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The rare daytime astronomical event, in which Venus can be seen as a tiny black dot crossing the sun, won't happen again until 2117. Andrea Wulf, author of Chasing Venus, explains how 18th-century astronomers used the event to calculate the distance between the Earth and the sun.

Wiley Cash's new novel follows two sisters whose errant father kidnaps them out of foster care after their mother dies. Cash tells NPR's Rachel Martin about his decision to set the story during Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's 1998 home run battle.

In a new book, journalist Jenny Nordberg writes about the bacha posh, young girls who dress up like boys to enjoy the freedoms of being an Afghan male for as long as they can.

Lucas Mann's Class A combines baseball and sociology in this chronicle of a farm team from a fading Iowa factory town. Reviewer Heller McAlpin says Mann "uses the full tool kit of literary nonfiction" in a book that "encompasses nostalgia, hope and failure."

Move over, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — a grumpy man may soon take your place as America's favorite fictional Swede. The film adaptation of the best-seller A Man Called Ove is now coming to the U.S.

The highly anticipated sixth installment of J.K. Rowling's novel about a child wizard was released Saturday. NPR's Neva Grant followed two youngsters who spent the weekend immersed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The protagonist of Naomi Hirahara's novels isn't a seasoned police detective or a private investigator — he's a gruff, 72-year-old gardener who lives in the hills above Pasadena, Calif. The Mas Arai character was inspired by Hirahara's father and guides readers into the hidden corners of L.A.'s Japanese-American communities.

Caitlin Doughty, whose Los Angeles funeral home specializes in alternative ceremonies, traveled the world to collect stories about how different peoples send loved ones off to the great beyond.

In his new book, Hello, Shadowlands, journalist Patrick Winn describes how underground crime groups thrive in a region where democracy is in retreat.

After her first book, journalist Atia Abawi was inspired to write a young adult novel about the Syrian refugee crisis. "It seems very dark, but it's a situation that happens all the time," she says.