Stefanie Dazio and Sandy Cohen, The Associated PressPublished 7:02 p.m. ET June 23, 2019 | Updated 7:04 p.m. ET June 23, 2019
CLOSE
Michelle Obama can now claim to have the bestselling book of 2018! Keri Lumm reports. Buzz60
LOS ANGELES – Writer Judith Krantz, whose million-selling novels such as "Scruples" and "Princess Daisy" engrossed readers worldwide with their steamy tales of the rich and beautiful, died Saturday at her Bel-Air home. She was 91.
Krantz's son Tony Krantz, a TV executive, confirmed her death by natural causes on Sunday afternoon. He said he'd hoped to re-create the "Scruples" miniseries before her she died but it is still in the works.
"She had this rare combination of commercial and creative," he said.
Krantz wrote for Cosmopolitan and Ladies Home Journal magazines before discovering, at age 50, the talent for fiction that made her rich and famous like the characters she created.
Her first novel — "Scruples" in 1978 — became a best-seller, as did the nine that followed. Krantz's books have been translated into 52 languages and sold more than 85 million copies worldwide. They inspired a series of hit miniseries with the help of her husband, film and television producer Steve Krantz.
"I always ask myself if what I'm writing will satisfy a reader who's in a plane that can't land because of fog, or who's recovering from an operation in a hospital or who has to escape to a more delightful world for whatever reason," Krantz said in 1990. "That is the test."
While her work was decidedly less than highbrow, Krantz made no apologies for the steamy novels with titles like "Princess Daisy," ''Mistral's Daughter," ''Lovers," ''I'll Take Manhattan" and "The Jewels of Tessa Kent."
"I write the best books I know how," she once said. "I can't write any better than this."
She filled her stories with delicious details about her characters' lavish lifestyles — designer clothes, luxurious estates — and enviable romances. And she spared no specifics when it came to sex.
"If you're going to write a good erotic scene, you have to go into details," Krantz told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. "I don't believe in thunder and lightning and fireworks exploding. I think people want to know what's happening."
So appealing were her sensational stories of high-powered heroines that each novel was reimagined for television as an episodic miniseries. Steve Krantz, a millionaire in his own right through such productions as the animated film "Fritz the Cat," helped translate his wife's work for TV.
The author was also famous for living a glamorous life that paralleled that of her characters. Her home in Los Angeles' exclusive Bel Air community featured a soundproof writing room flanked by an immaculately kept garden. In her closet were many of the same designer-label clothes the characters in her books wore.
The eldest of three children, Krantz was born Judith Bluma Tarcher in 1928 in New York City. Her father owned an advertising agency, and her mother worked as an attorney. Her brother, publisher Jeremy Tarcher, married the late ventriloquist Shari Lewis.
Growing up, Krantz was a precocious student at New York's exclusive Birch Wathen school, once describing herself as the youngest, smartest and shortest girl in her class. After skipping two grades, she enrolled at Wellesley College at age 16.
She was also by her own account an indifferent college student. She said she only enrolled at Wellesley "to date, read and graduate" and claimed to have set a record for her dorm by once dating 13 different men on 13 consecutive evenings.
"I got only one A-plus, and that was in English 101," she told The Boston Globe in 1982. "I had a B-minus average in English, my major, and made C's and C-minuses in everything else. But I didn't come here to get good marks."
When she could earn no better than a B in a short-story class, she decided she wasn't good enough to write fiction.
"Just in time for my 50th birthday, I discovered that I could write fiction. My husband had urged me to try fiction for 15 years before I did," she was quoted in a profile on Wellesley's website in 2001. "I believed that if I couldn't write 'literature,' I shouldn't write at all."
"Now, I would say to young women, do something you have a true feeling for, no matter how little talent you may believe you have," she added. "Let no masterwork be your goal — a modest goal may lead you further than you dream."
Krantz had met her husband through her high school friend Barbara Walters, who introduced the two in 1953. They married the following year.
"I fell in love with him the minute I saw him," she once said.
Her husband died in 2007 at age 83. The couple had two sons, Tony and Nick, a stockbroker, and two grandchildren.
Krantz's family requested that donations be given to the Library Foundation of Los Angeles in lieu of flowers.
Her memoir, "Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl," was published in 2001 and it reflected on her penchant for telling sex-drenched tales about the pretty and the privileged.
"In my opinion, there are two things women will always be interested in — sex and shopping," she said in 1994. "And if they're not, they've left out a large part of the fun in life."
