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Literary Feast 2007 Authors
 
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Margaret Ajemian Ahnert
In The Knock at the Door: A Journey Through the Darkness of the Armenian Genocide, first-time author Margaret Ahnert shares the story of her mother's terrifying experiences during the Armenian genocide in Turkey at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1915, Armenian Christians in Turkey were forced to convert to Islam, barred from speaking their language, and often driven out of their homes as the Turkish army embarked on a widespread campaign of intimidation and murder. Ahnert, a Fort Lauderdale resident, has produced television documentaries, holds a 100-ton master captain's license, and is an avid hunter, fisherwoman, and pilot.
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Ishmael Beah
Born to a life where war is reality for hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, this young man made it out to tell his tale. Ishmael Beah, now twenty-six years old, escaped Sierra Leone to come to the United States at the age of 17 and has since graduated from Oberlin College. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is Beah's first-hand account of the life and struggle of so many child warriors around the world. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children's Division Advisory Committee and has addressed the United Nations several times on behalf of these casualties of war.
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Andrew Carroll
Operation Homecoming is author Andrew Carroll's compilation of nearly 100 letters, poems and stories of service on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan and at home. An initiative of the National Endowment of the Arts, the project sent such noted authors as Tom Clancy, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff and Jeff Shaara to military bases to inspire the troops and their families to capture their wartime experiences. Carroll's Grace Under Fire is a moving record of the importance of religion and spirituality to troops and their families throughout American history. Carroll is the executive director of the American Poetry & Literacy Project, in Washington, D.C.
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Susan Cheever
American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work explores the personal lives behind the historic works of some of the most famous neighbors ever to live in 19th Century Concord, Massachusetts. These authors and activists transformed not only American literature and culture, they transformed each other, through their friendships and loves. Cheever, the daughter of literary giant John Cheever, is the bestselling author of 11 previous books, including five novels and the memoirs Note Found in a Bottle and Home Before Dark. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Boston Globe Winship Medal.
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Jon Clinch
In Finn: A Novel, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father. The result is an original debut novel that springs from Twain's masterpiece but takes on a fully realized life of its own. Finn is a tragic figure set loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body -- a corpse stripped of all identifying marks-drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim's identity, shape Finn's story as they will shape his life and his death. Clinch is a former advertising executive.
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Jennifer Crusie
Writing about romance and adventure comes easily to Jennifer Crusie, whose latest book, Don't Look Down, is a collaboration with bestselling author Bob Mayer. Crusie wrote her first Harlequin romance novel in 1993, and five others have followed. Her 15 novels have been published in 20 countries. They include What the Lady Wants, Tell Me Lies, and Getting Rid of Bradley, for which she won the Rita Award. Don't Look Down features the memorable Lucy Armstrong, a director of TV commercials who's just been offered her big break: a chance to direct an action movie. But there's trouble ahead with her stunt director ex-husband, and romance brewing with a former Green Beret "military consultant."
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John Dickerson
Before Barbara Walters, before Katie Couric, there was Nancy Dickerson. The first female member of the Washington TV news corps, Nancy covered most of the significant events of the 1960s. She and her husband Wyatt Dickerson were Washington's golden couple, and the capital's power brokers coveted invitations to swank dinners at their estate on the Potomac. Her son John Dickerson, now chief political correspondent for Slate, grew up in the shadow of her fame. On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star, is his frank memoir of the early days of television and of Washington's power elite. It also charts a son's search for the mother he came to admire and love.
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Farrah Gray
A self-made millionaire in his early teens, Farrah Gray is accustomed to defying the odds. The youngest person ever to have an office on Wall Street, Gray began his life on Chicago's South Side and formed his first business organization at age 8. At 15, he developed his own food company for kids, Farr-Out Foods, which he sold for $1.5 million. Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out chronicles Gray's life lessons from his early business successes to his current philanthropic ventures. Today at 22, he is in high demand as a dynamic public speaker on leadership, and personal and business development. He has been named one of the most influential Black men in America by the National Urban League's Urban Influence Magazine.
