Jeff Glor talks to Amy Webb about, "Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Amy Webb: There are millions of men and women who are stuck in the cycle of bad dates. Many of them assume that they'll never find the right partner, and the longer they stay on dating sites, the more despondent they feel. I want those folks to know that it's just a matter of taking more control of their situations. Online dating sites can work very well, as long as you know how to really use them. My book is my personal journey through heartbreak, dating and love, but it also provides some concrete, practical tips on how to create your own system to find the right person and how to relaunch your own personal, digital brand online.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

AW: I treated this book as a reported story, which meant that I spent countless hours scouring old original notes, spreadsheets and chat transcripts. I also talked at length with my dad and sister to recreate the conversations we had when the book takes place. It's always fascinating to look back at a moment in your own personal history. I caught my current self cringing numerous times at my former self, and wondering how I didn't see things more clearly then.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

AW: Well, I wear many hats. I'm the CEO of Webbmedia Group, which is a digital strategy agency that solves complex strategic and operational problems related to disruptive technologies and emerging digital trends that are catalyzing great change across many industries. I'm also the co-founder of Spark Camp, which is an invite-only gathering of super-smart, hyper-creative people that aims to think big thoughts and solve problems around bunch of central themes. I judge a bunch of industry awards, sit on boards of directors and I'm affiliated with a few universities doing research. If I was able to add a discipline to that, like a fantasy gig, I'd love to lead a rock star analytics and digital outreach teams for the next presidential election cycle.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

AW: I have a Ben Franklin obsession, and I'm in the process of devouring Walter Isaacson's biography "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life." I cannot put it down. I spent six full hours reading it on two flights this week. Up next will be "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain" by David Eagleman. Every week, I usually read New York magazine cover to cover, and most of the New Yorker, Time magazine and The Week. I also regularly read the MIT Technology Review. I have about 50 RSS feeds that I scan through every morning before I start my day: Mashable, ArsTechnica, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the like. And I'll be totally honest: I have a subscription to both Us Weekly and Star.

JG: What's next for you?

AW: My team has a very big year ahead of us at work. We're in the process of growing our client portfolio and expanding our offerings, and as a result we have lots of new projects on the books. Aside from my day job, I do have another book in mind, about the myth women have been sold about working hard, starting families later and attempting to have it all.

For more on "Data, A Love Story" visit her website.

Jeff Glor talks to Roseanne Montillo about "The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece"

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Roseanne Montillo: I was hired by Emerson College to teach a class called Forbidden Knowledge. "Frankenstein" was on the syllabus. My students were all incoming freshmen, and although I knew that most of them were already familiar with the book and the legend behind it -- Mary Shelley having written it after her dream on Lake Geneva -- I felt that they needed to know that the text was actually heavily influenced not so much by that dream, but by the belief that you could actually bring people back to life. By the science, medicine, experimentation and religion flourishing around her.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

RM: Although the experiments in galvanization and anatomization were mainly performed by men, what surprised me the most was that they were supported by women. Most people who attended Giovanni Aldini's so-called "performances" in galvanization, both in Italy and in England, were women. Although this seems odd to some readers, it actually made a lot of sense. This belief in reanimating the dead occurred at the tail-end of the French Revolution, a time when the loss of young men was great and many women had been left without their significant others. This loss affected them in many ways, not the least of which was financially. Of course, it made sense they would want to see with their own eyes if the dead could come back. In so doing, their husbands, fathers to their children, lover and provider, could make a return. Eventually, it wasn't surprising to find evidence of women taking center-stage during these "performances."

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

RM: Writing is the only thing I ever wanted to do. I also teach, and in a way that seems an extension of writing. Many of my students are writers themselves, so there is a wonderful connection and exchange of ideas between us that fosters creativity.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RM: I actually just started reading "Cleopatra: A Life," by Stacy Schiff

JG: What's next for you?

