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The poet describes his new book — about the death of his father and the birth of his son — as having a blues sensibility. "There are moments of humor even in the sorrow," he says.

Bound by the confines of gender and finances, two young women take divergent paths in Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name, the second book in her "Neapolitan Novels" trilogy. Critic John Powers believes the bold, expansive series to be semi-autobiographical, a revelation from a secretive author who won't reveal her true name.

David Sedaris' latest essay collection, Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, mixes his trademark quirky observations with less successful fictional asides in which he takes on the voices of assorted ultraconservative bad guys.

Claire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs, delves into the inner life of the quiet, friendly — and secretly furious — woman upstairs, a frustrated artist named Nora who becomes obsessed with a glamorous immigrant family.

New Yorker copy editor Mary Norris' new book is part life story, part grammar guide. Reviewer Heller McAlpin says the book is delightful, and Norris is a "stickler who can't resist schtick."

Cathleen Schine's new novel follows a young boy and his older half-sister, making a life for themselves in Greenwich Village. Reviewer Heller McAlpin says Fin & Lady is entertaining and moving.

More than 20 years ago, Dr. Hawa Abdi set out to change her broken society when she turned her 1,300-acre farmland outside Mogadishu into a camp for 90,000 internally displaced Somalis. Now she calls it Hawa Village — and it includes a hospital, school and farm.

Humans have been speaking thousands of years longer than they have been writing. Yet many assume the written word is superior to the way we speak. In What Language Is: And What It Isn't And What It Could Be, John McWhorter argues that most of our assumptions about language are wrong.

A choice of toppings lets all of the relatives around the table make this meal their own. And it's OK to substitute chicken or tofu if lamb is not your thing.

It's been centuries since camel caravans crisscrossed Eurasia along the Silk Roads. Now historian Peter Frankopan's new book puts the fabled roads at the center of a new view of world history.