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The Irish writer scandalized audiences with her 1960 novel, The Country Girls. Half a century later, she looks back on her childhood in a small village, her fame and its accessories and above all, her ceaseless drive to write.

Malmsteen is the king of the neoclassical shred guitar. The Swedish musician and composer has somehow bridged centuries, from Paganini to his own arpeggiated acrobatics. Here, the guitarist speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about being a family man and growing up on Bach and Jimi Hendrix.

Irish novelist Edna O'Brien looks back on eight tumultuous decades in a new memoir, Country Girl. Reviewer Heller McAlpin says the book is "a generous gift to readers" but too circumspect about O'Brien's personal life — which included encounters with Samuel Beckett, Richard Burton and Paul McCartney.

For National Poetry Month, Bangladeshi-American poet Dilruba Ahmed talks about how her heritage and her experience of being an outsider in small rural towns pushed her toward writing poetry.

Blues, jazz and gospel; a civil rights movement that began with the Emmett Till case; modern glass and steel buildings that dared the sky. In Third Coast, Thomas Dyja writes that "the most profound aspects of American Modernity grew up out of the flat, prairie land next to Lake Michigan."

Some people, unlucky in love, turn to matchmaking services. Thomas Day, an 18th century British intellectual, adopted two girls from an orphanage in order to mold them into the women of his dreams. Reviewer Cord Jefferson says Wendy Moore's history is so adroitly written it reads like a novel.

Philadelphia journalist and author Rod Dreher moved back to his hometown in Louisiana after his sister died there in 2010, and adopted the community she left behind. His experiences led to the book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life.

In 2011, Jessica Buchanan, an aid worker in Somalia, was kidnapped by land pirates. For 93 days she fought off despair while her husband, Erik Landemalm, wondered if he'd ever see her again. In a two-part interview, Buchanan and Landemalm recall Buchanan's capture and her dramatic rescue by Navy SEALs.

MI6 may be the world's most legendary secret service, but fiction and film can't uncover its actual history. For that, you need BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera and his new book, The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6.

In Amity Gaige's new novel, Eric Kennedy, aka East German immigrant Erik Schroder, reveals his true identity to his ex-wife and explains why he kidnapped his own 6-year-old daughter.