Here's a little Christmas secret: Dusting desserts with powdered sugar makes them look more expensive. Chef Nigella Lawson talks with NPR's Steve Inskeep about her tricks for economical holiday hosting.

Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion is a mythic figure. In Ben-Gurion: A Political Life, Israeli President Shimon Peres talks about his mentor.

Teresa Urrea was a real Mexican saint who was exiled to the U.S. 'Queen of America' tells the fictional story of her rise to pop star status and her desperate attempt to stop the machine of stardom.

The Artist of Disappearance contains three novellas set in modern India. Anita Desai's somber stories read like three symphonic movements in a minor key. Desai talks with NPR's Scott Simon about her writing, and about working with her daughter, novelist Kiran Desai.

What happens next in Pride and Prejudice? Well, if you ask 91-year-old British mystery writer P.D. James, it's a ghastly murder in the Pemberley woodlands. James was surprised she wanted to write a sequel: "I had never thought that I would ever want to use somebody else's characters," she says.

In the late 1970s, historian John Lewis Gaddis decided to write a biography of George F. Kennan, the author of the Cold War policy of containment. But the two men agreed it would not be published until after Kennan's death. Neither expected Kennan to live to 101, but now that he's gone, Gaddis has published George F. Kennan: An American Life.