All About Books

Robert McFarland is a naturalist who is also a gifted writer. His latest book is joyful and mind-expanding journey towards an ancient idea- should we think of rivers as living beings? Hear a review of “Is a River Alive?”

Their high school hockey team is so bad, it probably won’t take the ice again next year. This uncertain future is where the main character, Tommy finds himself in the novel “Small Ceremonies” by Kyle Edwards. It’s story of friendships and struggles for a group of Native high students in Winnipeg

The vast American prairie is an ecological marvel- home to bison, elk, wolves and prairie dogs. The changes made on this environment by European settlers and their agricultural methods are the subject of “Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie.”

One hundred years in the future, a lonely British scholar longs for our time as he chases a poem written in 2014. He’s captivated by what he imagines were the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. It’s the carefully plotted literary novel, “What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan.

This 1925 novel deals with topics very relevant today: the value of a university education, and the costs of war. “The Professor’s House” by Willa Cather has been released for the Oxford World Classics series, authored by Cather scholar Dr. Melissa Holmstead of UNL. Dr. Holmstead will be the guest on this week's All About Books.

Smith is a queer Black Stanford graduate arrested for cocaine possession. In the novel “Great Black Hope”, author Rob Franklin shows a young man protected by his class but betrayed by his race.

In her new collection of personal essays, UNL Professor of English Lisa Knopp uses an older meaning of the verb ravel- to entangle. In Ravelings: Essays on Love, Loss, and Wonder, she contemplates loss, change as well as connection and joy.

The One Book One Nebraska selection for this year is “The Antidote” by Karen Russell. Set in a fictional Nebraska town during the Great Depression, the novel looks at a struggling rural community and what people choose to forget.

It’s a very unique biography of the famous Regency author. “Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen” by graphic artist Kate Evans combines drama, comedy, and historically immersive detail to bring Jane Austen’s story to life with dynamic artwork

Deep in the English countryside, two neighboring families find themselves in nearly identical situations- a baby on the way and the relationship beginning to fade. The harshest winter in living memory traps the families with their long-kept secret resentments. "The Land in Winter: a Novel" by Andrew Miller