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In her debut novel, Iranian-American Sara Farizan tells the story of two teenage girls, secretly in love. Sahar faces a crisis when she discovers Nasrin is engaged, and considers gender-reassignment surgery as a way for them to stay together. Farizan speaks with NPR's Jacki Lyden about the book and her own struggle with her sexual orientation.

Art Spiegelman's new book, Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps, collects comics from a six-decade career, from his early, self-published works to his famous New Yorker covers. Spiegelman tells NPR's Scott Simon he knew in third grade that he wanted to be a cartoonist.

Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan puts forth his prescription for America's educational system in I Got Schooled. Reviewer John Wilwol says it's a "breezily written, research driven" book that debunks common myths about education in Shyamalan's distinctive — if flawed — voice.

Alice McDermott's characters can often be described as average, and Marie, the heroine of her latest novel, is no exception. But critic Maureen Corrigan says the power of McDermott's writing is that she can make even Marie's run-of-the-mill life one for the record books.

Margaret Atwood's new MaddAddam completes the post-apocalyptic science fiction trilogy she began with 2003's Oryx and Crake. Reviewer Annalee Newitz says MaddAddam is a "snarky but soulful peek at what happens to the world after a mad scientist decimates humanity with a designer disease."

Books about quantum mechanics can be pretty dry stuff. But when a novelist conjures up multiple worlds, the results can be spellbinding, even when it's no easy read. Such is the case with Duplex, the latest book from Kathryn Davis. Reviewer Rosecrans Baldwin, says this one's worth the effort.

No. 28 was the first president to team up with America's legislative branch, and he used a groundbreaking moral argument to get the U.S. involved in World War I. A. Scott Berg's new book, Wilson, fills in missing pieces of the president's life.

Many think of the feminist movement as a thing of the past, but Debora Spar says the battle isn't won yet. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the misinterpretation that got us where we are, and the need to improve support and pay for working women.

Humorist and late-night radio voice Jean Shepherd spent time in the U.S. Army during World War II. He never made it overseas, but the stories he mined from that experience have now been collected in a new volume, Shep's Army.

With a new book out that purports to be a novel but actually isn't, James Franco seems to have mastered celebrity in an unexpected way. He has so many images at this point — stoner, student, artist, bro — that he seems to have no image at all.