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When author Lucas Mann turned 13, his father gave him a copy of Portnoy's Complaint, a novel The New Yorker dubbed "one of the dirtiest books ever published." Mann says the book taught him that life is painful, sometimes gross, and often funny.

Emily Rapp lived every parent's nightmare when her infant son was diagnosed with a fatal disease. The Still Point of the Turning World is not only a powerful memoir of a mother's endurance but also a meditation on how our mortality should inspire us all to live life ferociously in the present.

Bill Manbo, an auto mechanic from Riverside, Calif., took photos of life inside a Japanese-American internment camp after he and his family were forced to move to Wyoming during World War II. These rare color photographs are now compiled in a new book called Colors of Confinement.

The new collection offers small treasures of wry amusement, elegance and effortlessness, but critic Joel Whitney wonders if Strand is just rehashing themes — and even lines — from his best books.

In Marcel Theroux's Strange Bodies, dead people inhabit new bodies and immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be. Theroux tells NPR's Scott Simon, "I think that everyone who loves books has experienced the feeling of being taken over by another mind."

Novelist Richard Mason explores belle epoque pleasures, biographer Jean Baker champions sex educator Margaret Sanger, journalist A.J. Jacobs gets healthy, comedian Bill Cosby outsmarts his grandkids, and writer Geoff Dyer takes on filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.

A leading figure in his generation of postmodern American writers, Auster wrote more than 20 novels, including City of Glass, Sunset Park, 4 3 2 1 and The Brooklyn Follies.

In 2010, Justin Horner was sitting on the side of the freeway, hoping someone would help him fix his blown tire. Right around the time he was about to give up, a van pulled over.

The awards, which come with a $50K purse, have helped launch the writing careers of many now well-known authors, including Colson Whitehead, Ocean Vuong, Alice McDermott and Jia Tolentino.

One of the founding mothers of feminist theology has died. Rosemary Radford Ruether was among the first scholars to think deeply about the role of women in Christianity.