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Since about age 2, Atlantic editor Scott Stossel has been "a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears and neuroses." Today, his phobias include asthenophobia, a fear of fainting; aerophobia, a fear of flying; and turophobia, a fear of cheese. He wrote his latest book to help understand and find relief from his anxious suffering.

There's plenty of cruelty in the British songwriter's book, but he's unreservedly bighearted toward his favorite films, actors, TV shows and music, and he rhapsodizes over one LGBT icon after the other.

Olivia Laing illuminates the complex relationships between writers and alcohol in The Trip to Echo Spring — Echo Spring being, of course, the euphemism Tennessee Williams used for the liquor cabinet in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Reviewer Jane Ciabattari says the book is "beautifully written, haunting, tragic and instructive in the best sense."

For one year, on her daily walks, poet Harryette Mullen observed the collision of the natural world with the man-made environs of Los Angeles. She translated her impressions into a series of tankas, 31-syllable poems in the Japanese tradition. The resulting collection is called Urban Tumbleweed: Notes From a Tanka Diary.

On Sept. 1, 1944, a B-24 bomber went down in the South Pacific. The wreckage, and the airmen, seemed to disappear. Almost 50 years later, a scientist on vacation in Palau found an airplane wing and went on an obsessive, decade-long quest to find what happened to the plane. Author Wil S. Hylton joins NPR to discuss his new book on the mystery.

Before World War II, numerous Jewish emigrants left Lithuania for South Africa. In his debut novel, Kenneth Bonert tells the story of a family among their number. As reviewer Ellah Allfrey writes, despite a few rookie mistakes, that story is told with great inventiveness and care.

In a new book, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says we should rewrite the Second Amendment, abolish the death penalty and restrict political campaign spending.

Bound by the confines of gender and finances, two young women take divergent paths in Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name, the second book in her "Neapolitan Novels" trilogy. Critic John Powers believes the bold, expansive series to be semi-autobiographical, a revelation from a secretive author who won't reveal her true name.

Jenny Offill's sparse and experimental novel Dept. of Speculation is a reminder that bigger isn't always better. Through short vignettes, Offill builds a narrative about an unnamed husband and wife. It's a sly, profound glimpse into a fragile domestic sphere — and, while the form may be unusual, the book is highly readable.

Defining poverty is not straightforward, says Tim Harford, author of the new book The Undercover Economist Strikes Back. It's also about how people view themselves and how they're viewed by others.