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Interviews with authors of new, bestselling books. Primary Format : Blogs Language : English Also Listed as: City : Washington State/Province : DC Country : USA Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of Eye on Books BOOKCAST Podcasts Methings.com listings of Eye on Books BOOKCAST Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

Roz Chast "The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!" What happens when you pair one of America's most-beloved comedians with one of the nation's premier cartoonists? Well, I suppose lots of things could happen -- one thing that did happen, when Steve Martin got together with The New Yorker's Roz Chast, is a new book for young readers called "The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Geraldine Brooks "People of the Book" A centuries-old Jewish religious book manages to survive into modern times, in the new novel by Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and novelist Geraldine Brooks. Clues to its provenance come from the wing of an insect, crystals of salt, a single white hair, and what appears to be a wine stain -- each carefully explored in vignettes that Brooks brings to life. Her book is called "People of the Book." [Interview taped at Politics and Prose, Washington, DC] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Felicia Pearson "Grace After Midnight" Felicia Pearson didn't get off to a very good start in life -- born to a crack-addicted mother in East Baltimore, her childhood was spent in the company of some of Baltimore's toughest characters. Snoop, as she was eventually dubbed, became a "baby gangsta," killed a woman in self-defense at age 15, and wound up in prison. On being paroled, she nearly fell right back into the old, dangerous life, before a chance encounter in a nightclub with a cast member from HBO's gritty series "The Wire ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Terri Irwin "Steve and Me" Steve Irwin changed his world. Through a unique ability to connect with all creatures - human and animal - Irwin entertained, inspired, and taught us. His untimely death in 2006, in a fateful encounter with a stingray, stunned us all. His wife Terri is committed to carrying on Steve's legacy. In her book "Steve and Me," she tells their story. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jarrett Krosoczka "Punk Farm On Tour" While Farmer Joe is en route to a Tractor Society Conference a couple of thousand miles away, back at the farm the members of a most unusual underground rock band are preparing to go on tour. Jarrett Krosoczka's book for children, "Punk Farm on Tour," tells the story of the talented Cow, Sheep, Pig, Goat and Chicken. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Judith Jones "The Tenth Muse" Over five decades, book editor Judith Jones has successfully combined her love of literature with a lifelong passion for fine food. Jones became muse to such towering figures as Julia Child and Claudia Roden, among many others, while shepherding her authors' books to the bestseller lists. Now Jones tells her own story, in a memoir called "The Tenth Muse." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thomas DeFrank "Write It When I'm Gone" The late Gerald Ford was often much more opinionated than he appeared to be. And funnier, and more gossipy. But he had a public face he kept on, out of respect for others -- even those he disdained -- and respect for the office he held for two and a half years. For sixteen years, however, Ford revealed his private thoughts to a reporter. Veteran journalist Thomas DeFrank had long conversations with Gerald Ford, with the only condition being that they not be published until after his death. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sally Bedell Smith "For Love of Politics" Many have opined that Bill and Hillary Clinton's is a marriage of convenience or expediency. But no, argues a respected biographer, it is a marriage of love - a mutual love of politics. Washington-based Sally Bedell Smith has spoken with dozens of people who know the Clintons well, to untangle the personal, professional, and political aspects of their relationship. Smith's book is called "For Love of Politics." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Vince Flynn "Protect and Defend" A nuclear Iran is something the U.S. and Israel would never tolerate, and in Vince Flynn's new thriller "Protect and Defend," Israel carries out an audacious operation deep inside Iran that leaves a gaping hole in the ground and an Iranian government bent on revenge. That's where Flynn's series hero Mitch Rapp comes in, persuading the president to push Iran over the edge once and for all. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sir David Frost "Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews" History has paired television interviewer Sir David Frost and former President Richard Nixon in a way neither may have ever anticipated. A series of landmark interviews in 1977 afforded the disgraced Nixon a means to begin his rehabilitation with the American public. But Frost recalls that the interviews might just as easily have never happened. There were obstacles aplenty, as he tells in his book "Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A.J. Jacobs "The Year of Living Biblically" Many people follow Biblical rules, starting with the basics, the Ten Commandments. But let's face it, even the most pious among us is unlikely to be able to live by ALL the rules in the Bible. But A.J. Jacobs -- whom last we met after he had read the entire encyclopedia, from A to Z -- decided to give the Bible laws a try. For one full year, he would do exactly what the Bible said to do. His chronicle of that effort is called "The Year of Living Biblically." [Interview taped at Borders, B ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website David Michaelis "Schulz and Peanuts" Charlie Brown had to pay Lucy a nickel every time he sought psychological advice. It seems his creator, Charles Schulz, sought some measure of therapy in the beloved comic strip he drew for decades. Now, in the book "Schulz and Peanuts," biographer David Michaelis draws a picture of the artist whose deeply troubled life can be seen in the panels of his cartoons. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dinesh D'Souza "What's So Great About Christianity" For years, it has been fashionable in some circles to dismiss Christianity and its beliefs as obsolete, discredited, disproven by science, even harmful. So what's so great about Christianity? Scholar and former White House domestic policy analyst Dinesh D'Souza takes on the challenge of defending the faith, in his book called "What's So Great About Christianity." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joseph Grenny "Influencer" How much influence do you have, and would you like to have more? And we're not talking just about influence as a business or political leader. Parents have influence, and just ordinary folks have and use influence. So how DO you get more? Joseph Grenny is one of the influencers at VitalSmarts, which is in the business of training Fortune 500 companies. He's also one of the authors of the new book "Influencer." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Laurence Bergreen "Marco Polo" The adventures of Marco Polo are world renowned. His 13th-century trade-diplomatic-possibly-espionage travels to Mongolia and China have become the stuff of legend - in fact, many people think it is just a legend. There's always been doubt that Polo even went to China. Did he go, or did he just pick up other people's stories and sell them as his own? That's just one of the things biographer Laurence Bergreen wanted to know. His book is called "Marco Polo." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rachel Louise Snyder "Fugitive Denim" Ever wonder where your clothes come from? Before you say The Gap or Sears or Abercrombie and Fitch, think .. before that. The wholesaler? No, before that. The manufacturer? Yes, but before that, too. Journalist Rachel Louise Snyder takes us to places as diverse as Azerbaijan, Cambodia, New York, and Italy as she traces the progress of a pair of jeans, from cotton farm to retail store. Her book is called "Fugitive Denim." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Walter Mosley "Blonde Faith" Since his debut in 1990, Easy Rawlins has taken his place as one of America's favorite literary characters, in a series of mystery-thrillers by Walter Mosley. The series has followed Easy from the years right after World War Two up through the year in which his latest book takes place, 1967. And now, in "Blonde Faith," Easy is trying to make sense of what his life has become. But the bigger story about "Blonde Faith" is that it may mean the end of the line for Easy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thomas Laird "The Story of Tibet" If you had exclusive access, for hours at a time over the course of three years, to the Dalai Lama, what would you ask? Journalist Thomas Laird knew exactly what he wanted to do with his unique access to Tibet's exiled leader. With His Holiness as his guide, Laird explores Tibet's history, in the process gaining great insight into science, reincarnation, and the nature of Buddhism. And, of course, a rare glimpse into the life of the Dalai Lama himself. [Interview taped at Borders, Washing ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bert Rockman "The George Bush Legacy" How has George W. Bush done as President? What will his legacy be? A new book published by the nonpartisan CQ Press, an arm of Congressional Quarterly, aims to put "Bush 43's" two terms in perspective. One of the three editors of the book is Purdue University political scientist Bert Rockman. The book's called "The George Bush Legacy." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Emily Benedek "Red Sea" When journalist Emily Benedek was working on an article for Newsweek on counterterrorism, once of the sources she turned to was a senior Israeli counterterrorism expert. So much of what she learned from him could not be told in the Newsweek article, only in fiction. The result is her first novel, a troublingly-realistic thriller that begins with a series of plane crashes and races toward an ending that could be catastrophic. It's called "Red Sea." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Andrea Barrett "The Air We Breathe" As the U.S. teeters on the brink of entry into the first World War, a motley group of tuberculosis patients in upstate New York is about to experience world politics on its own little scale, in Andrea Barrett's novel "The Air We Breathe." Poor immigrants are thrown into the same closed community as wealthy businessmen. One of them tries an ambitious social experiment. But soon the fevers of xenophobia and prejudice turn the community into its own brand of battlefield. [Interview taped at O ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Danica McKellar "Math Doesn't Suck" Only boys can be good at math. At least that's what millions of girls have been led to believe. But girls need to hear Danica McKellar's message. McKellar may be best known for her television role as Winnie Cooper on "The Wonder Years," but she also graduated summa cum laude in math from UCLA, and co-wrote a published math theorem. She calls her book "Math Doesn't Suck." [Interview taped at Borders, Rockville, MD] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Amy Bloom "Away" Russian Jewish immigrant Lillian Leyb has "endured the murder of her family, the loss of her daughter, an ocean crossing like a death march, intimate life with strangers in her cousin's two rooms, smelling of men and urine and fried food and uncertainty and need." And all of this by the age of 22. But in Amy Bloom's second novel "Away," Lillian faces her most difficult test yet: a journey across 1920s America, for the reunion with her daughter she longs for above everything else. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Basedow "Fitness Made Simple" You're out of shape. You know it. You see the looks people give you. And you've seen that guy on the TV commercials, the young buff guy who says fitness can be simple. Now, John Basedow has put his formula for fitness in a book for the first time. He says it's a total fitness program that goes way beyond just losing weight. His book is called "Fitness Made Simple." