Ugh. Cancer. That’s what I thought the first time I heard about Gail Konop Baker’s debut memoir, CANCER IS A BITCH (Or, I’d rather be having a midlife crisis.) I have a number of friends who are breast cancer survivors. Several of my great aunts, women I loved and admired were afflicted with various forms of cancer. I do the walk every October, donate whenever someone asks me to, offer…
You know how at the beginning of a night out dancing, you head out onto the dance floor and do that subdued side-to-side move because you don’t want to look like a dork? And then, by the end of the night, fortified with a few tequila shooters or a bottle of Veuve, you’ve kicked off your shoes, begged the DJ to play Oh, What a Night or Dancing Queen or…
We are thrilled to welcome New York Times best selling author Jane Green to The Debutante Ball today. Jane has an amazing new book called The Beach House, a book fans and reviewers are calling her best work yet. The Beach House by Jane Green Known in Nantucket as the crazy woman who lives in the rambling house atop the bluff, Nan doesn’t care what people think. At sixty-five-years old,…
The Debs are delighted to welcome debut novelist Anisha Lakhani as our guest today, author of the very funny and unputdownable Schooled>. There never was a grog, in the history of grogs, that I wished more fervently would become an actual manifestation of its title than The Debutante Ball. Blue blood will be replaced by blue ink, and new authors wearing white will dance-all-night like Eliza Doolittle on the arms…
After growing up as the only child of bitterly divorced parents, Mara Foster has finally gained independence and is embarking on a promising career as an artist. But despite her success, she is fragile. Burdened by a host of fears and anxieties, Mara finds it difficult even to leave her house on most days. When Mara meets Hugo, the walls she has built around herself begin to crumble, and as…
My favorite summer food, also my favorite thing of all time to eat for breakfast is simple and amazingly delicious. When my mother was growing up, she had a peach tree in her back yard, and every year they had far more peaches than they knew what to do with. I suspect this is why my family recipe books are jammed with peach tarts, peach pie, peach cobbler, peach salad,…
I live eight minutes from the beach, and it is my favorite place in the whole world. I keep a sun hat, beach chair, towel and a small umbrella in the back of my car at all times, just in case I have a spare hour (or half hour) for a little midday getaway. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I take my laptop down and work with my toes in the…
As many of you know, Fifteen Minutes of Shame was published in the strangest of ways and I miraculously (insanely? stupidly?) sold it with no novel-writing experience whatsoever. So, check and deadline looming, I sat down and attempted to actually produce a novel. Something I wasn’t exactly sure how to do. Here’s the gist of the story: America’s favorite TV dating expert Darby Vaughn finds out her husband Will is…
The year is 1986. Every weekend my friends and I tell our parents we’re going to the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This buys us a pass for a few curfew bonus hours, until at least 2:30 in the morning. Sometimes we actually go. Our little group of prepsters and jocks don our garters, party hats and freakwear, sneaking rice and water guns into the theater downtown….
When I grew up, we went water skiing every Fourth of July with the Curtis family, and then we’d lie exhausted on the beach, eating cold fried chicken and my mother’s fabulous top secret potato salad. (It’s the ingredients that are top secret, not the salad itself) — this paper plate will self destruct in five seconds… When we got home, we’d get cleaned up, eat some more and then,…
