We are accustomed to hearing about violence and instability in Pakistan, yet it remains a faraway place to most Americans. Yet what if Pakistan was home and its violence and uncertainty were part of the fabric of your life? And what if that violence one day claimed someone close to you? As a writer and as a Pakistani, Aatish Taseer has struggled all his life to understand his relationship with his country, with his ethnic homeland Punjab, and with his politically prominent father Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province. A year ago this week his father was assassinated just as he was finishing his first novel "Noon." 

This year's winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced today. The British prize goes to "the very best book of the year" written in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Past winners have been propelled to international celebrity overnight, with the winning books selling hundreds of thousands of copies around the world. But this year's shortlist has generated a new complaint. Critics of the prize say Booker Prize judges have begun valuing "readability" above artistic excellence.

Dr. Seuss fans, rejoice. This fall, seven rare Seuss stories, which were previously printed in Redbook, will be published in book form. The stories — which he wrote between 1950 and 1951 — have fantastically Seussian titles: "The Bippolo Seed," "Zinniga-Zanniga," "Tadd and Todd," and "Gustav the Goldfish." The compilation is called "The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss," and Random House is publishing it in late September.

Our summer book club continues today with host John Hockenberry's first pick for August. John sees summer reading as an opportunity for challenge. He spent one summer reading the Russian literature, and the following summer he devoted his reading to Charles Dickens. This summer, as the tenth anniversary of September 11 approaches, John decided it was time to tackle a few of the recent novels that deal with that tragic day. His first pick is Jonathan Safran Foer’s "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." The novel follows nine-year-old Oskar Schell in the years after his father dies in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Foer sat down with John to discuss his 2005 novel.

International celebrity culture often feels like a very modern phenomenon, but the concept was not foreign to society in the 1860s, when there was one couple everybody wanted to meet: General Tom Thumb and his wife, Lavinia Warren. Both were famous because of their short stature — Lavinia was just 32 inches tall — and they toured the country as "curiosities." Their wedding in 1863 caused a national sensation that extended as far as the White House, where President Abraham Lincoln hosted a reception in their honor. Tom Thumb is now a household name, though most people have never heard of Lavinia. 

The coming-of-age story is a summer book standard. So many of us remember spending our lazy summer days with Francie from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," the March sisters of "Little Women" or Holden Caulfield of "Catcher in the Rye." The next pick for our Summer Book Club furthers this tradition through a uniquely accurate adolescent voice. Jo Ann Beard's "In Zanesville" follows a teenage narrator and her best friend through high school life in 1970s small-town Illinois. The novel is so transfixing, Celeste claimed she couldn't put it down. John finished it and immediately passed it along to his daughters.

Over our nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, we've become accustomed to hearing stories of death and destruction—loss of life has become the price of this war. Former Foreign Service officer Patricia McArdle has written a story of re-birth and a second chance at life, based on her time in Afghanistan. Her new novel, "Farishta," tells the story of Angela Morgan, whose husband died in the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983. After mourning for 20 years, Angela is sent to an isolated British Army compound in Afghanistan, and it's there that she is reborn.

All summer long we’re celebrating the season of relaxing and reading with our book club here at The Takeaway. Some of the novels we'll talk about this summer are escapist in a fantastical way. They’re easy to read and enjoy. Other books are escapist because they are deeply engrossing. They draw us in to a difficult story, making it impossible to look away from the problems the book brings to the surface. Today's book club pick does just that. It’s called "Oil On Water" by Helon Habila. "Oil On Water" tells the story of two journalists who are in pursuit of a scoop in the oil-rich, poverty-stricken Niger Delta.

Bob Graham has accomplished a lot in his career. He served as governor, then senator of Florida, and on the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry Commission. Former Sen. Graham can now add “novelist” to his long list of achievements. His new book is called "Keys to the Kingdom: A Novel of Suspense." And while it’s fiction, some of the events and characters in the book bear a striking resemblance to former Graham’s real life. 

When David Foster Wallace took his own life in September of 2008, he left behind reams of unfinished work and a veritable young generation of readers still hungry for his work. This week, posthumous novel "The Pale King" is released from Wallace's long time publisher Little Brown. The book is unfinished, but was assembled from DFW's raggedy genius by longtime editor Michael Pietsch. Peitsch talks about how emotional it is for an editor to bring a book into the world when it's author is gone.

It’s likely you’ve heard about “O: A Presidential Novel.” The book is a fictional account of the Obama administration — the author, according to the publisher's website — "has been in the room with Obama and wishes to remain anonymous.” But buzz or no buzz, is “O” any good? Does it reveal anything juicy about Obama? And how is it similar or different from other fictional depictions of real, living presidents and administrations? Patrik Henry Bass, senior editor at Essence Magazine reviews the book.

It's been over ten years since The New Yorker published its "20 Under 40" list of promising writers. The last edition featured stories by David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri and 16 others, many of whom continue to write acclaimed fiction. After a long selection process, the new issue hits newsstands today, full of prose and promise.

Writer Brady Udall caused a stir more than twelve years ago when he wrote an article for Esquire about the predicament of being a polygamist dad. He wrote about a lonely polygamist named Bill who had four wives and thirty-one kids and explored how Bill kept his wives and himself afloat in the modern world.