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Deborah Norville "Thank You Power" Thank you. Amazing, isn't it, the power commanded by two little words? And the life-changing strength of another word, gratitude. Television personality Deborah Norville has long studied the positive effects of gratitude, and why true thankfulness is a blessing for the person who is thankful. Norville's book is called "Thank You Power." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Frank Warren "A Lifetime of Secrets" Hey - you want to know a secret? Who can resist an invitation like that? Apparently there is also a pretty fair number of people who can't resist the opportunity to tell a secret, sometimes a secret they have never told anyone. Maybe a secret they never even openly admitted to themselves. And Frank Warren has solicited, and collected, and lovingly maintains a library of thousands of them. He has shared them since 2005 on his wildly popular blog "PostSecret," and in bestselling books, the l ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Garry Wills "Head and Heart" There is a common assumption that underlies almost any discussion of faith in America, and that is the notion that the founding fathers sought to establish a Christian nation, and that we have strayed steadily further from their vision. The new book by historian Garry Wills reveals, however, that the founding fathers were, for the most part, not practicing Christians as we might think of that term today. But that, he writes, turned out to be the greatest blessing religion in America could e ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Vicente Fox/Robert A. Schuller/Tom Brokaw Vicente Fox was president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006. Fox has remained active and high-profile in his country. His memoir is called "Revolution of Hope." As the son of one of the nation's best-known evangelists, the Reverend Robert H. Schuller, founding pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, Robert A. Schuller could very easily have found himself overwhelmed by the pressure to live up to someone else's notion of what he was supposed to be. But his new book is about finding the unique path God h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus "Break Through" In the 1960s and '70s, we made impressive progress in restoring the environment, through new laws and initiatives designed to conserve resources and protect earth's ecology. But as they used to say, this is not your father's Buick. The old ways won't get the job done anymore, say two young environmentalists, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. They say it's time to set "environmentalism" aside and try something entirely new. Their book is called "Break Through." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Donald McCaig "Rhett Butler's People" Seven decades on, Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" continues to fascinate and captivate readers. Of course, having her book made into one of the greatest movies of all time didn't hurt. But Mitchell never wrote a sequel - indeed, never wrote another book. In 1991 Alexandra Ripley, with the blessing of the Mitchell estate, wrote "Scarlett." But until now, the backstory of Rhett Butler had gone untold. Novelist Donald McCaig gives the Charleston gentleman his due in an authorized sequ ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cathy Wilkerson "Flying Close to the Sun" It was the spring of 1970. A young woman named Cathy Wilkerson survived a bomb blast at a townhouse in Manhattan. Three other people were killed. It was, in fact, a bomb being built in the basement of that house by her colleagues with the Weather Underground, the radical leftist student group. For the next ten years Wilkerson was a fugitive, before turning herself in. She pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of dynamite, and served a brief prison sentence. Now she tells her story, and the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brock Clarke "An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes in New England" When the homes of famous authors begin burning down, suspicion immediately falls on one Sam Pulsifer, who just did ten years in prison for torching the Emily Dickinson homestead. As the narrator of Brock Clarke's new novel, Sam sees the new life he's trying to maintain crumble around him as more houses burn. Clarke's novel is called "An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes in New England." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mark Z. Danielewski "Only Revolutions" There are two sides to every story. Especially in Mark Z. Danielewski's unique story of the journey taken by teen lovers Hailey and Sam, called "Only Revolutions." But is it a road trip, or an extended metaphor? One story, or two? We get Hailey's version .. then Sam's. Or is it vice versa? Danielewski carefully -- and literally -- dispenses the narrative measure by measure, in a design that Publishers Weekly says "is a marvel" and "a feat of Pynchonesque puzzlebookdom." [Interview taped at ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Elder Robison "Look Me In the Eye" As early as nursery school, it was apparent that John Elder Robison was not like the other kids. But it wasn't until he was 40 that a therapist finally diagnosed what it was about him that was different: he has a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger Syndrome. Now, in a new memoir, Robison describes his painful childhood -- and life with his brother. You may have heard of him, too -- he changed his name to Augusten Burroughs, and wrote "Running With Scissors." John Elder Robison' ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ann Packer "Songs Without Words" Two women, friends since childhood, have their friendship severely tested when one faces a family crisis, in Ann Packer's novel "Songs Without Words." The challenge to Liz and Sarabeth's relationship comes when Liz's teenage daughter nearly loses her life. This is the second novel for the acclaimed author of "The Dive From Clausen's Pier." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chris Matthews "Life's a Campaign" He's a former newspaperman, Peace Corps volunteer, U.S. Capitol policeman, and top aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Today, Chris Matthews is best known for his cable TV news and interview show "Hardball." And in his new book "Life's a Campaign" Matthews tells the lessons he's learned over the last 40 years, and how they apply to life-in-general Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Glenn Kessler "The Confidante" From an academic post at Stanford University to Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice has become the most powerful woman in America. Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler dissects Rice's close relationship with George W. Bush, and how it has shaped U.S. foreign policy, in a new book called "The Confidante." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robert Draper "Dead Certain" It's rare and extraordinary for a journalist to have one-on-one access to the President of the United States - and his closest advisers - while that President is still in office. Robert Draper had just such access to George W. Bush, as well as the First Lady, the Vice President, and scores of other key figures in the administration. Draper is now, his publisher tells us, "the first author to tell a personality-driven history of the Bush years." His book is called "Dead Certain." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tess Gerritsen "The Bone Garden" Forget skeletons in the closet -- Julia Hamill finds one in her garden, at the beginning of Tess Gerritsen's standalone mystery-thriller "The Bone Garden." Julia is soon on a mission to discover whose bones they are, and how they got in her garden. That becomes the story-within-this story, an 1830s-era murder mystery featuring a character from real life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Naomi Wolf "The End of America" If it's axiomatic that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, Americans may be in deep peril, indeed. In a stark and startling new book, writer and political consultant Naomi Wolf illuminates the history we had better start familiarizing ourselves with, before it's too late. Her call to action is called "The End of America." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dave Barry "Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)" Here we are, well into the new millennium -- seven years into it! -- and doggone it, it's high time someone wrote a history of it. Luckily for all of us, esteemed historian and retired humor columnist Dave Barry gamely volunteered for the task, taking valuable time away from his golf game to do so. His new book is called "Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)." [Interview taped at Politics and Prose, Washington, DC] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wesley Clark "A Time to Lead" From segregated Little Rock in the '50s, to West Point and Vietnam in the '60s, and ultimately to the 2004 presidential race, retired General Wesley Clark has learned a lifetime of lessons. Lessons of loyalty, of leadership, and of principle. Now Clark shares what he's learned, in an autobiography called "A Time to Lead." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carl Bernstein "A Woman in Charge" She stands a good chance of becoming our 44th president, and the first woman to hold that office. So how much do we know about who Hillary Rodham Clinton really is? Liberal? Feminist? Dutiful wife who insists she doesn't bake cookies? Now famed investigative journalist Carl Bernstein goes in search of what motivates the Senator from New York. His book is called "A Woman in Charge." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alek Wek "Alek" Alek Wek was born in the southern Sudan town of Wau in 1977. Six years later her country was plunged into a long and brutal civil war, and in 1991 her family fled to Britain. It was in London, in 1995, that Alek's life was dramatically changed. A scout for a modeling agency spotted Alek, and has since become one of the world's top supermodels. She has also created her own line of handbags, Wek 1933. Her new memoir is called "Alek." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Randall Robinson "An Unbroken Agony" Just before he was overthrown in a coup in February 2004, former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was in contact with his old friend Randall Robinson, the activist founder of TransAfrica. When Aristide and his wife were whisked away to exile in the Central African Republic, it was a U.S. delegation led by Robinson and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters that carried out what amounted to a rescue mission. They brought the Aristides back to Jamaica. Now, in a new book, Robinson te ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Col. Randall Larsen "Our Own Worst Enemy" What will you do, when the next terrorist strike happens in your city? Retired Air Force Colonel Randall Larsen, the founding director of the Institute for Homeland Security, says we better not count on the government for all of our needs. In fact, he says, as a nation we're asking the wrong questions about our security. He tells us what the right questions are - and the answers - in his book "Our Own Worst Enemy." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Korda "Ike: An American Hero" They once dubbed him "The People's General," so popular was Dwight David Eisenhower. In these difficult times, with America mired in an unpopular war, recalling a singular figure like Ike is somehow reassuring, and his latest biographer, Michael Korda, doesn't disappoint. His book "Ike: An American Hero" centers on Eisenhower's World War II tenure as commander of Allied armies in Europe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James Gaines "For Liberty and Glory" George Washington is revered as the father of his country. He never had a son, but that hasn't stopped many an historian from speculating that that's why General Washington became so attached to France's Marquis de Lafayette, a fellow patriot-citizen who played a key role in both the American and French revolutions. Now historian James Gaines shows, in his book "For Liberty and Glory" why the notion of a father-son relationship is so off-the-mark. