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August 1, 2012 In his latest novel, You & Me, Padgett Powell continues the experimentation of his previous work The Interrogative Mood. Here, two Southern men sit on a porch, discussing everything from R. Crumb to human failure. No action, no attribution — just dialogue.

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July 31, 2012 An American candy heiress butts heads with a snooty French chocolatier in Laura Florand's romantic new novel The Chocolate Thief. They fight, he throws her out of his candy store — of course they're going to fall in love. Read on for a sweet treat to while away a summer afternoon.

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July 26, 2012 In Tana French's fourth novel of the Dublin murder squad, Broken Harbor, she revisits the character Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, an intensely dedicated detective who must return to the town of the title. Fending off memories he'd rather forget, he investigates a triple murder.

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July 25, 2012 Iain Sinclair, the foremost modern practitioner of "psychogeographic" nonfiction, explores the modifications to the London landscape in preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics. This "scam of scams," as he calls it, is an expression of British state egotism.

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July 18, 2012 In her essays, British columnist Caitlin Moran picks up funny feminism where Nora Ephron left off. She takes a fresh approach to hit topics from the past 40 or so years of feminist writing: sexuality, marriage, division of housework, female body fat, abortion and sexism in the workplace.

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July 18, 2012 David Crist's The Twilight War is a realistic — and often pessimistic — analysis of America's relationship with Iran. Crist covers decades of policy and history, while balancing this military and diplomatic detail with concern for humanity in his narratives.

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July 17, 2012 Sam Kean's The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code delves into the history of genetics, in the anecdotal and engaging mode of his previous exploration of the periodic table, The Disappearing Spoon.

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July 12, 2012 Writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank revisit and revise the origin of DC Comics' Caped Crusader, freed from the chains of comics continuity, in Batman: Earth One. NPR critic Glen Weldon says their take features some electrifying moments for fans.

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July 11, 2012 In his new memoir, David McGlynn describes how his teenage years were disrupted by violence. McGlynn was a swimmer who turned to evangelical Christianity in college. A Door in the Ocean is a compelling coming-of-age story marked by random tragedy and biblical tracts, church coffee and chlorine.

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July 11, 2012 You won't find sparkling vampires here — Glen Duncan's latest supernatural novel is full of violence, gore and sex. A sequel to The Last Werewolf, it follows antihero Talulla Demetriou as she deals with her lycanthropy, pregnancy and, of course, some undead enemies.

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