Deanna Larson
Content by Deanna Larson
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Jill Conner Browne, the self-appointed Sweet Potato Queen, captured hearts from the start with her outrageously outspoken debut, The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love, which documented h
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The bright, infectiously enthusiastic Sara Gruen couldn’t be further from the seedy circus subculture portrayed in Water for Elephants, her blockbuster novel that’s get
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Many medical school graduates want to establish lucrative private practices, but for Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., the Bronx-born son of an Irish physician, that was never enough.
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When Randy Pausch learned he was dying of pancreatic cancer, he found himself in quite a dilemma: at the top of his professional game, with a beautiful wife and three young children, how should he
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If you own white- and black-tie apparel, occupy a home that wouldn't be cramped with 100 guests, and think relaxed is making wild mushroom risotto cake and poached pears wrapped in pastry for a din
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Many of the images from the pages of LIFE magazine are iconic: the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on V-J Day by Alfred Eisenstaedt, the aerial shot of a near drowning on Coney Isl
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Sometimes broad black humor is required, and sometimes the suffering is too delicate for anything other than the most quietly astute words.
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Ever since she decided to buy the rundown farmhouse Bramasole and document her adventures in Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes has turned a twist of fate into a one-woman promotional machine
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Greeks are known for their delicious food and the gusto to enjoy it. But eating your mother's Greek cooking can leave more than a few extra pounds around your midsection, as Dr.
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The Ides of March is no match for cooped-up gardeners eager to get their fingers into still-frosty earth.
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For gardeners who want to create their own piece of paradise, a good place to start is the massive American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.
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Those who run on impulse to the nearest garden supply center should pull up a lawn chair and plan first with New Complete Home Landscaping.
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Gardens look most natural when they complement a house style rather than fight it.
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After the garden plans have been drawn, build one of the final fires of the season and curl up with The Garden of Reading, a collection of short fiction about gardens edited by Michele Slung.
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Russell Simmons, the groundbreaking, Tony award- winning media mogul (HBO's Def Comedy Jam, Def Poetry Jam on Broadway ) and co-founder of hip-hop label Def Jam shares his business philosophy in <
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Ellen Sandbeck, an organic landscaper and worm farmer, raises consciousness while promoting simple, environmentally friendly and cheap solutions to every cleaning challenge in Organic Housekee
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Shoppers drive hundreds of miles into the heartland, drawn to Nell Hill's, the home furnishing store in Atchison, Kansas, known for its layered, lived-in, neo-Victorian style.
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Even the most downtrodden corporate drones will believe that they have the ability to turn their unknown assets into limitless prosperity after reading the wildly optimistic and inspiring Cracking
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NEEDLE WORKS
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<b>Danticat's story of family and loss</b> Family can be inscrutable, a mystery sometimes better solved by describing events than by analyzing motives.
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It's enough to make you want to dig up Art Buchwald as soon as he finally reaches the grave and beat him with his own shin bone (to paraphrase Mark Twain).
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<b>Elizabeth Edwards' survival stories</b> Parents, political junkies and life's survivors that is, most of us will be caught up in the stories told by Elizabeth Edwards in Saving Grac
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Another cheerleader for the cheap and simple workout is Leslie Sansone.
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While thousands of diet and exercise experts claim to have the answer, Harley Pasternak really does have a catchy and worthwhile concept in Five-Factor Fitness: The Diet and Fitness Secret of Ho
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Sisters: Tenth Anniversary Edition revisits 13 sets of sisters originally featured in Sisters, the sleeper New York Times bestseller of the early 1990s, along with some new siblings.
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A flower child who attended the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, Sara Davidson epitomized her trailblazing generation.
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A man leaves his home one dark Manhattan night with a beagle on a leash, and then his life lodges in a single moment that never tips into the next.
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Each year, nearly 20,000 young people “age out” of America’s foster care system, and many of them have nowhere to go. Writer Vanessa Diffenbaugh has transformed this sad statistic into an extraordinary debut novel.
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Snow—and a gentle fate—swirl around Elm Creek Manor as members of the Elm Creek Quilters gather for their annual day-after-Thanksgiving bee in A Quilter's Holiday. This lat
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Infomercial, shminfomercial: everything you need to know to get rich quick, or die laughing, is contained in Dave Barry's Money Secrets.
