Steven Roberts "My Fathers' Houses"

Bayonne, New Jersey was where journalist Steve Roberts grew up in the 1940s and '50s, and in some ways it's where his heart still is. It's where he got his first newspaper job. His memoir My Fathers' Houses celebrates his extended family, as well as other people who have had significant influence in his life.

Judith Martin "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Freshly Updated"

A prior generation of Americans had Emily Post to guide them in the ways of manners and polite behavior. We have Miss Manners, Judith Martin, who has been joyfully dispensing firm but gentle guidance since 1978. About 25 years ago Martin wrote a book called Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, a book that has remained popular but which needed some updating. That's why Martin has now issued forth with an edition of the book that is "freshly updated."

Gary Schroen & Jack Coughlin

Today on THE BOOKCAST, firsthand perspectives from the war on terror -- two books, one by the man who led America's first foray into Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks, the other by the best sniper in the entire United States Marine Corps, a man who once had 13 kills in a 24-hour period in Iraq.

Mystery Monday - Laura Lippman

A school shooting incident is not what it first appears to be, in Laura Lippman's mystery-thriller To the Power of Three. A trio of teenaged girls is involved, but a dogged police detective quickly discovers how difficult it can be to get the straight scoop from strong-willed adolescent females.

Jon Ronson "The Men Who Stare at Goats"

The U.S. military is on a perpetual quest for ever more effective and sophisticated tools of warfare -- including psychic phenomena, and even what we might describe as supernatural powers, such as the ability to walk through walls, or to kill by simply staring at someone. Don't laugh; Jon Ronson did not make this up, for his book The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Sean Wilsey "Oh The Glory of It All"

Lots of kids saw their parents' marriage break up in the '70s, but few had to go through it in as public a way as young Sean Wilsey of San Francisco. His father left his mother for one of his mother's best friends, and because all three were prominent among San Francisco's social elite, the story even made national news. Now Wilsey goes back and has a look at those tumultuous years -- and what he made of them -- in a memoir called Oh the Glory of It All.

Douglas Brinkley "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc"

You can't change the past, but it is possible to change the way we remember the past. President Ronald Reagan, in a pair of speeches he delivered in the summer of 1984, helped shape and change the way this nation remembers World War Two. To tell the full story, historian Douglas Brinkley has crafted what's almost two books in one -- the story of the brave soldiers who attacked a German position on D-Day, and the charismatic president who, 40 years later, paid tribute to them.

23 Jun 2005 Judy Collins "Morning, Noon and Night"

Over the course of four decades, Judy Collins has had a number of hit songs, recorded nearly fifty albums, written several bestselling books, and she paints. And now she draws back the curtain to let us see how her creative mind works, in hopes of inspiring all of us to free our own creativity. Her book is called Morning, Noon and Night.

Bookcast 22 Jun 2005 - Nick Hornby "A Long Way Down"

Four people meet on a rooftop in London on New Year's Eve, all of them up there with the intent of jumping to their death. But in Nick Hornby's masterful novel A Long Way Down, the company of their shared misery gives each the inspiration to forego suicide and give life another try.

Mystery Monday - 20 Jun 2005 - Jeffery Deaver

A teenage girl is attacked and nearly killed in a New York City library, and it soon develops that she may have been targeted because of what she was there to research, in Jeffery Deaver's thriller The Twelfth Card. It's the sixth book to feature his very popular series hero, quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme.

Bookcast 19 Jun 2005 - "Nanny 911"

They are known to TV viewers as Nanny Deb and Nanny Stella, and they get the call when parents need help with their out of control kids. Stars of the Fox TV reality show "Nanny 911," Deborah Carroll and Stella Reid are experienced, working nannies who share their expertise with desperate parents. They do the same in their book, also called Nanny 911.

Bookcast 18 Jun 2005 - Gigi Anders "Jubana!"

Gigi Anders arrived in the U.S. from Cuba, with her family, when she was just a toddler. Since then she has led a cross-cultural life, as a Cuban woman, as a Jewish woman, as a distinctly American woman. Her memoir is called Jubana!

Bookcast 17 Jun 2005 - Naomi Wolf "The Treehouse"

When the time came to build a treehouse for her young daughter, noted feminist scholar Naomi Wolf turned to the person she knew could offer just the kind of help she needed, her father. But as she explains in her book "The Treehouse," what she got from teacher and poet Leonard Wolf were only nominally lessons about construction of a treehouse. She realized he was teaching her something much more profound.

Bookcast June 16, 2005 - Steven Sorrentino "Luncheonette"

This book will make a superb Father's Day gift! It was one Christmas Eve a number of years ago that a young man who had left his small New Jersey hometown to seek fame and fortune in New York City was suddenly yanked back home, to take over his father's little luncheonette, after Dad suffered a serious illness. That young man was Steven Sorrentino, who had to postpone his acting and singing ambitions, but who learned priceless lessons. He tells the story now in his memoir.

Bookcast June 15, 2005 - Dean Koontz "Velocity"

A California bartender's quiet and low-key life is turned into a ride of terror by a sadistic killer, in the Dean Koontz thriller "Velocity." Billy Wiles is the object of the cruelty -- but there may be a reason he was targeted.

Mystery Monday - June 13, 2005

"Mystery Monday" - The disappearance of a young prostitute in New York City might draw little or no attention, except that in John Connolly's thriller The Black Angel the young woman has a connection to series hero, private eye Charlie Parker. Once he gets involved, Parker quickly finds that he may be facing a kind of evil he's never seen before

Bookcast June 12, 2005 - Stephen Borelli "How About That!"

To generations of sports fans, Mel Allen was the New York Yankees. His was the voice that called thousands of games, and brought the drama and majesty of big league baseball to millions. The story of this Alabama-born, Jewish law school graduate is now told in Stephen Borelli's biography, How About That!

Mystery Monday - June 6, 2005

"Mystery Monday" - Jerrilyn Farmer takes her series heroine Madeleine Bean to the sunny shores of Hawaii in The Flaming Luau of Death. It's supposed to be a bridal shower, but when threats start coming -- and a dead body turns up -- the party's over.