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Report from the 2007 National Book Festival Just months after coming to Washington, D.C. as the nation's new First Lady, former librarian Laura Bush launched the National Book Festival. In the years since the first Festival in 2001, it has grown to become one of the nation's foremost venues for authors and readers. Last weekend, more than 100,000 people from all over the country came to Washington for the seventh National Book Festival. Today we take you there! (The website mentioned in today's program is: www.marcberniershow.com) ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Dean "Broken Government" We've all heard of President George Bush's abysmal approval rating; the outrage over the abridgement of civil liberties; the "cone of silence" over the administration's actions; the erosion of constitutional checks and balances. It's so bad, some people yearn for the "good old days" of Richard Nixon. His onetime White House counsel, John Dean, warns of what the Republican Party he has now abandoned is doing to the country, in a new book called "Broken Government." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stephenie Meyer "Eclipse" This past summer, it seemed like no book could match the popularity of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" -- except one. Harry was knocked out of the number one spot on several bestseller lists by the third volume in "Twilight," a series of vampire novels by Stephenie Meyer, who is fast becoming America's J.K. Rowling. In "Eclipse," her still-human teenage heroine Bella will have to choose between her love of Edward, a vampire, and her friendship with Jacob, a fledgling werewolf. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wendell Jamieson "Father Knows Less" Every parent knows how inquisitive young children are. Questions, questions, questions, all day every day. And the best thing about kids' questions is, they're perfectly honest, innocent, and transparent -- why DO cops like donuts so much? How does a whip make that noise, if it doesn't hit anything? Wendell Jamieson, the city editor for the New York Times, has spent his professional life finding answers to bigger, more adult questions. But when his seven-year-old son, Dean, started asking ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Leslie Sanchez "Los Republicanos" For a long time now, it's been assumed that America's Hispanic voters are Democrats. Republicans have assumed that, Democrats have assumed that, even many Hispanics have assumed that. But entrepeneur and Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez argues in her new book "Los Republicanos" that Hispanics and the GOP may have a lot more in common than they thought. In fact, she says, they need each other. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Diana Gabaldon "Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade" Lord John Grey is an English aristocrat, soldier, and gentleman, fighting in the Seven Years' war in the mid-18th century in Europe. He is also gay. And in the new Diana Gabaldon novel "Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade," there is a truth to be uncovered: the real story behind the death of Lord John's father 17 years ago. Oh, and did we mention that Lord John also has a new love interest? One who could put his very life in danger? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Junot Diaz "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" Meet Oscar Wao, a chubby fanboy nerd who lives in New Jersey with his mother and his sister. Oscar's a first-generation Dominican-American, dreaming of being a sci-fi author but dealing in the meantime with the challenges of youth, including the longing for a romance. In the debut novel by Junot Diaz, called "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," we come to understand Oscar not by meeting him or hearing directly from him, but through those who know him. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kiron Skinner & Serhiy Kudelia "The Strategy of Campaigning" In the waning days of the Cold War, two political figures emerged -- one on each side of the long standoff -- who changed the entire conversation, and remade the world. Ronald Reagan is one of those leaders. But the other is not Mikhail Gorbachev, it's Boris Yeltsin. Now scholars Kiron Skinner and Serhiy Kudelia, along with co-authors who include Condoleezza Rice, show us what Reagan and Yeltsin did, and why it was so significant, in their book called "The Strategy of Campaigning." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kris Carr "Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips" In 2003 actress and photographer Kris Carr was diagnosed with cancer. Not just any cancer, either -- the rare and incurable kind. As she puts it, "I thought my life was over, I had no idea it was just getting started!" Carr has made it her mission to give cancer a kick in the rear, and a makeover at the same time. First she made a documentary about her own medical journey. And now she has a book, filled with encouragement, advice, guidance and humor -- her own, and that of over a dozen me ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mike O'Connor "Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe" An old cigar box, filled with the miscellany of a life, provides the inspiration and the jumping-off point for one journalist's mission to find the truth about his own family. All that Mike O'Connor had at the outset was obscure memories from the 1950s of his mother and father taking Mike and his sisters, loading up the car, and heading to Mexico, leaving everything and everyone behind. His book is called "Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dr. Leonard Sax "Boys Adrift" What's happening to America's boys? When fully one third of men as old as age 34 are still living at home with Mom and Dad, something is wrong. Aren't they ambitious any more? Don't they have plans? What happened to career, marriage, and family? And why aren't girls facing similar challenges? Dr. Leonard Sax, a family physician and research psychologist with a practice in suburban Washington, DC went looking for answers. What he found, is in his new book "Boys Adrift." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kathy Reichs "Bones to Ashes" It's always very tough for a professional in either the law enforcement or medical fields to take on a case involving someone close to them. But sometimes they have little choice in the matter, as in the new Kathy Reichs thriller "Bones to Ashes." Her series heroine, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, is called on to examine the bones of a teenage girl -- and realizes the remains are those of a beloved, and long-disappeared childhood friend. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ellen Crosby "The Chardonnay Charade" When a late spring frost places Virginia vintner Lucie Montgomery's grapes in jeopardy, she takes steps to protect the vines -- and uncovers a murder, in Ellen Crosby's new mystery "The Chardonnay Charade." It's the second in her fledgling but already-acclaimed series of Virginia wine country mysteries. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Peter Yarrow "Puff, the Magic Dragon" "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is a musical icon. Written by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton in 1959, and first recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1963, it has become one of the best-known and best-loved songs of our time. But there has never been a children's picture book adaptation of the song -- until now. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jeff Thredgold "EconAmerica" Energy prices are soaring. Short-term interest rates are rising. The housing market is souring. Jobs are going overseas. There's plenty of bad news about the economy -- but economist and optimist Jeff Thredgold gives us a careful explanation of why America's economy continues to thrive, despite the many challenges it endures. His book is called "EconAmerica" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website William Gibson "Spook Country" Amazon calls William Gibson "the most influential science fiction writer of the past quarter century." However, his new novel "Spook Country" is not a futuristic cyber thriller -- like his last bestseller, "Pattern Recognition," it is set in the present. It's a post-9/11 thriller that depicts a vaguely threatening world of unslowing change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eric Jerome Dickey "Waking With Enemies" A hitman on the run from .. another hitman, is at the center of Eric Jerome Dickey's romantic suspense "Waking With Enemies." The story picks up exactly where Dickey's spring 2007 novel "Sleeping With Strangers" left off, with professional killer Gideon in London trying to keep things from spiraling fatally out of control. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jasper Fforde "First Among Sequels" Literary detective Thursday Next makes her fifth appearance in the new Jasper Fforde mystery "First Among Sequels." It's actually, in the storytelling, fourteen years since Thursday last appeared, and her son Friday is now 16 years old - and may actually hold the future of the universe in his hands. Meanwhile, there's a stupidity surplus reaching alarming levels, someone is turning classic books into reality-book shows, and Thursday's side business of cheese-smuggling now has her looking ov ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Norman Pearlstine "Off the Record" It's time-honored journalistic tradition: reporters would rather go to jail than unmask a confidential source. But reporters aren't above the law, argues Norman Pearlstine. He was editor-in-chief of Time Incorporated when the Valerie Plame scandal broke open, and prosecutors sought the notes of Time Magazine's Matt Cooper. Pearlstine shocked his journalism brethren by turning over Cooper's notes. Now, in a new book called "Off The Record," he explains why he did it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oliver August "Inside the Red Mansion" Chances are you've never heard of Lai Changxing, but in China he is a modern-day legend. Lai was an uneducated country boy, in the right place at precisely the right time in history, who became a self-made gangster-billionaire in the newly-emerging capitalism of China. But by the time journalist Oliver August began looking for Lai, he had already fled to Canada, one step ahead of the Chinese authorities. August's new book is called "Inside the Red Mansion." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jerry Kammer, George Condon, Marcus Stern "The Wrong Stuff" Duke Cunningham was a true hero. In Vietnam, Cunningham, a fighter pilot, became the first Naval "ace" since the Korean War. Cunningham parlayed his renown into a career in politics, ultimately going to Congress representing a district in Southern California -- and becoming one of the most corrupt Congressmen in U.S. history. The details are now told in a new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service journalists who first broke the Cunningham story. Jerry Kammer, George Condon, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James Dale "The Obvious" Woody Allen once famously observed that "80 percent of success is just showing up." Maybe it's no coincidence, then, that one of James Dale's common-sense tips for success, in his book "The Obvious," is to "show up." Dale is a former ad agency CEO who says, after years of personal experience and observation, that it's the "obvious" things like that, that work best. So he's assembled a book full of "The Obvious." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ridley Pearson "Killer Weekend" A high-profile politician is set to announce that she's running for President, at an exclusive weekend conference at an even more-exclusive Sun Valley, Idaho resort. As Ridley Pearson lays it out for us in his new thriller "Killer Weekend," there is someone at the resort who figures that Elizabeth Shaler's announcement would be the perfect venue for an assassination. And it may be up to the local sheriff, Walt Fleming, to prevent it -- just like he saved Shaler's life several years before. