In the 1950s, pulp fiction author L. Ron Hubbard founded a new religion: Scientology. The story of Hubbard and his church reads like a remarkable work of fiction, but Lawrence Wright tells it straight in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief ...

Bonus Track: Scientology's Sea Voyage

Long before Richard Nixon was president or he and Dwight D. Eisenhower were in-laws, the two were allies and adversaries. Their relationship lasted for 20 years, and brought out both the best and worst in each other. The story of their complicated relationship is told in the new book, "Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage." The author, Jeffrey Frank, is former senior editor of The New Yorker.

We asked you to come up with literary-themed names for the NFL teams. As usual, you didn't disappoint.

Susan Eloise Hinton was a teenager when she wrote The Outsiders, the story of rival gangs in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She used the pen name “S.E.” so readers wouldn’t know she was a girl, and bought a Camaro with the earnings. “Some of [the novel’s] faults, like its over-the-top emotions and ...

Slideshow: How The Outsiders became a movie

Emily Dickinson is one of those writers whose life is as famous as her writing: after she died, having spent much of her life writing at home, her sister found nearly two thousand poems in her bureau. "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," Dickinson’s fantasy of getting picked up by the grim reaper ...

Ian Rankin talks about the role of music in his series of crime novels starring Detective Inspector Rebus. 

I am an English major and a fan of professional football. So for this year’s Super Bowl, it will come as no surprise that I'm rooting for the Baltimore Ravens, the only team in the NFL named for a poem. In the spirit of literature and gridiron, I want to re-name all the NFL franchises. ...

As "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," the latest Grimm re-telling, hits the big screen, we look at where it all began with Maria Tatar, editor and translator of the new "Annotated Brothers Grimm."

Sue Grafton grew up pulling noir crime fiction off her father’s shelves in their Louisville home. But it wasn’t until she was in her 40s, already a published novelist and Hollywood screenwriter, that she tried her hand at the genre. Her new collection Kinsey and Me offers up some ...

Music writer Bill Wyman reviewed Untouchable, a new book about Michael Jackson, for The New Yorker and joins us with his take.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, fresh off her role in the inauguration of President Obama's second term, joins Brian Lehrer to talk about her new memoir and her life on the bench.

Science has had a pretty good run these last few centuries: immunology, space travel, the Higgs Boson. But there are still plenty of phenomena at the edge of our understanding. The Where, the Why, and the How is a sort of text book for grown-ups that addresses science’s enduring mysteries ...

Slideshow: Inside The Where, the Why, and the How

Author Adam Mansbach's innovative new novel, Rage Is Back, submerges readers into the world of graffiti and couples the book with an intriguing companion piece: a hip hop mixtape.

For all of our scientific advances, there are still many questions that remain unanswered. In the new book The Where, the Why, and the How, artists take a stab at explaining those mysteries. Now we’ve got one for you: Are we alone in the universe? Your challenge is to answer the question in an illustration ...

Ann Leary talks about her new novel, The Good House. It’s a classic New England tale about the secrets of a small town on the rocky coast of Boston’s North Shore about Hildy, a busy mother and grandmother who is also an alcoholic.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is open about how she benefited from affirmative action, how she came to terms with her diabetes and the "out-of-body experience" of being appointed to the high court. Sotomayor spoke with NPR just before the release of her new autobiography.

George Saunders writes short stories mostly set in a weird America of the near future and the futuristic present. His new collection, The Tenth of December, has garnered some extraordinary praise; The New York Times Magazine confidently (and unironically) entitled its profile of the writer ...

Bonus Track: George Saunders reads from Tenth of December

George Saunders, a master of the short story, talks about his new collection, Tenth of December. These explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into what makes us good and what makes us human.

Journalist and author Amy Wilentz first traveled to Haiti in 1986, as the regime of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier began to crumble and fall. Today, more than 25 years later, Wilentz reflects on the unique nation that has made her career in her new book, "Farewell, Fred Voodoo."

Ayana Mathis talks about her debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. Starting in 1923, it tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the life of Hattie Shepherd. She leaves Georgia at the age of 15 in search of a better life and settles in Philadelphia. As she grapples with her own disappointment, she raises her large family to face a world that she sees as harsh and unloving. Oprah Winfrey recently chose the book for her Book Club 2.0.