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Kim Thuy based her award-winning novel Ru on her own experiences as a refugee from war-torn Vietnam. She says the word "ru" has a poetic double meaning: In archaic French, it means a rill or stream, but in Vietnamese, it means a lullaby to soothe a child.

Elektra Natchios is the ultimate comic book heroine — sexy, smart and completely lethal. But author Sean Howe explains how a grim prequel destroyed his idealized vision of the sultry assassin. Have you ever read a prequel that ruined the book? Tell us in the comments.

Coco Chanel's name is synonymous with high fashion and luxury. She was born into extreme poverty, and eventually revolutionized women's fashion. In her recent biography Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life, Lisa Chaney chronicles the life, loves and career of the fashion icon.

The great Sanskrit epic The Birth of Kumara details the heavenly lovemaking of Shiva and Parvati. Author Aatish Taseer tells how reading the fifth-century epic connected him to classical India. What work of literature brought you closer to home? Tell us in the comments.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo chronicles the hardscrabble lives of some of Mumbai's poorest — and most inventive — people in her first book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

Yes, the gingerbread house is still here, and so are magic winter strawberries. But this is a world where young women and small children are delicacies, too. They're fattened for roasting, sliced up for serving, and cut up into stew.

As Thanksgiving draws near, many of us are thinking about what we're thankful for. Novelist and memoirist Anne Lamott says she is filled with "wonder at the just sheer beauty of creation." She discusses her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

Two hundred years after the Brothers Grimm published their first collection of fairy tales, Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, revisits "Hansel and Gretel," "The Frog Prince" and other original Grimm stories in his latest book, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum describes the tactics the Soviets used after World War II to take over and transform much of Eastern Europe. Her book Iron Curtain was recently nominated for the National Book Award.

The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You may be more than 15,000 lines of almost entirely unpunctuated poetry, but author Steve Stern says this Southern gothic fun house is so bewitching you'll have to finish it. Do you have a favorite impossible book? Tell us in the comments.