Booktalk with Diana Korte

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.

Prompted by the onset of Covid, Doughty has created a book that is a charming collection of lists, musings, prompts, and illustrations—from the extraordinary to the everyday, from the big to the little.  Here are examples.  Best advice. Handwritten thank-you notes. A stroll through the park at dusk, just as the crickets start to hum. 

One of my favorites is that YouTube video of “Uptown Funk” set to dance clips from old movies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Another is the “Little Pieces of Hope” Playlist of 19 songs from the book.  

“Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr takes readers on a 600-year epic journey.

There are three storylines: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city wall during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and gentle octogenarian Zeno, in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for a distant exoplanet, decades from now.

A single copy of an ancient text—the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land—provides solace, mystery, and the most profound human connection to this group of characters.

An author of six books, Doerr’s last book, “All the Light We Cannot See,” about people and events during World War II won a Pulitzer Prize and is being produced as a series for Netflix. 

Bestselling, award-winning historian Nathaniel Philbrick's "Travels with George" is a blended account of two road trips separated by about 230 years.  

In the fall of 1789, Washington, only six months into his presidency, set out on his first of four road trips as he attempted to unite what were in essence thirteen independent states into a single nation. 

In the fall of 2018, Philbrick, his wife Melissa, and their dog Dora set out on their own series of road trips as they retraced Washington’s route across the country.  

As for the style of travel, the Philbricks journeyed in a comfortable car with GPS. George traveled in a carriage pulled by four horses.  But ever the soldier, when he neared a town, he’d slip out of the carriage dressed in his general’s uniform, mount his big white horse, and ride down the main thoroughfare to thunderous acclaim.    

Dylan Thuras is co-author of "Gastro Obscura A Food Adventurer’s Guide," a book with 500 entries that span all seven continents and fifty states. Complete with photographs and illustrations, it’s all about food that ranges from the Antarctica Base Stations’ often elegant cuisine for scientists to the largest Asian night market in North America at Richmond in British Columbia. 

But then there's also Elvis’ favorite sandwich, the Fool’s Gold (peanut butter + blueberry jam + bacon on white bread), created in a now defunct restaurant in Denver CO. Story goes that Elvis once flew from Graceland to Denver with friends on his Boeing 727 private jet back in the 1970s just so they could share his cross-country indulgence.  Fool’s Gold is still on the menu today at Nick’s Café in Golden, Colorado.

"The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid," also co-authored by Dylan Thuras, is an illustrated guide to 100 mysterious wonders, both natural and manmade, and is popular with kids, parents and teachers alike.

"The Devil in the Gallery” is a lavishly illustrated book, the latest of more than a dozen books by Noah Charney. It’s a guided tour of the history of art through its scandals, rivalries, and shocking acts, each of which resulted in a positive step forward for art in general and, in most cases, for the careers of the artists in question.

Charney is an American expat who lives with his family and teaches in Slovenia and who is also a professor in Rome. He is the founder of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art and considered by many the Sherlock Holmes of art crime.

Among his other books is the recently released co-authored “Making It: The Artist's Survival Guide.”