Host Diana Korte speaks with award-winning journalist Becky Aikman about her new book, “SPITFIRES. The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger During World War II.”

This is a fast paced true story of the 25 US women who flew the world’s most dangerous aircraft through the treacherous skies of Britain during World War II eighty years ago. Another fifty years would pass before the first American woman piloted a US fighter plane in combat.

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses — all of them pilots who wanted to serve in World War II. Because they were women, their own country turned them away. But Great Britain, in a desperate fight for survival, would let anyone — even Americans, even women -- fly warplanes. Twenty-five of them bolted for England in 1942. They became the first American women to fly perilous missions in military aircraft.

In England these “spitfires” lived like women decades ahead of their time. They risked their lives in one of the deadliest jobs of the war, flying new, barely tested fighters and bombers to air bases and returning shot-up wrecks for repair. Many transport pilots died in crashes or made spectacular saves.

Host Diana Korte speaks with award-winning journalist and novelist Anne Hillerman, author of 18 books, whose newest title is SHADOW OF THE SOLSTICE (#10 in her Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series).

In the new book, Navajo Nation police are on high alert when a U.S. Cabinet Secretary schedules an unprecedented trip to the little Navajo town of Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border.

Tensions around the official’s arrival escalate when the body of a stranger is found nearby. Is it coincidence that a cult with a propensity for violence arrives at a private camp outside Shiprock the same week to celebrate the summer solstice?

Anne Hillerman was approached several years ago by Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin to create the popular tv series, “Dark Wind,” now in its third season that is based on her and her dad’s (Tony Hillerman) crime novels.

Host Diana Korte speaks with bestselling author Chloe Dalton who rescued and reared a wild hare in the English countryside during the Covid lockdown about her memoir, Raising Hare.

Imagine you could hold a baby hare (similar to rabbit, but bigger and wilder) and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention.

Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end during the day and gave birth to baby hares in your study.

For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.

Raising Hare chronicles their journey together and serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, might arise when we least expect them.