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Folk musician Woody Guthrie wrote thousands of songs in his lifetime — but as far as anyone knows, he only wrote one novel. Recently discovered, House of Earth is the story of struggling young sharecroppers who dream of creating a safe haven amid the dust storms and economic depression of the 1930s.

NPR's Backseat Book Club takes the yellow brick road back to its origins with L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900.

Maurice Sendak died last May but left behind a final book: a reflection on loss and love written in memory of his brother Jack. Sendak's longtime friend Tony Kushner describes the book's origins and Sendak's literary heroes.

Reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, who covered Bulger for years for The Boston Globe, have a new book out about the career criminal. Bulger was wanted for 19 murders when he was captured by the FBI in 2011. He faces trial in June.

The Inquisition revolutionized record-keeping and surveillance techniques that are still used today, says Cullen Murphy. His new book God's Jury draws parallels between some of the interrogation techniques used in previous centuries with the ones used today.

Mindy Kaling's humor is rooted in a type of circular logic that's all her own. Just consider this recent Tweet: "Can everyone buy my book please? I wanna quit the business and homeschool my kids real weird."

In 2009, Peter Van Buren joined a team working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and economy. For the next year, he encountered comically misguided projects, greedy contractors and oblivious bureaucrats. In his new book, We Meant Well, he recounts the ground-level waste and corruption he saw.

From the death of a Georgian luger at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics to the mechanics of hockey fights, the best sportswriting can inspire a range of human emotion. Jane Leavy, editor of The Best American Sports Writing 2011 anthology, joins NPR's Neal Conan to share some of her favorite sports stories.

Award-winning sports journalist John Feinstein explains how he's gotten some of the most talented and temperamental athletes and coaches in the world to talk to him. His book One on One details his conversations with people like Bobby Knight, Tiger Woods and John McEnroe.

Julian Barnes' Man Booker award-winning The Sense of an Ending investigates the power of self-delusion and how our memories are more edited than we believe.