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.

Host Diana Korte speaks with former FBI Agent Scott Payne, author of the memoir, “CODENAME: PALE HORSE: How I Went Undercover to Expose America’s Nazis.”

A decorated agent dubbed the “Hillbilly Donnie Brascoe,” Payne takes readers along with him on some of the most terrifying and riskiest assignments in FBI history.

His book begins in 2019 on a hot summer’s day in Georgia where he joins the Base, one of the fastest-rising, most radical white supremacist groups operating in the US.

Payne spent 28 years in law enforcement investigating cases against drug trafficking organizations, human traffickers, outlaw motorcycle clubs, gangs, public corruption, and domestic terrorists. He was also a SWAT team operator and instructor for firearms, tactics, and undercover operations.

Host Diana Korte speaks with award-winning Karen Russell about her newest book, THE ANTIDOTE , which begins on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm in the 1930s ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska.

But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories.

The book follows five characters--a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a talkative scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell’s “climate change” fiction in novels and short stories, includes the bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Author of six books, she has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Host Diana Korte speaks with Elizabeth Greenwood, author of Playing Dead. A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud, tells us just how hard it is to permanently disappear or fake your death.

She should know. Dealing with $100K in college loans, Elizabeth dabbles with the notion herself, details the how to make it happen, and describes the common pitfalls that interfere with success. (Hint #1: Don’t call Mom. Hint #2: Forget a fake drowning. Hint #3: Never Google yourself.)

This classic interview took place several years ago.

Host Diana Korte speaks with award-winning novelist Marie Benedict, author of nine books, whose newest title, QUEENS OF CRIME, features the 5 greatest women writers of the Golden Age of Mystery (1920s-1930s) and their bid to solve a real life murder.

That murder is the death of May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, who seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods.

The death has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing?

If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour?

Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering their combined skills and friendship make them stronger together.

Host Diana Korte speaks with Crime Writer Robert Crais, whose books have been translated into 42 languages, about his private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner Joe Pike who race to find a terrifying, unidentified killer in this unpredictable thriller, THE BIG EMPTY.

Traci Beller was thirteen when her father disappeared in the sleepy town of Rancha, not far from Los Angeles. The evidence says Tommy Beller abandoned his family, but Traci never believed it. Now, ten years later, Traci is a high-profile influencer with millions of followers and the money to hire the best detective she can find: Elvis Cole.

Elvis heads to Rancha where an ex-con named Sadie Givens and her daughter, Anya, might have a line on the missing man. But when Elvis finds himself shadowed by a gang of vicious criminals, the missing persons cold case becomes far more sinister.

He calls his ex-Marine friend, Joe Pike, for help, and they follow Tommy Beller's trail into the depths of a monstrous, hidden evil.