Arts & Culture

Carol Rifka Brunt is author of Tell the Wolves I'm Home.

There's this moment in Jon Ronson's book The Psychopath Test that caught me completely off guard. It comes a little less than halfway through, shortly after he's outlined the 20-point psychopath checklist. I'd read through the list and although most didn't really apply to me there were a handful that gave me pause: "Item 3: ... proneness to boredom," "Item 13: Lack of realistic long-term goals," "Item 15: Irresponsibility."

Honolulu, on the lush, green island of Oahu, is paradise for surfers and sunbathers — but author Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl sets her mysteries in a darker, more sinister version of the tourist mecca.

"I think that juxtaposition between things that are horrible and terrible happening in a beautiful setting adds a lot of tension and depth to things," she tells NPR's Renee Montagne.

Over the course of just a few sun-soaked weeks every summer, Chukar Cherries in central Washington state dries 250,000 pounds of fresh cherries.

"It's almost like going into your mom's kitchen and she's just taken a cherry pie out of the oven," says co-owner J.T. Montgomery. "A little bit like that."

Not surprisingly, the dried fruit goes into lots of Chukar Cherries' products, including the company's most popular: chewy, semi-dried cherries, rolled in oval nuggets of chocolate.