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John Manning, author of All the Pretty Dead Girls

Two decades ago, at a private women’s college in upstate New York, a student was brutally attacked in her dorm room, but her assailant was never found.

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Editorial content for Summer Blowout

Book

Summer Blowout

Teaser

A good makeup artist never panics. Bella Shaughnessy knows this. She’s the resident makeup maven in a family of Boston Irish hair salon owners; she has an artful solution to almost every problem. But Bella feels bruised beyond the reach of even the best concealer when her half-sister runs off with her husband. What could she come up with to cover a hurt like that?

About the Book

A good makeup artist never panics. Bella Shaughnessy knows this. She’s the resident makeup maven in a family of Boston Irish hair salon owners; she has an artful solution to almost every problem. But Bella feels bruised beyond the reach of even the best concealer when her half-sister runs off with her husband. What could she come up with to cover a hurt like that?

Plenty, it turns out. She conceives an invigorating new business idea, and soon meets a cute entrepreneur who can help out. Despite their bickering, they can’t seem to stay away from success --- or from each other.

Do you read debut authors?

April 4, 2009, 496 voters

April 3, 2009

OP-ED: Jeffrey Brown's Thought Bubble

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By Jeffrey Brown
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A few years ago, the talk of the graphic novel bubble started. Or maybe the graphic novel bubble itself started; it’s hard to tell. Maybe the bubble actually started much earlier, but people didn’t realize it was a bubble at first. Whatever the case, Chris Ware and Dan Clowes had books come out from Pantheon, the same publisher that had put out Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and their books started getting a lot of critical acclaim and attention from the mainstream press. Marjane Satrapi followed with her critical and commercial success, Persepolis,and Harvey Pekar’s long-running autobiographical comic American Splendor was adapted into a fairly successful film. At least, I think it was fairly successful. Then Craig Thompson worked for five years on his graphic novel Blankets for Top Shelf, and it was a critical and commercial success, both in the United States and internationally. Craig then signed a book deal with Pantheon, and suddenly it seemed like every alternative/indie cartoonist was dreaming of signing the big book deal with a mainstream publisher, and literary agents were looking to sign up the top graphic novel talent, and there seemed to be an unreal amount of opportunities for cartoonists whose previous publishing dreams involved printing somewhere other than the local copy shop.

April 3, 2009

Last weekend I read COLUMBINE by Dave Cullen. I thought I knew everything about Columbine as I had followed that story closely when it broke and in the months that followed. In my head two Goth-influenced kids who were part of the Trenchcoat Mafia at the high school took revenge one day on all of the jocks and others who had ostracized them over the years and shot them. That was the story I had been fed from the start. Now it seems that that was the story that fed upon itself when what happened was dramatically different. I started reading, and as the pages turned, every preconceived notion I had was unraveled. While I was ready to dismiss the book before I started it, I now thought it was one of the more powerful true crime narratives that I had read.

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Name up to three debut authors who you have recently read.

April 3, 2009

April 3, 2009 - April 16, 2009

Send us your current reading recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars. To make sure other readers will be able to find the book, please include the full title and correct author names (your entry must include these to be eligible to win). The Word of Mouth archives can be searched using the "Search" feature at the top right of the page.

April 2, 2009

Art of the City: Behind the Creation of the Art for City of Dust

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By John Hogan
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In a relatively short period of time, Radical Publishing has burst on the scene, setting itself apart with its fully painted comics. Beginning with works like Hercules, Hotwire, Shrapnel, and Caliber, Radical immediately distinguished itself with its gorgeous interior and exterior art.  
April 1, 2009

Watchmen: What GNR Readers Are Saying

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Posted by tom
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Thanks to everyone who entered our Watchmen movie contest. We appreciate your feedback! Here, we share some of the opinions readers gave about the movie.

April 2009

I am writing this newsletter from the Outer Banks where we are spending Spring Break. This is one of my favorite reading/writing weeks of the year. This house has a small dedicated office where I have managed to set up my desktop and a printer, and that room has a wall of bookshelves where I have moved in the books that I want to read. I wander in there to bang out emails, jot notes to myself and shop the shelves for the next book to read. I have to shoot a picture of this. It's actually quite amusing to see how I have moved in.

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