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On Sept. 1, 1944, a B-24 bomber went down in the South Pacific. The wreckage, and the airmen, seemed to disappear. Almost 50 years later, a scientist on vacation in Palau found an airplane wing and went on an obsessive, decade-long quest to find what happened to the plane. Author Wil S. Hylton joins NPR to discuss his new book on the mystery.

Since a garment factory collapsed last month in Dhaka, killing more than 400 people, ethical fashion has been in the spotlight. Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Price of Cheap Fashion, explains the economy that created this tragedy and what we can do to fix it.

The humorist has made a name as a playwright, novelist, columnist and screenwriter. Now he's turned his attention to the Young Adult market with an update of the Cinderella story — starring a young girl from a trailer park.

Samuel Scheffler, a philosophy professor at New York University, presents a secular interpretation of life after death. In his book Death and the Afterlife, Scheffler argues that our belief that humanity will outlive us — our faith in the existence of future generations — gives meaning to our lives.

Journalist David Finkel embedded with the 2-16 Infantry Battalion during the troop surge in Iraq, then recorded their stories in his first book, The Good Soldiers. Now, his new book chronicles the struggles of those who made it home, from their recurring nightmares and suicidal thoughts to the challenges of getting help.

Oprah Winfrey's second pick for her rebooted book club is The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, by first-time novelist Ayana Mathis. It's a chronicle of the Great Migration of African-Americans leaving the rural South, following a family matriarch who leaves Georgia to start a new life in Philadelphia.

She's been known to drink a bottle of Kahlua in the bathtub while ignoring the knocks of her kids outside. She has no shame, and she swears an extremely blue streak. In his new novel, The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days, humorist Ian Frazier spends a year in the life of a temperamental housewife.

Journalist Peter Bergen outlines the decade-long search for the al-Qaida leader in his new book Manhunt. Bergen is the only journalist to gain access to bin Laden's Abbottabad compound before it was razed by the Pakistani government.

Lizz Winstead has always looked at life a little differently. She's written a book of essays that takes readers through the different chapters of her life: growing up, becoming a comic and helping to create The Daily Show.

When Lucette Lagnado's parents were growing up, Cairo was a place of cultural and religious acceptance. But when the 1952 revolution sent Jews fleeing from Egypt, her family was among the exiles. Lagnado tells the story of their exodus to Brooklyn in The Arrogant Years.