Miami Herald: Books
- Author appearances
Tuesday - 03/16/2010 - 01:00 AMTUESDAYThomas Cahill and ``A Saint on Death Row.'' 6:30 p.m. Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables.
More | Talk - Review | Playful gods mock earthlings at Godley estate in 'The Infinities'
Sunday - 03/14/2010 - 01:00 AMCrafted as an homage to classic Greek drama, John Banville's latest novel takes place in the course of a single day and opens with the opulent line, ''Of all the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works.''
More | Talk - Book lovers, check out Broward's Literary Feast
Wednesday - 03/10/2010 - 06:14 PMThe Reserve), Elizabeth Kostova (The Swan Thieves), Lisa See (Shanghai Girls) and mystery writer Deborah Crombie (Necessary As Blood).
More | Talk - Review | 'Big Girl' protagonist not defined by her heaviness
Tuesday - 03/09/2010 - 01:00 AMSeventy-seven novels translated into 28 languages in 47 countries. Still, try finding a Danielle Steel romance reviewed in a major newspaper. We know the formula: Girl faces adversity and through plucky ingenuity and hard work, not to forget stunning looks, rises to power, prompting early detractors to eat crow.
More | Talk - Father knew best -- long-ago tale of bigamy is an inspiration to daughter
Tuesday - 03/09/2010 - 01:00 AMFifty years ago, Johanna Moran's father, a University of Miami law professor, came across a summary of a bigamy trial in California at the turn of the century. Captivated, he thought it might be good fodder for his wife, an aspiring writer.
More | Talk - Review | Recalling a Russian childhood in 'A Mountain of Crumbs'
Sunday - 03/07/2010 - 01:00 AMThe first paragraphs of Elena Gorokhova's memoir about her Cold War-era Soviet Union upbringing are so atmospheric and pointedly descriptive that everything in the real world seems to grow quiet.
More | Talk - What are you reading now? -- Kaylie Jones
Tuesday - 03/02/2010 - 01:00 AM``I just read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell. I loved it; he came alive and was so three-dimensional. She went into his motivation and why he did what he did and brought the whole period to life.''
More | Talk - Review | 'Get Me Out' a delightful history of childbirth
Tuesday - 03/02/2010 - 01:00 AMSeven hundred years ago, a Spanish doctor named Arnold of Villanova wanted to make a baby. He put semen in a womb-shaped vase and waited. The result was disappointing. We can shake our head at the naivete of believing sperm contains teeny-tiny human beings just needing the proper place to grow.
More | Talk - Review | Rachel's black or white world in 'The Girl Who Fell From the Sky'
Sunday - 02/28/2010 - 01:00 AMHere is what Rachel Morse has learned in her short, tumultuous life: ``If there's no one else to tell another side -- the only story that can be told is the story that becomes true.''
More | Talk - A charmed life with a dark side
Sunday - 02/28/2010 - 01:00 AMIn one sense, writer Kaylie Jones has lived a charmed sort of life.<p/> Daughter of James Jones -- author of the celebrated World War II novels From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line -- she grew up surrounded by famous literary figures in Paris and Sagaponack, N.Y.
More | Talk
- Review | Fashion dynasty's sad tale in 'House of Versace'
Sunday - 03/14/2010 - 01:00 AMThe eye-opening House of Versace chronicles the life of fashion designer Gianni Versace, from his humble beginnings in Reggio, a town in southern Italy, to his violent death in Miami Beach in 1997.
More | Talk - Review | 'Burning Bright': Ron Rash's Applachian tales
Sunday - 03/14/2010 - 01:00 AMModern sensibilities have inched into the lives of the people who inhabit Ron Rash's uneasy stories about Appalachia. They don't live exactly the way their great-grandfathers did. They drive big pickups.
More | Talk - What are you reading now? | Jennifer Gilmore
Tuesday - 03/09/2010 - 01:00 AM''I'm reading Chang-Rae Lee's The Surrendered. It's a story of love and war, set in Korea in the 1950s, and New York and Italy in the '80s. I'm admiring the epic, sweeping feel, the intimacy with these unique characters and the way the novel manages to be classic, timeless and contemporary all at once.''
More | Talk - Review | Exploring our deep connections in 'Being With Animals'
Tuesday - 03/09/2010 - 01:00 AMAnimals are an integral part of our lives and culture. We can find them in children's books as talking characters, in our living rooms snuggled up on the couch or on our dinner plates next to a heap of mashed potatoes.
More | Talk - Review | Weirdos meet misfortune in 'Fun With Problems'
Sunday - 03/07/2010 - 01:00 AMWhen you start to add up the people who drown in the works of Robert Stone, the toll quickly mounts. A pair of drug smugglers take a swim while their boat drifts in the Caribbean and discover they can't climb back on board in the great story Under the Pitons.
