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In his debut novel, Broadway Baby, Alan Shapiro examines the fictional life of Miriam Bluestein, a woman whose dream of a life on stage slowly unravels her family. Shapiro says the story is presented as a struggle with emotional and physical intimacy.

Thomas Mallon's new novelization of the infamous political scandal re-imagines the events through the eyes of the perpetrators. Critic Heller McAlpin says Mallon manages to capture both the metastasizing dishonesty and the ludicrousness of this great American tragedy of political ambition run amok.

In a new book, an English professor sets out to uncover the source of our attraction to the gruesome and grim. Drawing on a cross-section of disciplines, Eric G. Wilson argues that there's something nourishing in darkness.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says space exploration is a key to transforming our economy and will play a crucial role in American success in the years to come. It "transforms the culture into one that values science and technology, and that's the culture that innovates," he says.

Under the impending threat of Nazi invasion, a tiny Jewish town in 1939 Austria decides to reinvent its past. Ramona Ausubel's debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, contains echoes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Journalist Craig Timberg, the former Johannesburg bureau chief for The Washington Post, says international AIDS organizations working in Africa went off in the wrong direction in fighting the spread of HIV across the continent.

Our brains are filled with billions of neurons. Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung explains how mapping out the connections between those neurons might be the key to understanding the basis of things like personality, memory, perception, ideas and mental illness.

Our brains are filled with billions of neurons. Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung explains how mapping out the connections between those neurons might be the key to understanding the basis of things like personality, memory, perception, ideas and mental illness.

In the mid-1980s, Simon Norton was considered one of the great mathematical prodigies of the 20th century. Decades later, biographer Alexander Masters just knew him as the unkempt, eccentric man who lived downstairs. Their friendship is documented in Simon: The Genius in My Basement.

Helen Simpson once said that when it comes to short stories, "Something's got to happen, but not too much." Her latest short story collection, In-Flight Entertainment, may seem bleak and mundane — with subjects like mortality, infidelity and climate change — but it's also bursting with British wit.