RM: I'm researching and writing a new book with the Great Boston Fire of 1872 as a backdrop. A real-life murder mystery and the friendship between Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Herman Melville, the influence those events had on insanity cases, juvenile court system, prison reform, and of course, literature.

For more on "The Lady and Her Monsters," visit the Harper Collins website.

Jeff Glor talks to Herman Koch about, "The Dinner."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Herman Koch: I was inspired by an actual event that happened in Barcelona about seven years ago. Two teenagers did something to a homeless person similar to what I write about in the book. But they seemed so nice. My first thought was these could have been my sons. The next thought was they could have been anybody's sons.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

HK: That I didn't know beforehand where the novel would go. I trusted my characters in the beginning, but they proved to be not that thrust-worthy at all.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

HK: I would have been a retired soccer player. Or an almost retired soccer coach. Or a singer in a band who should have retired years ago.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

HK: At the moment I am reading the biography of J.M. Coetzee: always nice to be confirmed in your idea that writer's lives and writing problems are more or less the same everywhere, and that you are not alone. Recently I was also very impressed by "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers.

JG: What's next for you?

HK: Another book... I am finishing a new novel this year. There is no retirement for a writer, and I am happy with that.

For more on "The Dinner" visit the Random House website.

Jeff Glor talks to John Man about, "Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

John Man: My previous book was about the samurai -- actually the so-called last of the samurai, Saigo Takamori, who led a disastrous rebellion in 1877. The obvious next step was to explore the world of the ninja, who you might term the counter-samurai, because they were the opposite of the colourful, display-loving, death-seeking samurai. As spies and occasionally assassins, the ninja were covert, secretive and dedicated to surviving come what may.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

JM: I thought before starting research that the martial arts traditions associated with the ninjas would provide a lot of good material. I was wrong. It's almost totally invented long after the true ninjas vanished when Japan was unified around 1600. To me, the real ninjutsu -- "the way of the ninjas" -- is much more interesting than any martial art. The ninjas emerged in a small area around today's towns of Iga-Ueno and KMka, where in the middle ages villages became fed up with Japan's warlords and set about forming themselves into self-defense communes. The ninjas were farmer-warriors. In some ways, the communes were incipient democracies. The final surprise was to discover that their homeland is a delightful backwater of hills, forests, rivers and rice-fields. Ninjas of course are all the rage, but the tourist industry, like the countryside, is charmingly under-developed.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

JM: My father used to be a farmer. We had a D7 caterpillar tractor, the size and power of which made me gasp. The engine was so massive it needed a little engine to start it. In another life, I would have fulfilled my ambition as an eight-year-old and become a specialist in earth-moving machinery.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

JM: Besides the New York Review of Books, which always takes a while, I'm finishing "Is That a Fish in Your Ear?" by David Bellos. The reference is, of course, to the babel fish in "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which, if you stick it in your ear, translates any language in the universe into your own. Bellos's book is about the joys and tribulations of translation.

For more on "Ninja" visit the Harper Collins website

Jeff Glor talks to Sheila Hale about , "Titian: His Life."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Sheila Hale: I'd always admired Titian, but it had not occurred to me to write about him until Stuart Proffitt, the publisher of my previous book The Man Who Lost His Language, made the suggestion, mostly on the basis of my guidebook to Venice. I then turned to an old friend, the Titian scholar Charles Hope, who has seen more documented primary sources about Titian than anyone else but not yet published them. Not only did he encourage me, he put all his documents on a flash drive and gave it to me. I then discovered that there had been no fully documented biography of Titian since 1877, and I took the decision to set Titian's life in the context of the period, which was so very different from our own times.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

SH: I was surprised by the sheer volume of information that has survived about Titian's personality and relationships with his patrons, family and friends, more than about any other Renaissance artist except Michelangelo. But perhaps the best thing about getting to know Titian and following his career closely from beginning to end is that my admiration turned into something closer to awe for his protean genius, the way his painting continued to change and develop until the very end of his life. Another surprise, one that seems to disconcert some readers, is that when not painting, he seems to have been a rather ordinary man: sociable, selfish although concerned about his family and a loyal friend, obsessively interested in money, probably monogamous. Too many people seem to expect great artists to be mad bohemians or tortured souls like Michelangelo.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

SH: As a child I wanted to be a doctor or a concert pianist. Now I suppose I would spend more time with friends and family, listening to music, gardening, travelling, going to the theatre, and working for neglected causes, especially better understanding and treatment of aphasia, the loss of language that my late husband suffered at the end of his life and the subject of my book "The Man Who Lost His Language."

