Tag archives: Leslie Zemeckis
Time to load up those beach totes as June brings a tidal wave of captivating books. The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule is a mystical, magical read. Set in the 1960s, Bernadette and Melvin, a young Black couple, flee a racially divided America for Ghana where they hope to obtain asylum from Melvin’s […]
Imagine yourself, a newly married woman who wakes in Lisbon to find your husband has vanished, the police don’t believe you are innocent, and suddenly danger lurks around every corner. That is the opening of Chris Pavone’s Two Nights in Lisbon. What follows is an unpredictable, twisty story that will have you guessing to the […]
First off, let’s visit a small town in Texas. In Samantha Jayne Allen’s Pay Dirt Road, waitress Annie is drawn into her family’s private investigation firm after a fellow waitress disappears from a party they both attended. Allen slowly builds her characters and the atmosphere of a recession-hit town with hardscrabble characters in grimy honky-tonks […]
Maune Contemporary, a new art gallery, has opened on State Street next to the Arlington Theatre. It is the second location for owners Ramsey and Heidi Maune, who opened their first gallery in Atlanta, Georgia, four years ago. “It has been a longtime dream of ours to open a gallery here,” Heidi told me at […]
Sorry not sorry, but I have many excellent reads this month. Let’s start with The Cicada Tree, a debut novel by Robert Gwaltney with its melt-in-your-mouth prose, is a Southern gothic novel in the tradition of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. I was enraptured with the story of eleven-year-old Analeise, a piano protégé living in […]
Nadia Denham runs a curio shop in a “rundown Santa Barbara mall.” Mickie Lambert works for a company that creates “digital scrapbooks” for those wishing to preserve their precious trinkets. When Nadia dies, Mickie sets out to fulfill her last wish to curate twelve mementos that cause a dormant serial killer to surface. Mickie receives […]
You do not have to be a ballerina, or a dance mom, as I am — quick shout out to Gustafson Studios for managing an end of year, in-person ballet show — to enjoy Georgina Pazcoguin’s memoir Swan Dive: The making of a Rogue Ballerina. Pazcoguin’s rise from ABT Summer Intensive student to NYCB’s first […]
It is every parent’s nightmare. Their child goes missing. It is 1993 and young girls are disappearing in Northern California. The New York Times bestselling author Paula McLain (The Paris Wife) makes an abrupt departure from her popular historical novels to delve into the world of suspense and crime mystery in When the Stars Go […]
In the Kitchen with Leslie Zemeckis When Leslie Zemeckis saunters into a room, people pay attention. That’s because the Montecito-based actress-baker-author exudes a kind of charm and poise that makes it possible to swan her way through any room – even a kitchen. Her kitchen is her temple, her place for Zen. So is her […]
Last Sunday, community godfather and Christmas Elf Dana Newquist organized the second Montecito-To-Unity toy and fundraising drive and caravan for delivery. A great group met up at the Upper Village in classic cars, ready to donate toys and funds for the second week in a row. Dana asked me to get up on the 1937 […]
The Santa Barbara Symphony’s reimagined 2020-2021 performance season launches this weekend first as an online-only series – although the musicians are performing live in person. And while plans have already been put in place to allow audiences up to about 30 percent capacity at its home venue of the Granada Theatre starting in January, the […]
