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Matthiessen was a spy, a naturalist, a well-regarded activist and a three-time winner of the National Book Award — for both fiction and nonfiction. He died of acute myeloid leukemia.

Hilary Mantel is the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize twice, first for her 2009 novel, Wolf Hall, and now for that book's 2012 sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The novels are part of a historical fiction trilogy about Tudor England and the events surrounding the reign of King Henry VIII.

Biologist and Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson has spent his lifetime making scientific discoveries and writing award-winning, best-selling books on science. His new book, inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, gives advice gleaned from his career in science.

April is National Poetry Month, and what better way to celebrate than with new books? This month brings us a reissue of Hayden, a retranslation of Dante, a gathering of estimable poems from the past quarter-century and a new collection with a camera-eye view of the world.

Six teens at a summer arts camp dub themselves, only somewhat ironically, "the Interestings" in Meg Wolitzer's novel of the same name. As the book follows the friends into love, marriage and adulthood, some realize their artistic ambitions while others adjust to less interesting lives.

In his latest book, the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food turns his attention to how we use the four classical elements to transform plants and animals into food, and argues that home cooking can remake the American food system.

After years trying to conceive, novelist Jennifer Gilmore and her husband decided to adopt. What they thought would be a relatively simple process was instead a long and painful one. In her latest novel, Gilmore channels these autobiographical experiences into fiction.

Colin Broderick's new memoir, That's That, chronicles his childhood in Northern Ireland during the modern-day "Troubles." Broderick says growing up in what was essentially a war zone seemed normal to him at the time.

In The Child Catchers, Kathryn Joyce explores the outsized influence of evangelical Christian groups on the overseas adoption industry, which can exploit poor families.

Full of sex, intrigue and clues based on Victorian poetry, Elanor Dymott's Every Contact Leaves a Trace is a literary mystery about a murder at Oxford University. This tale of a clueless husband who discovers his wife's true nature too late reminds critic Maureen Corrigan a little of Gone Girl.

Jesmyn Ward's new memoir Men We Reaped follows the lives and tragically early deaths of several young black men — Ward's brother among them. Reviewer Richard Torres says Ward is "talented enough to turn ... prose into poetry," but that she doesn't sugarcoat her terrible experiences.

In his new memoir, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, the Oxford scientist reveals for the first time intimate details about his life — some of which are quite startling. Reviewer J.P. O'Malley says the book is "a fascinating account" of one man's quest for answers.

Annemarie Selinko's Desiree, a novel about a silk merchant's daughter who almost married Napoleon, was the first book that author Fiona Maazel ever read with excitement. What book turned you into a reader? Tell us in the comments.

RASL collects all 15 issues of Jeff Smith's comic of the same name, about a time-jumping physicist-turned-art-thief who knows more than is good for him about interdimensional travel. Reviewer Etelka Lehoczky says RASL's female characters can be a little one-dimensional, but overall the book is full of surprises.

Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone is a sleuthing novel that was ahead of its time.

No. 28 was the first president to team up with America's legislative branch, and he used a groundbreaking moral argument to get the U.S. involved in World War I. A. Scott Berg's new book, Wilson, fills in missing pieces of the president's life.

Two new books published Tuesday tell the story of Harlem. The first features the white women involved in the Harlem Renaissance. And the second profiles three black female artists during World War II.

Khaled Hosseini's new novel, like his two earlier works, is set partly in Afghanistan — but this time, political turmoil isn't a major element of the plot. Instead, And The Mountains Echoed is a story of a family's loss that spans decades and continents.

Thomas Keneally's new novel, The Daughters of Mars, follows two Australian sisters who become nurses during World War I. Naomi and Sally Durance share a guilty secret, but they don't share any sisterly closeness — until the horrors of war begin to bind them together.

Lionel Shriver has never shied away from contentious topics. Her latest novel, Big Brother, tackles the hot-button issue of obesity as doll-maker Pandora deals with her brother — washed-up jazz pianist Edison — and his massive weight gain.

Goliarda Sapienza's sprawling, posthumously published epic, The Art of Joy, follows the life of Modesta, born in Sicily on the first day of the 20th century. Reviewer Maria Russo says the book lacks editing, but that ultimately doesn't matter to a story of such "scale and seductive libertinism."

When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie moved from Nigeria to the United States for college, she was suddenly confronted with the idea of what it meant to be a person of color in America. Her new novel explores issues of race in contemporary America.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum describes the tactics the Soviets used after World War II to take over and transform much of Eastern Europe. Her book Iron Curtain was recently nominated for the National Book Award.

Can natural science find a place for us in its vision of the cosmos? Thomas Nagel, in a new book, demands we take this question seriously. He is right to do so.

In his new book, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind, author David Cay Johnston examines the fees that companies have added over the years that have made bills incrementally larger. He tells Fresh Air that companies are misusing language to "confuse people."