TRYING TO DECIDE WHAT TO READ OVER THE HOLIDAY MONTHS? OUR SELECTION RANGES FROM MEMOIR TO HISTORY TO BRAND-NEW FICTION, AND FROM Funny TO gothic TO heartbreaking
Ann Devine: Ready for Her Close Up By Colm O'Regan Transworld, £12.99 When home help worker Ann Devine is persuaded to join the Kilsudgeon tidy towns committee, she doesn't expect drama. But then a production company arrives in Kilsudgeon to make a big budget American fantasy television series, trampling all over what's best for the locals in the process. Soon, Ann finds herself taking action – and getting into trouble. This very funny debut novel from the creator of the popular Irish Mammies series is a treat, as O'Regan satirises Irish rural life with affection and wit.
Candice Carty-Williams
Queenie By Candice Carty-Williams Trapeze, £12.99 When we meet 25-year-old journalist Queenie Jenkins, she and her boyfriend Tom are "on a break" that everyone but Queenie can see is clearly a permanent break-up. As she struggles to keep both her emotional and professional life on track, Queenie must also deal with the unthinking racism of her colleagues as well as the lingering effects of her mother's troubled past. Equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious, Candice Carty-Williams's debut novel is a single-girl-in-the-city story with depth and a very sympathetic heroine. A must-read.
Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss By Rajeev Balasubramanyam Chatto and Windus, £12.99 Cambridge economist Prof Chandra is still smarting from being overlooked (again) by the Nobel Prize committee when a minor accident lands him in hospital. Told by his doctor to take a sabbatical and "follow [his] bliss", the grumpy 69-year-old ends up in California, where, after punching his ex-wife's sanctimonious therapist husband, he begins an unlikely journey to enlightenment. A witty, tender book about the meaning of life and family that's as uplifting as it is amusing.
The Garden of Lost and Found By Harriet Evans Headline Review, £16.99 No one writes gripping family sagas quite like Harriet Evans, and her new novel is no exception. At the heart of the book is Nightingale House, the country house where, in 1918, the artist Ned Horner inexplicably destroyed his most famous painting, an image of his children called The Garden of Lost and Found. A century later, a strange twist of fate leads to Horner's great-granddaughter Juliet arriving at the house with her own family. Will she uncover the house's secrets? The perfect book for an afternoon in a sunny deckchair.
Other Words for Smoke By Sarah Maria Griffin Titan Books, £8.99 When teenage twins Mae and Rossa go to spend a summer in their great-aunt Rita's house, they don't realise someone else is living there besides Rita, her teenage ward Bevan and their strangely oversized cat Bobby. A dark presence is lurking in the walls of this ordinary house on the outer edges of the Dublin suburbs, a sinister owl called Sweet James, who exerts a dangerous power over the glamorous Bevan. Both a moving coming of age story and a brilliantly unnerving horror tale, this darkly magical book will thrill both teenage and adult readers.
Evvie Drake Starts Over By Linda Holmes Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99 It's a year since Evvie Drake's husband was killed in a car crash, and no one in her friendly Maine seaside town, not even her best friend Andy, knows that she was planning to leave him on the day she died. Evvie is struggling with the fact she doesn't miss Tim at all – and then Andy persuades her to rent part of her house to his friend Dean, a star baseball player who has inexplicably lost the inability to play. With its quaint small town setting, snappy dialogue and big heart, this is a smart and poignant romance.
The Confessions of Frannie Langton By Sara Collins Penguin Viking, £12.99 "Why couldn't a Jamaican former slave be the star of her own gothic romance?" That's the question author Sara Collins asked herself when she began writing her stunning debut novel The Confessions of Frannie Langton. Born into slavery in Jamaica, where she is forced to help her master with his experiments on her fellow slaves, Frannie Langton goes to London where, as we know from the book's opening pages, she ends up in the dock, accused of murdering her new master and mistress. But what really happened on that fatal night? A powerful page-turner with an unforgettable narrator.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
Daisy Jones and the Six By Taylor Jenkins Reid Hutchinson, €16.99 When the beautiful singer-songwriter Daisy Jones gets together with an up and coming rock band called the Six in 1970s California, musical history is made. But while Daisy and the band's frontman Billy Dunne manage to create incredible music together, tensions start to mount. Inspired by the story of Fleetwood Mac, Daisy Jones and the Sixis an oral history of a band that never existed, told through the voices of members, producers and friends. Incredibly evocative (you'll find yourself yearning to hear the band's legendary album Aurora) and a little bit heartbreaking, it's the perfect book to read on a summer night.
Just One More Question: Stories from a Life in Neurology By Niall Tubridy Penguin Ireland, £14.99 Over the course of his career as a neurologist working everywhere from Melbourne to his current role at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, Niall Tubridy has encountered many intriguing cases. In Just One More Question, he tells some of those stories, from the woman who refused to tell her fiancé about her MS diagnosis to the man who found himself unable to keep his eyes open, and warns against the dangers of self-diagnosis. Hypochondriacs may approach this book with caution, but Tubridy's compassionate, no-nonsense approach makes him a comforting guide through the landscape of neurological medicine.