JG: What else are you reading right now?

SH: I usually have two or three books on the go at the same time. At the moment I seem to be mostly catching up with books by friends. I've just finished Claire Tomalin's "Life of Dickens" and am looking forward to her husband, Michael Frayn's, latest novel "Skiros" and his memoir "My Father's Fortune." Have started Ross King's "Michelangelo" and the "Pope's Ceiling." An Italian friend, a former ambassador to India, has sent me his "L'elefante a messo le ali" (The Elephant Has Sprouted Wings) about India in the 21st century.

Also towards the top of the pile is Edmund de Waal's "The Hare with Amber Eyes," just because so many people have told me it' so good. Then I look forward to settling down with Hilary Mantel's "Woolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies." I love her short stories and shorter novels.

JG: What's next for you?

SH: I've been toying with several ideas but the only one that haunts me at the moment would be a play called Titian's Best Friend about Titian's relationship with Pietro Aretino, the rather nasty bi-sexual egomaniac powerbroker, playwright and pornographer who figures large in my life of Titian. Aretino understood and wrote about Titian's painting better than any other contemporary, but there was always an element of competition in the friendship, Aretino trying to prove that words are more expressive than painting (the superiority of one art form over another was a big preoccupation in the Renaissance), Titian always proving him wrong. At first Titian depended on Aretino for finding patrons; in the end Aretino was rather pathetically clinging to Titian's coattails.

I've never written a play before, but then I'd never written a biography before either.

For more on "Titian," visit the Harper Collins website.

Jeff Glor talks to Chris Pavone about, "The Expats."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Chris Pavone: A few years ago, my wife came home from work and asked, "What would you think of living in Luxembourg?" In truth I didn't know precisely where--or what--Luxembourg was. (A nation? A city? Both. Kind of.) I'd never lived anywhere besides New York and a college town, and this seemed like a great opportunity to rectify that hole in my life experience. So we moved to Europe for Madeline's new job, and I became what's called a trailing spouse, which is an expat without a job. Rather, an expat whose job is to take care of children, and a household, and the residency permits and car inspections and veterinary appointments, all in a different language. And I noticed that many trailing spouses--nearly all of them women--had only the vaguest idea of what their husbands actually did all day. And conversely very few of those office workers really understood what we did with our time at home. So I wrote a book that asks: what if both people are extremely wrong?

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

CP: I was astounded by how much I loved the original writing--facing the blank piece of paper (i.e., a blank screen)--and how intensely I loathed revising. Unfortunately the rewriting took twice as long as the original writing.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

CP: I was a book editor for fifteen years. If I didn't want to write, I'd never have quit. Editing is a great thing to do for a living, and I think it's becoming more important every year, with this digital explosion of material that's now constantly erupting. And it's not just book editing we need, but everything editing--sifting through all the content that's floating around out there, choosing which of it merits the broadest audience, then helping to develop that content so it's the best it can be, and can be marketed and distributed into the world in a way that helps readers, viewers, and listeners find what it is we want.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

CP: In a New Yorker online article on "The Best Books of 2012," Malcolm Gladwell recommends two thrillers. I wrote one of them. I'm reading the other, a wonderful espionage novel called "Shake Off" by Mischa Hiller.

JG: What's next for you?

CP: I just finished writing a first draft of a new novel, "The Accident." As with "The Expats," this story is set in an ordinary world I know intimately: the book business. But also as with "The Expats," the events that drive the plot are anything but ordinary. Plus, there are spies.

