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As a child, author Koren Zailckas was an introvert with numbed emotions. When her fourth-grade teacher, "Mr. Cool," assigned the works of Edgar Allan Poe, she was horrified. Murder? Torture? How inappropriate! But the terrifying stories and poems transformed her: she says they scared her into life.

In The Story of the Human Body, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman explains how our bodies haven't adapted to modern conditions. The result is "mismatch diseases" — ailments that occur because our bodies weren't designed for the environments in which we now live.

India's politics and history play a central role in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. In the Booker Prize-nominated novel, an Indian radical is killed, and his wife and brother start over in America. Lahiri tells NPR's Lynn Neary that the story was inspired by true events, but very unlike her own life.

Tom Clancy built his fascination with military hardware and history into a best-selling career writing thrillers — beginning in 1984 with The Hunt for Red October. His books were turned into Hollywood blockbusters and popular video games. NPR's Lynn Neary has a remembrance of Clancy, who died this week at 66.

Rick Najera's name may not sound familiar, but his work is famous in Hollywood. Host Michel Martin talks with the funnyman about his career and his book Almost White: Forced Confessions of A Latino in Hollywood.

Long before they met, fell in love, got married and became co-authors, Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston both read A Spell for Chameleon. The first novel in Piers Anthony's "Xanth" series is a silly book, full of corny jokes. But for teenage Melissa and Michael, it was a winking glimpse into the world of adult relationships.

Doctor Sleep is Stephen King's sequel to his 1977 smash hit The Shining, about a haunted hotel. Sleep follows Danny Torrance, the troubled son of Shining protagonist Jack, as he gets drawn into a new battle against evil. Reviewer Alan Cheuse says King "is still scaring the hell out of me."

Author Anya Von Bremzen's new memoir, Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking, is a tragic-comic history of a family and a nation as seen through the kitchen window. Everything we ate in the Soviet Union was grown ... by the party state," she says. "So, with the food, inevitably, you ingested the ideology."

Author Leah Hager Cohen says it's time to stop faking your way through conversations. "Once you finally own up to what you don't know, then you can begin to have honest interactions with the people around you," she explains.

Jonathan Lethem's Dissident Gardens sketches a history of the American left that is at once intimate and expansive. Out of the lives of a few conflicted characters, reviewer Mohsin Hamid explains, the book lends depth and emotion to events that affected millions.