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Philip Short's new biography of French president Francois Mitterrand, A Taste for Intrigue, is a compelling, polished portrait of a slippery, contradictory figure who relished reinventing himself.

For the first time, Witold Gombrowicz's 1967 Polish novel Cosmos has been translated directly into English. Wordplay and aphorisms don't get lost in the translation of this feathery existential crisis — in which two men obsessively hunt down the person responsible for the death of a sparrow.

Author Anya Von Bremzen's new memoir, Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking, is a tragic-comic history of a family and a nation as seen through the kitchen window. Everything we ate in the Soviet Union was grown ... by the party state," she says. "So, with the food, inevitably, you ingested the ideology."

Many think of the feminist movement as a thing of the past, but Debora Spar says the battle isn't won yet. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the misinterpretation that got us where we are, and the need to improve support and pay for working women.

In 1998, the novelist befriended a rich, eccentric, art-loving Rockefeller — or so he thought. Kirn explores the man's lies in Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade.

Gillian Flynn's third novel begins on the morning of Nick and Amy Dunne's wedding anniversary, when Amy disappears and Nick becomes the No. 1 suspect. But the central question isn't what happened to Amy — it's what happened to her marriage.

The nation's biggest insurer is starting to dole out bonuses and penalties to nearly 3,000 hospitals as it ties almost $1 billion in payments to the quality of care provided to patients.

We're not sure anyone has ever published a book list that includes both Anna Karenina and The Little Engine That Could -- so this might be a first! Find all our recommended tales of travel by train.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., just a few miles from where the tornado hit Monday, had warned that bad weather was coming. But experts there say they're surprised the monster storm didn't cause more deaths, and they want to know why.

Terry McMillan, the best-selling author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, tells NPR's Scott Simon that she writes because she wishes she were a magician. She shows off her tricks in Who Asked You?, a novel with many narrators — including a woman named BJ and her husband, children and grandkids.

Raymond Gunt is profane, rude, heartless and truly the Worst. Person. Ever. Author Douglas Coupland says he's not exactly sure how the character, with no redeeming qualities, came into his mind.

Aline Ohanesian's debut novel attempts to make sense of the events of 100 years ago, when the Ottoman Empire began forcing Armenians out of their homes in Turkey, leaving more than a million dead.