Tag archives: read

Summer Thrills
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   August 6, 2024

‘Scandalous Women’ Author Gill Paul imagines a friendship between two glamorous women in her latest, Scandalous Women. Jacqueline Susann was the first to shock the publishing industry with her now iconic Valley of the Dolls, which remains one of the all-time best-selling novels in history. Two years later, in 1968, Jackie Collins published The World […]

Spring Reads
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   April 16, 2024

I am admittedly a big fan of NY Times bestselling author Kim Michele Richardson and her Troublesome Creek books. Her children’s book, Junia: The Book Mule of Troublesome Creek – with illustrations by David C. Gardner – is out now and it is a delight. Set in 1936, it is Junia’s job to carry the […]

Stories Matter: Back-to-School Reads
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   August 16, 2022

As the temperature rises… so does the current crop of sizzling reads. First up from Elaine Murphy is I Told You This Would Happen, a pithy, hilarious thriller that will have you rooting for at least one serial killer. Sisters Carrie and Becca are siblings that just barely get along, and it might have to […]

Rethinking Reading: Look to Science to Solve the Literacy Crisis
By Ruth Green   |   June 14, 2022

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass The Santa Barbara Unified School District is failing in its most fundamental responsibility – teaching all of its students to read. Currently (and pre-pandemic as well), barely half of the students in SBUSD read proficiently meeting the district’s standard. The percentage is […]

Spring Travels
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   March 29, 2022

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 […]