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John Grogan is more like Marley than he might want to believe.
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Quirky actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. ("Living with Ed") was riding his bike to the Vanity Fair Oscar party long before green was cool.
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Oh Susannah, anybody can play an instrument!
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One morning Julia Fox Garrison kissed her husband, sent her child off to school and began a busy day at work; then she got a sudden excruciating headache.
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The store that stained the American home espresso now gives its fans even more to drool over in Pottery Barn Home.
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If the formal lines of Versailles, Sissinghurst Castle or the gardens of Kyoto fertilize your horticultural aspirations, then the imaginative gardens in The New Garden Paradise: Great Private Gard
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The fresh smell of line-dried laundry practically leaps off the pages of Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook.
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<b>I'm OK, you're not</b> The ubiquitous Dr.
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Mother Nature doesn't need a paint chip to combine colors.
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Apparently, Prince Charles was right: talking to plants isn't barmy.
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<b>It's your move</b> Use harassment to boost your career, advises Penelope Trunk in <b>Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success</b>, a left-field guide coming late thi
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Each January, people across America vow to get into better shape, then beat themselves up when they fail to maintain their resolutions.
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Those who want a more traditional reference guide to cleaning challenges will enjoy the perky advice and attractive design of Cleaning Plain and Simple.
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Self Magazine's 15 Minutes to Your Best Self by Lucy Danzinger et al. presents multiple New Year's resolutions in one gorgeous little package.
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When all the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above average, you know you've entered the mystical world of Lake Wobegon, created by National Public Radio personal
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Lean, Long ∧ Strong is one of the best new entries in the fitness category, allowing resolution-makers to get the bodies they dream about.
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It's no secret that celebrities glow and look glam because teams of beauty experts follow them around. The Handbook of Style, bound in faux croc, is everywoman's chance to even the field.
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Classic suspense and intricate plots are the usual domain of mega-best-selling writer Dean Koontz—a touching story about a beloved dog, not so much.
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Entrepreneurs are a notoriously optimistic lot: they focus on inspiration and perspiration and often share failures only with insiders.
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If home advice is as ubiquitous as cheap throw pillows, why aren't our houses less cluttered and more reflective of our best selves?
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The pictures are burned into our collective brains, and the facts are familiar to people all over the world. But five years after 9/11, many of us still want to know: How did those spouses cope?
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Some girls live on cigarettes, booze, heartbreak and petty disasters, until fate turns their lifetime of humiliation into a fairy tale ending.
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As we waddle into the new year, the weight-loss ads and get-fit advice begin to sound like the grownups in a Peanuts TV special.
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Coins have been coveted throughout history as both useful art objects and symbols of power.
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Television producer, director and writer Christopher Lukas (Silent Grief) and his Pulitzer Prize - winning journalist brother J.
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<b>Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog</b> The dilemma of the canine's true nature is explored by award-winning writer Ted Kerasote in <b>Merle's Door: Lessons from a
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Chris Freytag, ShopNBC's fitness expert and personal trainer, knows that busy families hardly have a minute to spare.
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<b>Murphy's Law strikes the garden</b> What gardener doesn't indulge in <i>schadenfreude</i> from the smug perch of an armchair in early spring, before their own epic mistak
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Live Your Best Life: A Treasury of Wisdom, Wit, Advice, Interviews and Inspiration from O, the Oprah Magazine is the first annual compilation of articles and essays from O magazine, the
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<b>One man's island</b> Everything about being in St.
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Like many legendary sports writers before him, Mitch Albom embodies that plain-spoken but big-hearted guy you want to bear hug, then buy a beer.
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The photographer's lens magnifies both personality and era, the seen and unseen.
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Style maven Carolyne Roehm captures readers' attention form the start in Presentations: A Passion for Gift Wrapping with her confession that she's held onto paper, tags, ribbons, cards and orn
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Brassier than Gloria Steinem in the NOW era, Deborah Copaken Kogan, an international photojournalist who wielded her camera throughout the '80s and part of the '90s, has written a vivid, sp
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What does a hip, arty, self-interested and semi-committed couple in a closet-sized New York City apartment do when they tire of their jaded lives?
