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The Vanity Fair critic was an aspiring writer when he arrived in a turbulent Manhattan in 1972. In his memoir, Lucking Out, he writes about the crime and culture (and pornography) he discovered there.

Brian Selznick's cinematic approach to storytelling is an artful experiment in narrative and illustration. Writing and drawing his books, he says, is "like going through a treasure map backwards."

Somali writer Nuruddin Farah's latest novel, Crossbones, centers on a family's return to Somalia on the eve of the Ethiopian invasion. As war breaks out, each character looks for personal peace in a society rife with violence and tension.

Science-fiction writer Jack Finney would have turned 100 this month. Critic Maureen Corrigan says he had a knack for tapping into our shallowly buried psychological anxieties. At its core, Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about how our loved ones inevitably change — and it is as sad as it is scary.

Many colleges assign books that all incoming freshmen must read over the summer. A popular 2011 assignment is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, about a cell line taken without consent from a black woman with cervical cancer.

Ernest Hemingway famously told The Paris Review that he'd rewritten the ending to A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. Those endings — and more — are being published in a new addition to the classic novel. But the writer's grandson, Sean, says Hemingway always knew the book would end sadly.

Flowers In The Attic is saucy and scandalous, but author Gillian Flynn says it was the complex, often evil women in the story that kept her turning the pages. Do you have a favorite female villain? Tell us about her in the comments.

In The Violinist's Thumb, writer Sam Kean goes inside our genetic code, looking at the stories written by the fundamental building blocks within us. The book explains things like why some people can't handle drinking coffee and why some human babies are born with tails.

Fifty Shades of Grey, the biggest phenomenon in publishing right now, began as a work of fan fiction based on the Twilight books. Now, author E.L. James is taking the series to the ultimate fans: attendees at this year's San Diego Comic-Con.

An American candy heiress butts heads with a snooty French chocolatier in Laura Florand's romantic new novel The Chocolate Thief. They fight, he throws her out of his candy store — of course they're going to fall in love. Read on for a sweet treat to while away a summer afternoon.