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Steven J. Harper "Crossing Hoffa" In the early 1960s, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa was not yet the punchline of jokes. He was a powerful labor boss, accustomed to getting his way and running over those who got in his way. So Steven J. Harper was intrigued to find, after his father's death, that more than 40 years ago James Harper stood up to the formidable Jimmy Hoffa, risking his livelihood -- and perhaps even his life -- in the process. Harper's new book about his father's nose-to-nose with the big guy is called ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brian "Head" Welch "Save Me From Myself" Brian Welch lived the dream of millions. He was a bona fide rock star. As one of the founding members of the controversial nu metal band Korn, Welch -- known since childhood by the nickname "Head" -- had the life he had always dreamed of, too. The band sold millions of albums. They toured to sold-out venues. They were making a ton of money. And Head was sinking further and further into an abyss of drug and alcohol abuse, until one day when he realized what his lifestyle was doing to his you ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Floyd Landis "Positively False" Floyd Landis won the Tour de France in 2006, only to be stripped of the title three days later, after testing positive for elevated testosterone levels. He has insisted, however, that he is neither a doper, nor a liar, nor a cheater. Now in his memoir "Positively False," Landis tells how this kid who grew up in a Mennonite community in Pennsylvania ultimately won the most prestigious race of his career, then had it all taken away. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website W.E.B. Griffin & Bill Butterworth IV "The Double Agents" As Allied forces prepared for the decisive D-Day invasion, one of the most critical tasks was to mislead Adolf Hitler and the Axis powers about where the invasion was going to happen. The nascent Office of Strategic Services employed a portfolio of deceptive tactics, including the dangerous use of double agents. Now veteran novelist W.E.B. Griffin, along with his son, Bill Butterworth IV, bring the suspense of that time to life in the latest installment in the "Men at War" series, "The Doub ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jeffery Deaver "The Sleeping Doll" A prison break has left a psychopathic, Manson-esque killer on the loose, in Jeffery Deaver's new mystery "The Sleeping Doll." In mad pursuit of him is the California Bureau of Investigation agent who inadvertently let him escape, Kathryn Dance. We first met her in Deaver's The Cold Moon; now she's got a story all her own. She'll need to find and catch killer Daniel Pell, before he can find the only witness to his most horrendous crime. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Claire Cook "Life's a Beach" Ginger's 41. Her sister Geri's almost 50 -- and freaked out by it -- and their hippie parents are about to sell the house, in Claire Cook's sister story "Life's a Beach." One sister's married, the other's single -- and both are still growing up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Claire Cook "Life's a Beach" Ginger's 41. Her sister Geri's almost 50 -- and freaked out by it -- and their hippie parents are about to sell the house, in Claire Cook's sister story "Life's a Beach." One sister's married, the other's single -- and both are still growing up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sheila Lukins & Julee Rosso "Silver Palate Cookbook - Anniversary Edition" Hard to believe, but the "Silver Palate Cookbook" has been around for a quarter of a century. Before Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins published the book in 1982, quality cooking was something "gourmets" did, not ordinary folks. But Julee and Sheila showed how anyone could cook and host like a gourmet. Now, for their 25th anniversary, they've redone the book from front to back. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lee Child "Bad Luck and Trouble" It starts with a man being dumped out of a helicopter three thousand feet up. Lee Child's series hero Jack Reacher is very quickly drafted into a mission that reunites him with the members of the Army special investigation unit he last worked with a decade earlier. And as Reacher finds out in "Bad Luck and Trouble," class reunions are rarely what they're cracked up to be. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website At the American Library Association Annual Conference This week, over 21,000 librarians gathered in Washington, DC for the annual conference of the American Library Association, or ALA. In addition to the librarians, there were over 7,000 exhibitors, including publishers, distributors, digitizers, even furniture makers. Librarians came in all varieties, too -- so come with me, to the American Library Association's annual conference. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barry Eisler "Requiem for an Assassin" John Rain is a professional assassin, who wants desperately to become a retired professional assassin. But in Barry Eisler's new thriller "Requiem for an Assassin," Rain will have to postpone his plans just a while longer, because someone with a terrifying agenda has drafted Rain to do yet another job. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ann Brashares "The Last Summer (Of You and Me)" Growing up, summers on Fire Island were always something that sisters Alice and Riley looked forward to. Well, that and seeing their lifelong friend Paul. But they're all adults now, and the world has changed. Their world has changed. In Ann Brashares' first novel for adults, "The Last Summer (Of You and Me)," the changes have become both exciting and painful. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website David Baldacci "Simple Genius" A scientist who has committed suicide, a former Secret Service agent who seems to be trying to, and a super-secret government intelligence installation all figure into David Baldacci's new thriller "Simple Genius." There's a clock ticking, too -- a girl's life is in danger. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lama Surya Das "Buddha Is As Buddha Does" Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost American Buddhist teachers, and a leading spokesperson for the emerging American Buddhism. The Dalai Lama calls him "The Western Lama." Now, in a new book, Surya Das offers a guide for spiritual development, whether you're a new seeker or an experienced practitioner of Buddhism. The book is called "Buddha Is As Buddha Does." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Ondaatje "Divisadero" In Northern California in the 1970s, a widower is raising his daughter Anna, an adopted daughter named Claire, and an orphan boy nicknamed Coop. Theirs is an unorthodox family, three siblings related by common bond instead of blood. But when two of them begin a sexual relationship, their father explodes in a stunning moment of violence, and the family is shattered. This is Michael Ondaatje's new novel "Divisadero," a story spanning years and continents as it tells the story of these three ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marisha Pessl "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" Blue Van Meer is the teenage daughter of a single father, a precocious young woman who annotates and footnotes her own life in real time. After years of wandering from one college town to the next, she and her father settle down in North Carolina for the duration of her senior year of high school -- and what a momentous year it turns out to be, for Blue is soon enmeshed in a murder mystery. All of this happens in the impressive fiction debut by Marisha Pessl called "Special Topics in Calam ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michael Connelly "The Overlook" There is no such thing as a "routine" homicide investigation, as the LAPD's Harry Bosch knows all too well. Now, in his thirteenth Bosch novel, author Michael Connelly pairs Harry with a new partner, reunites him with an old love interest who's now with the FBI, and hands him a case that threatens to spin out of control almost from the word go. And it all happens in a matter of hours, in "The Overlook." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bay Buchanan "The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton" Many people think Hillary Rodham Clinton could be our next president. But would we get the new Hillary, or the old Hillary? Conservative commentator Bay Buchanan says it's important to know the difference, and to understand why the "real" Hillary could be so dangerous. Buchanan's new book is called "The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Russ Parsons "How to Pick a Peach" What do you think about, when you're at the store picking out apples, or tomatoes, or peaches? Well, the point is, you're probably not thinking much about them at all. Chances are you have only the vaguest idea of where those fruits and vegetables came from, or whether they are "in season" or not. Do you know how to choose the best of the lot? L.A. Times food writer Russ Parsons brings together some science, some history, some big agribusiness, and some shopping tips in his new book "How t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Feinstein "Tales From Q School" The PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament is commonly known among golfers as "Q school" -- and it's anything but pencils and exams. The annual event, played out in three separate tournaments, determines who will get to play on the PGA Tour. Careers are literally made or ended at Q School. Now sports journalist John Feinstein takes us inside this grueling, high-stakes trial in his book "Tales From Q School." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Monica Holloway "Driving With Dead People" When does eccentricity turn the corner into outright weirdness? And when does it descend into abuse? In her new memoir "Driving With Dead People," actress-and-writer Monica Holloway tells of a small-town Midwest upbringing with parents that were indeed eccentric, and weird, and ultimately abusive. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rebecca Mead "One Perfect Day" Everyone knows a Bridezilla, an otherwise sensible, sweet woman who becomes more of a monster the closer she gets to her wedding day. But it's not really her fault, at least not all her fault, says Rebecca Mead, who unveils -- if you will -- the nature of the 161-billion-dollar wedding industry in America. Her book is called "One Perfect Day." [Interview taped at Olssons Books & Records, Washington, DC] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Berkeley Breathed "Mars Needs Moms" When Martians land on Earth, and abduct Milo's mom -- right out of their house! -- Milo does what any little boy would do: he chases them, sneaks aboard their spaceship, and heads off to Mars, too. And in Pulitzer Prize?winning comic strip creator and bestselling author Berkeley Breathed's new book for little readers called "Mars Needs Moms," Milo learns a priceless lesson from these motherless Martians. [Interview taped at Tree Top Kids, McLean, VA] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paul Starr "Freedom's Power" While some conservatives may be eager to write liberalism's obituary, one of its loyal practitioners argues that not only isn't liberalism dead, it is strong and viable. In fact, Paul Starr, a Princeton professor and founding editor of The American Prospect, says liberalism is the single most powerful tool in building a politically and economically strong world. His book is called "Freedom's Power." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anchee Min "The Last Empress" History traditionally has portrayed China's Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi as a cruel despot, but Chinese-born author Anchee Min has taken on the task of rebuilding the empress' image. In a 2004 novel called "Empress Orchid" Min retold the story of the young woman who started as a royal concubine and ended up as ruler of China. Now, she completes the story, in the sequel, "The Last Empress." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harlan Coben "The Woods" Life seems like it's going pretty good for New Jersey prosecutor Paul Copeland -- until a body turns up, with a startling link to Copeland, and raises painful questions about a chapter in his life he thought was long closed. In Harlan Coben's new thriller "The Woods," Cope must hold his life together as events from his past threaten to destroy it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jabari Asim "The N Word" For four centuries, one particular word has carried an outsize power in America -- perhaps moreso today than ever. It's a nasty word which you cannot say in polite company, which can and does incite violence, but which also, paradoxically, has been eagerly adopted by many of the very people it was intended to disparage. It is, as Washington Post columnist Jabari Asim's book is titled, "The N Word." