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Adelle Waldman's debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., recounts a relationship's demise from the perspective of Nate, a young writer-type. Reviewer Lidia Jean Kott says Waldman is most incisive, however, when she gets out of Nate's head and comments about life in New York and class privilege.

In a new novel, David Gilbert tells the story of a famous, aging writer whose children do not feel as warmly toward him as his readers do. Gilbert wrote the book as his own father was getting older and his son was approaching his teen years.

Steven T. Seagle's new graphic novel, Genius, follows once-golden physicist Ted as he grapples with family troubles and malaise at work. Reviewer Glen Weldon says Genius is an "achingly felt portrait of man coming to terms with the role chance plays in human lives."

Even as Detroit files for bankruptcy protection, Bruce Katz says many American cities are showing promising signs of renewal. In The Metropolitan Revolution, he writes that, together, cities and suburbs have the power to take on the challenges Washington won't.

Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire, set in Shanghai, explores the dynamic tumult of that city. Reviewer Ellah Allfrey says that Aw, with gentle compassion and keen understanding, shows his characters succumb to the lure of a city where everything seems possible.

Movie star Ava Gardner agreed to write her memoirs with British journalist Peter Evans in 1988. Now, after the deaths of both Gardner and Evans, the results of their abortive collaboration are being published. Reviewer Bob Mondello says the book is dead on arrival.

R.J. Palacio explores the life of 10-year-old Auggie Pullman, a tough, sweet kid who was born with a serious facial deformity. He wants a normal life, but adults and children alike turn their eyes away at the sight of him. Join NPR's Backseat Book Club as we read a novel about cruelty and kindness.

When crime writer Karin Slaughter was struggling to find a good literary relationship, she turned to the Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis. She learned about togas and scrolls and came away with a new template for a happy marriage.

When the Pilgrim family first arrived in Alaska, they looked to be from another century. They didn't use calendar months, they called their father "Lord," and they knew how to live in the wild. But, as Tom Kizzia writes in Pilgrim's Wilderness, that rugged facade helped conceal a history of abuse.

Photographer Christopher Boffoli made his name with his amusing dioramas of tiny, plastic people literally dominated by food. A new book, Big Appetites, assembles more than 200 images of these tiny people and their "complex culture."