Colorado-based Paul Holes, author of UNMASKED, specializes in cold case and serial predator crimes. He began his career in the Contra Costa County (CA) Sheriff's and District Attorney's Offices in California's Bay Area.

He led the team that found the Golden State Killer, the most notorious and cunning serial predator in U.S. history who hid in plain sight for more than 40 years.  

His memoir of investigating America’s toughest cold cases and the rewards and toll of a life solving crime also includes details of Laci Peterson’s murder and the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard.

He continues his work today applying innovative technology, including genetic genealogy, which was the key to identifying the Golden State Killer.

After dozens of travel guidebooks under his belt, Brandon Presser’s newest title is THE FAR LAND: 200 Years of Murder, Mania, And Mutiny In The South Pacific.

The mutiny on the British navy vessel HMS Bounty occurred in the South Pacific in 1789 when Fletcher Christian and his followers seized the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh. 

In 1808, an American merchant ship happened upon an uncharted island in the area and unwittingly solved the biggest nautical mystery of the era. They found the whereabouts of the Bounty’s band of fugitives who, after seizing their vessel, had disappeared into the night with their Tahitian companions.

Seven or so generations later, the island’s past still looms over its 48 residents-- descendants of the original mutineers, marooned like modern castaways. Today only a rusty cargo ship connects Pitcairn with the rest of the world a few times a year.

In WAYS & MEANS. Lincoln and his Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, author Roger Lowenstein not only spells out how each side in very different ways paid for the war, but reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. 

Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

In our conversation he also describes the several ways that Mr. Putin in his invasion of Ukraine today are similar to what the Confederacy did more than 150 years ago.

Lowenstein is the author of 7 books, Including "America's Bank" and "Origins of the Crash." He reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, and his work appears in numerous other financial publications.  

Ted Conover's IMMERSION: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO GOING DEEP shares the how-to’s of his trade that he had to learn the hard way. How to get in, how to be ethical, and how to avoid being Googled are just a few of his topics he discusses.

Ted has ridden the rails with hoboes, crossed the border with Mexican immigrants, and butchered beef in a meat-packing plant in Nebraska. His day job is teaching at New York University. He is also the author of five other books and numerous articles published in The New Yorker, Harper’s and The Atlantic, among many others. Perhaps his best-known book is “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,” an account of his ten months spent working as a corrections officer at New York’s Sing Sing Prison.

This conversation with Ted Conover took place several years ago. His newest book, Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge, will be released later this year.

ANGELS OF THE PACIFIC by Elise Hooper (her fourth novel) tells the powerful story of American army and navy nurses kept as prisoners for nearly three years during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II.

Many of them had fled the hardships of the Great Depression at home before the war for the glamour and adventure of Manila, one of the most desirable postings in the world.

But everything changed when the Japanese army invaded with lightning speed and devastating results only hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

These angels of the Pacific served on the front lines until captured as prisoners of war on Corregidor, a US post on a fortified island near Manila, and subsequently held behind the high stone walls of Manila's Santo Tomas Internment Camp.

This book is dedicated to the author’s grandfather who served in the US Navy in the Pacific during the war.

Early in Brit Bennett’s “THE VANISHING HALF” light-skinned Desiree and Stella, now age 16, run off to New Orleans, two hours away. But "after a year, the twins scattered, their lives splitting as evenly as their shared egg. Stella became white and Desiree married the darkest man she could find."

It’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities.

One sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.

Yet the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?

Bob Shea has written and illustrated over a dozen children's picture books. His newest is the award-winning “CHEZ BOB,” a story about a lazy yellow alligator named Bob who is intent on gobbling birds.

To that end, he opens Chez Bob, a bird restaurant, on his nose. It becomes so popular that Bob finds himself a pillar of the bird community. Bob even coaches a local bird basketball team and joins a bird book club. 

What happens next to Bob in this story, is he going to learn to love, too?

Tune in to find out why he and the alligator have the same name and his answer when the first-graders at school visits predictably ask him if he's rich. 

"THE STEAL. The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It," co-authored by Mark Bowden, concentrates in week-by-week, state-by-state fashion on the 64 days between Election Day, November 3 and January 5th, 2021.

All the judges in the 61 election lawsuits during this period made their unanimous decisions against Trump’s claims based on the law. So did the election workers at many levels in the six swing states, regardless of their party affiliations, who refused to change the votes.

The only elected officials who objected to certifying the 2020 Electoral College results were in Washington DC. They are all Republicans and include 8 Senators and 139 members of the House of Representatives. Their names appear in the back of the book.

The book is co-authored by journalists Mark Bowden (his 15th) and Matthew Teague (his first).

Can a lawyer in their first courtroom case win against the mighty power of the US federal government? Yes, she did. The Farmer’s Lawyer by North Dakota attorney and advocate Sarah Vogel is a memoir about her successful landmark class action lawsuit against the federal government.

She did it on behalf of 240,000 family farmers facing illegal foreclosures during the 1980s farm crisis in the President Reagan years.

Sarah Vogel is also the first woman elected Commissioner of Agriculture in the US. She served in that position in North Dakota for two terms and has become one of the foremost agriculture lawyers in the United States.

You might want to tune in to hear Sarah’s answer to “Who is the best friend of the small farmer today?” Maybe you will be as surprised as I was.

Prolific (36 books) storyteller Ken Follett, author of the contemporary thriller NEVER, says, “When I was doing the research for “Fall of Giants” I was shocked to realize that the First World War was a war that nobody wanted…I came to believe that it was all a tragic accident. And I wondered: Could that happen again?”

His compelling book speaks to our political times while it travels the world. It brims with heroines and villains, false prophets and elite warriors, jaded politicians and opportunistic revolutionaries.

Two elite western intelligence agents in the Sahara Desert track drug-smuggling terrorists. Nearby, a beautiful young widow in Chad fights against human traffickers. A senior Chinese spy battles against older Communist hawks who support North Korea and hate the west. Meanwhile, US President Pauline Green navigates terrorist attacks, illegal arms trading, and the smear campaigns of her political opponent with careful and deft diplomacy. But what’s next for her?

More than a thriller, NEVER is about the impossible decisions and unforeseen consequences that could lead to the next world war. It is a cautionary tale for our times.