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September 12, 2012 Marco Roth grew up on New York's Upper West Side in the 1980s, where a liberal Jewish culture infused with European tastes was breathing its last gasps. In his memoir, Roth describes how he learned — years after his father died from AIDS — that his father was probably gay.

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September 12, 2012 Breed offers a new and horrifying picture of New York's upper echelon, the barren rich, with full wallets and empty cribs. Desperate for a child, one couple find treatment in a sketchy fertility clinic, where they successfully become fertile — and feral.

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September 11, 2012 Michael Chabon's new novel, set on the border between Berkeley and Oakland, Calif., takes stylistic cues from jazz, soul and funk music. It's formally playful, and even when it misses the mark, it's still satisfying to watch Chabon work, says NPR critic Glen Weldon.

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September 6, 2012 Centuries into the future, cranky technophobe Huw gets dragged into a massive conspiracy after someone at a party infects him with a technological parasite. Rapture of the Nerds is the latest from science-fiction stars Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow, but it may be tough going for non-nerds.

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September 5, 2012 Iconoclastic journalist Christopher Hitchens, who died from esophageal cancer in December 2011, chronicled his battle with the disease — his 18 months "of living dyingly" — in Mortality. Critic Heller McAlpin says the tragically posthumous work is full of his pugnacious, ever-bright prose.

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September 4, 2012 In his latest true-crime account, Errol Morris argues that a man found guilty of a triple murder never should have been convicted. Morris makes the case for Jeffrey MacDonald's innocence by questioning the character and competence of the investigators.

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August 30, 2012 How much do the people who've made it owe to the people who've been left behind? That question is at the heart of Zadie Smith's new novel NW, a nuanced and disturbing look at class issues in a working-class northwest London neighborhood.

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August 29, 2012 Martin Amis' new novel is a scabrous portrait of England's underclass, layered on top of a more thoughtful look at the devolution of journalism and the ways newspapers — tabloid and highbrow — influence our lives and the stories we tell about ourselves.

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August 28, 2012 Jonathan Evison's heartbreaking, maddening new novel, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, follows the budding friendship of professional caregiver Ben and his paralyzed teenage patient, Trevor. While the writing can be lovely, the book will test readers' tolerance of puerile sex talk.

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August 27, 2012 Juliet Barker has released a new edition of her landmark 1994 biography, The Brontes. Critic Maureen Corrigan says that even the 136 pages of footnotes are "thrilling," as readers are taken "deeper into the everyday realities" of the Brontes' "strange world."

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