Kitty Kelley Book Club: ‘Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises’ 
• April 12, 2023

A literary critic admits his shortcomings. The writing life is full of potholes — long days and solitary nights followed by rewrites, rejections, and, for most, scant rewards. Upon publication […]

Of Inhuman Bondage: Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Nickel Boys’ Shines a Light on an Insidious Evil
• February 8, 2023

Colson Whitehead is to American literature what the Rolls-Royce is to automobiles: revered and unrivaled. Having published eight novels, two books of nonfiction, and numerous essays and short stories, the […]

Kitty Kelley Book Club: ‘Shine,’ a Path to Stardom
• January 5, 2023

’Tis the season, and January is the time for New Year’s resolutions. So, in that spirit, Larry Thompson, a Hollywood magnate, offers his book, “SHINE: A Powerful 4-Step Plan for […]

Kitty Kelley Book Club: ‘Shirley Hazzard: a Writing Life’ 
• December 1, 2022

An entertaining, edifying look at the underappreciated Australian author Shirley Hazzard’s first short-story submission was plucked from a slush pile of 30,000 unsolicited manuscripts at the New Yorker by fiction […]

David Bruce Smith’s Grateful American Book Award Honors Michelle Coles 
• November 9, 2022

No one hosts a more spectacular dinner party for a better cause than David Bruce Smith. His heavy parchment invitations of exquisite calligraphy arrive each fall to announce his Grateful […]

Kitty Kelley Book Club: ‘Manifesto: On Never Giving Up’ 
• October 12, 2022

The Booker Prize-winning author owes it all to tenacity. And talent.  Reviewed by Kitty Kelley  If “perseverance is genius in disguise,” then Bernardine Evaristo is a 22-carat gold, diamond-encrusted genius. […]

‘Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom’ 
• September 14, 2022

A Riveting Saga That Belongs on the Silver Screen.  Lights! Camera! Action!  Andrew Nagorski’s “Saving Freud” ought to be coming to a theater near you. This nonfiction work crackles like […]

Kitty Kelley Book Club: ‘My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington’ 
• August 17, 2022

Meet a fortunate son genuinely grateful for his luck.  Reviewed by Kitty Kelley  Sometimes, the sons of famous fathers are cursed. “They’re born on third base and think they’ve hit […]

‘Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History’ 
• July 13, 2022

An edifying, bloated chronicle of what might’ve been.    “For all sad words of tongue and pen,  The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’ ”  These woeful words from […]

Kitty Kelley Book Club: ‘The Summer Friend: A Memoir’
• June 15, 2022

 A heartfelt, guarded ode to a seasonal pal.   The spectacular cover of Charles McGrath’s “The Summer Friend” deserves its own trophy. It shows a photograph of an apricot sun setting […]