You know her as the megabestselling author of such books as Toxic Bachelors and Daddy, but Danielle Steel is also the brains behind a San Francisco art gallery, Steel Gallery, soon to be defunct. In 2003, Steel got the idea of opening a showplace for comtemporary artists who, as she told the San Francisco Chronicle, [...]
Beantown isn’t big on pastures, but from June 4 until September 5 the city is home to more than a hundred life-size fiberglass moo-cows, “grazing” on sidewalks and other urban settings as part of CowParade Boston, a public-art extravaganza and fundraiser. To celebrate the launch of Houghton Mifflin’s new American Heritage® Dictionary, Boston Edition, HM [...]
Even if you don’t read it, this one has to win an award for Best Title Ever. A spunky, curly-haired, famous doctor who performs abortions is found dead in her swimming pool at the end of a day on which she fought with both her lawyer husband and college-student daughter. Who killed Diana? Given her [...]
She wanted to be an orthodontist, but at seventeen, hot island babe Dayanara Torres was persuaded to enter the Miss Puerto Rico pageant instead. She won, then shortly thereafter she entered the Miss Universe pageant and won that too. Told you she was hot! During and after her reign, she founded scholarship programs for poor [...]
It’s always fun or at least psychedelic to imagine your fav books recast in alternate genres, alternate time periods, alternate countries and such. A sci-fi version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s; Beowulf as chick lit. So imagine Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses … set in 18th-century Korea! At least the century hasn’t changed from the [...]
Admit it. You get soooo hot over those preternaturally huge eyes, that wild flowing hair and the cute way those sailor-suited schoolgirls and cone-breasted androids wreak havoc and save damaged planets. It’s all female Japanese cartoon characters all the time at Yuricon, the Tokyo convention for fans and creators of lesbian manga and anime. Yaoi [...]
Alexander McCall Smith, beloved author of several bestselling novels featuring Botswanan female detective Precious Ramotswe, is great friends with Flea, bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The pair met in 2004 after the bassist (real name Michael Balzary) posted on the band’s web site about how much he loved Precious Ramotswe. Having survived a [...]
Bringing alive in all their horrifying glory seven infernos that changed Americans’ sense of identity and brought entire urban areas to the brink — from a 1760 Boston fire to the 1967 Detroit fire to 9/11, with others in between — historian Hoffer will make you keep sniffing the air in search of smoke. Winningly, [...]
Amazon.com was forced to admit having made a huge mistake last weekend and has vowed to alter its UK site as a result. The trouble erupted when links to books for gun enthusiasts and marksmen appeared on the page for Sandra Uttley’s book Dunblane Unburied, about a tragic 1996 school massacre in Scotland that left [...]
“They cut me in my stomach and my guts were laid out, hanging from my stomach. It was like when you gut a fish,” said rap artist and author-to-be James Lathlin after a gang attacked his head, chest and abdomen with knives outside his Manitoba, Canada home last Saturday. A devotee of the late singer [...]