More | Talk - Review | Twelve snapshots of obsession in 'The Devil and Sherlock Holmes'
Sunday - 03/07/2010 - 01:00 AMDavid Grann likes obsessives. In the beginning of The Lost City of Z, his excellent book about vanished Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett, he explains how he got interested in Fawcett's story.
More | Talk - Review | Domestic violence shapes sisters' lives in 'The Murderers Daughters'
Tuesday - 03/02/2010 - 01:00 AMThe debut novel by Randy Susan Meyers -- whose family hails from Miami -- dives fearlessly into a tense and emotional story of two sisters anchored to one irreversible act of domestic violence.
More | Talk - Review | Forensic pioneers pave the way in 'The Poisoner's Handbook'
Tuesday - 03/02/2010 - 01:00 AMPolice and prosecutors today increasingly bemoan a major courtroom adversary: the so-called CSI effect, named after the popular CBS franchise. The show's popularity has ratcheted up expectations about DNA testing and other forensic evidence to the point that jurors are reluctant to deliver guilty verdicts without it.
More | Talk - Review | 'Point Omega': A `Psycho' world of perceptions and illusions
Sunday - 02/28/2010 - 01:00 AMWhen Psycho was released in 1960, Don DeLillo was a Mad Man for Ogilvy & Mather, had just published his first story and was six years away from his first novel.
More | Talk - Digital archivists work to save rare books, historical documents
Saturday - 02/27/2010 - 01:00 AMThe rumors traveled urgently from Haiti: Beyond all the death and wreckage, one of the nation's greatest exports -- its cultural scholarship -- was buried that awful afternoon in January.
More | Talk
- Cannell can do it all, from novels to acting
Tuesday - 03/16/2010 - 01:00 AMStephen J. Cannell's career is a marvel. In the '70s, after a stint writing for Adam-12 and Ironside, the L.A.-born wordslinger co-created such beloved TV shows as The Rockford Files and Baretta.
More | Talk - Writer Deborah Crombie is obsessed with her characters
Sunday - 03/14/2010 - 01:00 AMSome suspense novelists grow weary of reprising their characters in book after book and seek respite by writing stand-alone novels. But Deborah Crombie's fans need not worry.
More | Talk - Author appearances
Tuesday - 03/09/2010 - 01:00 AMWEDNESDAY Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke and ''Beyond the Echo Chamber.'' 6:30 p.m. Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables
More | Talk - Reviews | Banker in meltdown in 'Money to Burn'; divers and pythons in 'Deep Shadow'
Tuesday - 03/09/2010 - 01:00 AMA few years ago, plots about subprime lending, short selling and the stock market would have been the sorts of themes to make readers' eyes glaze over. But that was before the economy collapsed, and Wall Street brokers went from being masters of the universe to pariahs.
More | Talk - Cameron stands by his man despite WWII vets' outcry
Sunday - 03/07/2010 - 01:00 AMAn organization of World War II veterans is unhappy with James Cameron's support for a discredited history of the atomic bombing of Japan that the director has optioned for a possible film.
More | Talk - Superstar authors vie for award
Sunday - 02/28/2010 - 01:00 AMWhat a matchup. Female literary superstars Barbara Kingsolver and Lorrie Moore are going head to head as finalists for this year's prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award.
More | Talk - Author appearances
Tuesday - 03/02/2010 - 01:00 AMTUESDAY<p/>Alexandra Diaz and Bonnie J. Doerr and ``Of All the Stupid Things'' and ``Island Sting.'' 7 p.m. Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables.
More | Talk - Review | Greed, outrage battle in 'Union Atlantic'
Tuesday - 03/02/2010 - 01:00 AMSince housing prices peaked in 2006, we've been in a bull market for nonfiction about the Great Recession. From Andrew Sorkin's Too Big to Fail to William Cohan's House of Cards, journalists, historians and economists have spent millions of words explaining the crisis that gutted Lehman Brothers, emasculated General Motors and robbed 10 percent of us of our jobs.
More | Talk - Review | 'Voodoo Histories' goes behind the lies
Sunday - 02/28/2010 - 01:00 AMDavid Aaronovitch and I are reporters, born the same year, but it seems he was a lot luckier than I for the first 30 years or so of his career.
More | Talk - Zimbabwe novelist finds a safe haven in Miami
Tuesday - 02/23/2010 - 06:00 PMThe death threats? Too numerous to count. The serious attempts on his life ranged from make-believe doctors offering potentially fatal ''medicine'' to a traffic accident that was no accident at all.
More | Talk