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Laziness Does Not Exist: Drilling Down on Procrastination
“This isn’t getting the work of the world done,” my mother used to tell me when I was young and talking on the phone to friends instead of cleaning my room or putting away the dishes or whatever else needed to be done. I still don’t know exactly what the work of the world…
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Ina Garten: Modern Comfort Food
“When I was a kid my mother would cut up hot dogs to add to canned split pea soup for me to eat,” Ina Garten tells me from the barn in West Hampton, New York where she creates and tests the recipes published in her cookbooks, including the latest Modern Comfort Food and on…
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One by One: Ruth Ware’s Locked Door Mystery
It sounds idyllic–a lovely ski chalet with stunning views of the French Alps, a highly rated chef preparing all the meals, a full-service housekeeper, heated swimming pool, and a week away from the London office. Sure, it’s a corporate retreat for the eight employees of Snoop and that means tedious brainstorming sessions and a…
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Kate Collins Latest Mystery Series
Kate Collins, best-selling author of the popular Flower Shop mysteries, is—excuse our pun–branching out with her Goddess of Greene St., a series of cozy mysteries centered around single mom Athena Spencer who after divorcing returns home to work in her family’s garden center. It was a big change not only for Athena but…
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The Witch Hunter
But is Roger Koponen really dead? A security camera at a passenger station picks up his image. Indeed, he seems to want to be recognized as he boldly stares straight into the lens.
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Thriller writer channels anger into her books
Fargo, vice president of the Chicagoland chapter of Sisters in Crime and the cocreator of the podcast Unlikeable Female Characters, has a little bad girl in her too. “I love the sinister title of ‘They Never Learn,’” she said, adding that this, her second thriller, has everything she loves in a book — sexy women,…
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TMI: My Life in Scandal by Perez Hilton
The phone call from Perez Hilton came two days earlier than planned. “He can do it now instead,” his assistant emailed me on Wednesday. I was totally unprepared. Hilton’s autobiography, “TMI: My Life in Scandal” (Chicago Review Press) — the one we’re supposed to talk about — sat unread on my desk. Thinking “right now”…
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Lincoln Roadtrip: Following the backroads to find Abraham Lincoln
I am proud to announce that my book, Lincoln Roadtrip: The Backroads Guide to America’s Favorite President, published by Indiana University Press, is a winner in the 2019-20 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, taking the bronze in the Travel Book category. The annual competition is sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Winners…
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“Central Indiana Interurban” chronicles the state’s electric trains
There was a time when electric railroads, called interurbans, crisscrossed the state, connecting the small villages and large cities of Indiana. “I was about 10 when my mother first started letting me take the interurban on my own,” recalls Lorraine Simon, who was born in East Chicago in 1911. “My mother would put me on…
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