55 pages into this dark, compelling 1963 mystery , one word changes everything! Mystery enthusiast Joan Worley joined me to explore this fascinating example of West Coast Noir.

How do we remain hopeful in the face of ongoing injustice? a conversation with San Antonio Express-News columnist Cary Clack about his powerful new book, More Finish Lines to Cross: Notes on Race, Redemption, and Hope.

This wonderfully subtle novella reveals the adult world through a child's eyes, revealing layers of meaning within everyday life. Chris Gardner explored those layers with me.

What happens when an Irish photographer and a Jewish medical student fall wildly in love as their country moves inexorably towards war? Author Anna Bliss talks with me about her compelling debut novel, which opens in 1936 and Nazi sympathizers march through the heavily Jewish East End of London.

Call the Midwife is based on this wrenching memoir that takes you on a lice-infested, thin-blanket journey into the London workhouse. You’re cold. Sick. Unemployed. Your 9 children starving. Where else do you go? Better than the streets, surely. But residents tell a different story. So come. Join flies, fleas, and roaches on stony walls as Nurse Jenny bears witness. At least you won’t be alone. 

Global warming is already doing major damage. Why are we ignoring it? Dr Rebecca Bell-Metereau and I explore David Wallace-Wells' scary, beautifully written book.

It's a best-seller that's become a TV series and a graphic novel, but no one is completely sure of the author's identity. Garrie Borden and I ponder the power of this compelling novel.

Chris Gardner joined me for a discussion of Barbara Kingsolver's brilliant contemporary re-imagining of the Dickens classic "David Copperfield," a profoundly moving examination of poverty, addiction, and resilience in the face of injustice!

The

novel features two settings—South China in the late 18-early 19 hundreds, and a

futuristic North America between 2044 and 2062. In this world, apparently run

by corporations, people live either in walled communities like “Serendipity” or

in the dangerous “unregulated zone.” The North American protagonist narrator,

Miranda, might be a reincarnation of the South China protagonist narrator, Nu

Wa, and both young women seem to be part fish. Similarly, Miranda’s lover, Evie,

seems to reembody the Salt Fish Girl Nu Wa loves. Each plot has a number of

digressions as the women seek to survive and thrive in sometimes hostile

environments.

A community reading of the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol" from the KZSM studios in San Marcos, Texas.