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Alena, a reworking of Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, takes place in the contemporary art world, while The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles is a "delicious French romp." Critic Maureen Corrigan says both novels are "exquisite vehicles of escape fiction."

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor has been a voice in the literary world since one of her short stories won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003. Colin Dwyer reviews her debut novel, Dust, and says that while Owuor's talent shines in parts, the book gets bogged down in melodrama.

Rebecca Mead was 17 the first time she read Eliot's Middlemarch, and the book has remained a favorite ever since. But critic Meg Wolitzer says you don't have to read (or re-read) Middlemarch to love Mead's new book, My Life in Middlemarch, which is a mash-up of literary criticism, memoir and biography of Eliot.

Diane Johnson has spent much of her adult life living in France, writing novels like Le Divorce. But it was not until a visit home, to the Midwestern town of Moline, IL, that the Johnson discovered that her pioneer ancestors had lives worthy of writing about. Her new book, Flyover Lives reconstructs their stories.

In his new book, The Everything Store, journalist Brad Stone says Amazon "ended up forever changing the way we shop and read." He says CEO Jeff Bezos started out selling books, but always had the intention of turning the online market into a company that sold everything.

This week, 28-year-old Eleanor Catton became the youngest person ever to win the Man Booker Prize, for her novel The Luminaries. Critic Ellah Allfrey says this year's finalists were some of the most compelling in years — and The Luminaries is "a masterwork of structural brilliance."

Susan Minot's new novel is a departure from her usual minimalist explorations of upper-crust love. Based on her own journalism, it's a gripping fictionalized account of the 1996 abduction of 139 Ugandan schoolgirls by militant guerrillas. Reviewer Jane Ciabattari says Thirty Girls is "panoramic" and "poetic" in its descriptions.

Therese Walsh knows Colleen McCullough's famous novel — which contains not just sex, but sex with a priest -- might not be "appropriate" for teens. But, she says, it's the perfect sort of dangerous.

Alan Cheuse reviews Night in Shanghai, by Nicole Mones.

Acoustic engineer Trevor Cox has traveled around the globe to hear whispering arches and singing sand dunes. Closer to home, he can also explain why your singing sounds better in the shower.