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Vincent Bugliosi "Reclaiming History" Perhaps no event in modern times has been the subject of more conspiracy theories than the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Some surveys suggest that as many as three out of four Americans no longer believe the Warren Commission report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald alone, was responsible for the assassination. Now, after more than twenty years of some of the most meticulous research ever done on the case -- and the attendant conspiracy theories -- famed ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tim Gunn & Kate Moloney "A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style" The old wisdom says, clothes make the man. Or the woman. But choosing the right clothes is as challenging as ever, as we try to navigate every situation from first dates and job interviews to "casual Fridays." Now Tim Gunn, Bravo television's style guru and mentor to contestants on "Project Runway," has partnered with Kate Moloney, the Assistant Chair of fashion design at Parsons, The New School for Design. Their new book is called "A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Atul Gawande "Better" When you see the doctor, are you satisfied with care that is just "good enough," or would you like your doctor to do better? The answer to that is self-evident, but the means of getting to "better" are not nearly as obvious. In Dr. Atul Gawande's new book "Better," the surgeon and New Yorker staff writer visits fellow medical practitioners around the world in search of places where doctors are, indeed, improving their skills, and the outcome of their patients' health problems. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Arthur Phillips "Angelica" The same story told from four points of view unfolds in the new Arthur Phillips novel "Angelica," set in Victorian England. The Barton family -- Joseph, his wife Constance, and their 4-year-old daughter Angelica -- lives in a home which may, or may not, also be occupied by a ghost. As Phillips reveals more and more of the story, however, the supernatural aspect takes its place alongside equally compelling -- and surprising -- elements. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tom DeLay "No Retreat, No Surrender" When Tom DeLay of Texas was in the U.S. House of Representatives, they called him "The Hammer," for his ability to get things driven home. He was a key figure in the 1994 Republican revolution, and became House Majority Whip the next year. DeLay was elected House Majority Leader after the 2002 elections. But when a Texas grand jury indicted him in 2005 on charges of violating campaign finance laws, DeLay stepped down from his leadership post, and then left Congress in 2006. Now, in a new b ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Laura Flanders "Blue Grit" On election night 2004, radio talk show host Laura Flanders got stuck with the overnight shift at the liberal Air America network. Instead of helping her listeners celebrate a John Kerry victory, however, it fell to Flanders to console Democrats who had worked so hard for the man who had just come in second to George W. Bush. That's when Flanders decided she had to find whatâ??s happening at the grassroots level of progressive America. She set out on a cross-country tour of the Democratic p ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jonathan Lethem "You Don't Love Me Yet" In his new novel "You Don't Love Me Yet," Jonathan Lethem tells us the story of a California alternative rock band, whose bass guitarist, Lucinda, is a young woman whose day job is answering the phone at a complaint line. One caller, in particular, captures her imagination, and before long, an inspired Lucinda is coming up with great new song ideas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mike Farrell "Just Call Me Mike" Most people who want to get into show business end up in Hollywood sooner or later. But actor Mike Farrell started there. He grew up in a working class neighborhood in West Hollywood, a stone's throw from Tinseltown. As a teenager he delivered groceries to Jack Benny, Lucille Ball, and Jimmy Stewart. Years later Farrell finally enjoyed stardom himself, on television in "M*A*S*H" and "Providence" and in movies, as producer of "Dominick and Eugene" and "Patch Adams." Through it all, overarchi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jodi Picoult "Nineteen Minutes" There is a very unsettling irony in the fact that the Virginia Tech campus shooting tragedy occurred just a few weeks after publication of the newest Jodi Picoult novel "Nineteen Minutes," since the book is a multi-layered story of a boy who takes a gun to school one day and opens fire. But Picoult does not stop with just telling what went wrong with Peter Houghton. This is a whole community's story. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tom Bissell "The Father of All Things" The Vietnam war was the defining event for an entire generation of Americans, most critically for those sent to Vietnam to do battle. Mountains have been written about this generation; considerably less has been written about their children, and even less about the cross-generational impact of the war. Journalist and fiction writer Tom Bissell now contributes in a major way, with a book about his journey to Vietnam a couple of years ago with his ex-Marine father, John Bissell, who found muc ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rita Mae Brown "Puss 'n Cahoots" Mrs. Murphy goes to Kentucky, in the new Rita Mae Brown mystery "Puss 'n Cahoots." So does her fellow feline Pewter, and their canine companion Tucker, all of them on a trip with their human companion Mary Minor Haristeen to a prestigious Saddlebred horse show -- where, of course, there is first a robbery, then a murder. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website William Cohen & Janet Langhart Cohen "Love in Black and White" William Cohen was born and raised in Maine. His father was Jewish, his mother, Protestant. Janet Langhart, an African-American, was raised in Indiana by her mother, a Southern Baptist. Bill Cohen became a U.S. Senator, Janet a prominent television personality, businesswoman and author. They met in 1974, and married in 1996. Now they tell their "opposites attract" story in a book called "Love in Black and White." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Frank Warren "The Secret Lives of Men and Women" Frank Warren is singlehandedly responsible for setting free thousands of secrets that people all over the world have been holding captive, some of them all of their lives. It was in the fall of 2004 that Warren started the website postsecret.com, inviting people to anonymously send him postcards on which they had revealed a secret. Sometimes it's just a little secret, sometimes it's a huge one. Now, in his third compilation of secrets, Frank Warren highlights the different ways men and wome ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robert Crais "The Watchman" In a series of increasingly popular mystery/thrillers, Robert Crais has painstakingly crafted the character of private eye Elvis Cole, who now ranks among America's favorite crime-fiction characters. But in the newest Crais thriller, "The Watchman," it's Cole's enigmatic partner Joe Pike who gets the lead role. Pike is called upon to act as bodyguard for a spoiled young heiress whose life is inexplicably, but indisputably, in serious danger. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dr. Sherwin Nuland "The Art of Aging" Most of us are not exactly comfortable with aging. But, as the wag said, it's better than the alternative. Now comes Dr. Sherwin Nuland, National Book Award winner and author of the new book "The Art of Aging," and he says aging not only doesn't need to be avoided, it can be a gift. In chapters that blend medical details of aging with firsthand accounts of vitality at age eighty, ninety, or beyond, Dr. Nuland wants to arm us with a new attitude about our autumn years. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paula Poundstone "There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say" It's not that comedian Paula Poundstone had nothing to say about herself, it's just that when a publisher asked her to write a book she couldn't get started. Luckily for us, she found a way to write it, and the result is a book unlike any other memoir. She calls it "There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Laura Lippman "What the Dead Know" Thirty years before the story begins in Laura Lippman's new mystery-thriller "What the Dead Know," two young sisters vanish from a Baltimore-area shopping mall. The public memory of their disappearance has long since faded -- until the day a middle-aged woman shows up, claiming to be one of the long-lost sisters. But as her claim is subjected to scrutiny, even more questions arise. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gigi Anders "Men May Come and Men May Go ... But I've Still Got My Little Pink Raincoat" Cuban-American journalist and author Gigi Anders brings fashion sense to her search for Mr. Right in a collection of spot-on, hilarious vignettes based on her own obsessions. Recalling a variety of clothing and accessories, Anders tells of her sartorial sojourn in a book called "Men May Come and Men May Go ... But I've Still Got My Little Pink Raincoat." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Susan Isaacs "Past Perfect" Over a dozen years ago Katie Schottland was suddenly and without explanation fired from her job at the CIA. She never found out why. But now, in the new Susan Isaacs novel "Past Perfect," Katie may finally get the chance to learn the truth. A call out of the blue from a former colleague promises answers -- if everyone stays alive long enough. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James Mann "The China Fantasy" America's policy toward China is evolving, as China evolves. As the world's most populous country becomes an ever more prominent player, that policy will have to keep up, and author James Mann worries, in his new book "The China Fantasy" that it may not be keeping up very well. And that could have far-reaching consequences. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barbara Delinsky "Family Tree" In Barbara Delinsky's new novel "Family Tree," a baby is a blessing from heaven for a well-to-do couple from New England -- but the joy fades quickly when Dana and Hugh Clarke, who are white, realize their baby daughter looks distinctly African-American. As the story unfolds, difficult questions come tumbling out, and two families are tested. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Yael Goldstein "Overture" A woman's difficult relationship with her daughter is complicated by the fact they are both highly talented musicians, in Yael Goldstein's debut novel "Overture." It's a coming-of-age story, with a stormy romance or two thrown in for good measure. It's also a story of sacrifices and painful choices. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel After a series of bestselling nonfiction books that combine over-the-top humor with relationship advice and recipes, Jill Conner Browne turns, in her latest book, to fiction. Browne -- otherwise known as Her Royal Highness, Boss Queen of the Sweet Potato Queens -- uses the new book to explain, albeit in fiction, the history of the SPQ. Publishers Weekly calls Browne's debut "hilarious and heartwarming." It's called "The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel Stuff We Didn't Actually Do, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Linda Fairstein "Bad Blood" Manhattan assistant DA Alexandra Cooper faces a huge challenge, in Linda Fairstein's ninth mystery "Bad Blood." Alex is prosecuting an upscale young Manhattan businessman for the murder of his wife, but the evidence is circumstantial, and the man has a great alibi, and a great defense attorney. And then the plot takes a bizarre twist that tests, and ultimately proves, Fairstein's skill as a storyteller. