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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.

Jay Cantor is a hard author to nail down. He's written about topics as wide-ranging as Che Guevara and Krazy Kat. His latest work expands his range even more, fictionalizing the lives of four of Franz Kafka's friends and lovers. It's called Forgiving the Angel, and Cantor tells NPR's Lynn Neary it's a book born out of gratitude.

The 19th century Connecticut school sought to convert young men from Hawaii, China, India and the Native American nations and then send them home as Christian missionaries. It did not go as planned.

In his new memoir, Allen Kurzweil goes looking for his childhood tormentor — and discovers he's served time for involvement in an international fraud scheme so wild and colorful, it could be a movie.

Debbie Macomber's books don't get a lot of critical attention, but they've sold in the hundreds of millions. Her fans feel like they know and love the woman behind the words, so her publisher threw a party for them.

In his new book, Jared Diamond describes how readily people in small-scale societies learn to speak many distinct languages. After reading Diamond's book, commentator Barbara J. King takes time to consider what we in the U.S. may lose in a sea of monolingualism.

Survivors of the Sept. 8 earthquake return to devastated villages. "This was our paradise," says a 74-year-old woman. "Everyone in this village is like family to me, and our family is now shattered."

Katy Simpson Smith's novel, set during the American Revolution, was inspired by her research on mothers in the South. "Death was sort of the specter that haunted every aspect of life," she says.

Gordon's Lord of Misrule and Smith's Just Kids were the big winners at the National Book Awards in New York. We were there to capture the laughter, the tears and the free caviar.

Videos and photos provide some clues, but much remains unknown about the horrific explosion at the site.