Hotel Scarface by Roben Farzad Book Review
Hotel Scarface by Roben Farzad Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date October 17, 2017 Drugs, disco, and debauchery: This is the wild true story of the Mutiny, the decadent hotel that embodied Miami’s cocaine-fueled heyday–and inspired the legendary film Scarface. In the seventies, coke hit Miami like a hurricane, and no place attracted dealers and dopers like the Mutiny. Rock stars and models flocked to the hotel’s club to order bottle after bottle of Dom and to snort lines alongside narcos, hit men, and gunrunners, while upstairs, marathon orgies raged in the elaborate fantasy suites. But as the kilos–and bodies–began to pile up, the Mutiny became target number one for law…
Bad With Money by Gaby Dunn Book Review
Bad With Money by Gaby Dunn Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date January 1st, 2019 In the first episode of her “Bad With Money” podcast, Gaby Dunn asked patrons at a coffee shop two questions: First, what’s your favorite sex position? Everyone was game to answer, even the barista. Then, she asked how much money was in their bank accounts. People were aghast. “That’s a very personal question,” they insisted. And therein lies the problem. Dunn argues that our inability to speak honestly about money is our #1 barrier to understanding it, leading us to feel alone, ashamed and anxious, which in turns makes us feel even more…
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe Book Review
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date February 26, 2019 From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In…
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule Book Review
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date April 1, 1992 Ann Rule was working on the biggest story of her career, tracking the trail of victims left by a brutal serial-killer. Little did this future bestselling author know that the savage slayer she was hunting was the young man she counted among her closest friends. Everyone’s picture of a natural winner, Ted Bundy was a bright, charming, and handsome man with a promising future as an attorney. But on January 24, 1989 Bundy was executed for the murders of three young women – and had confessed to taking the lives of at…
Sons of Cain by Peter Vronsky Book Review
Sons of Cain by Peter Vronsky Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date August 14, 2018 From the author of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters comes an in-depth examination of sexual serial killers throughout human history, how they evolved, and why we are drawn to their horrifying crimes. Before the term was coined in 1981, there were no “serial killers.” There were only “monsters”–killers society first understood as werewolves, vampires, ghouls and witches or, later, Hitchcockian psychos. In Sons of Cain–a book that fills the gap between dry academic studies and sensationalized true crime–investigative historian Peter Vronsky examines our understanding of serial killing from its prehistoric…
An Arabian Journey by Levison Wood Book Review
An Arabian Journey by Levison Wood Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date February 5, 2019 Following in the footsteps of famed explorers such as Lawrence of Arabia and Wilfred Thesiger, British explorer Levison Wood brings us along on his most complex expedition yet: a circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula. Starting in September 2017 in a city in Northern Syria, a stone’s throw away from Turkey and amidst the deadliest war of the twenty-first century, Wood set forth on a 5,000-mile trek through the most contested region on the planet. He moved through the Middle East for six months, from ISIS-occupied Iraq through Kuwait and along the jagged coastlines…
Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ’80s and ’90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss Book Review
Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ’80s and ’90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss Book Review The lowdown on Goodreads Publication Date October 30, 2018 Every twenty- or thirty-something woman knows these books. The pink covers, the flimsy paper, the zillion volumes in the series that kept you reading for your entire adolescence. Spurred by the commercial success of Sweet Valley High and The Babysitters Club, these were not the serious-issue YA novels of the 1970s, nor were they the blockbuster books of the Harry Potter and Twilight ilk. They were cheap, short, and utterly beloved. PAPERBACK CRUSH dives in deep to this golden age with affection, history, and…
Bob Armstrong Dip aka Tex-Mex Queso Recipe
Bob Armstrong Dip aka Tex-Mex Queso Recipe A few weeks ago, I arrived home to find one of the greatest things in life – a surprise package on my doorstep. My sweet friend Pam sent me a box with a card, some bridal magazines, and The Austin Cookbook. As much as I love California, I desperately miss food from Austin, which made this book one of the best gifts I received in a while. Mark immediately flipped to the Bob Armstrong Dip aka Tex-Mex Queso Recipe and asked if we could please make it the first Sunday of football. Um, duh, of course, we can! Matt’s El Rancho Matt’s El Rancho is…
Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South by Karen L. Cox Book Review
Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South by Karen L. Cox Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date October 9, 2017 In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery–known in the press as the “Wild Man” and the “Goat Woman”–enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed. The crime drew national coverage when it came to light…
Go Ask Ali: Half-Baked Advice (and Free Lemonade) by Ali Wentworth Book Review
Go Ask Ali: Half-Baked Advice (and Free Lemonade) by Ali Wentworth Book Review The lowdown from Goodreads Publication Date April 24th, 2018 New York Times bestselling author Ali Wentworth offers her hilarious and unique advice on surviving the absurdity of modern life in her third collection of laugh-out-loud comic vignettes. Ali Wentworth’s first two books, Ali in Wonderland and Happily Ali After, were lauded by readers, critics, and fellow comedians alike. Entertainment Weekly included Happily Ali After on its “Must List” and hailed it as “hilarious. . . . Her glass isn’t half full—it’s “empty and cracked,” while Cosmopolitan praised it as “razor-sharp.” Chelsea Handler called Ali in Wonderland “truly hilarious,” and Kathy Griffin christened it, “Chicken Soup for the Vagina.” Alec Baldwin has…
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