May 14, 2012 Mario Puzo isn't known for his strong female characters — but if you've read his pre-Godfather work, The Fortunate Pilgrim, you might think otherwise. Author Zoe Ferraris recommends this book, which is based on Puzo's own mother. Do you have a favorite literary matriarch? Tell us in the comments.

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May 14, 2012 Darkly funny, suspenseful and cunningly plotted, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl will be published June 5. In this exclusive selection from the book's opening, we meet Nick and Amy, the seemingly perfect couple whose alternating chapters soon reveal them to be unreliable narrators — and spouses.

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May 13, 2012 Ecologist and "natural security expert" Rafe Sagarin thinks our systems for dealing with natural disasters and terrorist attacks need to be updated. The best place to turn for advice? Other organisms.

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May 13, 2012 Gideon Lewis-Kraus didn't know what to do with his life, so he took three very long walks. In his new memoir, he describes his journeys in Spain, Japan and Ukraine. "The whole idea of pilgrimage is that you're hoping that you're going to rise to the occasion in some way," he says.

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May 13, 2012 The hero and the heroine of Peter Carey's new novel are separated by 150 years — and are brought together by an enormous, 19th-century, mechanical duck. The Chemistry of Tears is the 12th novel by the Australian-born, two-time Booker Prize-winning author.

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May 12, 2012 In 1919, Chicago was called the "youngest great city in the world." World War I had just come to a close, troops were coming home, industry was booming and crime was down. But in mid-July, just about everything that could go wrong in Chicago did.

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May 12, 2012 Desire can have a profound effect on young adults during their formative years. Novelist John Irving turns 70 this year, and his latest novel is a coming-of-age story about loss, identity and AIDS — told by a bisexual narrator named Billy Abbott.

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May 10, 2012 Thomas Jefferson's garden was a vast, beautiful science experiment involving over 300 varieties of 90 different plants. And no gardening detail was too small for Jefferson to note in the gardening journal he kept for nearly 60 years.

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May 11, 2012 NPR sports commentator Frank Deford says he has always been "more interested in the people than in who was winning the games." In his new memoir, Over Time, he says it used to be easier for writers to get close to athletes.

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May 10, 2012 The end of the Civil War marked a pivotal moment for slaves in America, but newfound freedom arrived as a bittersweet victory. Longing to find their displaced families, freed slaves placed classified ads in newspapers. In his new novel, Leonard Pitts Jr. explores the chaos of the era through a love story.

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May 9, 2012 It's a rich week for fiction, with new novels from Ann Patchett and Jennifer Weiner, and a debut by Chad Harbach that marries a literary sensibility with a love of baseball — plus Jorie Graham's new poetry collection. In nonfiction, Erik Larson is back with the story of an American ambassador in Germany in 1933.

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