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Sandy Denny became the queen of British folk rock when she joined the band Fairport Convention in 1968. Her fans included Robert Plant and Nina Simone. Denny was a skilled songwriter with a powerful and expressive voice, yet today many people don't recognize her name.

In his long career as a sports columnist, Rick Reilly has covered the biggest games, including the Super Bowl and World Series. But for his new book, Sports from Hell, Reilly sought out the championships of decidedly less conventional sports, such as bull poker, chess boxing and jarts.

In April of 1943, the body of a British Royal Marine washed ashore in Spain, carrying top secret letters about Allied plans to invade Greece and Sardinia. Or so it seemed. In reality, the body was that of a homeless Welsh laborer, and the letters were fakes designed to direct German attention away from the real Allied invasion target: Sicily.

What began as a Harvard-only website is now the social networking tool of almost 500 million people worldwide. David Kirkpatrick examines the site's short history and its long-term potential in The Facebook Effect.

Linda Greenlaw took a decade off from commercial fishing, but the siren call of the deep blue water drew her back in. The only female swordfish boat captain in the United States recounts her latest adventure at sea in a new memoir, Seaworthy.

The summer sun may be shining, but vampires don't seem to be going anywhere. NPR's Margot Adler has read more than 100 vampire books this year, and gives a heads-up on two bloodsucking books expected to be summer blockbusters: Christopher Farnsworth's Blood Oath and Justin Cronin's The Passage.

Carla Hall can't stand sardines. In fact, she hasn't eaten them since childhood. But sardines are nutritious, safe and sustainable, so we gave her a challenge: Make them tasty, too.

English rose from humble beginnings to become a language that's spoken by people from every corner of the Earth. In Globish, Robert McCrum tells the story of how a mongrel language slowly took the world by storm.

Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson was on the verge of international fame and fortune when he died in 2004, right before the publication of his bestselling Millennium trilogy. NPR's Robert Siegel talks to Larsson's publisher about what made the trilogy a runaway success.

Heather Lefebvre just graduated with top honors from Brandeis University with a degree in English and creative writing. She's leaving school with a diploma in her hand and a mountain of debt. And that has her worried about her academic choices.