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  • The Italian Table: Creating Festive Meals for Family & Friends

    Elizabeth Minchilli, who has lived in Italy for a quarter of a century, has created a way for all of us to experience certain special food events that comprise the country’s heritage in much the same way as their monuments (think The Colosseum, St. Peter’s and the Leaning Tower of Pisa) are must-sees for visitors.…

  • Mo Welch: How To Die Alone

                  Always a doodler, stand-up comedian Mo Welch, who’d just broken up with her boyfriend, was eating a blueberry  Pop Tart in her mom’s kitchen when she began sketching a dozen cartoons about a female character she named Blair—think a more sarcastic, less sunny but equally funny version Cathy, the popular cartoon character created by…

  • Park Avenue Summer

                  Chicago-based author Renee Rosen typically writes novels about historic periods and people in Chicago such as the age of jazz (Windy City Blues); mid-20th century journalism (White Collar Girl) and the Roaring Twenties (Dollface). But in Park Avenue Summer, her latest novel which she describes as “Mad Men the Devil Wears Prada,” she takes…

  • William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Mean Girls

                  Take two cultural icons—William Shakespeare, the English poet, playwright and actor who is considered one of the best writers in the English language and the movie Mean Girls which was released 15 years ago and stars Tina Fey, one of my favorite comedians and you have tales of passion, toxic envy, back-stabbing (both literal…

  • Save Me the Plums: Ruth Reichl’s Memoir

                A decade ago, out of all the food magazines published, the most famous was Gourmet, which offered a sophisticated look at culinary trends and cookery. And Ruth Reichl, who formerly had been the food critic for the New York Times, a job that entailed wearing disguises because her photo was plastered on a large…

  • The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle’s Journey Across America: Sixteen Teenagers on an Adventure of a Lifetime

    In her last year of college, Lorraine Boissoneault, an avowed Francophile and writer who lives in Chicago, became interested in the French history of North America and the journey undertaken by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the first European to travel from Montreal to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Her fascination with…

  • Magical Miniature Gardens & Homes: Create Tiny Worlds of Fairy Magic & Delight with Natural, Handmade Décor

    Donni Webber, creator and owner of fairygardens.com and author of Magical Miniature Gardens & Homes: Create Tiny Worlds of Fairy Magic & Delight with Natural, Handmade Décor (Page Street Publishing 2016; $9.99 Amazon price) offers ideas and instructions for creating a variety of gardens and accessories. Chapters titled The Fairy Sunny House: An Exploration in…

  • Brett Paesel’s Everything is Just Fine: Life for a Beverly Hills Soccer Team

    Everything is Just Fine, a social satire about families on a Beverly Hills soccer team for 10-year-old boys told partially in e-mails, explores the secrets and failings of the parents as they connect with each other throughout the season’s wins and losses. Written by Brett Paesel, who also authored the bestselling Mommies Who Drink: Sex,…

  • Abby Wambach Shows Women How to Change the Game in Wolfpack

    Abby Wambach, the two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup champion and international soccer’s all-time leading scorer, is taking on a new game, that of empowering women—asking them not only to be thankful for what they have but also to demand what they deserve. And that’s the premise of her new book, Wolfpack: How to…

  • Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

    Totally unexpectedly, Lori Gottlieb’s long term boyfriend, the man she thought she’d marry, made a succinct and ultimately devastating statement, saying he didn’t “want to live with a kid in the house for the next ten years” and then he was gone. Suddenly, Gottlieb, a psychotherapist who writes the weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column for…