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In a new book, journalist Jenny Nordberg writes about the bacha posh, young girls who dress up like boys to enjoy the freedoms of being an Afghan male for as long as they can.

It seems like a simple question: How many parts can you divide a line into? The troublesome answer was square at the root of two of Europe's greatest social crises.

Miss Havisham is one of Charles Dickens' most enduring characters. She appears in Great Expectations as an eccentric recluse, jilted at the altar years ago, who still wears her wedding gown and presides over a rotting feast. In his new novel, Ronald Frame imagines the kind of life that would have created such a woman.

With intricately composed photographs, designer Dinah Fried puts readers at the table for 50 of her favorite literary spreads. Her new book is called Fictitious Dishes.

Wiley Cash's new novel follows two sisters whose errant father kidnaps them out of foster care after their mother dies. Cash tells NPR's Rachel Martin about his decision to set the story during Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's 1998 home run battle.

Megan Abbott was riveted by stories of a bizarre illness that seemed to consume the town of Le Roy, N.Y., in 2012. Her new book uses pieces of that true story to explore the mysteries of adolescence.

Typhoon Haiyan swept through the Philippines late last week, leaving behind devastation and plenty of questions yet to be answered. Authors Kevin Roose and Allan Gurganus suggest books that might provide readers with a glimpse past the week's ubiquitous headlines, to the human cost often left hidden.

When author Vaddey Ratner was just a child, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and destroyed her aristocratic family. Her new novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, draws on her terrible experiences — and the poetry and stories from her father that helped her survive.

Journalist Seth Rosenfeld spent three decades pursuing government documents about the FBI's undercover operation in Berkeley, Calif., during the student protest movements in the '60s. His new book details how the FBI "used dirty tricks to stifle dissent on campus" and influenced Ronald Reagan's politics.

The rare daytime astronomical event, in which Venus can be seen as a tiny black dot crossing the sun, won't happen again until 2117. Andrea Wulf, author of Chasing Venus, explains how 18th-century astronomers used the event to calculate the distance between the Earth and the sun.