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Best-selling mystery novelist James Patterson may be known for his thrillers, but the little book that profoundly influenced his writing was far less conspicuous. Mrs. Bridge, the tale of a Kansas City husband and wife, would stay with him forever.

In James' Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer is wise enough to understand that if you're not happy without a man, you certainly won't be happy with one. Writer Rhoda Janzen loves the book because it shows what a woman does once she acknowledges her own complicity in the life she has chosen.

Garden writer Bonnie Blodgett didn't know what her sense of smell meant to her — until she lost it. Her new book, Remembering Smell, describes what it's like to live in the world without being able to smell it — from the sweet aromas of springtime to the stench of sour milk.

Amy Dickinson, author of the syndicated advice column "Ask Amy," writes about the strong women in her life in her new memoir, The Mighty Queens of Freeville. The youngest in her family, Dickinson says she's "the plankton at the end of the food chain and the advice flows down."

In the early 1960s, writer Norton Juster and illustrator Jules Feiffer created The Phantom Tollbooth, which quickly became a kid-lit classic. Now, 50 years later, the two have finally collaborated once more — this time, on a picture book called The Odious Ogre. They speak to NPR's Liane Hansen about their partnership and their new project.

In this week's Wisdom Watch, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discusses foreign relations, sexism and the dynamics of presidential politics, as chronicled in her new book Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership.

Hurricane Ike, expected to make landfall in the U.S. this week, has already caused havoc in Cuba and the Caribbean. In Haiti, at least 58 people have been killed. The port city of Gonaives, hit hard last week by Tropical Storm Hanna, has been flooded again, and aid agencies are having trouble delivering supplies.

Most people think of the Cold War as a long, glacial period, but in the beginning it was dangerously unstable. Neil Sheehan, author of A Bright Shining Lie, says there might well have been nuclear war — had it not been for one man: the subject of his latest book, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon.

Sportswriter Frank Deford's historical novel, Bliss Remembered, tells the story of a young American swimmer at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Deford explains why he was drawn to this particular historical setting — and what it's like to write a novel from the perspective of a woman.

The author of the bestselling Shopaholic series is back, with a new novel about a woman who's addicted not to shopping but to fixing the lives of the people around her — at the expense of her own.