The Fire Starters By Jan Carson Doubleday Ireland, £12.99 Set over the course of a hot, strange Belfast summer, The Fire Starters is the story of two fathers who are both, in very different ways, afraid of their children. There's former loyalist paramilitary Sammy, whose son Mark plots chaos from his attic bedroom, and isolated doctor Jonathan, who fears that his baby daughter has inherited her strange mother's uncanny powers. Meanwhile Belfast is going up in flames, inspired by a mysterious YouTuber. A perfect mix of dark humour, magic and social commentary.
You Will Be Safe Here By Damian Barr Bloomsbury, £16.99 Set in 1901 and 2010, Damian Barr's deeply powerful new novel exposes the horrors of two chilling events in South African history. It tells the story of Sarah, a young Boer woman who is taken to a British concentration camp at Bloemfontein during the Boer War before jumping across the decades to follow the life of Willem, a lonely sensitive teenager whose father sends him to a white supremacist training camp that promises to "turn boys into men".
Hallie Rubenhold. Photograph: Sarah Blackie
The Five By Hallie Rubenhold Doubleday, £16.99 The murders committed by Jack the Ripper still capture the public imagination 130 years later – but little attention is generally paid to the women whose lives he cut brutally short. In this fascinating and moving non-fiction book, Hallie Rubenhold tells the stories of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, painting a grim picture of what can happen to troubled women in a society without a safety net. In focusing on the women's lives and debunking the myths that grew up around them, Rubenfeld gives the five victims back their humanity.
Things in Jars By Jess Kidd Canongate, £14.99 It's 1863 in London and Bridie Devine, "Irish street-rat" turned dashing lady detective, is on a mission. She must find a kidnapped child called Christabel Berwick, a strange, pale child with black eyes and disturbing powers. Bridie is accompanied in her quest into a Victorian underworld of sinister doctors and peculiar showmen by the ghost of a handsome boxer and a dapper (living) detective. Jess Kidd's third novel is an irresistible gothic adventure, full of darkness, humour and bravery.
Leonard and Hungry Paul By Rónán Hession Bluemoose Books, £8.99 Leonard and Hungry Paul don't quite fit in – and they're okay with that. Dublin writer Rónán Hession's debut novel is the story of two friends in their thirties who are happy to swim against the tide, preferring to play board games in Hungry Paul's family home than go down the pub. But although their lives may seem quiet, that doesn't mean they're not full of meaning. Charming without being twee, this funny, warm book will bring you sunshine even if the summer is a washout.
Cruel Acts By Jane Casey Harper Collins, £12.99 Leo Stone is a serial killer – at least, that's what Det Sgt Maeve Kerrigan is trying to prove. Stone has recently been released from prison on a technicality, and the police want to make sure that after the retrial, he'll be heading straight back there. But is he guilty? If you haven't met the smart, vulnerable and brave DS Kerrigan before, you'll immediately want to spend your summer binge-reading her earlier adventures after devouring this twisting novel from one of Ireland's finest crime writers.
Reasons to Be Cheerful By Nina Stibbe Penguin Viking, £12.99 When teenager Lizzy Vogel gets a job as a dental assistant in 1979 despite a total lack of experience, she moves into the flat above the surgery. But it's hard to be independent when your dreadful boss insists on using your loo, and your sort-of boyfriend has moved in with your mother. Lizzie is a heroine with broad appeal – my 73-year-old father loved this book as much as I did. It's the funniest book I've read this year (at one stage I was laughing so much I literally had to lie down) but there are always real, complicated emotions beneath Lizzie's deadpan observations.
Kate Atkinson
Big Sky By Kate Atkinson Doubleday, £20 Jackson Brodie is back! After nine years – during which she wrote three brilliant genre-defying novels and won two Costa awards – Kate Atkinson has returned to crime fiction with Big Sky, the fifth in her much-loved series about the policeman turned private investigator. Fans won't be disappointed as Jackson, now living on the Yorkshire coast, finds himself looking into a horrible world of exploitation and abuse that goes back decades. As ever, Atkinson's self-aware hero transcends all "troubled detective" clichés despite his, well, troubled backstory, and all the other characters are wonderfully drawn. Whatever genre she's writing in, Atkinson's plots are always as satisfying and perfectly paced as her beautifully crafted sentences. (Published June 18th)
Being Various: New Irish Short Stories Edited by Lucy Caldwell Faber & Faber, £12.99 Irish writing is in very good health at the moment, and the sixth in Faber's series of Irish short story collections is proof of the myriad exciting voices that have emerged in recent years. With previously unpublished stories from Kevin Barry, Melatu Uche Okorie, Sally Rooney and Lisa McInerney among many others, it's a fantastic sampler of contemporary Irish fiction.
