Stories about life on Native American reservations often focus on alcoholism, drugs, violence and poverty. In Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life, Ojibwe writer David Treuer strives to capture stories about the beauty of life on Indian reservations.

Through his many New Yorker covers, Barry Blitt has become one of the preeminent satirical cartoonists of America's recent presidents. Now Blitt has trained his eye and pen upon our first president; he's illustrated a new children's book called George Washington's Birthday.

In her new book, Peggielene Bartels describes going from secretary at the U.S. Embassy to king of a fishing village in Ghana. Dividing her time between Otuam and Washington, D.C., she straddles two cultures — and says she loves every bit of it.

The seemingly accidental death of a troubled starlet is the catalyst for events in a new thriller that takes the reader from Dublin to New York to the Congo. "It's an exploration ... of the power dynamics that go on" between executive boardrooms and warlords, author Alan Glynn says.