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Writer David Rakoff's glass is never half full. In Half Empty, his latest essay collection, Rakoff explains the powers of pessimistic thought as he analyzes topics such as a pornography trade fair, his neurotic childhood and his recent cancer diagnosis.

Novelist Nicole Krauss explains how not knowing is an integral part of her writing process. She says her doubt-ridden characters in Great House are reflections of her own approach to fiction; she doesn't know what's going to happen — until it does.

The damned wear Yale varsity sweaters in Seymour Chwast's graphic novel adaptation of Dante's masterpiece. Chwast's diabolically witty cartoon drawings mix Hell's medieval monsters with the tropes of film noir and the zaniness of indie comics.

This week, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol finally arrives in paperback, while Jennie Sanford explores her South Carolina governor husband's fall from grace and Steven Landsburg draws on math, physics and economics to challenge our ideas about what we believe.

Roth, who has been writing novels for more than a half-century, explains how he comes up with his ideas — and why he continues to write every day. In his latest work, Nemesis, he imagines a fictional polio outbreak set in his hometown of Newark, N.J., during the 1940s.

Erika Lopez's The Girl Must Die: A Monster Girl Memoir is a rallying cry for the gritty, guitar- and gun-slinging women who disappeared after the 1990s. It comes 12 years after her raucous, racy and hilarious breakthrough novel Flaming Iguanas.

In her recent collection of essays, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat takes readers beyond the rubble, on a journey of history, culture and healing.

Many of Spencer's novels feature a turning point — a dreadful, unplanned act committed by one of the characters. In his latest book, Man in the Woods, a carpenter accidentally kills a man, which leads him to question himself and his relationship with God.

Octavius Catto led the fight to desegregate Philadelphia's horse-drawn streetcars, raised all-black regiments to fight in the Civil War, and pushed for black voting rights — all before the age of 32. Despite all that, he's barely remembered today. But a new book sheds life on his groundbreaking work.

The musical-theater titan tells the stories behind some of his most famous work, from West Side Story to Gypsy. And he offers some surprising criticisms of other theater greats, including his mentor Oscar Hammerstein.