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Michael Grunwald
In The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise, Michael Grunwald tackles America's last frontier, the River of Grass that stopped flowing. In his gripping narrative, he recounts the successive generations of eager land sharks, politicians, sugar magnates, engineers, and farmers who have transformed the Everglades into an ecosystem on life support. Grunwald, a national reporter for The Washington Post, also analyzes the chances for success of the federal Everglades Restoration Plan, the largest environmental project in history. A frequent contributor to Slate, Grunwald won the 2003 Society of Environmental Journalists Award for in-depth reporting on the Everglades.
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Cassandra King
Queen of Broken Hearts tells the story of a controversial divorce therapist whose innovative methods have helped heal many shattered lives... but not her own. This book, like Cassandra King's other bestsellers Making Waves, The Sunday Wife and The Same Sweet Girls, is set in a small Southern town, with all of its intrigues. King has taught writing on the college level, conducted corporate writing seminars; and published an article on her second-favorite pastime, cooking, in Cooking Light magazine. An Alabama native, she lives in the Low Country of South Carolina with her husband, novelist Pat Conroy.
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Brian Latell
Brian Latell is considered one of America's foremost experts on Cuba. A former top CIA officer, he has been a Latin American and Caribbean specialist for the last four decades. Latell has consulted throughout the region with presidents, senior government officials, and U.S. embassy officers. In After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader, he presents an intimate portrait of Fidel and Raul Castro, offering new insights on their relationship through the years and on Raul Castro's potential leadership and why it would be unlikely for a challenger to usurp his control. Latell is a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
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Linda Francis Lee
A former Texas debutante and Junior Leaguer, Linda Francis Lee shares her 10 Rules for Proper Behavior and Guidelines for Proper Dress in her hilarious debut, The Devil in the Junior League. As we all learn in life, there are unspoken rules, social norms to prove we fit in. Lee explores what happens when someone doesn't get it. Fredericka Mercedes Hildebrand Ware (Frede to her friends) is a Junior Leaguer to be envied until her husband betrays her, steals her money and runs off. To save face and her fortune, she turns to Howard Grout, a tasteless, ruthless lawyer who agrees to help only if Frede will get his spandex-loving wife Nikki into the Junior League.
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Daniel Levitin
Why do some songs move us while others leave us cold? Why can music trigger memories that seem buried or lost? With the unique background of a former record producer, sound engineer, and A&R agent for Columbia Records, and current expertise on how our brains interpret music, Daniel Levitin, Ph.D. shares the answers to these and many other questions about how we perceive music. This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession explores the complex relationship between music and the mind, science and art Levitin now runs the Levitin Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University.
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Sujata Massey
Sujata Massey was born in Sussex, England to a father from India and a mother from Germany. Her characters are as multicultural as their creator. In Girl in a Box, her ninth crime novel, Massey returns to her usual protagonist, the brassy Japanese-American Rei Shimura, who works for an elite U.S. spy agency. Rei is assigned to infiltrate a Tokyo department store whose profits are suspiciously inflated though she wonders why this is a matter of American state security. Her escapades are an engrossing romp through espionage, fashion and romance. Massey, who spent several years in Japan teaching English and studying Japanese, provides a fascinating inside view of Japan and its culture.
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Bob Mitchell
"So…why should I save you?" That's the question Elliott Goodman hears in the operating room as he's about to have emergency surgery following a heart attack. But it isn't Elliott's surgeon who's asking. It's God. And God has a wager for Elliott. He challenges him to an 18-hole golf match. If Elliott wins, he is saved; if he loses... So begins Match Made in Heaven, a witty and insightful novel about golf and life and the lessons learned from both. Bob Mitchell is a sports fanatic and the author of seven nonfiction books. He was a French professor at Harvard, Purdue and Ohio State for 11 years and also worked as creative director at a number of New York ad agencies.
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Jorj Morgan
In Gorgeous! The Sum of All Your Glorious Parts, Fort Lauderdale's Jorj Morgan helps today's woman make the most of her mind and body. Written with South Florida plastic surgeon Dr. Harry Moon and former Olympic diver Mary Ellen Clark, the book is filled with information about the science of good health and beauty, food tips and recipes that promote wellness, stress-reducing exercise and relaxation techniques. Morgan, the author of four books on nutrition and entertaining, is a frequent speaker at wellness seminars and at lifestyle balance workshops. Her culinary advice appears regularly in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Reader's Digest.
