Places & Travel

Fresh Air's world music explorer Milo Miles introduces us to Soukous (sue-cooes), pop music from Zaire.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Poodle Springs," the novel Raymond Chandler was working on at the time of his death. The story finds Chandler's famous detective Philip Marlowe married and living in Poodle Springs. Writer Robert Parker has just finished the novel that Chandler started 30 years ago.

Novelist, essayist, and reporter Barbara Grizutti Harrison. Her new book is called "Italian Days." It's a chronicle of her travels through Italy, but it's also more introspective, influenced by her parents Italian heritage and her conversion to Catholicism after a childhood spent in the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Book critic John Leonard reviews Thomas McGuane's new novel, "Keep the Change."

Gossip columnist-turned novelist Michael Musto. Musto writes a column for The Village Voice (called La Dolce Musto) that follows New York City's avant-garde social scene. Musto's columns usually ignore the comings and goings of the Donald Trumps in favor of highlighting some about-to-be-discovered artist or performer. In 1986, Musto wrote Downtown, a guide book to the Manhattan party scene. His new book, Manhattan On The Rocks, is a novel about the party scene and the most sought after gossip columnist in New York.

Writer Thomas McGuane. McGuane's been called "Ernest Hemingway with a sense of humor ... (and) ... Franz Kafka journeying through Montana. He's the author of the acclaimed novels The Sporting Club, Ninety-Two In The Shade, and To Skin A Cat. McGuane's new novel is called Keep The Change. It follows a self-despising artist as he travels to Montana to try to make a new life for himself. McGuane himself runs a ranch in Montana.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews "Black Rain." It stars Michael Douglas as a New York City cop who goes to Japan to try to track down a killer. The movie's directed by Ridley Scott, who also made "Blade Runner" and "Alien."

Airline expert George Brown. In his new book, The Airline Passenger's Guerrilla Handbook, Brown explains how to beat the air travel system. He tells how to find the cheapest fares, accumulate frequent flyer points, how to beat jet lag, even how to make love while in flight.

Rock historian Ed Ward looks back to the dawn of the British punk scene, and the creation of acts such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Billy Idol, and Siouxie and the Banshees.

World music critic Milo Miles introduces us to the music of Cheb Khaled. Khaled is a leading performer of Raï, a type of music popular in Algeria.

Mystery writer Mary Wings. Wings' novels draw on the familiar hard-boiled detective genre, but her heroine is a lesbian-feminist detective named Emma Victor. Wings new book is titled "She Came in a Flash."

Writer Alec Wilkinson. Cutting sugar cane is one of the most dangerous jobs in America. In Florida, workers are recruited from the West Indies in what some are calling modern day slavery. Wilkinson exposes the sugar cane industry in his new book "Big Sugar." Wilkinson's past books include "Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor," and "Midnights: A Year with the Wellfleet Police." Wilkinson is also a staff writer for the New Yorker; Big Sugar originally appeared as a series of articles in the magazine.

Filmmaker Ketan Mehta (Kay-Tahn May-Ta). He's one of a group of young, politically committed directors in India today who believe movies can be effective tools for social change and not just entertainment, and his films have dealt with such issues as the caste system and feminism. His latest film, "Spices," tells the story of a young woman in a remote village in India and her struggle to resist the advances of a powerful feudal overlord.

Edmund (Pat) Brown, the former governor of California. From 1959 to 1967, Brown commuted the death sentences of 23 convicts, but allowed 36 others to go to the gas chambers. He has written a book, Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor's Education on Death Row, about the extraordinary personal and political pressures that came to bear on each decision, and of the evolution of his thinking on the death penalty from his inauguration to his last day in office.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews First Light, a new novel by the British writer Peter Ackroyd.

Rock and roll historian Ed Ward profiles Memphis soul musician and producer Willie Mitchell. Mitchell was a trumpeter whose own tastes ran to jazz and soul. But Mitchell enjoyed his greatest success as a producer and talent scout. He launched the careers of Al Green, Ann Peebles and O.V.Wright.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews a posthumous collection of essays by writer Bruce Chatwin. The collection is titled What Am I Doing Here? Chatwin, who wrote extensively about his world travels and the collisions of cultures, died last year from a Chinese fungus that infected him on one of his trips.

Writer Martin Cruz Smith. His latest novel, Polar Star, is his sequel to his 1981 best-seller Gorky Park. In Polar Star, Cruz Smith revives Arkady Renko, the intrepid police investigator hero of Gorky Park. Smith is also the author of Stallion Gate, a novel about the making of the atomic bomb. (Interview with Sedge Thomson)

Ronald Takaki. He's the grandson of Japanese immigrants and a professor of Ethnic Studies at Berkeley. His book, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, tells the diverse stories of Asian immigrants who have come to the United States during the past century and a half. Takaki relates the personal testimonies of new immigrants and their American-born children.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews "Christopher Unborn," the new novel by Carlos Fuentes.