Book Nook

Alan Furst returned to the program after a long hiatus. The last time he was here he came out to the WYSO studios in Yellow Springs for an interview. That was back in the late 1990's. This time around we tracked him down at his hotel in Chicago. Furst was touring for the release of "Midnight in Europe." In this interview he discussed his writing process and what it is like to meet his fans. Here's my review which appeared in the Cox Ohio newspapers:

Andrew Goodman was a young man from New York who went to Mississippi during the summer of 1964 to participate in the civil rights struggles that were taking place then in the South. Shortly after he arrived he vanished. Andrew and two other civil rights workers had been taken by members of the Ku Klux Klan and brutally murdered. Their bodies were found some time later.

Craig Johnson's series of crime novels featuring the Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire just keeps rolling along. His character has also become the inspiration for the popular TV series  "Longmire." In this interview the author explains how he came up with the idea for the first book and what has transpired since then. 

Roz Chast has experienced something that many Americans have experienced; caring for aging parents as they lived through their final days on earth. But Chast is different from the majority of Americans in that she is an incredibly gifted long-time staff cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine. So when Chast decided to write a memoir about the things she recalled about her parents and their final days she was able to depict those moments in graphic novel form.

One of the great joys of reading fiction is when one encounters that rare book that grabs you by the imagination and doesn't let go. "Young God" by Katherine Faw Morris is that kind of story. Her protagonist is a 13 year-old girl named Nikki. As the story begins Nikki has just gotten out of a group home and she's hoping to reunite with her father Coy Hawkins. This tale unfolds in the hill country of North Carolina in a place that is reminiscent of the area where the author grew up.