VIDEO EXCERPT:

Pavone talks about how he came up with one of the central questions posed in his book, "The Expats"

For more on "The Expats," visit the Random House website.

Jeff Glor talks to Adam Mansbach about, "Rage is Back." 

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Adam Mansbach: I wanted to write a book that was fun and exciting, a modern adventure story with caper elements, and the world of graffiti seemed like a fresh place to set it - it's a world I know well, and an environment I thought would allow me to imbue the story with detail and depth, politics and soul. I 've been fascinated by graffiti for a long time. As a kid, during the time I was coming up in hip hop, you were expected to be conversant with all the art forms -- the sonic, the kinetic, and the visual -- and to be proficient in at least a couple in order to fully "be" hip hop. I was an MC and a DJ, but I also wrote graffiti. I wasn't great, but the thrill of it was captivating, and I quickly discovered that graffiti writers were the mad geniuses and eccentrics of hip hop, the guys whose relationship to their craft was the most fraught and intense, the guys who labored in the dark, literally, whose lives were a discourse between fame and anonymity, who used "beautify" and "destroy" almost interchangeably when they talked about their work. And when I first got into hip hop around 1987, graffiti was already being forced off the New York subway trains, which had been its canvas since the beginning. So there was this sense of a death throe, and of guys outliving the form they'd created, which was weird and tragic, even though graffiti had already gone worldwide by then. And graffiti is a really interesting window on the history of New York. The "War on Graffiti," first declared by Mayor John Lindsay in '72, has really been a war on young people, especially young people of color. It's about public space, and who has the right to it. It presaged and ushered in zero tolerance policy, prejudicial gang databases, quality of life offenses, epic incarceration -- the whole way a generation has experienced law enforcement and personal freedom, basically.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

AM: How much fun I was having. Writing in Dondi's voice was really liberating; he's funny, he's digressive, he's stoned and whip-smart, his field of reference is broad-ranging, and he's self-aware - transparent with the reader about the fact that he's writing a book, and doesn't really know what he's doing. I'd shied away from writing an entire novel in first person in the past, because I thought I'd paint myself into a corner by being locked into one perspective, dependent on the character being in every scene, etc. But Dondi offered me all the advantages of immediacy and character without the drawbacks. If he doesn't feel like writing a scene, he skips it. If he's not present, he'll hand the story off to someone who is. He doesn't mind breaking the rules, and that freed me to do so too.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

AM: I've known I wanted to be a writer of some kind - a poet, a rapper, a journalist, a novelist - since I was about five, but every writer has an imaginary fallback career, a thing we imagine doing when this is no longer sustainable. Which is a real fear for most of us, because there's not a lot of stability to be had. I'd be a litigator. A terrifying, dead-eyed, soulless litigator.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

AM: Right before my tour started, I got hit with the flu, so i got to stay in bed and read - next year, if I don't get the flu, I might have to fake it. I read Victor LaValle's books "Big Machine" and "The Devil in Silver," Raquel Cepeda's forthcoming memoir "Bird of Paradise," Eddie Huang's forthcoming memoir "Fresh off the Boat," H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman's "Articulate While Black," and Jeffery Eugenides' "Middlesex." And now I won't have time to read anything longer than a New Yorker article for the next three months.

JG: What's next for you?

AM: I've got a supernatural thriller - my first "genre" novel - coming out in September, with HarperCollins. It's called "The Dead Run;" I just finished up my edits, and I'm excited about it. And I was just hired to adapt my favorite children's book, "The Pushcart War," for the screen. I enjoy working in different genres; sometimes having a clear set of parameters can push you in interesting directions.

VIDEO EXCERPT:

Adam Mansbach talks about how the public perception and experience of graffiti has changed over the last 30 years:

For more on "Rage is Back," visit Adam Mansbach's website.

