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Cold weather means "Mum's Rice Paprikash" for Merelyn Chalmers, a member of The Monday Morning Cooking Club. The club is dedicated to preserving recipes from Sydney's Jewish community. For our Found Recipes series, Chalmers shares the dish that she considers the ultimate comfort food.

Croatian author Dasa Drndic's new novel Trieste is an experimental mix of historical record and personal quest. It's the story of an Italian woman trying to find the lost child she bore to a Nazi officer. Reviewer Alan Cheuse says it's an intensely moving book, but one that must be put down occasionally in order to recover.

Stephen Dunn's 17th collection of poetry, Lines of Defense, includes several works meditating on the death of his brother. Dunn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, often features everyday details in his work — because, as he tells NPR's Rachel Martin, "we live with the little things much more than the large things."

E.L. Doctorow's new novel Andrew's Brain takes the reader deep into the mind of a cognitive scientist who's struggling with both scientific questions and personal tragedy. Critic Heller McAlpin says the book, which takes the form of Andrew's monologue to a doctor, is "a real head-scratcher."

Grown-ups might not "get it," but subjects like bugs and poop can make history lessons a little more palatable for middle schoolers. Author Sarah Albee says she writes books for her inner 12-year-old.

Slow-cooking expert Stephanie O'Dea shares the story behind her KFC-inspired chicken: It was an attempt to recreate the Colonel's secret recipe so that her daughter, who has celiac disease, could experience a taste most Americans take for granted. In a twist, O'Dea also wanted to cook the chicken in a Crock-Pot.

Two decades after Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen is back with Cambridge, an unflinching, elegiac, quasi-autobiographical novel that takes us back to her childhood in the 1950s.

Saturday Night Live recently announced that they were hiring Sasheer Zamata, the first black woman to join the cast in six years. For our series This Week's Must Read, author Danielle Evans recommends a book that can give readers an idea of how Zamata might feel: Get Down, a short story collection by Asali Solomon.

In Norman Lock's new novel, Huck and Jim set out on their raft in 1835, but are swept up and along through three wrenching centuries: slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and onward.

NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with the irrepressible novelist about his latest book — a memoir this time, called Tibetan Peach Pie -- and why he hates being labeled as a counter-culture writer.