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Anita Elberse's new book, Blockbusters, examines the strategy behind making and marketing megahits. She tells NPR's Renee Montagne that content companies — publishers, movie studios and the like — can create blockbusters by dedicating most of their budgets to a select few likely winners.

At its core, StoryCorps founder Dave Isay says, the project is about letting people know their lives matter and won't be forgotten. The result often means that listeners have a good cry on their way to work. As the oral history project marks its 10th anniversary, NPR will be revisiting some of your favorite stories.

When Rebecca Harrington ran out of Jane Austen novels, she was devastated — until she discovered Austen's Juvenilia, a treasure trove of unfinished novels, stories and letters. Do you like reading unpublished work by your favorite author? Tell us in the comments.

The women of Jezebel.com have released a new illustrated encyclopedia of "lady things" from Clueless to Clytemnestra. Reviewer Annalisa Quinn says that although The Book of Jezebel is positioned as lighthearted and unambitious, it has a serious aim — which it does not quite achieve.

Vast distances and cultural differences may separate America's states, but remarkably, regional rivalries are fairly trivial. This unity is no accident; it's the legacy of the explorers, leaders and inventors who brought the country together. British author Simon Winchester tells their stories in The Men Who United the States.

In The Pure Gold Baby, a budding anthropologist raises a developmentally disabled child and confronts the challenges of middle age. This is a surprise comeback for author Margaret Drabble, who swore in 2009 that she'd never publish fiction again.

Napoleonic Wars? The Royal Navy? Yawn. Novelist Nicola Griffith had low expectations when she started reading Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. But soon she was tearing through the 20-volume series, reveling in the deeply rendered friendship between the characters Jack and Stephen. It's a masterpiece, she says: "Jane Austen on a ship of war."

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in 2007. Heraldo Munoz, who led the United Nations investigation into her death, portrays the tense political climate that surrounded Bhutto's return to politics and the circumstances of the killing in his new book.

Novelist Robert Stone may not have the name recognition of some of his buzzed-about contemporaries, but his works have won top honors in the writing world. Critic Rosecrans Baldwin thinks Stone's latest, Death of the Black-Haired Girl — full of characters whose evil-doings are "a pleasure to watch" — might give him a shot at mainstream acclaim.

The mostly forgotten explorer Paul du Chaillu first introduced the world to gorillas. His methods were attacked and his work discredited during his lifetime, but he also experienced fame and redemption. Now, there's a new book that tells his story.