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How do you dig deeper into someone who's already so open about her life, her hopes, her fears? NPR's Annalisa Quinn talks to Gay about her writing, and about not acting happy if you don't feel happy.

Author Ru Freeman first turned to Alessandro Baricco's tale of a French silkworm merchant and his impossible love because it made her homesickness palpable. On second reading, it cured it.

Some companies are helping their employees become more creative and increasing their productivity, says science writer Jonah Lehrer in his new book, Imagine.

Leslie Jamison's new book of essays, The Empathy Exams, combines the intellectual and the emotional to explore the humanizing effect of empathy. Heller McAlpin calls it a "soaring performance."

This week saw celebrations of the anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and revelation of the ZunZuneo scandal. Paul Reyes and Ralph Eubanks recommend The Cultural Cold War and We Are Not Afraid.

Lee's upcoming novel is a dystopian tale, set in a future America where corporations have replaced a long-crumbled government, and Chinese immigrant workers have become a new laboring class, repopulating deserted cities.

The Poetry Of Derek Walcott: 1948 - 2013 pulls from the Nobel laureate's large body of work. Fans might remember that the St. Lucian poet — who just turned 84 — published a Selected Works a few years ago. But the new book is more expansive and more enlightening, showing how Walcott's work has no parallel.

On a distant, watery moon, three civilizations clash in James Cambias' debut novel A Darkling Sea: human explorers, native scientists, and a self-styled intergalactic police force determined to make the humans go home. Reviewer Annalee Newitz says while flawed, Sea has "the gee-whiz wonder of a classic space opera."

Music critic Greg Kot's new I'll Take You There chronicles the life and times of gospel star Mavis Staples and her family — from their hardscrabble beginnings in postwar Chicago to the civil rights movement and stardom. Reviewer Richard Torres praises the book's emotional honesty — but says it really needs a companion album.

Robert Harris' new An Officer and a Spy is a fictionalized account of the Dreyfus Affair — which, as critic Alan Cheuse notes, is tailor made for Harris' talents: there's an innocent victim at the center, a melodramatic villain, buffoonish military brass, crusading newspaper editors and a star turn from the novelist Emile Zola.