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The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books This week: Meg Wolitzer's latest, Charles Frazier returns to the Civil War, the pressures of being the only black person in the room, a new Macbeth, and marriage-saving tips from a divorce lawyer.
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The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books

This week: Meg Wolitzer, Charles Frazier, Jo Nesbo, Nafissa Thompson-Spires and James Sexton.
Years Beyond The Rabbit Hole, 'Alice' Looks Back

Seven year-old Alice Liddell, photographed by Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll/Metropolitan Museum of Art/AP hide caption

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Lewis Carroll/Metropolitan Museum of Art/AP

Years Beyond The Rabbit Hole, 'Alice' Looks Back

Melanie Benjamin's Alice I Have Been imagines the life and regrets of Alice Liddell, the real-life girl who served as the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice knew Carroll as Charles Dodgson, a neighbor who told her stories and photographed her as a young girl.

Years Beyond The Rabbit Hole, 'Alice' Looks Back

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'Union Atlantic' Author Banked On A Coming Crisis

Adam Haslett's first book, a collection of stories called You Are Not a Stranger Here, was nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Brigitte Lacombe hide caption

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Brigitte Lacombe

'Union Atlantic' Author Banked On A Coming Crisis

A first novel by a much-honored short-story writer imagines a financial system wracked by risk and on the verge of collapse. Yet Adam Haslett wrote Union Atlantic before the current financial crisis exploded, making him seem more prescient than he will confess to being.

'Union Atlantic' Author Banked On A Coming Crisis

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A Hunt For The Mysterious Beasts Of The Deep
Josh Friedman/iStockphoto

A Hunt For The Mysterious Beasts Of The Deep

Philip Hoare's book, The Whale, is an exploration of the role that the great animals have played in human history, from Moby-Dick to lamp oil to the author's own close encounter with a curious female sperm whale.

A Hunt For The Mysterious Beasts Of The Deep

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For Love Of Do-Good Vampires: A Bloody Book List

Tod Browning's 1931 film Dracula, released in the chaos and uncertainty of the Great Depression, turns in part on the character of Mina (Helen Chandler), who manages to maintain her i--ocence — and--ontrol — despite having suffered at the hands of Bela Lugosi's vampire. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images

For Love Of Do-Good Vampires: A Bloody Book List

NPR correspondent Margot Adler has read 75 vampire books in the past nine months. It was a fascination with the classic vampire's immortality that got her started — but it was her discovery of the modern vampire's sense of morality that kept her going.

For Love Of Do-Good Vampires: A Bloody Book List

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'Man From Beijing' Takes Mystery Fans Across Globe

In a small Swedish village, 19 people are found brutally murdered. The investigation of these gruesome deaths takes readers from Sweden to China to Africa in Henning Mankell's latest book, The Man from Beijing.

'Man From Beijing' Takes Mystery Fans Across Globe

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'Clinton Vs. Starr': A 'Definitive' Account

Fresh Air

Ten years after President Clinton's impeachment, law professor Ken Gormley reviews the entire scandal in his new 800-page book The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr. Gormley joins Fresh Air to discuss the independent counsel investigation — and why it continues to resonate today.

'Clinton Vs. Starr': A 'Definitive' Account

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Tracking A Man's Life, In Endless Footsteps

The Unnamed is a book about a man afflicted with a debilitating condition — a compulsive need to walk until he collapses from exhaustion. Author Joshua Ferris, who also wrote Then We Came To The End, says he wanted to examine the nature of illness.

Tracking A Man's Life, In Endless Footsteps

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In Ethiopia, A Monarch Falls In 'The Lion's Gaze'

Beneath The Lion's Gaze is Maaza Mengiste's first novel. She was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and now lives in New York. hide caption

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In Ethiopia, A Monarch Falls In 'The Lion's Gaze'

In Maaza Mengiste's first novel, Beneath The Lion's Gaze, she tells the story of a nation at war with itself. Mengiste was born in Ethiopia during the early days of the revolution, which, in 1974, brought down the country's 3,000-year-old monarchy.

In Ethiopia, A Monarch Falls In 'The Lion's Gaze'

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Three-Minute Fiction Round Three: Picture This
Robb Hill/Robb Hill Photo

Three-Minute Fiction

Three-Minute Fiction Round Three: Picture This

For the third round of our contest, we asked you to send us original works of fiction inspired by this photograph. NPR book critic Alan Cheuse will choose a winning story to be read on-air, and meanwhile, we'll keep posting our favorite entries right here.

Three-Minute Fiction Round Three: Picture This

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Power And Principles Clash In Ancient Republic

Power And Principles Clash In Ancient Republic

Conspirata is the second novel in author Robert Harris' trilogy about the Roman politician Cicero. The series pits Cicero, who is called a hypocrite for his willingness to compromise, against Julius Caesar, who seeks to refashion the Roman republic in his own image.

Power And Principles Clash In Ancient Republic

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Wintry Literature For A Snowy Day
Ezra Jack Keats/Penguin

Wintry Literature For A Snowy Day

Buried under the drifts in Washington, D.C., we turn to artful descriptions of snow from some favorite writers — in the hands of a good storyteller, snow can be magical, or monstrous. We sample works from Ezra Jack Keats, Laura Ingalls Wilder and, of course, Robert Frost.

Wintry Literature For A Snowy Day

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