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The pianist builds R&B with old-school values: singers who don't need software, live improvising, hand-built beats.

Stephen Dunn's 17th collection of poetry, Lines of Defense, includes several works meditating on the death of his brother. Dunn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, often features everyday details in his work — because, as he tells NPR's Rachel Martin, "we live with the little things much more than the large things."

Ozy.com co-founder Carlos Watson talks about a rising film producer getting his big break this year, and the swath of films on the horizon dealing with biblical or Greco-Roman times.

The group's sound broke down musical walls and inspired civil rights leaders. NPR's Arun Rath speaks with biographer Greg Kot about his new book, I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highway.

Jay Cantor is a hard author to nail down. He's written about topics as wide-ranging as Che Guevara and Krazy Kat. His latest work expands his range even more, fictionalizing the lives of four of Franz Kafka's friends and lovers. It's called Forgiving the Angel, and Cantor tells NPR's Lynn Neary it's a book born out of gratitude.

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.

Richard Powers' new novel tells the story of an avant-garde classical composer who finds himself dabbling in DNA. He "gets obsessed with finding music inside of living things," Powers explains, and, as a fugitive, ends up leading officials on a low-speed chase.

On Tuesday, France's president held an uncomfortable news conference, beginning with a question about his personal life. Rumor has it he's been cheating on the French first lady with a younger actress. In light of this affair, author Sarah Wendell recommends revisiting an old classic: The First Wives Club.

Rachel Joyce's new novel offers two parallel narratives: the 1972 story of Byron, an anxious schoolboy, and the present-day account of Jim, a supermarket worker who has spent most of his life in institutional care. But critic Ellah Allfrey says that the novel is made up of two distinct and unequal parts.

Author and sociologist David Cunningham speaks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the origins of cross burnings and white hoods, and why North Carolina had more Klan members during the height of the civil rights movement than all other Southern states combined.