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Vacuous pop stars, a hygiene-challenged photographer and corrupt politicians all play a part in Carl Hiaasen's new satire of the industry that both makes and breaks celebrities.

Megan Stack hadn't planned on becoming a war correspondent. But then Sept. 11 happened, and she found herself in the Middle East — the beginning of a seven-year stint of wartime reporting. In Every Man in This Village Is a Liar, Stack reflects on the experience of reporting from war-torn countries.

After sailing the Antarctic Sea and traversing the deepest Tibetan gorge, Peter Heller became a "kook," or beginner surfer. It was while surfing in Huntington Beach, Calif. that he caught a glimpse of his next great adventure: a trip down the West Coast, in search of the perfect wave. In Kook he tells the story of that journey, and what he learned along the way.

Influenced by both The Sopranos and Marcel Proust, Jennifer Egan takes her readers on a swirling, playful ride through time in A Visit from the Goon Squad, a novel of linked short stories — including one told as a PowerPoint presentation — that defies categorization.

Author Helen Simonson risks her literary pretensions to admit a lifelong secret attraction to the Regency romance novels of Georgette Heyer. The dampened muslin dresses, the highly polished boots — for her, nothing beats these tales of heroines who require a man with a firm hand on the bridle.

Author and law professor Stephen Carter started reading the novels of John le Carre in college and he hasn't stopped. After all these years, he says his favorite is still Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a Cold War spy story that demonstrates le Carre's marvelous craftsmanship.

In China, the vast following of a folk goddess of the sea illustrates the remarkable rebirth of local popular religion since the Cultural Revolution. Now, China's communist leaders are supporting worship of Mazu as "cultural heritage" and using it to advance their own political and economic goals.

Before the BP explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst domestic oil spill was the 1989 Exxon Valdez in Alaska. The accident gave the oil giant a jolt and prompted the company to rethink its approach to safety. Now, Exxon does considerably better than the industry average on several safety-related measures.

When Laura Lorson needs a break from the daily grind, she curls up with books that transport her to simpler times. She recommends three titles that take her back to her days of childhood summer reading — absorbing words off sun-dappled pages under the shade of a tree.

Contemporary authors have a habit of lazily shoplifting plots and characters from 19th-century fiction — especially the works of Jane Austen. But even though Allegra Goodman's latest novel, The Cookbook Collector, is a modern riff on Sense and Sensibility, her homage quickly comes to have a glorious life of its own.