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Elizabeth Gilbert "Eat, Pray, Love" After her marriage ended, and ended badly, Elizabeth Gilbert needed some way to recharge and redirect her life. She decided that what she needed was a systematic change of scenery, so she planned a yearlong journey to Italy, India, and Bali. Now she tells us about her twelve months of self-rediscovery in a bestselling book called "Eat, Pray, Love." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Richard Clarke "Breakpoint" It's the year 2012 in Richard Clarke's new thriller "Breakpoint," and new technology is emerging that promises -- or threatens -- to change the very definition of what it means to be human. And that has upset enough people, that some are driven to destruction. Communication networks, satellites, research labs are suddenly very naked and vulnerable targets. All this, from a man who is a longtime government counter-terrorism expert. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jennifer Ouellette "The Physics of the Buffyverse" It turns out that one of the most popular TV shows of recent years is also -- in its own way -- educational. Or so says science writer Jennifer Ouellette, who realized one evening while watching "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" that there was, indeed, some real science in the show about a teenage girl who fights monsters. Turns out that teleportation, alternate dimensions, and even Buffy's kickboxing skills have their basis in real scientific principles. Ouellette is author of the new book "The ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Donovan "The Autobiography of Donovan" Among the rock music superstars of the mid and late 1960s, there were the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan ... and Donovan, the Scottish-born original "flower child" whose musical influence was immense, for fans and fellow musicians alike. Now he talks about his youth, his music, and his legacy, in a book called "The Autobiography of Donovan." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carl Weber "The First Lady" Bishop T.K. Wilson is a popular pastor, whose wife Charlene has recently died from cancer, in Carl Weber's new novel "The First Lady." There are plenty of women who would like to become the next First Lady of the church, a circumstance Charlene foresaw -- and that's why she wrote deathbed letters to each of the four leading contenders, and to her husband. But will the letters have the effect Charlene had in mind? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jennifer Abrahamson "Sweet Relief" If you are ever tempted to believe that one person just can't make that much of an impact in the world, you need to read about Marla Ruzicka. The energetic 20-something California native made it her mission in life to improve the lives of the innocent victims of war. Her accomplishments were many and significant -- but her life's work was cut short by the ironic tragedy of her own death at the hands of a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2005. Marla's story is now told in a book by her friend, jour ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Adam Gopnik "Through the Children's Gate" When he and his family moved back to New York, after five years of living in Paris, "The New Yorker's" Adam Gopnik rediscovered his longtime love of the city. And he found that the city he returned to had changed in ways he could not have predicted. His new book of essays about the experience is called "Through the Children's Gate." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Larry Dossey "The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things" Modern medicine is a marvelous thing. Never before has science known so much about how the human body works, and how to fix it when it doesn't. But sometimes modern medicine is so enamored of the modern, and the highly scientific, that it forgets some of the simple things that we can all use to get and stay healthy. That's where Dr. Larry Dossey comes in. He's a holistic physician who seeks out the ordinary remedies that often have dramatic results. He talks about medical weapons such as mu ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Matthew Diffee "The Rejection Collection" It is perhaps the world's most selective venue for cartoonists. The New Yorker rejects thousands of cartoons each year, including quite a few by Matthew Diffee, who felt that many of those rejects deserved to be seen. Contacting his fellow cartoonists, Diffee compiled a collection of the best of the also-rans. It's a new book he calls "The Rejection Collection." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kinky Friedman "The Christmas Pig" Kinky Friedman's quixotic bid for Governor of Texas did nothing to diminish his desire to tell a good story. It did, however, diminish his time to write one, so his latest book is considerably shorter than his bestselling mysteries were. And this one is not a mystery, it's a Christmas tale, the story of a young boy and the task he is given that will change him. The book is called "The Christmas Pig." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marc Eliot "Jimmy Stewart: A Biography" He was always billed in the movies as James Stewart. Offscreen he liked to be called Jimmy, and to his best friend Henry Fonda -- and only to Fonda -- he was "Jim." Biographer Marc Eliot now tells Jimmy Stewart's story, from his upbringing in Pennsylvania, to his early years on stage at college, to his service as a bomber pilot in World War Two, to a string of movies in the 1950s that made him an undisputed megastar. Eliot's book is called "Jimmy Stewart: A Biography." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James McGreevey "The Confession" By the age of 36, James McGreevey was already a successful New Jersey politician, on the fast track to a major political career. He was elected governor in 2001, but by 2004 his administration came to a spectacular end, with McGreevey's disclosure that he had had an extramarital affair with a state employee -- and that he was gay. Now McGreevey shares how he got to that place in his life, and why he had to come out when and how he did. His book is called "The Confession." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website September 11th, Five Years Ago As you know, THE BOOKCAST is normally all about presenting interviews with the authors of the newest and most-talked-about books. But tomorrow is a sober anniversary for the U.S., and indeed, the world. It's been five years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. So I wanted to use this occasion to offer another chance to hear interviews with a few of those who published important books in the two years or so after the attacks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Derek Leebaert "To Dare and to Conquer" Military special operations have become well known to Americans in the years since the first Gulf War. We're all familiar, for example, with the laser-guided efficiency that toppled the Taliban just weeks after the 9/11 attacks. But special ops are nothing at all new, says historian Derek Leebaert. His book "To Dare And to Conquer" is a history of several centuries' worth of history-changing commando operations, going back to Biblical days. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sen. Byron Dorgan "Take This Job and Ship It" For years the U.S. has been exporting something that critics say has been steadily weakening our economy -- we're exporting jobs. Veteran North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan gives us the numbers, and shows us the consequences, of continuing to make more and more of the U.S. economy dependent on foreigners, at the expense of our own workers, in his book "Take This Job and Ship It." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robin Hazelwood "Model Student" Can a bright, intelligent, and very attractive 17-year-old succeed both as a highly-sought-after model, and a student at a demanding Ivy League college? We find out, in former model and Ivy League grad Robin Hazelwood's novel "Model Student." The heroine is 17-year-old Emily Woods, fresh from Wisconsin, who is learning that the big city isn't exactly what she thought it would be. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pamela Gien "The Syringa Tree" In 2001, South African-born actress and playwright Pamela Gien won an Obie Award for an autobiographical Broadway play called "The Syringa Tree." The story is told through the eyes of a white girl who, like Gien, grows up in apartheid-era South Africa. Now Gien tells her story in a novel, her first, also called "The Syringa Tree." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michelle Stimpson "Divas of Damascus Road" A family of highly-charged women is at the center of the latest novel by Michelle Stimpson, "Divas of Damascus Road." As the story unfolds, we find out that each of the women has a demon or two that she is wrestling with, and that each is struggling to find her way. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Diane Ladd "Spiraling Through the School of Life" Human beings spiral through life, always moving upward or downward, but never remaining static, says the author of a powerfully-worded new book. Oscar-nominated actress and motivational speaker Diane Ladd is also a teacher and a healer. And she calls her book "Spiraling Through the School of Life." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barry Eisler and Robert Baer Today, two former CIA intelligence officers, who each have new novels, join us to talk about their fiction and how close it may be to fact. Robert Baer, who wrote the book upon which they based the movie "Syriana" calls his first novel "Blow the House Down." And in it Baer presents a credible alternate theory about 9/11. We'll meet him in a few minutes, but first, Barry Eisler, whose latest book in his very popular series about the government assassin John Rain, who wants to get out of the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marita Golden "After" A young man is shot and killed by a police officer in suburban Washington, DC one night, altering the worlds of two families in ways often unexpected, in Marita Golden's novel "After." Golden uses the aftermath of the shooting, which turns out to have been a tragic mistake, to show how far-reaching the impact of such an incident is. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carolyn Parkhurst "Lost and Found" A group of TV reality show contestants find that the game is changing them in ways both subtle and profound, in the novel by Carolyn Parkhurst called "Lost and Found." While competing with each other, the pairs of contestants are also forming alliances, declaring some relationships dead, and admitting to secret desires. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brad Thor "Takedown" In the post-9/11 world New York remains a prime terrorist target, but in Brad Thor's thriller "Takedown" a horrific -- and utterly believable -- attack on Manhattan is only the beginning of the trouble, because it's not what it appears to be. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carolyn See "There Will Never Be Another You" In the Los Angeles of the very near future, a societal post-9/11 anxiety is a constant companion as one family tries to deal with smaller, family-type anxieties, in Carolyn See's novel "There Will Never Be Another You." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New satires by Gary Shteyngart and Scott Anderson Today, the absurdities of war, U.S. foreign intervention, politics, and, not least, love are carefully drawn out in two new novels. Journalist Scott Anderson calls his new satire, set in a fictitious Arab kingdom, "Moonlight Hotel." We'll meet Scott Anderson in a few minutes, but first, Gary Shteyngart, whose new book is called "Absurdistan." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paul Waldman "Being Right Is Not Enough" Liberals, or progressives, if you prefer to call them that, need to take a lesson from America's conservatives, if they want to regain political power. So says a fellow liberal, Paul Waldman, the former associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. In his book "Being Right is Not Enough," Waldman directly addresses why conservatives keep winning and why liberals will have to steal their playbook. