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Fiction is reality and reality fiction in Revenge, Yoko Ogawa's absorbing cycle of interlinked, eerie tales. Readers may detect the shadows of Murakami, Borges and Poe, but, says critic Alan Cheuse, Ogawa's delicious tales cast their own singular spell.

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.

In his latest novel, Thomas Mallon takes a fresh look at the scandal that brought down the Nixon administration, re-imagining it through the eyes of the cast of characters involved.

A former addict, Jeet Thayil spent decades in Mumbai's seedy, drug-ridden underworld. He draws from his life to populate his first novel, Narcopolis, with a cast of desperate, damaged and magnetic characters.

Critics originally described it as a "housewife's choice" when it won the Booker Prize in 1987, but the feisty female protagonist in Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger is a "little wife" to no one. Author Moni Mohsin explains why the unexpected verve of this novel is worth its weight in pages.

Can the mishaps of three seriously misguided Victorian gentlemen still provoke laughter? More than 120 years after its first edition, author Julia Stuart says Jerome K. Jerome's classic caper, Three Men in a Boat, is still a delightful read.

The romantic power of words has the uncanny ability to lead us through the aches and pains of growing up. Author Leah Hager Cohen recommends Brian Hall's The Saskiad, a coming-of-age tale with a bookish twist.

After a meteoric rise, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is now polling in the single digits. But she's still plowing ahead with her campaign, and this week she came out with a memoir. The Minnesota congresswoman talks with co-host Steve Inskeep about Core of Conviction and aiming to win the nomination.

In The Dead Witness, Michael Sims presents stories from the early days of detective fiction, revisiting classics and introducing readers to a raft of lesser-known writers, many of them women.

If you are uncertain about the implications of The Jock-Nerd Convergence or are unsure about the dangers posed by The Century Toad, fear not: author John Hodgman is here to explain them to you. Also: sardines.