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Linda Wertheimer hails a Dickensian novel of London in the boom days of 2007, before the banking bust. An encore by child detective Flavia de Luce both creepy and laugh-out-loud funny.

The book by the conservative strategist is called Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Rove tells Fresh Air the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 was not based on wrong information from the Bush administration, but was based on wrong information from the intelligence community.

Everyone has his or her own secrets, but what happens when your most intimate ones are shared with loved ones? Family secrets can be the hardest to hide — and the most provocative. Martha Toll suggest three books for when no one knows you better than your family — and that's the problem.

Suppose that, in 19th-century America, the forces of good and evil battled for the soul of the new republic — what we now know as the Civil War. Author Seth Grahame-Smith explores that premise in a new book you can really sink your teeth into.

Novels of manners never get old. Any quick flip through one of today's celebrity magazines will prove that. From social climbers to spouse grabbers, century to century, nothing changes. Author Helen Simonson offers three novels for going beyond Jane Austen's gossip.

The Hypochondriacs, Brian Dillon's book about nine historical figures who battled obsessions and fears about their health, shows how these afflictions bled into the work that defined their careers.

The tiny, no-frills automobile imported from communist Yugoslavia during the 1980s is known to most Americans as the butt of many car jokes. Author Jason Vuic's book The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History reveals why it's the most famous lemon in automotive history.

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, about 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes. Another 2 million have fled the country entirely. Throughout the war, NPR's Deborah Amos has spent much of her time with Iraqis who fled to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. She has a new book out: Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East.

Diane Ravitch's Death and Life of the Great American School System is a scathing report card of U.S. education. The former assistant secretary of education hands down a withering critique of the nation's schooling efforts — from charter schools, to No Child Left Behind, to Teach for America.

David Remnick has a nearly impossible task in his new biography of Barack Obama: writing "the most complete account yet" of the most famous man on the planet. The well-written and well-researched book may be ahead of its time; the events in it are so familiar right now that its scholarship may resonate better in 20 years.