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For two years, the author lived in a Laotian hospital, in an apartment above the operating room. His experiences there inspired characters — including a country coroner — for the books he would later write.

The last deep pit coal mine in northern England closes next month, marking the death of an industry that has fueled area towns for decades. Miners are angry the government didn't do more to help them.

Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air is an unsentimental meditation on the immigrant experience and the illusory idea of asylum. With lyrical prose, he reassesses the by-your-bootstraps mythology associated with American mobility.

Ten years ago Friday, 43 drivers lined up to race NASCAR's Daytona 500. One of them was Dale Earnhardt, who died in a crash in the last lap. Fellow racer Michael Waltrip, who won that race, details the day's events in a new book: In the Blink of an Eye: Dale, Daytona, and the Day that Changed Everything.

Punting the ball on fourth down seems like tried-and-true football wisdom. But the authors of Scorecasting argue that like many sports cliches, this one is based more on perceptions than on hard evidence.

Jane's Fame, Claire Harman's book about the author of Emma and Sense and Sensibility, reveals the gap between her legacy — modest, indifferent to fame and devoted to her characters — and her ambition.

The summer sun may be shining, but vampires don't seem to be going anywhere. NPR's Margot Adler has read more than 100 vampire books this year, and gives a heads-up on two bloodsucking books expected to be summer blockbusters: Christopher Farnsworth's Blood Oath and Justin Cronin's The Passage.

Thriller writer Richard North Patterson knows about engrossing political dramas — he served as the SEC liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor. As his favorite thriller, he recommends Allen Drury's Pulitzer Prize-winning Advise and Consent, a political novel that still rings true after 50 years.

In their seven-year love affair with Interstate 95, Stan Posner and Sandra Phillips-Posner have found the best Polish sausage, Berger cookies and a battleship you can spend the night on.

Vic Armstrong has made a career out of jumping from helicopters, falling off horses and leaping from trains — and he's got the scars to prove it. He tells stories from his long career on set in The True Adventures Of The World's Greatest Stuntman.