Originally from Sydney Nebraska, author Dan Chaon is the guest this week. His latest novel “One of Us”, is a playfully dark thriller about orphaned twins on the run from their murderous uncle who find refuge in a bizarre traveling carnival.

Last week’s program featured gift ideas for adult readers, this week we’ll look at books for young people. Ali Bousquet, Youth Services and Outreach Coordinator for Lincoln City Libraries has suggestions for books perfect for early readers and their families.

This week it's the annual holiday gift giving guide for book lovers. Local bookseller Leslie Huerta returns with suggestions for every interest. She’ll introduce new fiction, biography, mysteries, and books about Nebraska. Listen before you shop!

Recently retired UNL English Professor Steve Buhler returns to All About Books with a guest review of “Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys” by Mariana Enriquez. A book of essays looking at noteworthy cemetery’s history, architecture, saints and ghosts.

Making Art seems to be a universal human activity. Why is that, and what does Art actually do? This is explored by composer and music producer Brian Eno in his book “What Art Does: an Unfinished Theory”. It’s a playful and richly illustrated look at Art in our lives.

The book began with a trip to Buchenwald Memorial near Weimar, Germany. UNO English Professor John Price was inspired by a memorial at a massive oak stump- all that was left of a famous oak tree mentioned in German literature and music. “Goethe’s Oak: a Holocaust Memorial” imagines the history this famous tree experienced over the centuries of its long life. Hear an interview with author John Price

On Halloween week, All About Books welcomes UNL Professor of English Dr. Michael Page who will introduce a Gothic thriller and the era that created them. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

In her memoir, Deborah Jackson Taffa traces how, as a mixed-tribe native girl growing up in the 70’s and 80’s she came to her own understanding of identity. Hear a review of “Whiskey Tender: A Memoir of Family and Survival on and off the Reservation.”

The Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder painted a vivid sense of place with the weather on the Great Plains playing an important role. Dr. Barbara Boustead is a meteorologist and Wilder scholar who researched the accuracy of these stories’ descriptions of blizzards, tornadoes and floods. Hear an interview with Dr. Boustead about her book “Wilder Weather”

On January 28, 1986, a little over a minute into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. The full story of what happened before and after that day is revealed in the new book, “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space” by Adam Higginbotham.