This week's featured story is "Spurs" by Tod Robbins. This tale of love and revenge in the Circus side-show was the basis for Tod Browning's infamous cult movie, "Freaks."

Year Up founder Gerald Chertavian tells how a pioneering program is redefining urban young adults as economic assets, not deficits. -- During Chertavian's many years as a Big Brother, the former technology entrepreneur realized that the opportunity divide strands millions of young, disadvantaged, yet motivated workers at the bottom of the job ladder. In 2000, he created Year Up to address the challenges. Today, Year Up serves more than 1,400 students annually in nine cities across the United States, including Seattle. Chertavian's book follows a Year Up class from admissions through graduation, letting students share, in their own words, the challenges, failures, and personal successes they've experienced before, during, and after their program year.

As a reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal in 2009, Grind wrote a series of investigative stories about Washington Mutual. Her coverage would name her a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award. -- Based on that reporting, Grind's new book "The Lost Bank" offers a look at the human failings that lay at the root of the Great Recession, the personalities caught up in good times and easy money, a seriously deluded industry and an entire culture ultimately undone by financial collapse. -- She describes WaMu's unprecedented bank runs and unveils the details of its purchase by JPMorgan Chase and the controversial actions taken by federal regulators in closing the bank. Grind also traces the last 20 years of WaMu's existence, focusing on the people who led the bank through its spectacular rise and fall.

Dance, wriggle and laugh during this live musical performance of funny songs that feature sing along elements and call and response themes.

Listen to Daniel Silva in conversation with popular cultural commentator, Warren Etheredge, as they discuss Silva's latest book, 'The Fallen Angel.' Silva writes an internationally-bestselling literary espionage series featuring Gabriel Allon (an Israeli art restorer, spy and assassin).

On an ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover that an earthquake has caused the Earth's rotation to slow dramatically. Days grow longer, gravity is affected, and the environment is thrown into disarray. As she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia remains a typical young girl, making her way through adolescence, coping with the normal disasters of everyday life. -- "While the apocalypse looms large, has in fact already arrived, the narrative remains fiercely grounded in the surreal and horrifying day-to-day and the personal decisions that persist even though no one knows what to do. …[T]he story also feels eerily plausible, as if the problems we’ve been worrying about all along pale in comparison to what might actually bring our end." -- Publishers Weekly starred review. -- Walker is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program and a recipient of the 2011 Sirenland Fellowship as well as a Bomb magazine fiction prize. A former editor at Simon and Schuster, she wrote 'The Age of Miracles' in the mornings before work.

We welcome back 2011 Seattle Reads author Chris Cleave for an exclusive Seattle appearance for his new novel. "Gold" tells the story of Kate and Zoe, who first met at age 19. Now 32, in what they know will be their last race, each desperately wants to win the 2012 Olympic gold medal for speed cycling. -- Kate and Zoe are coached by Kate’s husband, Tom, who barely missed his own gold medal in 1968. Their eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, is fragile, fighting a recurrence of leukemia. She dreams of the Death Star and of battling alongside the Rebels as evil white blood cells ravage her personal galaxy. The question for everyone is, what would you sacrifice for those you love, if it means giving up the thing that is most important to you? -- Chris Cleave is the author of 'Incendiary' and the international bestseller, 'Little Bee,' featured in The Seattle Public Library’s 2011 Seattle Reads series.

Joy Harjo reads from her memoir: a story about family, a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and her journey to become an award-winning poet and musician. -- Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she grew up with an abusive stepfather. She attended an Indian arts boarding school, where she gained an appreciation for painting, music, and poetry; gave birth while still a teenager; and struggled on her own as a single mother, eventually finding her poetic voice. -- Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, an internationally known poet, performer, writer, and saxophone player. Her seven books of poetry include “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky.” She has written books for children and young adults and has released four award-winning CDs of original music. She performs nationally and internationally with her band, the Arrow Dynamics. She also performs her one-woman show, "Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light."

Listen to The Wild Geese Players of Seattle as they present a staged reading of two chapters of James Joyce’s "Ulysses." -- For this year’s reading of "Ulysses," the Wild Geese Players continue last year’s approach of following Joyce’s timeline for June 16th, rather than reading the chapters in strict linear order. Chapters 3 (“Proteus”) and 6 (“Hades”) will be interwoven to highlight the parallel journeys of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus during the novel’s eleven o’clock hour. -- The Wild Geese Players have been staging readings of Irish literature, by writers such as James Joyce and W. B. Yeats, in Seattle since 1998.