On the popular syndicated nighttime radio show "Delilah After Dark," the music shares equal billing with the host and the real-life stories of the listeners who call in.

Now, some of those stories have a life beyond the minutes it took to tell them over the airwaves. Host Delilah has a new book featuring her favorite listeners' stories -- "Love Matters: Remarkable Love Stories That Touch the Heart and Nourish the Soul" (Harlequin, $16.95).

"Delilah After Dark" is heard in more than 250 markets and airs locally on adult contemporary station WSHH-FM (99.7) nightly from 7 p.m. to midnight.

The inspirational book is the first release from Harlequin Enterprises Limited's new nonfiction imprint. The stories fall into several thematic groups, including love for family and friends, true love, lost and found love and letting love go.

Among the stories reprinted here are one about a man playing Santa who learns about the true meaning of the holiday through a visit to a terminally ill little girl in a hospital; couples who went their separate ways and were reunited after many years; and a former Vietnam prisoner of war who recalls a friendship formed with one of his captors.

Delilah, whose real name is Delilah Rene Luke, wrote chapters that serve as a prelude to each of the sections.

Delilah calls her show a "safety zone," where listeners feel comfortable sharing personal stories with a nationwide audience that numbers in the millions. "I don't have any problems getting people to open up." If anything, she says, it's often a case of hearing too much information. "I'm not Dr. Phil. I'm not Dr. Laura."

She said some of the program's stories were just too good to fade away after airing in a three-minute segment. "After we air the call, it's gone. I always thought, what a waste," Delilah says. "That's such a powerful story and there's no way to revisit it or share it."

She began saving what she felt were the most memorable vignettes, and sifted through them to come up with the material for "Love Matters." Some were stories that aired on the show, and some were taken from letters listeners had sent in.

The book has an element of her radio show: each story is matched to a particular adult contemporary song that connects to it thematically, like Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You," Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You" and Patti Austin's cover of the George and Ira Gershwin classic "Someone To Watch Over Me."

"My greatest talent is that I remember lyrics. I have this catalog of music lyrics in my head non-stop. When I'm talking to somebody, the soundtrack is going of the song that I would pick to go with their situation." As she re-read the stories, each suggested a particular song to her.

Love is the common thread running through all of the stories. "My goal was to share the core value of my life. I believe when all is said and done the only thing that will remain is love. I don't mean falling in love. I mean connecting with another human being and giving of yourself to enrich a life. All the money you make, all the awards you win, all the plays you produce, all the things you accomplish -- the only thing that will remain is the love and the relationships that are formed in your lifetime."

Delilah and her show, broadcast from Seattle, are an increasingly rare breed in commercial radio -- personality radio, where the host and the listener connect.

"A very tragic thing happened in our industry about 25 years ago," she says. "Stations decided to move away from human interaction and personality -- funny, weird, loud, flamboyant, poignant -- whatever it was.

"Theater of the mind was such a huge part of radio. You don't have the distraction of the visual. You get to use your mind to create the scene. Something happened, and somebody got the idea to remove all creativity from radio.

"I'm not going to stay in the studio saying things like 'Longer half hour sets.' " Listeners responded to her conversations with her audience. "They liked the fact that I was real and corny and stupid and sappy and honest and creative."

Off the air, Delilah spends her time working with Point Hope, the foundation she established. She travels regularly to Ghana, where Point Hope has established programs in nutrition, intervention for pregnant women and young mothers, job skills training and constructing facilities to bring fresh water to a refugee camp there.

Her next off-air project is a sequel to her book -- "Family Matters," which will feature her listeners' stories about how family members influenced their lives.