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barbara Leaming "Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman" Sometimes a change of perspective offers some critical new piece of information about someone or something that we thought we already thoroughly knew. At least that's the thinking behind biographer Barbara Leaming's book about President John F. Kennedy. She was well aware that virtually every aspect of Kennedy's life has been very closely scrutinized -- except one, as she now lays out in her book "Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Augusten Burroughs "Possible Side Effects" Publishers Weekly says writer Augusten Burroughs has "superb comic sensibility," and a voice that is "alternately caustic and warm, bitchy and self-deprecating." Burroughs' many talents are on display again in his new collection of autobiographical essays called "Possible Side Effects." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Douglas Brinkley "The Great Deluge" When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the fall of 2005, among the many thousands of people directly impacted was historian Douglas Brinkley, who teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans. Now he has written one of the first detailed accounts of the week of hell, a book called "The Great Deluge" in which he tries to put into context the response to one of the worst disasters in American history. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Howell Raines "The One That Got Away" By 2001, veteran newspaperman Howell Raines had reached the top of his profession, with his appointment as executive editor of the New York Times. Within less than two years, Raines was painfully pulled down from that lofty perch by the Jayson Blair scandal at the Times, an episode that forced him to reassess his life and his career. One result of his rumination is his new memoir "The One That Got Away." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Michele Turk "Blood, Sweat and Tears" Anytime and anyplace there is a disaster, natural or manmade, there will soon afterward be volunteers from the Red Cross. The American Red Cross has been coming to the aid of those in need for 125 years. Now journalist and former Red Cross employee Michele Turk tells the organization's story, in an oral history called "Blood, Sweat and Tears." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Philip Beard and DBC Pierre Today we'll talk with the authors of two new and noteworthy novels. DBC Pierre joins us for a talk about his book "Ludmila's Broken English," in which a young woman who gets involved in a Russian-brides internet scam comes to meet two men who, until very very recently, had actually been conjoined twins. We'll meet DBC Pierre in a few minutes, but first, Philip Beard, whose debut novel "Dear Zoe" was told in the voice of a grieving teenager. His new one, "Lost in the Garden" is told by a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gay Talese "A Writer's Life" Whether it's profiling boxer Floyd Patterson, or trying to track down Frank SInatra, or chronicling an American mob family, or revealing the true nature of modern American mores about sex, journalist and author Gay Talese has always been at the cutting edge of his profession. Now, in his first substantially new book since 1992, called "A Writer's Life," Talese pulls back the curtain just enough to let us see how he works. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gloria Loring "Living With Type 2 Diabetes" When her son was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes several years ago, actress and singer Gloria Loring made it her business to do what she could to fight the disease that affects millions of Americans. Her book, for those with diabetes as well as their family members, is called "Living With Type 2 Diabetes." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jane and Michael Stern "Two For the Road" For years and years now, Jane and Michael Stern have traveled America, in search of the best places to eat. You won't see them, however, at Olive Garden, or Denny's, or Applebee's. The Sterns have made it their task to seek out the places where the food is unique, and cooked with the individual touch that only a small restaurant can accomplish. They've written several books about the restaurants, and the food, and now they've written a book about their never-ending journey, called "Two F ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sebastian Junger "A Death in Belmont" In the early 1960s, a serene suburb of Boston was panicked by a murder, its first ever. And what's more, the killing appeared to be the handiwork of the infamous Boston Strangler. One of the families who lived in Belmont in 1963 was the Jungers, and now bestselling author Sebastian Junger, who was just a toddler at that time, investigates the story that has captivated his family for years. His book is called "A Death in Belmont." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ross King and Joyce Chaplin Today we're going back to 19th century Paris, where the era of Impressionism in art is beginning to take hold, as we talk with Ross King about his new book "The Judgment of Paris." But first we're going back even further, to the 18th century, as historian Joyce Chaplin reveals the scientific side of the most iconic of American founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, in her new book "The First Scientific American." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James Morrow "The Last Witchfinder As the European witchhunts were winding down, Salem, in the New World, was just heating up, and that's how a man whose job it is to find witches winds up in Massachusetts, in James Morrow's novel "The Last Witchfinder." But that man is not the main character of the story. That designation belongs to his daughter Jennet, who rebels against her father's line of work -- which later becomes her brother's -- at tremendous risk to her reputation, but also to her very life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barry Werth, Robert Dallek and Terry Golway Barry Werth joins us to talk about his new book "31 Days," which focuses on that tense month between the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon and the historic pardon from Gerald Ford. We'll hear from Barry Werth in a few minutes. But first, Robert Dallek and Terry Golway, whose new book reexamines the political career of John F. Kennedy through his public speeches. It's called "Let Every Nation Know." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Louis Uchitelle "The Disposable American" Why have layoffs reached epic proportions in America? How did we get here? And can we ever again have real job security, like our parents and grandparents had? New York Times business reporter Louis Uchitelle shows how layoffs have become a first resort, instead of a last, in his book "The Disposable American." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paul Rusesabagina "An Ordinary Man" He's been called Rwanda's Oskar Schindler. He was portrayed by actor Don Cheadle in the movie "Hotel Rwanda." And now Paul Rusesabagina has written a memoir, putting the full horror of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in heartbreaking clarity and perspective. His book is called "An Ordinary Man." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes Whether you're a longtime devotee of NBC's daytime drama "Days Of Our Lives" or not, you probably know who Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes are. They are known to the show's viewers as Doug and Julie, and have now written a memoir of their romance, both the on-screen version and the real-life version. It's a book calledLike Sands Through the Hourglass. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams & Tom Graham March Madness comes to a conclusion tomorrow night with the crowning of the NCAA men's basketball champion. It wasn't that long ago that college basketball was for whites only. The man who broke through that barrier was named Bill Garrett, and author Tom Graham tells his story in a new book called . We'll talk with Tom Graham in a few minutes. But first, the book the entire nation is talking about, the book that claims to have the proof that prominent athletes have used steroids, including ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Francesca Segre & Hilma Wolitzer Today, it's the stories of two daughters. Acclaimed writer Hilma Wolitzer will be with us to talk about , her first novel in 12 years, a story of a middle-aged woman who must reevaluate her life as it begins to crumble around her. We'll meet Hilma Wolitzer in a few minutes, but first, Francesca Segre, whose debut novel was actually inspired by her own real-life experience of watching her mother walk down the aisle. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Frank Warren What's your secret, the one thing you've never told anyone, maybe not even yourself? One man from Maryland is inspiring people to finally reveal those secrets. Frank Warren began by asking people to anonymously send him a postcard. Then he began posting those postcards on a website, and now it's become a global phenomenon.PostSecret, the book, features some of those postcards and the secrets that are finally seeing the light of day. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lynn Nicholas "Cruel World" From Norway to Spain, from Russia to England, millions of children were affected by the policies of the Nazis in World War Two. While German children were being drawn into Aryan Nazi culture, the children of Leningrad starved to death, Spanish youngsters were left homeless, and girls from Norway were brought to Germany to breed. Lynn Nicholas, author of the acclaimedRape of Europa, now tells the story of the children of the war, in her bookCruel World. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ted Bell "Pirate" China poses the gravest threat the U.S. has ever had to face, in Ted Bell's thrillerPirate, but he also provides just the hero to neutralize the threat: intelligence operative Alex Hawke.Pirateis the third book in a series featuring Hawke, who this time out is called upon to stop a plot that could launch World War Three. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lucia St. Clair Robson&Charles Cerami The theme today is patriots -- young patriots and shadow patriots. July of 1776 was a time when people's true loyalties were sometimes obscure. That's the world shown to us by Lucia St. Clair Robson in her historical novelShadow Patriots. Then, in Charles Cerami's nonfictionYoung Patriots, we are reminded that the two main architects of the Constitution -- James Madison and Alexander Hamilton -- were not old fogies, but energetic young guys. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Steven Heine "White Collar Zen" There are all kinds of philosophies for succeeding in the modern workplace -- not sweating the small stuff, extreme success, how full is your bucket -- and then there are the ancient principles of Zen Buddhism. Steven Heine is a professor of religious studies and history at Florida International University and a prominent authority on Buddhism. His purpose in writingWhite Collar Zenwas to show how Zen concepts can be much more useful than anything you picked up reading Dilbert. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Linda Greenhouse "Becoming Justice Blackmun" As the U.S. Senate prepares to begin confirmation hearings for the president's Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, it's a good time to look back a few years, to the high court career of a Nixon appointee who achieved his greatest notoriety on the Supreme Court just three years into his 24-year tenure. Harry Blackmun died in 1999, leaving behind an astounding collection of paper that New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse has used in writing her new bookBecoming Justice Blac ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marc Romano "Crossworld" Every day millions of Americans go through a common ritual, an intellectual exercise that is as addictive as it can be exhilarating -- or maddening. It's the crossword puzzle. Among its acknowledged devotees is writer Marc Romano, whose book is calledCrossworld. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hendrik Hertzberg "Politics" For nearly forty years Hendrik Hertzberg has been commenting on American politics, from his perch at the New Republic, the New Yorker, and even speechwriting for President Jimmy Carter. Now he has collected some of his favorite essays in a book that spans a turbulent period in American politics. His book is calledPolitics. