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Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera's new book of poems melds the political with the personal. Critic Craig Morgan Teicher says it makes for deep yet accessible reading.

Reviewer Jason Sheehan says Sandra Newman's debut novel may start some arguments — but readers would be better off just sitting down, opening the book and letting the beauty of her language sink in.

Beverly Jenkins writes historical romances — about free black towns, lawmen and cowboys and Civil War vets. She says her mission is to illuminate the parts of black history you don't learn in school.

Lavie Tidhar's new novel follows a motley crew of spacemen, castaways, data vampires and magical children in a beautifully realized far-future Tel Aviv. It's short, lush and close to a masterpiece.

The title piece in Mexican master Juan Rulfo's The Golden Cockerel is a good story with a simple point: Life is short and then you die. It's the sketches and fragments that come after that amaze.

Workers in Lebanon climb high up pine trees for a valuable export: pine nuts. But the important source of revenue is being choked off by an invasive pest.

The Supreme Court has heard a case testing whether the federal government may punish the fleeting use of a dirty word in a broadcast.

Akiko Busch sets out to argue against visibility, "the common currency of our time." But she neglects to expose why she dislikes social media and networked culture.

Young voters, an increasingly dominant force in Florida, are frustrated that many of the issues they feel so strongly about aren't a major part of the discussion by the major party candidates.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, about a young man looking for closure, offers Haruki Murakami's trademark blend of fantasy and reality. Some moments fall flat, but many others are intoxicating.

As an acoustic engineer, Trevor Cox has spent most of his career getting rid of bizarre, unwanted sounds. But in The Sound Book, Cox turns up the volume on those sonic oddities. The book explores weird echoes and unexpected noises from around the globe — including "whisper galleries" and a chirping pyramid.

In Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons, editor Kelly Gerald lays out the youthful visual artwork of the woman who would become one of the greatest fiction writers of the 20th century. NPR's Glen Weldon sees it as a prototype for her prose sensibility.

When author Vaddey Ratner was just a child, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and destroyed her aristocratic family. Her new novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, draws on her terrible experiences — and the poetry and stories from her father that helped her survive.

In 1961, actor and Civil Rights activist Ossie Davis wrote the blistering play Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch. Now, Leslie Odom Jr. stars in the revival.

Matthiessen was a spy, a naturalist, a well-regarded activist and a three-time winner of the National Book Award — for both fiction and nonfiction. He died of acute myeloid leukemia.

Novelist Clyde Edgerton has four kids; one is an adult, and the other three are all younger than 10. His new book, Papadaddy's Book for New Fathers, is a guide for dads that's written from his perspective as an older father. Pay heed, expectant fathers: Install that car seat now.

The Hunger Games has been a huge success, and the film adaptation is only weeks away. Now, publishers are looking for the next big dystopian hit.

Ishmael Beah was 12 when he was orphaned by Sierra Leone's civil war and recruited as a child soldier. He described the ordeal in his 2007 memoir, A Long Way Gone. Now, Beah's debut novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, tells the story of a shattered community struggling to rebuild itself after war.

The term "Rube Goldberg machine" has become shorthand for a convoluted contraption made up of a series of chain reactions. But Goldberg was also a real person, whose ideas for whimsical devices have captivated imaginations for decades.

Donna Tartt is a writer who takes her time — she's published just one novel per decade since her debut in 1992. But critic Maureen Corrigan says she'd gladly wait another 10 years for a book as extraordinary as Tartt's latest work, The Goldfinch, an "exuberantly plotted triumph."