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In his new book, Oliver Burkeman shuns motivational seminars and the power of positive thinking in favor of uncertainty, insecurity and even pessimism. "Trying to let [negative] feelings be and not always struggling to stamp them out is a more fruitful alternative," he says.

The classic horror novel The Exorcist inspired an even creepier movie, but author Mark Danielewski says after he saw the film, it changed the book in his mind forever. Has a movie ever overtaken its literary counterpart in your imagination? Tell us in the comments.

Swedish writer Karin Tidbeck's debut story collection, Jagannath, is suffused with the myths of her homeland — and the American oddities she picked up as a student here. Reviewer Alan Cheuse says the stories are weird — but it's a good kind of weird.

David Rowell's debut novel puts public and personal timelines alongside each other as he recounts June 8, 1968. That's the day a train made a slow, momentous journey from New York to Washington, D.C., to deliver the body of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy for burial beside his slain brother.

Colson Whitehead's novel Zone One is a post-apocalyptic tale of a Manhattan crippled by a plague and overrun with zombies. He explains that he created the novel, in part, to pay homage to the grimy 1970s New York of his childhood.

Criminologist David M. Kennedy's strategy for reducing gang violence has dramatically reduced youth homicide rates nationwide. In his new memoir, Don't Shoot, Kennedy outlines how community meetings and interventions have worked to curb youth violence in more than 70 cities.

Blogger and now cookbook author Deb Perelman insists you don't need a big or gourmet kitchen to make good food. Since 2006, she's been tracking down, testing and blogging about recipes she thinks pretty much anyone can make — all from her tiny New York kitchen.

Bill Berloni has more than 30 years of experience training dogs, pigs, rats, cats and lambs for Broadway productions and Hollywood films. Fresh Air listens back to an interview with him from 2008.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks' new book is a thoughtful look at hallucinations — visual and otherwise. In this exclusive excerpt, we learn about auditory hallucinations — and that not everyone who hears voices is necessarily mentally ill.

Tom Wolfe's new novel is a sprawling portrait of Miami and its many ethnic groups, centering around a Cuban-American police officer and an immigration conflict. NPR editor Luis Clemens says the book nails the physical descriptions of Miami, but falls down badly in the portrayal of actual humans.