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Ghana's Vice President John Dramani Mahama has written a new memoir of growing up during what he calls Africa's "lost decades," the dfficult years after independence. It's not all politics, though: Mahama also writes about enjoying James Brown and traditional village dances.

You won't find sparkling vampires here — Glen Duncan's latest supernatural novel is full of violence, gore and sex. A sequel to The Last Werewolf, it follows antihero Talulla Demetriou as she deals with her lycanthropy, pregnancy and, of course, some undead enemies.

Can a murderer ever be redeemed? That's the question journalist Nancy Mullane takes on in her new book, Life After Murder. Over the past few years, Mullane has made dozens of trips to California's San Quentin prison to interview men locked up for committing heinous crimes.

In Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace, Kate Summerscale reconstructs the everyday private life and very public shaming of Isabella Robinson, a wife sued for divorce over her scandalous diary entries in the early days of England's divorce court.

Jess Walter's latest novel spans decades and traverses the Atlantic to create a kaleidoscopic collection of "beautiful ruins." Characters include a hotelier, a young script reader and real-life movie star Richard Burton. NPR's Maureen Corrigan says the book is a "literary miracle."

Gillian Flynn's third novel begins on the morning of Nick and Amy Dunne's wedding anniversary, when Amy disappears and Nick becomes the No. 1 suspect. But the central question isn't what happened to Amy — it's what happened to her marriage.

Juan Pujol Garcia lived a lie that helped win World War II. Nicknamed for the enigmatic actress Greta Garbo, Garcia's own performance was so convincing he fooled Hitler himself.

Michael Ondaatje's fifth novel, The Cat's Table, follows an 11-year-old boy on a 21-day journey from Sri Lanka to London. Unsupervised, he and his companions live by only one rule: to every day do at least one thing that is forbidden.

Anthony Heilbut's essay collection, The Fan Who Knew Too Much, features reflections on the Queen of Soul, soap operas and Jewish immigrants. The highlight of this sometimes harsh collection, says Michael Schaub, is a history of LGBT contributions to gospel.

Alan Furst's new thriller, Mission to Paris, follows a German-American film star to Europe on the brink of war. Fredric Stahl thinks he's going to make a movie in France, but he winds up caught between German and American forces who both hope to use his stardom for their own ends.