one of the world’s most influential media empires. Featuring exclusive interviews with more than 150 people who witnessed, aided, and suffered from his ascent. Even if you’ve never watched a minute of professional wrestling, you are living in Vince McMahon’s world.

📰 Headline: Brock Lesnar Retires at WrestleMania 42. Here’s what that means

by Jacob Soboroff

🎧 Audiobook

A firsthand account of the firestorm that consumed Los Angeles, the costliest wildfire in American history, from the MS NOW reporter and New York Times bestselling author of Separated, who covered the fires on the ground as an LA native.

📰 Headline: Wildfire survivors who lost their homes could face another blow from taxes on settlement payouts

by Mark L. Clifford

🎧 Audiobook

This is the life story of billionaire businessman, Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who became China’s most famous political prisoner.

📰 Headline: China Raises Pressure on Underground Catholics to Join Official Church, Human Rights Watch Finds

by Mario Vargas Llosa

Both a send-up of parochial idealism and a love song to the culture of his homeland, this is the final novel of the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner, whose enduring works captured a changing Latin America. His tragic hero Toño, a man whose love for a democratic, proletarian music is at odds with the culture and politics of a modern Peru scarred by violence, is the writer’s last statement on the revelatory, maddening, and irrepressible belief in the transformative power of art.

📰 Headline: Peru: Dispute over results after presidential election

by Norman Ohler

🎧 Audiobook

The author of Blitzed returns with a provocative secret history of drugs and postwar America, examining the untold story of how Nazi experiments into psychedelics covertly influenced CIA research and secretly shaped the War on Drugs. 

📰 Headline: Trump announces reforms to accelerate access to psychedelic drug treatments

by Joseph Kanon

Set in 1945 at the secret Los Alamos site of the Manhattan Project, the story follows Michael Connolly, an investigator sent to solve the murder of a security officer amid the world’s greatest scientific minds. As he navigates a cloistered community of brilliance and moral compromise, Connolly uncovers darker truths while the creation of the atomic bomb (and the fate of the world) hangs in the balance.

📰 Headline: White House to Probe Reports of 10 Missing or Dead Scientists