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Ali Smith's new book, Artful, began as a series of lectures on comparative literature, given at Oxford last year. The lectures have been given a fictional shell, the story of an unnamed narrator finding a cache of essays in the study of her dead lover. Reviewer John Wilwol calls Artful "superb."

Herman Koch's new novel The Dinner asks the uncomfortable question: How far will you go to protect your family? Two couples gather for dinner to discuss their teenaged sons, who've most likely committed a terrible crime. Will they report it? Or will they cover it up to keep their sons safe?

Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, discusses her new book about the history of the court, and why she doesn't like the term "swing vote." O'Connor served for 24 years, retiring in 2006 to care for her ailing husband.

By the time Wendy Plump learned that her husband had a longtime mistress and an 8-month-old son, their union already bore the scars of adultery — both his and hers. Plump's marital post-mortem, Vow, is a frank, intelligent inquiry into the thrills and anguish of infidelity.

The American hero really was from Tennessee and he really was a skilled frontiersman, but he may not have actually worn that coonskin hat. A new book by Bob Thompson tries to separate the man from the myth.

The confounding title of the self-referential novel Percival Everett by Virgil Russell signals its method, which seeks to erase lines between author and subject, reality and fiction. For Alan Cheuse, Percival Everett's (or is that Percival Everett's?) postmodern mind games spoil what might have been a fine novel.

In Sonia Sotomayor's new memoir, My Beloved World, the associate Supreme Court justice opens up about her childhood in the Bronx. NPR's Nina Totenberg calls it a moving and unexpectedly personal look at the court's first Hispanic justice.

George Saunders has long been praised in literary circles for his short stories that deftly combine the absurd with the mundane. But now the author has caught mainstream attention with his newest collection, Tenth of December.

It was one of the most revolutionary tools of biomedical research: the immortal HeLa cell line. But few people know the cells belonged to a poor Southern tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot spent years researching Lacks and tells her story in The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks.

Karen Russell's new collection of short stories has dead presidents reincarnated as horses, girls turning into silkworms, and vampires who quench their thirst for blood with lemons. Reviewer Meg Wolitzer says that in Russell's world we aren't fixed in space and time but can change at any moment.