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George Orwell's dystopian vision offers such devastating political commentary that it's rarely described as a suspense novel. But author and former CIA operative Barry Eisler says the book simply proves just how powerful a thriller with a message can be.

Slaughter is a master of the thriller genre; her latest book, Broken, is full of twists and turns and technical details. In the latest installment of our "Thrilled to Death" series, Slaughter talks with NPR's Michele Norris about the stories that keep her in suspense.

Food writer Nigella Lawson knows that the holiday season can be overstuffed with planning and decorating. She offers Renee Montagne two recipes — chocolate chip chili and a Christmas-y rocky road — to help keep things warm and simple.

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.

Sebastian Mallaby's book is an expert primer on hedge funds — the "Ferraris of finance" — and a detailed portrait of Wall Street's daredevils. Reviewer Susan Jane Gilman says More Money Than God is illuminating ... and infuriating.

How about an electrified birthday cake or a steaming martini? A new book shows you how to turn your food into edible science experiments. Your kitchen is like a home laboratory, says one author, why not have fun with it?

What do Wikipedia and Craigslist have in common with the Tea Party movement? They succeed by being decentralized, says Rod Beckstrom, co-author of the management book The Starfish and the Spider.

Novelist Nicole Krauss artfully weaves disparate stories of love and loss into a devastating examination of the weight of memory on those left behind. Four narrators are connected by an antique desk separated from its original owner during the Holocaust.

The world economy has created a new class of global engineers. AnnaLee Saxenian, the dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, has written a new book about this group. Deborah Amos talks to her about The New Argonauts.

A classical scholar with a voracious appetite for high and low culture alike, he's dauntingly smart — but far too interested in why we love what we love to be a snob. Jacki Lyden talks to Mendelsohn about his new essay collection.

Fox News TV host Bill O'Reilly describes himself "as the most controversial journalist and commentator in the United States of America." In his memoir, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, he explains how he got that way.

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

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.

What happens when an expendable starship crewman realizes he's expendable? John Scalzi's new Redshirts is a meta-narrative about outsmarting Narrative itself, and a multilayered love letter to fans of classic science fiction.

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.

Two young, star-crossed magicians compete against each other in a mysterious, lifelong competition in Erin Morgenstern's sparkling debut novel.

Fifty years ago Norton Juster sat down and tried to remember the confusion and dislocation of childhood. His memories became a book, and The Phantom Tollbooth was born. In this essay, Juster looks back at his beloved novel, and the bored, disconnected child who grew up to write it.

In the 2008 financial crash, a lot was written in newspapers and even books — but there wasn't much fiction out there to help those who like to view life through an imaginative lens. Now author John Lanchester's Capital can fill that void. It describes the crash as seen from London, and Lizzie Skurnick calls it "brilliant."

In Power Concedes Nothing, civil rights attorney Connie Rice describes brokering peace between the Los Angeles Police Department and minority populations.

K.J. Reilly creates an indelible character in 17-year-old Joel Higgins, with his phone full of unsent text messages to his crush, his principal and his dead friend, and his profane, vulnerable voice.