All About Books

At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. To hire the experts needed,the government looked to academia for recruits. English professors, librarians, and historians were suddenly pulled into spy craft. This history is detailed in the new book “Book and Dagger” by Elyse Graham.

Set in a starkly beautiful North Dakota community, “The Mighty Red”, a novel by Louise Erdrich, reveals ordinary people who are complicated and contradictory as they struggle, dream, and love.

This week on All About Books” Pat Leach talks with author Kevin Shinn a former collegiate pastor, chef and restaurateur. His lifelong spiritual journey eventually led him to his typewriter where he worked out his latest book, “A Different Metaphor: Faith That Imagines The Impossible.”

It’s a day in the lives of a team of 6 international astronauts as they orbit the earth. There are mundane daily tasks, solitude, as well as profoundly moving vistas of the fragile earth below. “Orbital: a Novel” by Samantha Harvey, winner of the 2004 Booker Prize, is reviewed on this week's "All About Books."

Two women with opposite personalities share a house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961. Suspicion between them becomes obsession in the novel “The Safe Keep” by Yael van der Wouden, a tale about the legacy of World War 2 and the darker corners of the past.

It’s 1921 in Panang Malaysia where the novel “The House of Doors” introduces real events and people, like the writer Somerset Maugham, along with fictional characters. The sunset of British Empire is the backdrop for this tale about the complicated nature of love and friendship.

“How to Read a Book: a Novel” by Monica Wood is an honest and hopeful story of struggling with guilt, second chances, and how books can change a life.

Most towns have a library of some sort, but did you know there’s a library at the South Pole? Some libraries are hidden in remote deserts, in phone booths and trees. “All About Books” host Pat Leach talked with author Diana Helmuth about her new book, “Hidden Libraries: The World’s Most Unusual Book Depositories”

Irish novelist Colm Toibin’s latest book is “Long Island” which continues the life story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine from his previous best-seller, “Brooklyn”

In her award-winning novel “The Wren, The Wren” author Anne Enright creates 3 generations of Irish women who contend with their inheritances- which includes charismatic, poetic men and sometimes ill treatment.

If you need gift ideas this holiday season, “All About Books” has great suggestions. Tory Hall of Sower Books has ideas for book lovers into history, nature, mysteries, romance and horror. It’s the annual gift guide for the holiday shopping season.

Nancy Hopkins began her career in science in the 1960s. By 1999, she and other female scientists at MIT gave detailed evidence of the college’s flagrant favoritism and discrimination. Their speaking out led to a historic admission by MIT and resulting changes. Their story is in the book “The Exceptions: Sixteen Brilliant Women at MIT and the Fight for Equality in Science” by Kate Zernike

John Stevens Berry is probably best known as a lawyer with a Lincoln practice since 1965. But he’s also a Vietnam veteran and poet. This week Pat Leach talked with Berry about his book, “Foot Soldier: New and Selected Poems”

Editorial cartoonist Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother had “the “talk” with him. For Darrin, who is mixed-race, the talk was about the reason he couldn’t have a realistic-looking water gun was for his own safety. Bell’s graphic novel, “The Talk” uses sharp humor to examine this talk that shaped his understanding going forward.

They are an almost a mystical creature due to their rarity, size and beauty. The tallest bird in North America and rarest crane in the world. Nebraska photographer Michael Forsberg gives a rare glimpse into the world of the Whooping Crane.“Into Whooperland: A photographer's journey with whooping cranes by Michael Forsberg”

Molly Gray’s flair for cleaning and proper etiquette sees her excel at her job as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. It’s her remarkable eye for detail that helps her solve mysteries. That’s exactly what’s in store for Molly in the new Nita Prose novel, “The Mystery Guest”

The Roaring Twenties might be remembered for jazz, style and excitement, but it was also the decade that saw the rise of the hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their center of power was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and West. A new history of the group reveals the con man who rose as its leader, and the woman who stopped him. “A Fever in the Heartland” Timothy Eagans

“The Biography of X” by Catherine Lacey is a novel adventure. When a polarizing artist and writer known as “X” dies unexpectedly, her widow goes on a quest to write a biography only to discover a life filled with deceptions.

Ava Chin was confused that the stories her grandparents told her did not match the history she learned in school. Her research into family history and the father she never met, led to a single building in New York’s Chinatown where many of her ancestors lived. “Mott Street” by Ava Chin

Like others, author Amy Tan was becoming discouraged by a world filled with fear and strife. She turned to nature for relief, specifically the birds that visited her backyard. “All About Books” host Pat Leach talked with the author of the “Joy Luck Club” about her new book, “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” written and illustrated by Amy Tan