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In the mid-19th century, more than a million Irish fled the potato famine in search of a better life. But the fate they met aboard so-called "coffin ships" headed to the New World was often as bad as what they left behind. Not so for those lucky enough to find their way onto one ship. Kathryn Miles tells the story in her book, All Standing.

Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah is about a young Nigerian woman who moves to the U.S. It's a story of relocation, far-flung love and life as an outsider. But reviewer Rosecrans Baldwin says that despite the author's talent, much of the storytelling feels flat.

Anchee Min's new book, The Cooked Seed, picks up 20 years after the end of her bestselling memoir Red Azalea, as Min arrives in America with little money and no English. After persecution in China, Min describes art school in America as "a strange environment, very surreal."

In the multilayered graphic novel Red Handed, an ace detective solves a series of odd and seemingly unrelated crimes, only to find that they're all part of a grand design. Critic Glen Weldon admires artist Matt Kindt's mastery of the comics medium.

Bill Cheng's debut novel, Southern Cross the Dog, is full of mythical characters who feel like they rose right out of the Mississippi Swamp, and narratives that churn and swirl like the river itself. Cheng calls the novel "a love note to those old blues players."

With the growing popularity of tequila and mezcal in the U.S., a new generation of growers and distillers in the Southwest is trying to create a uniquely American agave liquor.

A girl with the soul of a bird finds her wings in Audrey Niffenegger's haunting Raven Girl. The author of The Time Traveler's Wife illustrates this slight volume with her own moody etchings.

Although Venezuela has a rich literary culture, its writers remain largely unknown outside of the country. Marcela Valdes traces the intersection of literature and politics in the large Caribbean nation, showing the forces that have kept Venezuelan writers from getting the praise they deserve.

In Mission To Mars, astronaut Buzz Aldrin lays out his plans for getting Americans on Mars by 2035.

George Packer's The Unwinding explores the social and economic upheavals that have transformed the U.S. over the past 30 years. In a nuanced work of literary journalism, colorful characters from across the class divide tell their own stories of a social contract in tatters.