Sarah Byrn Rickman completes her trilogy of books on the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) with WASP of the Ferry Command: Women Pilots, Uncommon Deeds. Rickman, who first appeared on this program 15 years ago for her first book about WASPs has deep roots in the Dayton community. Rickman was a journalist for many years in Centerville/Washington Township and in this interview she explains how her journalistic endeavors ultimately put her in the position to become intrigued by the WASPs and

Wendy Gamber is a professor of history at Indiana University. She was spending a lot of time poring over Indiana newspaper archives from the mid to late 19th century and she kept seeing a particular name being cited in numerous articles. A woman named Mrs. Clem was the subject of extensive newspaper coverage in the Indianapolis region for a number of years. Gamber was struck by the frequency of those mentions and she decided to investigate further. She discovered a story that made newspaper

The early history of New England is filled with stories about the interactions that took place between the native peoples who were the original residents of the region and the European settlers who were in the process of dislodging the original inhabitants and taking their lands. During the late 17th century the tensions between the colonists and the local tribes became so intense that some of the native people decided to fight back. The resulting bloodshed unsettled the region for many years to

The new novel by Raul Ramos y Sanchez is quite different from his previous books. In his latest effort "The Skinny Years" Sanchez has mined his memories of being a young Cuban immigrant living in Miami during the 1960's. While this fiction has some elements of autobiography they primarily serve to make this story ring true. Sanchez was there and his protagonist, a youth with the nickname of "Skinny" is slowly becoming a man. We follow Skinny's adventures over a ten year period. 1960's Miami is

Recently I had another opportunity to interview James Lee Burke. The first time I interviewed Jim was in 1997 when he came out to our studios in Yellow Springs for a live interview for his novel "Cimarron Rose." Over the course of our many conversations I have gotten to know him a little bit. He's a wonderful writer because he has such a great mind and a swirling imagination. He's also a scholar. Jim's breadth of knowledge of history, literature, and his craft never ceases to impress me. In his

Over the last several years we have been encountering some rather unreliable narrators in novels. "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins featured the most notable one so far. Fiona Barton gave us another one in "The Widow." And now Camilla Way is tantalizing readers with dueling unreliable narrators in her tense psychological thriller "Watching Edie." Edie is one of those two narrators. She is describing her experiences in the present day. Her chapters alternate with those being told from the

Earlier this year I had the novelist Lisa Lutz on the program and I asked her for suggestions on any books and writers that I should be reading. She told me that I had to check out the work of Megan Abbott. So I did. That was a lovely suggestion. Megan's latest novel "You Will Know Me" is a tense psychological thriller about a family that has become completely immersed in the world of gymnastics. There are just the four of them; the mother, the father, the sister, and the little brother. The