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Bananas are the most popular fruit in America, and demand is growing worldwide, too. But growing bananas requires a lot of pesticides. And a new study shows that some of those chemicals are ending up in caimans living downstream from banana plantations in Costa Rica, where many of the bananas that Americans eat are grown.

In Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward recalls the deaths of five young men in her life, which she believes were all connected to being poor and black in the rural South. "It made me feel that I wasn't promised some long life. ... That's not a given for me."

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.

Was King's 1977 The Shining your first fictional scare? Now, after nearly 40 years, King has followed up his horror tale of a little boy and a haunted hotel with a sequel called Doctor Sleep. "I wanted to revisit Danny and see what he was like as a grown-up," King says.

A scientist in Birmingham, Ala., is trying to help overharvested sea urchins, considered a delicacy in many parts of the world, find their way back to a restaurant near you. He's developed an urchin farm to help grow them more sustainably and a special feed that gives them a sweet umami taste.

It's been a good summer for author Jhumpa Lahiri. Her new novel, The Lowland, has been nominated for two major literary prizes. But reviewer Ellah Allfrey says that while the book is elegantly structured, she wished for more humanity from the characters.

India's politics and history play a central role in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. In the Booker Prize-nominated novel, an Indian radical is killed, and his wife and brother start over in America. Lahiri tells NPR's Lynn Neary that the story was inspired by true events, but very unlike her own life.

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross created and starred in the short-lived sketch comedy program Mr. Show. Fifteen years after their show went off the air, they have a new book of old scripts that were rejected by Hollywood.

Samantha Geimer was victimized twice: once by an infamous Hollywood director who fled prosecution after raping her when she was 13, and again by a relentless media, which has hounded her for the past three decades.

Young Jack hits the road with his cranky, elderly teacher Miss Volker (and a couple of cranky, elderly cars) in From Norvelt to Nowhere, the new young adult novel from Jack Gantos. The sequel to 2011's Newbery-winning Dead End in Norvelt is set in 1962, in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis.