After finishing two "projects" back-to-back, I wanted something a little lighter. And I had just the thing: The First Assistant, by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare. I read the original right around this time last year. In re-reading that post, I was a little surprised at all I had to say about chick lit ...

Allison Amend most recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #256. Allison Amend is the author of Things That Pass for Love. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Pondering the troubling things that pass for love. Author: Allison Amend Subjects Discussed: Dealings with the Atlantic Monthly, what constitutes a p...

Looks like we could melt that snowman with our candles. Totally unintentional. This is the time of year my patients come in with holiday questions, and I happen to see a lot of Italian people. (Thank you, thank you, thank you Sopranos). A lovely Italian man who has been seeing me for a long time swe...

With all of the good books I picked out yesterday, I'd like to say that it was hard to choose one to read first. But Jennifer Weiner's Certain Girls is a 7-day book, and I also suspected it'd be a fairly fast read, so that one got the nod. I was right, too: I started the book around 8 or 9 last nigh...

Chick Lit authors say they don't get any respect. Now a new literary contest aims to change all that. Melissa Nathan Award for comedy romance awards $10,000 to the winner. It is sponsored by the British grocery chain Tesco. This year the winner was Lisa Jewell who famously said: "People say 'chick l...

By Mary Kay Andrews. When Keeley Murdock finds her fiance and the maid of honor fucking each other at the rehearsal dinner at the country club, she...well, you can guess how she reacted. Suffice it to say a country club......

By Mindy Klasky. The sequel to Girl's Guide to Witchcraft starts out good...and then has issues. Ten months after the last book, Jane's been practicing hard with her Watcher warder David, and she's just gotten an invite to join the......

By Mindy Klasky. Jane Madison is a librarian under stress. She works in a colonial library that's fallen on hard times, and is now making her (a) dress up in colonial garb every dang day, (b) run a coffee bar,......

On my desk today is a little pile of Japanese fabrics from Patchwork on Central Park — the strawberries are very, very cute. That’s also a bit of Rosa’s ribbon draped casually across it. Under that is a Moleskine dedicated to “ideas for my online store”. Under that is a...

"Steroid" Scandal Rocks Major League Libraries: Why not make the top quality stuff available to everyone? That’s the only way to really level the playing field,� says metadata advocate Harley Trion. “If we close down the labs creating high-quality metadata, you will see widespread adoption of ...