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Sam Moses
At All Costs: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Marines Reversed the Tide of World War II is the astonishing untold account, based on original historical reporting, of how two American men faced unfathomable danger to help save the besieged island of Malta, considered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to be the crux of World War II. It's a story of heroism and courage that changed the course of history. Moses is the author of the race-driving memoir, Fast Guys, Rich Guys and Idiots, and a former senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He began writing as a U.S. Navy seaman on a heavy cruiser in action off Vietnam.
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T. Jefferson Parker
T. Jefferson Parker, the prolific and award-winning author of popular murder mysteries, traces the genesis for his new book Storm Runners to his days in high school. One character is drawn from the drum major for the marching band who administered swift justice to rowdy classmates. He later traded his baton for a police officer's gun. Not far away a bright Latino student got a full ride to Harvard but on his vacations, he robbed liquor stores at gunpoint. Parker draws on his deep California roots and trademark psychological acuity to ask: What if the lives of these two boys had intersected? Like his previous 13 books, Parker's latest novel deals with crime, life and death in sunny California.
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Tom Santopietro
After his witty portrayal of entertainment legend Barbra Streisand in The Importance of Being Barbra, Tom Santopietro takes on the biggest female box office attraction in Hollywood history - Doris Day. In Considering Doris Day, he paints a vibrant portrait of the woman, and offers a thoroughly researched career evaluation and critique of her pristine screen persona and her singing prowess. He has worked for New York theatre for the past 20 years as a manager of more than two dozen Broadway shows, including A Few Good Men, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, A Doll's House, Master Class, Tru, The Iceman Cometh and Noises Off.
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Jeff Shaara
Jeff Shaara, who has written critically acclaimed historical novels covering the American Revolution through World War I, takes on World War II in the first volume of a planned trilogy, The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II. As the New York Times best seller begins, Hitler's forces control Western Europe, and U.S. troops face off against the Germans in North Africa. From fall 1942 through spring 1943, the Allies battle Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. Shaara evokes the agony of desert warfare and the utter chaos of an airborne assault through the experiences of a tank gunner and a paratrooper. The challenges of command are seen through the eyes of such luminaries as generals Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton and Rommel.
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Yasmin Shiraz
Yasmin Shiraz is the CEO of a marketing company, book publisher, and event planner. A role model and champion of teen girls, she's the author of the Blueprint empowerment series: The Blueprint for My Girls and The Blueprint for My Girls in Love. She speaks frequently on college campuses, and to such groups as the YMCA and Boys and Girls Clubs. In her novel About Privacy, she draws upon her six years as publisher and editor of Mad Rhythms, a magazine devoted to hip hop and urban music to create a vivid backdrop of rap music while she explores a journalist's struggle against accusations of attempted murder and themes of love and manipulation.
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Adriana Trigiani
New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani chose her hometown for the setting of her novels, Big Stone Gap, Big Cherry Holler and Milk Glass Moon. Trigiani returns with her fourth entry in the popular series with Home to Big Stone Gap, a powerful story of humor and heart, wisdom and hope. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, it is the tale of a strong woman who faces challenges to her full life in a small community and who then must reinvent her world, her life, and herself, whether she wants to or not. One of the reigning queens of women's fiction, Trigiani is also the screenwriter and director of the movie version of Big Stone Gap, which will begin filming this spring.
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Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Time magazine named Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez one of the nation's 25 most influential Hispanics because, they said, she is the "Godmother" of chica lit. Her stories are of professional, educated American women, most of whom are of Latin descent. In Make Him Look Good, her third chica lit offering, she writes a busy celebrity fantasy populated by six women and the "him" of the title, a Latin pop sensation named Ricky Biscayne. A former reporter at the Boston Globe, where she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and the Los Angeles Times, Valdes-Rodriguez is a popular speaker on American campuses.
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Kate Waites
Particular Friendships: A Convent Memoir offers a rare glimpse inside the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in the late 1960s. The young narrator arrives with gentle visions spawned by The Sound of Music, only to encounter the harshness of life in this secretive society. Her wit, compassion, and musicality foment a rebellion against rules forbidding expressions of joy and intimacy. Dr. Kate Waites is a professor of English and Gender Studies at Nova Southeastern University.
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