Linguist Elizabeth Little took a two-year trip across the U.S. in search of the country's lost languages. The resulting book is Trip of the Tongue: Cross-Country Travels in Search of America's Lost Languages.

From the racially charged Pure Food movement to the countercultural revolution of the 1960s, white bread has been at the spongy, store-bought heart of American food politics.

Charlotte Silver recalls her rich childhood in the new memoir, Charlotte au Chocolat. The author grew up in a famed restaurant owned by her mother — Harvard Square's Upstairs at the Pudding, which catered to famous intellectuals and celebrities.

In his debut novel, Broadway Baby, Alan Shapiro examines the fictional life of Miriam Bluestein, a woman whose dream of a life on stage slowly unravels her family. Shapiro says the story is presented as a struggle with emotional and physical intimacy.

Kathryn Harrison's new novel is a fairytale mash-up of magical realism and history — a fanciful tale about the real-life daughter of the mystic Rasputin during the last days of Imperial Russia.

Tobias Buckell has written a thriller called Arctic Rising. Set in a period after global warming has opened the polar region to smugglers, drug traffickers and other illegal pursuits, the book is a fast paced thriller. Alan Cheuse, who teaches writing at George Mason University, thinks readers should receive it warmly.

Frank Calabrese Jr. has written a memoir about bringing down his father's murderous Chicago crime family. In Operation Family Secrets, Frank details how he helped the FBI convict his father of several murders by wearing a hidden wire and taping his father's conversations.

Just weeks after New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid died in Syria, his latest book has been released. House of Stone tells of the year he spent restoring a family home in Lebanon.