Jeff Glor talks to Rus Bradburd about, "Make It, Take It."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Rus Bradburd: I met Robert Boswell, the writer, my first week coaching at New Mexico State. I loved books, and the idea of writing about college ball grew out of taking classes from him and his wife, Antonya Nelson. What's always interested me about basketball was the stories, the human interaction -- much more so than the games and the stats. In 2000 I got my courage up and quit coaching, after 14 seasons in Division I.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

RB: I began writing the book to explain what it was like to live in the world of college hoops. But pretty soon I discovered that I was writing to understand what had happened to me, to clarify my own life. When a reporter asked presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson a question in the 1950s, his response was, "I don't know, I haven't written about it yet." That answer feels very true to me now, although it was quite a surprise when I first realized it myself.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

RB: Coaching college basketball again, and doing a poor job, because I wouldn't have the energy anymore. Or coaching back in Ireland, which I loved -- it was the job that inspired my first book, "Paddy on the Hardwood."

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RB: "The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards," Robert Boswell's latest story collection. Sounds like a basketball title, huh? And I received an advance copy of David Shields' new book, "How Literature Saved My Life," which is great. I guess those titles sort of some up my two careers up to now, right?

JG: What's next for you?

RB: I'm deep into writing a comic novel set at a major university, a school that has been taken over by the football team. I guess you could say it's comic fiction based in realism.

For more on "Make It, Take It" visit his website.

Jeff Glor talks to Lisa O'Donnell about "The Death of Bees."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Lisa O'Donnell: Living on the East Side of L.A., I see the same level of poverty I experienced as a child during '80s Thatcherism. I was in my car recently when I saw this little girl, maybe about 7, walking in front of her mother and pushing a stroller. The mother was also pushing a stroller and holding the hand of a small toddler, but it was the young girl that caught my attention. I thought to myself "She's a wee mother" which later translated in "The Death of Bees" as "Wee Maw" when referring to Marnie raising Nelly.

Later, my sister sent me a docudrama about families in Scotland living with drugs and poverty, and again, the maturity of the children immersed in such a heartbreaking situation struck a chord. One child in particular was talking to the journalist about a father who might not return with the groceries for the week and go on a "bender" instead. She worried about Welfare Services getting involved in her life again. I wondered what the girl who waited for her father to return home with the groceries would do if she had had the money to go for the groceries herself, I wondered what she would do if it was in her power to get the electric bill paid, and what lengths she would go to in order to survive parents who had essentially vanished from her life. The thought then occurred to me that these children would be better off raising themselves. That's when I came up with the idea of "The Death of Bees" and had two children bury their parents in the yard making them disappear forever, leaving the girls to their own devices.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

LO: It was a very emotional experience and I found myself crying and laughing with my own characters. I came to know them like my own family and when I had finished writing "The Death of Bees" I was actually very sad to be closing the book on them all. I missed them for a long time after the book went to press, but like all writers we find new characters and places to love, don't we?

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

LO: I'd love to be a therapist. If I wasn't able to write peoples secrets then I want to hear them

JG: What else are you reading right now?

LO: "Shadows" by Ilsa J.Bick. I love "The Ashes Trilogy." It's a haunting apocalyptic story of survival in the face of Zombies and people in general. It's the people who scare me most.

JG: What's next for you?

LO: I come from a small island in Scotland where everyone knows everything about everyone and so I love the thought of things that are actually kept secret in a world like that. My next book "Closed Doors" will focus on a big secret having repercussions for everyone who keeps it.

For more on "The Death of Bees" visit the Harper Collins website.

Jeff Glor talks to J. Grigsby Crawford about, "The Gringo: A Memoir."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Grigsby Crawford: I've always wanted to be a writer. And for a long time, I've been obsessed with narrative nonfiction and "new journalism." So when you're a student of those genres, in a certain sense you're always mining your life experiences for good writing material--you're always on the record, so to speak. After joining the Peace Corps, it was literally only a matter of weeks before my adventure turned out to be just dark and bizarre enough that I knew I had to write about it. Above all, I enjoy absurdity; I like when things gets weird--and there was no question this fit the bill. Almost immediately, I knew I could sew together a story that both traced my personal journey and exposed what this government agency was really like.

