NOTE: I’ve been promising and/or threatening myself to publish fiction here from time to time, since writing novels has been a significant part of my life. The other night I had a dream, and like most dreams it had some kind of beginning but nothing resembling an end. This story is what I think the […]
Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown, both in Virginia and both part of crucial early moments in the commonwealth’s history, make for strange but fascinating bedfellows. The first is the place England made its initial go in the New World, despite starvation and an understandably violent pushback from native Americans beginning in 1607. The second is the […]
As we speak, my 60th book – Virginia Ham: A History of Salt and Smoke– is making its way into the retail settings of the world. On the in-person side, I will be speaking and signing at Fonts Books & Gifts in McLean, Va., Tuesday May 12 at 7 p.m. And I’m especially happy to […]
I just spent the better part of a week with two of my oldest and best friends – not together, mind you, since I’m not even sure they know each other. First with one and then with the other, we revisited old haunts, swapped much-loved yarns and discovered a few new places we might seriously […]
For all who visit the Hungarian capital of Budapest on the Danube, there is intense romance written into the city’s very existence. For centuries, Buda and Pest faced each other from opposite sides of the river – the first regal, a bit haughty and filled with castles and cathedrals, the other scrappier and more commercial […]
There is quiet and peace in the green meadow on a not-too-hot summer’s day. The grass now covers the valley among gently rolling hills, with only a few stones marking departed buildings poking through. A welcome breeze finds its way through the leafy trees. The world, meaning the bustling Czech capital of Prague only an […]
I didn’t read Postmortem when it introduced Dr. Kay Scarpetta in 1990, but I jumped into the series a few books later and then played enthusiastic catch-up. So, as of now, I’ve read all 29 of Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta novels – and feel therefore compelled to tune into the new TV series on Prime Video. […]
It was sometime after midnight that the train I’d taken up from Rome stuttered to a stop in the dark as I tried to sleep sitting up, slowly releasing all its passengers onto a concrete walkway. Guards with machine guns directed us into a tunnel of high fencing lit in pools by spotlights. The year […]
My journey to Prague began as a postcard, truth be told: one of those faded, crumpled cards in a flea market long ago – I don’t remember where or when. The city in that vintage black-and-white photograph seemed filled with castles, with shuttered windows and cobblestones and statues and balconies, and drifts of white snow, […]
The word arancini in Italian means “little oranges.” But in the Sicily that named them, going back to the Arab occupation in the 12th century, they are actually no such thing. They were named so, as you might expect, because of a physical resemblance. Some – a deep-fried form of risotto – are round like […]