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To some, Detroit may be a symbol of urban decay; but to journalist Charlie LeDuff, it's home. In Detroit: An American Autopsy, he says the city's heart beats on. "We're still here trying to reconstruct the great thing we once had," he tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies.

In her new book, The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, author Paula Byrne shows how everyday objects helped shape Austen's life and literature. One example, a topaz cross, a cherished gift to Austen from her brother, plays an important role in Mansfield Park.

Journalist Lawrence Wright's new book, Going Clear, is a penetrating look at Scientology and its famous practitioners. The book centers on Crash and Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis, who famously left the church over its support for an anti-gay marriage initiative in California.

Investigators in Europe have revealed evidence that hundreds of soccer games were fixed by gambling syndicates. The scandal even includes national teams competing for places in soccer's biggest tournament: the World Cup.

In her new book, Andrea Stuart explores the intersection of sugar, slavery, settlement, migration and survival in the Americas. Stuart's personal history was shaped by these forces — she is descended from a slave owner who had relations with an unknown slave.

Two couples — two brothers and their wives — meet for a meal in Herman Koch's new novel The Dinner, and it's anything but a convivial family gathering. Both couples have teenage sons, and they're meeting to discuss a ghastly crime the boys have committed.

Amid continuing turmoil and violence in Egypt, the main opposition alliance has rejected dialogue with the government of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. Over the weekend, Morsi announced a state of emergency in the three main cities along the Suez Canal. One of those, Port Said, was the scene of major violence and there was more on Monday with police battling protesters.

Top aide Denis McDonough is moving into the chief of staff's office. Justice Department official Lisa Monaco is taking on the counterterrorism post.

Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief looks at the world of the controversial church and the life of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986.

Ali Smith's new book, Artful, began as a series of lectures on comparative literature, given at Oxford last year. The lectures have been given a fictional shell, the story of an unnamed narrator finding a cache of essays in the study of her dead lover. Reviewer John Wilwol calls Artful "superb."