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Twelve Breaths a Minute: End-of-Life Essays captures the experiences of family members, doctors, caregivers and others who have learned valuable lessons from witnessing life's final moments.

Nik Worth is a failed musician who painstakingly documents his life and non-existent career, leaving his sister to worry about practical things like paying his rent. Dana Spiotta's new novel investigates the long-term costs of an artist's passion.

What makes a memorable character? It is the one who changes the most throughout the book? The one who makes a personal discovery? Or is it simply the most eccentric who we love? Actor Simon Pegg says that for his favorite literary protagonist, all three apply.

The author spent more than five years writing and researching her book, Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion. It gives a detailed account of the lives of founder L. Ron Hubbard and the man who succeeded him, David Miscavige.

NPR Music's Tom Huizenga and host Guy Raz spin an eclectic mix of new classical releases.

Jake Marlowe is cultured, dashing and full of quotable insights. And at 200 years old, he's just discovered he's the last of his kind — werewolf, that is. Glen Duncan imagines a race on the brink of extinction in The Last Werewolf.

Entomologist Mark Moffett loves ants. He's devoted his career to studying the tiny insects: how they move, what they eat, when they attack their prey. Moffett's book, Adventures Among Ants, details his explorations around the world, tracking many a species through jungle forests and remote mountain passes.

This summer of record-breaking heat followed a spring that brought some of the most extreme weather on record. In her book The Weather of the Future, climatologist Heidi Cullen writes, "It's time to face the fact that the weather isn't what it used to be."

From 1915 until 1946, some 25,000 pieces of paper were exchanged between painter Georgia O'Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The correspondence tracks their relationship from acquaintances to admirers to lovers to man and wife to exasperated — but still together — long-marrieds.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to defend his integrity Wednesday as Parliament debated the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World. The opposition wanted to know why Cameron had hired a former editor at the newspaper as his media adviser — a man who left the paper because of the scandal and who has since been arrested by police. Cameron defended his decision and refused to apologize amid rowdy scenes in the House of Commons.