My job as a writer--here and with whatever I do in the future--was to reveal some truth about the human condition, root out hypocrisy, and deliver something gritty. So my only agenda, as it were, was to give a completely honest account. I suppose this all makes for an important distinction: Unlike a lot of Peace Corps memoirs in the past, I wasn't a volunteer who happened to write a book about it later; I am a writer who just happened to join the Peace Corps.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

GC: From the beginning, I worked under the assumption that no one involved with the Peace Corps would like my book. It's clearly not a very flattering portrayal of the agency and since Peace Corps people are often rabid defenders of its mythology, I just assumed not many would read it and, if they did, they wouldn't have nice things to say. But it's been just the opposite: Many have read it and the feedback has been quite positive. What most have said is, "Thanks for giving such an honest account," and "Yup, that's pretty damn accurate." That has easily been the biggest surprise for me.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

GC: Maybe I'd be a musician or an offensive coordinator, or maybe involved in politics. But I suppose that's the beauty of first-person journalism: I could still do any of those things someday--and then write another memoir about it. If I'd been born in a different time, I might've been a pirate or a benevolent dictator of a small country. I'll always be a writer, but I'm also 26 years old. I think there's still time to live a lot of different lives.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

GC: I'm reading yet another book about Bob Dylan. Also, Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." And I very recently finished Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl" and then "Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story," that new biography of David Foster Wallace.

JG: What's next for you?

GC: I'm not sure. And, in a way, that's exciting. Incredibly, it turns out many themes from The Gringo--isolation and disconnection, for instance--are more relevant to American life than I ever imagined. And I really like those themes. So maybe I'll explore them in essays on domestic life.

But, really, it could be anything. And I believe the second book will be better than this one. Whichever topic I choose to write about next, though, I'll still be trying to push the envelope on what is socially acceptable. I'll still be seeking truth--searching for the electric love. And I'll still be trying to form my sentences like Hemingway on acid.

VIDEO EXCERPTS:

J. Grigsby Crawford, author of "The Gringo: A Memoir," gives his advice to other young people interested in possibly serving in the Peace Corps and talks about what's next for him:

For more on "The Gringo: A Memoir," visit Grigsby's website.

Continue »

Jeff Glor talks to Peter Heller about "The Dog Stars."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Peter Heller: I've been wanting to write a novel since I was six. What I always wanted to do. Life intervenes. When I got out of college I was kayaking crazy whitewater, guiding rivers, writing poetry and stories, and a friend said, "Why don't you combine your interests, write for Outside Magazine?" I called them up and started talking fast, and got an assignment to cover the first descent of a dangerous river off the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. A guy died on the first day. I took another expedition assignment and another. I wrote books from these assignments and I was very happily diverted. But a year and a half ago I had money saved up, time out ahead of me, and decided now was the time.

I wanted to write a novel but I didn't want to know what was going to happen. In all my other books I always knew--because they had actually happened. I wanted that feeling you get when you kayak a river that hasn't been well described, and you come to a tight corner in a canyon and you don't know what will be there--could be a pool, a waterfall, thirty Yanomami Indians with spears. So I began with a first line and wrote into the story. I was surprised, shocked, moved, the whole way through. It was the most thrilling thing I've ever done.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

PH: How completely immersed I became in the world I was creating. It's just so fun to make it all up, I realized that I'd always wanted to do that as a journalist, but just never wanted to be that guy on Oprah doing the mea culpa thing and apologizing! Whenever my hero Hig ventured out of the airport where he and his loyal dog Jasper are holed up, I never knew what was going to happen. I never knew what was going to happen when Hig and his armed-to-the-teeth survivalist neighbor, Bangley, began talking to each other. I'd laugh out loud. Once in a while I'd cry. I'm sure the other people in the coffee shop where I write thought I was going through a bad divorce...

