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A year ago, the Pakistani army mounted an offensive to dislodge Taliban militants who had overtaken Swat Valley. The fighting forced more than 2 million people from their homes. A year later, the people of the region are trying to rebuild their lives.

A year ago, the Pakistani army mounted an offensive to dislodge Taliban militants who had overtaken Swat Valley. The fighting forced more than 2 million people from their homes. A year later, the people of the region are trying to rebuild their lives.

Years ago, writer Adam Ross' father told him a disturbing story involving a morbidly obese second cousin and a deadly peanut. Now, Ross has transformed that tale into a dark, debut novel, Mr. Peanut, which dramatizes the case of a man who may or may not have killed his wife via legume.

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 new book, Adventures Among Ants, details his explorations around the world, tracking many a species through jungle forests and remote mountain passes.

Gabrielle Burton's near lifelong obsession with Tamsen Donner — the wife of the leader of the fatal expedition — has produced a haunting novel, Impatient with Desire, and a must-read memoir, Searching for Tamsen Donner. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the stories are unforgettable.

Garden writer Bonnie Blodgett didn't know what her sense of smell meant to her — until she lost it. Her new book, Remembering Smell, describes what it's like to live in the world without being able to smell it — from the sweet aromas of springtime to the stench of sour milk.

In 1999, Tom DeBaggio was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. He was 57. Soon after the diagnosis, he began talking with NPR about his illness. He wanted to document his decline, to break through what he called the "shame and silence" of the disease. Now he can't talk, walk or feed himself.

The Daily Beast editor-in-chief joins NPR's Steve Inskeep for another chat about the best reading she's been doing lately — books and articles about an iconic Depression-era photo, campaign promises and a country that has a way of flying too close to the sun.

When Michael Koryta was 8 years old, his father took him to visit the ruins of an American hotel that was once referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Eighteen years later, he's written So Cold the River, a supernatural thriller about the historic hotel and the mysterious waters that run beneath it.

If the Dead Rise Not, the latest book in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther detective series, shifts the saga from prewar Nazi Germany to 1954 Havana. Critic John Powers says the Chandleresque novel kept him glued to his deck chair for days.