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Isabel Losada "A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World" It is much too easy in today's global community to assume that one person is, more or less, powerless to make very big changes. But that assumption is wrong, says English entertainer -- and activist -- Isabel Losada. When she adopted the cause of freedom for Tibet, she was hooked. Her book is calledA Beginner's Guide to Changing the World. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hollis Gillespie "Confessions of a Recovering Slut" Flight attendant turned columnist and NPR commentator Hollis Gillespie is becoming one of Atlanta, Georgia's favorite writers. From her very modest home in one of the city's more challenged neighborhoods, Gillespie has earned a serious following with her autobiographical essays. Her first book was calledBleachy-Haired Honky Bitch. Her new book carries the equally subtle title ofConfessions of a Recovering Slut. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Richard Marcinko "Vengeance"&John Weisman "Direct Action" It's a BOOKCAST twin-spin -- Richard Marcinko and John Weisman. After years of collaborating on several of Marcinko'sRogue Warriorbooks, Marcinko and Weisman went their separate ways in 2002.Vengeanceis Marcinko's newest Rogue Warrior book, while John Weisman's latest thriller is calledDirect Action. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dr. Mehmet Oz "You: The Owner's Manual" What if when you were born, the hospital had sent you and your parents home with an owner's manual? What if you had a reference book to explain how your body works, how to keep it running properly, and how to tell the difference between a little problem and a big problem? The idea of a comprehensive, but easy to read, user's guide was the inspiration forYou: The Owner's Manual, by Dr. Mehmet Oz. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Edna Buchanan "Shadows" An old house on the Miami waterfront is about to be torn down, in Edna Buchanan's mysteryShadows, but the police get involved after a tip that there's something in that old house they better have a look at before it's too late. And what they find makes a very cold case suddenly very hot again. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kevin Smokler "Bookmark Now" A National Endowment for the Arts report in the summer of 2004 that concluded the Internet seemed to be hurting America's reading habits fueled fears that young people will no longer choose writing books as a career. Those fears are unfounded, says book critic and commentator Kevin Smokler, editor of aBookmark Now, in which a couple of dozen very talented young writers explain why they embrace books. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Geneva Holliday "Groove" Four 30-something New Yorkers seeking love and happiness find that they may actually be able to help each other, in the Geneva Holliday novelGroove. One thing that makes the book unusual is that Geneva Holliday is also one of those four characters. And, the author is already well-known to readers, just not under this name, for Geneva Holliday is actually the bestselling novelist Bernice McFadden. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bernard Goldberg "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America" Who are the people who are really screwing up America? Everyone's list will be different, but one man's list has become a bestseller. Journalist Bernard Goldberg calls his book100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Among those Goldberg identifies as screwing up America are the likes of Al Franken, Ted Kennedy, Dan Rather, Barbra Streisand, and coming in at #1, Michael Moore. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Elizabeth Kostova "The Historian" A teenage girl's discovery of a centuries-old book in her father's library gets her heart pumping. Then she discovers a stack of very old letters, all of which begin with the ominous greeting, "My dear and unfortunate successor..." In Elizabeth Kostova's debut novelThe Historian, the book and the letters seem to point to the possibility that the medieval Vlad the Impaler -- also known as Dracula -- is still alive. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joel Garreau "Radical Evolution" When it comes to genetic engineering, science fiction is being overtaken by science fact, says Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau, whose bookRadical Evolutionis a book that may be at once both exhilirating and terrifying. While there are certainly innovations and discoveries that will make us stronger and healthier humans, other developments could threaten the very future of humankind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jessica Cutler "The Washingtonienne" In the summer of 2004, a young, low-ranking staffer for a U.S. Senator turned Capitol Hill on its ear with her online blog that carried details of her sexual encounters with, among others, a Bush administration official and a staffer for another Senator. Jessica Cutler was summarily fired from her government job, but has now written a novel about .. a young Capitol Hill staffer who is fired after her sexy emails come to light. Her book is calledThe Washingtonienne. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Remembering Ed McBain Contemporary American literature lost a major figure when Evan Hunter -- also known as Ed McBain --died last week at age 78. Writing as McBain, Hunter is credited with creating the police-procedural genre, with his 87th Precinct series of mysteries. The Mystery Writers of America gave McBain its Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986. I interviewed Evan Hunter-Ed McBain several times over the years, including this 1995 talk after publication of his 46th book in the 87th Prec ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lisa Scottoline "Devil's Corner" When a federal prosecutor's partner is murdered during a meeting with a confidential informant, who is also killed, it launches a series of events that could also cost that prosecutor her life, in Lisa Scottoline's mystery thrillerDevil's Corner. Scottoline was inspired by a real-life trial in Philadelphia involving a brutal drug gang. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dean Karnazes "Ultramarathon Man" For a lot of us, running a mile or two is enough to cause some serious pain. Running a marathon is unthinkable. But Dean Karnazes runs ultramarathons. He recently ran 262 miles nonstop -- the equivalent of 10 marathons, like running from Dallas to Houston. Now Karnazes tells why he does it, in his bookUltramarathon Man-- which he didn't even stop running, to write. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ingrid Newkirk "Making Kind Choices" As consumers, we make choices, large and small, every day -- what to eat, what kind of clothes to buy, what kind of furniture we want. Smart consumers can use those decisions to improve the planet, says our guest today on THE BOOKCAST. Ingrid Newkirk is president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But her bookMaking Kind Choicesis not limited to doing kind things for animals, although that is a key part of the book. It's about making choices that will be environmentally awar ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barbara Kline "White House Nannies" When the wealthy and powerful of Washington, D.C. need a nanny, they are likely to turn to the company that Barbara Kline runs, called White House Nannies. For the last twenty years, Kline has been providing power couples in the nation's capital with their in-home childcare, a task that requires the protocol skill of a diplomat, the tenacity of a lobbyist, and the hard nose of a K Street lawyer. And now Kline shows us inside her business, in her bookWhite House Nannies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Umberto Eco "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" Very often, fiction writers don't really, consciously know what they are writing about until after it's on paper. It may be something they have been unable to face in real life. The newest book by the great Italian writer Umberto Eco -- author of such acclaimed books asFoucault's PendulumandThe Name of the Rose-- is about a man, about his age, who awakens from a coma with a peculiar form of amnesia. Yambo can remember everything he's ever read, but can't remember a thing about himself. So ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Edward Klein "The Truth About Hillary" Is Hillary Rodham Clinton fit to be President of the United States? Those who say no are finding confirmation of their opinion in a book by author and former New York Times Magazine editor Edward Klein. But it's also been roundly criticized by Clinton supporters, and even by a few conservatives, largely because of the number of unnamed sources Klein relies on, and because of what they say are mere unsubstantiated rumors. Klein's book is calledThe Truth About Hillary. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bookcast 19 Jun 2005 - "Nanny 911" They are known to TV viewers as Nanny Deb and Nanny Stella, and they get the call when parents need help with their out of control kids. Stars of the Fox TV reality show "Nanny 911," Deborah Carroll and Stella Reid are experienced, working nannies who share their expertise with desperate parents. They do the same in their book, also calledNanny 911. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bookcast 17 Jun 2005 - Naomi Wolf "The Treehouse" When the time came to build a treehouse for her young daughter, noted feminist scholar Naomi Wolf turned to the person she knew could offer just the kind of help she needed, her father. But as she explains in her book "The Treehouse," what she got from teacher and poet Leonard Wolf were only nominally lessons about construction of a treehouse. She realized he was teaching her something much more profound. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bookcast June 16, 2005 - Steven Sorrentino "Luncheonette" This book will make a superb Father's Day gift! It was one Christmas Eve a number of years ago that a young man who had left his small New Jersey hometown to seek fame and fortune in New York City was suddenly yanked back home, to take over his father's little luncheonette, after Dad suffered a serious illness. That young man was Steven Sorrentino, who had to postpone his acting and singing ambitions, but who learned priceless lessons. He tells the story now in his memoir. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bookcast June 15, 2005 - Dean Koontz "Velocity" A California bartender's quiet and low-key life is turned into a ride of terror by a sadistic killer, in the Dean Koontz thriller "Velocity." Billy Wiles is the object of the cruelty -- but there may be a reason he was targeted. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bookcast June 12, 2005 - Stephen Borelli "How About That!" To generations of sports fans, Mel Allen was the New York Yankees. His was the voice that called thousands of games, and brought the drama and majesty of big league baseball to millions. The story of this Alabama-born, Jewish law school graduate is now told in Stephen Borelli's biography,How About That! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mystery Monday - June 6, 2005 "Mystery Monday" - Jerrilyn Farmer takes her series heroine Madeleine Bean to the sunny shores of Hawaii inThe Flaming Luau of Death. It's supposed to be a bridal shower, but when threats start coming -- and a dead body turns up -- the party's over. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mystery Monday - May 30, 2005 "Mystery Monday" - Michael Connelly, once called "the best mystery writer in the world," continues his immensely popular Harry Bosch series of L.A. mysteries withThe Closers, in which Harry is reinstated with the LAPD. But has Harry changed? Mellowed? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mystery Monday - May 23, 2005 "Mystery Monday" - Former federal prosecutor Michele Martinez makes her mystery debut with a shocking story of a young and ambitious U.S. Attorney who has to fight to get the case that could end with her death. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website