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Polish author Olga Tokarczuk's new collection is a cabinet of curiosities — surreal, loosely connected stories about the human body, about movement, about two-headed calves and saints' relics.

Jeff Vandermeer's new novel, set on a far-future, post-apocalyptic earth, follows a trio of only vaguely human astronauts through a shifting, allegorical story that jumps back and forth across time.

Writer Jonathan Hayes was escaping a painfully dull Boxing Day dinner when he was introduced to Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors for the first time. Hayes says Sayers helped nudge the English mystery novel out of the drawing room and into the real world.

NPR's Life Kit has tips and tricks for how to clean better.

CNN's national security analyst Peter Bergen just returned from Pakistan, where he visited the town where Osama bin Laden was killed. He talks about the various conspiracy theories surrounding bin Laden's death — and how al-Qaida has changed in recent years.

After a meteoric rise, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is now polling in the single digits. But she's still plowing ahead with her campaign, and this week she came out with a memoir. The Minnesota congresswoman talks with co-host Steve Inskeep about Core of Conviction and aiming to win the nomination.

There are many books set in the so-called City of Light, but author Rosecrans Baldwin says that none are quite as charming as The Dud Avocado. Have a favorite tale set in France? Let us know what it is in the comments.

Ecologist and "natural security expert" Rafe Sagarin thinks our systems for dealing with natural disasters and terrorist attacks need to be updated. The best place to turn for advice? Other organisms.

To Kill a Mockingbird and Valley of the Dolls have more in common than you think. In his new book Hit Lit, mystery writer James Hall argues that best-sellers from the past century share 12 features.

When Teddy Roosevelt became a New York police commissioner in 1895, he vowed to clean up the city's endemic vice and corruption. It didn't exactly work out. New Yorkers liked the idea of standing up to corrupt cops, but they rebelled when Roosevelt tried to enforce a ban on Sunday drinking.