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Laurie Halse Anderson's latest young adult novel, The Impossible Knife of Memory, follows 15-year-old Hayley and her dad, who suffers from PTSD after serving in Iraq. Anderson says the book draws on her own experience of growing up with a World War II veteran father who still struggles with his war memories.

The mostly forgotten explorer Paul du Chaillu first introduced the world to gorillas. His methods were attacked and his work discredited during his lifetime, but he also experienced fame and redemption. Now, there's a new book that tells his story.

Napoleonic Wars? The Royal Navy? Yawn. Novelist Nicola Griffith had low expectations when she started reading Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. But soon she was tearing through the 20-volume series, reveling in the deeply rendered friendship between the characters Jack and Stephen. It's a masterpiece, she says: "Jane Austen on a ship of war."

When author Chris Abani was a boy, he was miserable at Catholic seminary and he felt like an outsider in his own family. One summer break, at home in Afikpo, he discovered James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. The tragic, taboo love story made young Abani feel that at last he'd found someone who understood how out of place he felt in his own life.

Lee is acclaimed for his realistic and historical fiction, but he's made a foray into the futuristic sci-fi genre with a new novel called On Such a Full Sea. Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan says sometimes it's better for writers to stick closer to familiar shores.

The Supreme Court justice tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "In every position that I've been in, there have been naysayers who don't believe I'm qualified or who don't believe I can do the work." She has committed herself to proving those people wrong.

Armistead Maupin's famous series Tales of the City winds down with one last story about Anna Madrigal, the transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane. Maupin tells NPR the series originally grew out of his attempts to write a nonfiction piece about the heterosexual pickup scene at his local Safeway.

After years of cooking and eating the same pumpkin pies, stuffing and green bean casseroles, you might be in a Thanksgiving slump. Veteran restaurant critic Patricia Wells has a few recipes — including a spicy pumpkin soup and "intense" chocolate custards — to put a French twist on the holiday.

Therese Walsh knows Colleen McCullough's famous novel — which contains not just sex, but sex with a priest -- might not be "appropriate" for teens. But, she says, it's the perfect sort of dangerous.

Jon Taffer is a bar and nightclub consultant and the host of the reality show Bar Rescue. His new book is called Raise the Bar, and he says bars and pubs are part of America's fiber.