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Music critic Greg Kot's new I'll Take You There chronicles the life and times of gospel star Mavis Staples and her family — from their hardscrabble beginnings in postwar Chicago to the civil rights movement and stardom. Reviewer Richard Torres praises the book's emotional honesty — but says it really needs a companion album.

Alex Mar's half-memoir, half-cultural study of American occultism mixes research with her own search for meaning. Critic Genevieve Valentine says it's a difficult journey, for Mar and for readers.

Writer Kate Bolick says that, growing up, she just assumed she'd get married some day — but it hasn't happened. Her new book looks at five women who upend traditional assumptions about women's lives.

Author Kevin Maher laughed off the Dubliners as a 12-year old, yet one line stayed with him. It was that line that convinced him to go back to the stories, discovering a love of James Joyce in the process.

Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda remembers finding a worn copy of the anthology Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural in the library as a young boy. He found the stories revelatory. Is there a scary story that made an impression on you when you were his age? Tell us in the comments.

Sometimes, when walking Brooklyn's streets, it doesn't feel as if its literary past is haunting. Rather, its literary soul is still alive and pulsating. Brooklyn is a world unto itself and a writer's enclave. Journalist and critic Evan Hughes has written a literary biography of the leafy borough.

The economic crisis in Cuba is prompting an exodus by thousands, but also giving rise to a greater free market enterprise to begin taking hold on the Communist island.

Years after leaving his home in northern India, journalist Siddhartha Deb returned to explore the true impact of globalization on his homeland. In The Beautiful and the Damned, Deb exposes the darker side of Indian prosperity.

An Italian tribunal convicted 207 people on charges related to their membership in an Italian crime syndicate that is one of the world's most powerful, extensive and wealthy drug-trafficking groups.

The Fault in Our Stars hits cinemas this week, causing mass outbursts of tears. Author John Green based the character on a real-life girl with cancer — and his own feelings of growing up an outsider.