Today's Featured Book:

Down the Hill: My Descent into the Double Murder in Delphi 

by Susan Hendricks

Hachette Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

On February 13, 2017, two teenage girls—13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German—decided to enjoy a day off from school by exploring the popular hiking trails near the Monon High Bridge just a few minutes’ drive from Libby’s home in Delphi, Indiana. Libby’s sister, Kelsi, dropped the two girls off at the head of the trail and waved to them as they walked down the path, which was the last time they’d ever be seen alive. Less than 24 hours later, their bodies were found on the north bank of Deer Creek, about a mile from where they were last seen. There were few clues and little to go on in terms of physical evidence, except for the visual and audio remnants of a strange encounter the girls had with a stranger just hours before their disappearance, an encounter unsettling enough that Libby had thought to record it on her cellphone as it unfolded. In the years since the murders were first made public, Libby’s audio and video recordings have been released and two very different composite sketches of the suspect have been shown, but local law enforcement remained vague about developments for years—until finally, in October 2022, the long-awaited suspect was arrested and a trial date was set.

Longtime anchor and journalist Susan Hendricks was one of the first reporters to cover the case. A broadcast veteran with decades’ worth of experience under her belt, she was no stranger when it came to sharing the tragedies of the day with viewers. But there was something about this case that rattled her to her core. A year after the murders, Susan went to Delphi to interview the victims’ families for an in-depth special report where Kelsi drove Susan down the same path that she drove her sister down on the last day of her life. Over the years, Susan has built close relationships with family members, and law enforcement officials and armchair detectives alike who are determined to get justice for Abby and Libby.

In Down the Hill, Hendricks digs deeper in into the mystery that has captivated our nation for years, exploring the family's enduring resilience and advocacy, as well as the rippling impact the case has had on not just Delphi, but the very heart of the American heartland. As a result, this book is more than just a book about a double homicide; it’s about a small town in middle America that’s been haunted by an unfathomable act of violence; it’s about the ways families and communities cope with grief and move forward after tragedy; it’s about the limitations of local law enforcement and the rise of technology in helping to solve cases in new ways. But it’s also about compassion, connection, empathy, and resilience—on a very real, very human level.

Today's Featured Book:

No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of A League of Their Own - Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood

by Erin Carlson

Hachette Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

No Crying in Baseball is a rollicking, revelatory deep dive into a one‑of‑a‑kind film. Before A League of Their Own, few American girls could imagine themselves playing professional ball (and doing it better than the boys). But Penny Marshall's genre outlier became an instant classic and significant aha moment for countless young women who saw that throwing like a girl was far from an insult.

Part fly‑on‑the‑wall narrative, part immersive pop nostalgia, No Crying in Baseball is for readers who love stories about subverting gender roles as well as fans of the film who remain passionate thirty years after its release. With key anecdotes from the cast, crew, and diehard fanatics, Carlson presents the definitive, first‑ever history of the making of the treasured film that inspired generations of Dottie Hinsons to dream bigger and aim for the sky.

On My Radar:

 Highways and Heartaches: How Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, and Children of the New South Saved the Soul of Country Music

by Michael Streissguth

Hachette Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves.  It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads and legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive.  They were barely teenagers in the early 1970s when they visited this stage in the care of legends Ralph Stanley and Lester Flatt, respectively. Skaggs and Stuart followed their bosses to dozens of stages throughout Appalachia and deeper into the American southland.  They were the children, absorbing the wondrous music and strange dramas around them as they became innovators and living symbols of country music.

Highways and Heartaches takes readers on the rural circuit Skaggs and Stuart traveled, where an acoustic sound first assembled by masters such as Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and Mother Maybelle Carter ruled the day. The young men were heirs to a bluegrass tradition transmitted to them early in life. One part mountain soul and another African American–influenced rhythm, the music they received was alternately celebrated and neglected in the more than fifty years after the two met in 1971, but since then it has never stopped evolving and influencing the wider American culture thanks to Skaggs and Stuart and other actors in this book, such as Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Keith Whitley, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt. Riveting portraits of Johnny Cash, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt and other heartland-born figures emerge, too.
 
Molded by forces in postwar southern culture such as racial conflict, fringe politics, evangelicalism, growing federal government influence, and stubborn patterns of Appalachian living and thinking, Skaggs and Stuart injected the spirit of bluegrass into their hard-wrought experiments in mainstream country music later in life, fueling the profitability and credibility of the fabled genre. Skaggs’s new traditionalism of the 1980s, integrating mountain instruments with elements of contemporary country music, created a new sound for the masses and placed him in the vanguard of Nashville’s recording artists while Stuart embraced seminal influences and attitudes from the riches of American culture to produce a catalog of significant recordings.
 
Skaggs and Stuart’s friendship took years to jell, but their similar pathways reveal a shared dedication to the soul of country music and highlight the curious day-to-day experiences of two lads growing up on the demanding rural route in bluegrass culture. Their journeys—populated by grizzled mentors, fearsome undertows, and cultural upheaval—influenced their creativity and, ultimately, cut life-giving tributaries in the ungainly, eternal story of country music.