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Richard Powers' new novel follows an avant-garde composer who has sacrificed everything in his pursuit of transcendent music — and who gets into trouble when he attempts to combine his twin obsessions of music and chemistry. Reviewer Heller McAlpin says Powers hits a high note with Orfeo.

Author Walter Kirn thought he was befriending an eccentric Rockefeller, but his pal turned out to be an impostor wanted for murder. Kirn's new book explores the depths of that deception.

Nicole Helget's new novel, Stillwater, follows the lives of twins separated at birth — and raised on opposite sides of the tracks. Helget, who is proud to be called a "Minnesota novelist," tells NPR's Scott Simon about the photograph that inspired one of the book's central characters.

Barbara Ehrenreich — a rationalist, atheist and scientist by training — has written a new memoir called Living With a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything.

Years after she first read and adored Ellen Emerson White's series of young adult novels, author Tova Mirvis still finds herself wondering, "What would Meg Powers do?"

The approach made popular by Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work for most people, according to psychiatrist Lance Dodes. In fact, he says, the steps can actually be harmful to the majority of addicts.

Kids can be magical and maddening. The title of Jennifer Senior's book — All Joy and No Fun — contrasts the strains of day-to-day parenting with the transcendent experience of raising a child.

Simon Schama's new history of the Jews covers several millenia in the first of two planned volumes. Reviewer J.P. O'Malley says it drives home an important point: anti-Semitism is nothing new.

The son of one of America's wealthiest families disappeared off the island of New Guinea in 1961. Writer Carl Hoffman explains how he thinks Rockefeller died and why the truth was kept hidden.

Journalist Matt Taibbi investigates the differences between punishment for white-collar and blue-collar crimes in The Divide. He also questions beliefs about who is "appropriate for jail."