Listen to Joe Donahue interview Rebecca on WAMC's Roundtable

**Staff Pick**  Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells-taken without her knowledge-became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons-as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

A beautifully written, compulsively readable debut that deals with the aftermath of a shocking act of violence that leaves two young sisters with nothing but each other - in the tradition of White Oleander, this haunting novel is a testament to the power of family and the ties that bind us together, even as they threaten to tear us apart.

Randy Susan Meyers spent eight years as assistant director of Common Purpose, a batterer intervention program where she worked with both batterers and domestic violence victims. Previously, she was director for the Mission Hill Community Centers where she worked with at-risk youth. She is the co-author of the nonfiction book Couples with Children. Her short fiction has been published in Perigee, Fog City Review, and Grub Street Free Press. She currently teaches fiction-writing seminars at the Grub Street Writers' Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Peter McCarty will sign copies of his newest picture book, Henry in Love.

Peter is the author and illustrator of T Is for Terrible, Little Bunny on the Move and Hondo and Fabian, for which he won a Caldecott Honor. He lives with his wife and two children in the Hudson Valley.

Joshua Ferris, author of The Unnamed, and Jami Attenberg, author of The Melting Season, read from their new works.

Joshua Ferris's first novel, Then We Came to the End, has sold in 20 countries and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Granta, Tin House, New Stories From the South, Best New American Voices, The Guardian, The Iowa Review and Prairie Schooner. He attended the University of Iowa and the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

Jami Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, graphic novels, books, television, and urban life for The New York Times, Jane, Print, New York, Nylon, Radar, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, Salon, Plenty, Nextbook, Time Out NY, eWeek, and others. Her fiction has been published by Nerve, Five Chapters, Smokelong Quarterly, 3: AM Magazine, and Spork. She recently appeared in the anthologies Sex for America, Future Misbehavior, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone, and Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts. Her debut collection of stories, Instant Love, was published by Crown/Shaye Areheart Books in June 2006. The Kept Man was published by Riverhead Books in January 2008, and is now available in paperback. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The Oblong Book Group meets to discuss Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.

Diane Zahler will sign copies of her middle-grade novel, The Thirteenth Princess, from 12pm-2pm.

A classic fairy tale with a bold twist, The Thirteenth Princess tells the unforgettable story of a magical castle, true love, spellbound princesses-and the young girl determined to save them all.