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

PH: I had so many jobs coming up as a writer. I was a logger, a lobster fisherman, a kayak instructor and river guide. I love being out on the water, out in nature. I'd probably be running a river guide service or skippering a lobster boat in Northern New England.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

PH: I'm reading the travel essays and poetry of the Japanese master Basho, a wonderful translation by Yuasa. Also, a strange book by the great Spanish fiction writer Vila Matas called "Bartleby & Co." Today I'm going to start Junot Diaz's "This is How You Lose Her." He's such a great writer, a national treasure.

JG: What's next for you?

PH: I finished my second novel last week. I'm very excited. My wife and I are taking a month break to New Zealand, to kayak and bike, and then I can't wait to start the next one. Once you start making it all up, there's no going back!

For more on "The Dog Stars" visit the Random House website.

Jeff Glor talks to Stephanie LaCava about "An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris"

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Stephanie LaCava: This book has been being written since the events described started to happen. I've always written down stories and fragments of things that I hear or see here and there. I always wanted to write, but never thought I'd be a writer by trade. It was a perfect storm that pushed me to work on this until it all sort of magically came together. Not to say it wasn't very hard work, but it found its way to the final story through a kind of strange sixth sense of when it was ready and the whole thing felt right. My rhythm in sentences is the same, I just feel it. Something tells me to take out a word or add one, the same for what I included in the stories.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

SL: How much it helped me. I had never been able to articulate so many things that appear there.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

SL: I would be an editor or work in foreign relations, maybe for an NGO or towards becoming a diplomat.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

SL: Right now, James Salter's "A Sport and a Pastime" and Joseph Kessel's "Belle de Jour."

JG: What's next for you?

SL: Something loosely inspired by the two books above... fiction, of course.

For more on "An Extraordinary Theory of Objects," visit the Harper Collins website.

Jeff Glor talks to Alex Kershaw about, "The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau"

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Alex Kershaw: I was researching a story about men who liberated the camps in WW11. I came across an extraordinary photograph which showed a young American officer, Felix Sparks, firing his pistol into the air on 29 April 1945. He is in a coal-yard at Dachau, which he has just liberated, and some of his men have opened fire on SS soldiers. He is firing his pistol and shouting to make them stop. The image captures an amazing moment of incredible humanity when one considers that Sparks had by then spent over 500 days in brutalizing combat, losing an entire company at Anzio and a battalion to the SS, since landing on the first day of the invasion of Europe. Most people would not have stopped the killing of such evil men, just minutes after discovering the full horrors of Hitler's first concentration camp. I had to meet this man and in 2007 I interviewed him, literally on his death-bed. No other American fought for longer or suffered more to free more people from the greatest evil of modern times.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

AK: I was often astonished by the sheer violence and trauma endured by the so-called Greatest Generation. Over 150,000 mostly working-class Americans died to liberate Europe. Hundreds of thousands came home and never talked about it. Why would you want to recount what felt like being in a terrible car crash each day? I interviewed many men who served with and under Sparks and because they opened up to me I was struck over and over by how great their suffering had been. None came home unbroken. They all paid a huge price if they were in combat.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

AK: I'd be a retired banker, sipping cocktails in St. Lucia, lazily scanning the Wall Street Journal to see how my investments, taxed at almost nothing, are doing. Sadly, l decided to try to do something a little more interesting....

JG: What else are you reading right now?

AK: I am utterly absorbed in the Civil War and Revolutionary War America - my son is studying these periods at middle school. It's hugely colorful history. Even as an expat "limey" who has lived here for 20 years I'm astonished by how radical the idea was that all men should be equal before the law, not subjects of a king. As concerns the Civil War, Michael Shara's The Killer Angels is amazing. The Civil War has not ended of course - just look at the red and blue states.

JG: What's next for you?

AK: An American family in Paris in WWII under the Nazi occupation. I'm a European in my heart and soul, and I want to write about extraordinarily brave Americans who find themselves in the most civilized place on earth during the darkest time in recent history.

For more on the "The Liberator" visit the Random House website.