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Each week, the guests and hosts on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour share what's bringing them joy. This week: Devil in a Blue Dress, Evil, and more.

Joshua Ferris (Then We Came To The End) studies the monster within in The Unnamed. Lush language limns a Soviet childhood of privation and paranoia in A Mountain of Crumbs.

In Rawhide Down, journalist Del Quentin Wilber offers new information about the March 1981 day that President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington, D.C. Wilber and Jerry Parr, the head of Reagan's Secret Service detail at the time of the shooting, speak with NPR's Ari Shapiro.

We all know what it's like to escape into a great work of fiction — but it's quite another leap of pleasure to get lost in a truly exotic, alternate-reality world of an author's unique creation. Critic Glen Weldon trips out on the haunted, vivid landscapes of 2010's best speculative fiction.

The Washington, D.C., gallery turns 100 this year. Susan Stamberg has fond memories of visiting back in the '60s: "It was like visiting a really rich uncle with fabulous taste and a collector's eye."

After more than three decades as a soloist, violinist Joshua Bell has taken over the venerable Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, leading the orchestra in a new recording of Beethoven symphonies.

Among music composers, there's always been a desire to hear their works performed exactly as conceived. One distinguished jazz guitarist acted on that impulse: He built his own collection of computer-controlled acoustic instruments.

Neil Patrick Harris plays a gay New Yorker whose long-term relationship abruptly ends. While it's tempting to criticize Uncoupled for being superficial, that would be missing the point — and the fun.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Dan Kois about his list of "The 50 Greatest Fictional Deaths of All Time" in Slate.

After a decorated career in the NBA, pro-basketball player Earvin "Magic" Johnson turned to being an entrepreneur. He explains that pivot to Jay Williams, host of NPR's The Limits.