Shelf Life

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FROM MY SHELF TO YOURS

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  • The World Is Awake, A Celebration of Everyday Blessings by Linsey Davis

    Though she often reports on what’s worst in our world (the Las Vegas massacre, the Boston Marathon bombing and the sexual predator assertions against Harvey Weinstein), Linsey Davis, an Emmy award winning news correspondent for ABC News, wants us to look at the world in a more positive way, enjoying its delights with a sense…

  • Chicago’s Only Castle

      It’s been more than 40 years since Errol Magidson first saw The Castle with its crenelated towers, stone walls, parapets and arched doorways and windows. Only this castle, rising on top of a hill with even, we’re not kidding here, slit-like windows perfect for archers to fire at marauders, wasn’t located in Europe but…

  • Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend

    Deirdre Bair wasn’t that familiar with Al Capone. Beyond the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, she’d been more focused on literary biographies, racking up numerous awards including the National Book Award. But when she was contacted by a friend who had a friend who knew someone (yes, it went like that) who wanted help in solving…

  • Lost Recipes of Prohibition: Notes from A Bootlegger’s Manual

    When I was writing my book, A Jazz Age Murder in Northwest Indiana (History Press), about Nettie Diamond, a wealthy widow and pharmacist who was murdered by her fifth husband, a much younger bootlegger named Harry in Indiana Harbor on Valentine’s Day 1923, one of the things I learned was that it was relatively easy…

  • The Death of Mrs. Westaway: A New Psychological Thriller by Ruth Ware

    Tarot cards, a threatening stranger and a mysterious will propel Hal, a young vulnerable orphan to spend her remaining cash for a railway ticket to the funeral of a woman who solicitors believe is her grandmother. Hal, who makes her precarious living reading Tarot cards, a skill she learned from her mother who was killed…

  • Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America

    For those who are worried that we have entered dark days as country and are uncertain what the future might hold, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and presidential historian Jon Meacham explores other eras in America’s history, pointing out that in the end, by following “our better angels” we became a stronger and better America. “Lincoln got…

  • Michael Koryta in Chicago to Talk About His New Book

    Michael Koryta, the New York Times-bestselling author of 12 suspense novels of including Those Who Wish Me Dead and Rise the Dark talks with writer Jane Simon Ammeson about his just released “How It Happened” (Little Brown 2018; $27). “How It Happened” starts off with the so chilling confession and then suddenly we’re wondering okay,…

  • Chasing Helicity by Ginger Zee

    In the time it takes to create a waterspout, Ginger Zee was hooked on weather. “My mom kept shouting at me to get out of the way,” says Zee, who was eight years old at the time. “I thought it was the coolest thing, I was mesmerized. That’s when I decided that when I grew…

  • Cecile Richards: “Make Trouble”

    “How much time do you have?” Cecile Richards laughs when I ask how her mother, the late Ann Richards and the first woman governor of Texas, influenced her. “She taught me so much,” continues Richards, the outgoing president of Planned Parenthood who will be in Chicago next week to talk about her new book, Make…

  • Paris in Stride: An Insider’s Walking Guide

      Imagine strolling through Paris with a friend, one who knows the greatest little patisseries, cafes, outdoor markets and shops tucked along winding cobbled streets. Together the two of us try on amazingly chic designer dresses at La boutique Didier Ludot and amble through the courtyard gardens and gaze at the Swedish art work at…