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Science-fiction writer Jack Finney would have turned 100 this month. Critic Maureen Corrigan says he had a knack for tapping into our shallowly buried psychological anxieties. At its core, Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about how our loved ones inevitably change — and it is as sad as it is scary.

Catherine McKinley traveled through nine West African countries a decade ago to track the history of indigo, the blue dye that was made very valuable by the African slave trade. Host Michel Martin speaks with McKinley about her book Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World.

In Sybil Exposed, Debbie Nathan explores the life of Shirley Mason — the psychiatric patient whose life was portrayed in the 1973 book and 1976 TV movie. Mason later admitted to her psychiatrist that she'd made the whole thing up — but not before the story manufactured a psychiatric phenomenon.

Susan Orlean's new book about one of cinema's great dogs argues that Rin Tin Tin wasn't just a dog doing tricks, but an actor who could emote and affect audiences.

In January 1943, 230 women of the French Resistance were sent to Auschwitz. Only 49 of them came back. Journalist Caroline Moorehead's latest book chronicles the bond between the women that enabled them to make it through.

Set somewhere in a modern yet resolutely mythical Middle East, Craig Thompson's latest graphic novel is a love story that also tackles the roots of religion and the nature of masculinity and femininity.

In England, where sniping at Booker Prize finalists is a national sport, this year's bickering was especially fierce. But last night's award of the prize to Julian Barnes' absorbing, elegant The Sense of an Ending provided ... just that.

Historians have long struggled to explain how the West became the preeminent political and economic force in the modern world. In Civilization, historian Niall Ferguson credits six "killer apps" and explains how China is quickly catching on — and catching up.

"Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology," says the bestselling thriller writer. Eisler walked away from a half-million dollar deal offered by a traditional publisher to self-publish — and then teamed up with Amazon. His newest book, The Detachment, was e-released on Amazon in September.

Invisibility is often used for mischief, but in Chuck Klosterman's new novel, his invisible character sits still, looks deeply and disrupts only when necessary. Love him or hate him, Klosterman's stoner-genius extemporizing is unmatched in this sly work of fiction.