Month: June 2019
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Fading Ads of Chicago
For more than 40 years, Joe Marlin, author of the just released Fading Ads of Chicago, photographed ghost signs, those fading advertisements painted on the sides of brick buildings, a onetime popular way to advertise in the U.S. “I’d take notes when I was driving to and from work on the west side…
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Park Avenue Summer
Chicago author Renee Rosen describes her latest novel, Park Avenue Summer as “Mad Men Meets the Devil Wears Prada.”
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Apocalypse Any Day Now: Deep Underground with America’s Doomsday Preppers.
The end of the world is coming again—just as it was before Y2K and the Mayan Doomsday Calendar back to the calculations of Bishop Gregory of Tours, showing it would be all over sometimes between 799 and 806 and Christopher Columbus (yes, that Christopher Columbus) who it was ending in 1658. “It’s something…
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Stefan’s Destiny
When Rosemary Gard was growing up in Gary, Indiana, she asked for and was given a typewriter for her 12th birthday—a Remington portable in a gray hard cover carrying case (in case you’re wondering). “I’ve been writing ever since,” says Gard who graduated from Lew Wallace High School in 1956 and credits the patience of…
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The Body in the Castle Well
After reading Martin Walker’s The Body in the Castle Well, the 14th book in the series about Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges, I Googled real estate listings in the Périgord, known for its castles, caves, gastronomy and lush landscape of rolling hills, woods and vineyards. From Walker’s description, this region in southwestern France seems…
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How to Forget: A Daughter’s Memoir
Kate Mulgrew is just finishing lunch when I call at the pre-arranged time and she asks for a moment so she can order coffee. She’s eating and talking because her schedule is so tight it requires serious multi-tasking. Right now, she is juggling filming a new season of Mr. Mercedes and is also on…
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Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter’s Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times
While other boys his age were reading Hardy Boy mysteries and articles about baseball, Scott Pelley was riding his bike down to the public library in Lubbock, Texas and checking out books on faraway places. “I kept a stack by my bed and when I finished those, I’d return them and get more,”…
Shelf Life 