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Those investors still recovering from the burst of the dotcom bubble will appreciate Active Investing: Take Charge of Your Portfolio in Today's Unpredictable Markets.
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Who else but Anna Quindlen could make the short life of an ordinary Labrador retriever so profound? Good Dog.
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White-knuckle flyers and their struggles while suspended in those big aluminum tubes in the sky inspired Chicken Soup for the Soul Presents The Fearless FlightKit.
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Issue:
When you bite into a burger, a steak sandwich or pile of juicy wings—and sauce drips down your wrist and your jaw aches from opening wide—you’re having a classic Guy Fieri moment.
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Reading Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World is like overhearing a barstool monologue by a streetwise MBA from the School of Hard Knocks: if you interrupt with a dumb que
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The Inn at Lake Devine is a looming anachronism, a New England WASP character all its own.
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To the afterlife created in Alice Walker's latest novel, say amen and believe.
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Dying is an experience you can't imagine until you get there, and impossible to relate once you have.
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If anyone can capture what makes Sunday afternoons and lives of quiet desperation so melancholy, it's Anita Brookner.
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Altar music, for those who hear it, must be a partial lament.
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In this charming, witty novel, Zigman creates an amusing fairy tale from that common nightmare for 30-something women: hearing a louder tick-tock from their biological clock.
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Amy Bloom faces off with taboo topics in her short stories, those unwanted subjects rarely overheard on the bus or at a party.
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Will present and future generations help protect our planet from neglect and abuse, or will the social and political mechanisms of the market economy win out?
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Dog lovers and literary groupies alike will adore Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte.
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If you need to lose weight, consider taking a trip to another country. Two new entries in the ever-expanding category of diet books look at the cultural aspects of maintaining a healthy weight.
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Big grins will break out on faces across America when readers check out the diet menus devised by Mireille Guiliano for French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes and Pleasure
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Nicholas Sparks waves his magic romance wand once again, this time over the ideal of transformational first love.
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If an Archaeopteryx of the Late Jurassic Period perched on our rooftops, we’d surely take notice.
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The smart mischievous chicken, the sweet sensitive cow and the problem-solving pig are the stuff of cartoons.
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A bible in the frugal but fabulous periodicals category, Real Simple magazine and its associated books are packed with arty still lifes and easy and adaptable templates for parties that whispe
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He reports, he anchors, he blogs, he gets emotional. Wait, pause. Rewind. Old-school newsmen aren't supposed to react or feel, but Anderson Cooper is a new breed of journalist.
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The "Native universe" could describe the whole of the Americas and Caribbean, as well as the varied, mysterious and complex societies of Native peoples.
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Life is ultimately about death, and nowhere is the reminder more poignant than in the brief and bittersweet relationship with a companion animal.
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The search for a soulful and completing love is a theme as old as stories, and recent bestsellers have struggled to convey that theme in all its universal, weighty and romantic glory.
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Betty White has been on a roll—a tear, really—for decades.
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The inside counts, but the outside packaging can make all the difference between a date or a job and a pass over.
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Looking appropriate as you age, while not giving in to stretch pants, low-rider jeans and scrunchies, is a challenge taken up by Christine Schwab in The Grown-Up Girl's Guide to Style.
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Moving from lunch in the dorm cafeteria to lunch at Chez Henri with the boss is a transition that green professionals can make with the help of Work 101: Learning the Ropes of the Workplace Wi
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Hannah Seligson is every girl's BFF in New Girl on the Job: Advice from the Trenches.
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<b>What's new in getting old</b> Not many Americans have missed the message that retirement now means a Jupiter-sized nest egg, a fourth or fifth career and purpose-driven leisure.
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More than 65 million American households have a pet, so it's difficult to comprehend that many living creatures in this country are neglected, abused and cruelly murdered each year.
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Animal Life is the ultimate armchair expedition for wildlife enthusiasts.
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The workplace can seem like a large dysfunctional family, but Lisa Robyn sees it as a wild, sadomasochistic world where some wield power and others often women succumb to it.
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The Victory Garden is the longest-running gardening program on American television, popular for its folksy style and Yankee practicality.
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