Cape May By Chip Cheek Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.99 Henry and Effie are barely out of high school when they get married and leave rural Georgia for a honeymoon in the New Jersey resort town of Cape May. It's September 1957, and the town is almost empty after the summer season, leaving the newlyweds feeling a little awkward. But when they meet the glamorous Clara, who is staying with her lover Max and his half-sister Alma, they decide to stay a little longer. This turns out to be a bad idea. The naïve outsiders drawn into a world of decadence is an old trope, but Chip Cheek makes it feel fresh in this unsettling, atmospheric novel.
Rules of the Road By Ciara Geraghty Harper Collins, £12.99 Terry didn't plan to go on a road trip from Dublin to Switzerland with her father Eugene and her terminally ill best friend Iris. But then, just after collecting Eugene from the dementia-friendly care home where he lives, she discovers that Iris plans to take her own life at a Zurich clinic. Terry insists on tagging along in order to persuade her friend to change her mind, and what follows is a very funny, very moving and utterly unsentimental adventure, as Terry discovers what makes life worth living.
Rewilding: Real Life Stories of Returning British and Irish Wildlife to Balance Edited by David Woodfall William Collins, £17.99 From the wetlands of Tipperary to the Scottish Highlands, farmers, conservationists and wildlife experts all over Ireland and Britain are stepping back and letting natural ecosystems restore themselves. In some cases, they're lending a helping hand and reintroducing original animal and plant species that were previously driven out. Packed full of beautiful photographs, this gorgeous book tells the stories of various projects on both sides of the Irish sea, and should inspire readers to get out and enjoy the natural world.
Elizabeth Day
How to Fail By Elizabeth Day 4th Estate, £12.99 If you're the sort of person who has a nervous collapse as soon as you take time off work and actually start thinking about your life, this is the book you need to take on holiday. And even if you're not, Elizabeth Day's wise, moving and genuinely inspiring book will give you plenty to think about. Based on her hugely popular podcast, How To Fail sees the novelist and journalist share what she's learned from a lifetime of perceived failures big and small, from not fitting in at her Belfast secondary school to struggling to have a baby in her thirties.
The Kindness of Strangers By Salka Viertel NYRB, £11.99 Salka Viertel led a truly extraordinary life. Born into a privileged Polish Jewish family in Galicia, she became a successful actor before she and her director husband went to Hollywood in 1928, where she became a screenwriter. Greta Garbo was her best friend and muse, and her Hollywood home became a salon for celebrated Mitteleuropean emigrés. With a cast that includes everyone from Franz Kafka (he came to dinner when she lived in Prague) to director Ernst Lubitsch, this recently reissued 1969 memoir is a witty, warm picture of a glittering vanished world.
In at the Deep End By Kate Davies Borough Press, £12.99 Civil servant Julia always thought sex wasn't all it was cracked up to be – until she slept with a woman for the first time. Now she's realised she's a lesbian, she just has "to find somebody to be a lesbian with". But is Sam, the glamorously butch artist who introduces Julia to a brave new world of sexual adventure, the right woman? As Julia's unconvinced new friend Ella says, Julia really has gone "in at the lesbian deep end". Incredibly likeable, gloriously filthy and very, very funny, this is a wonderful book with real heart.
The Darksome Bounds of a Failing World: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era By Gareth Russell William Collins, £25 If you think that there's nothing new to say about the Titanic, The Darksome Bounds of a Failing World will prove you wrong. Just don't read it on a cruise. In this fascinating and highly readable book, Belfast author Gareth Russell tells the story of the fatal ship's sole journey through the eyes of six very different first-class passengers, from the Irish engineer Thomas Andrews to early film star Dorothy Gibson. He examines the rapidly changing world of the Edwardian upper classes, and shows how their privilege "left many of them unaware or indifferent to the coming danger until it was too late".
Karin Slaughter's 2018 thriller, "Pieces of Her," is nearly impossible to put down, but that doesn't mean it's a natural fit for an adaptation. While the novel opens with a riveting scene involving a nice suburban mom dispatching an active shooter with the dexterity of a trained assassin, much of the story unfolds in the mind of her daughter, 31-year-old Andy, as she embarks on a road trip to solve the puzzle of her mother's fractured past. As Andy learns, Laura Oliver, the protective speech pathologist who raised her, has a lot to hide. Netflix's new eight-episode adaptation, starring Toni Colette as Laura and Bella Heathcote as Andy, departs regularly from the source material: The grisly encounter that sets the plot in motion is mercifully less nauseating than the novel; one major character is added; and one villain, securely incarcerated in the book, instead remains at large. But, as Slaughter explained a couple days before the series premiered on Frida...
“There’s Nothing to Doooo” - Slate “There’s Nothing to Doooo” - Slate Loyalsock class of 2019 walks into the future | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport Sun-Gazette The News Media Muting of the FBI’s MLK Jr. Report is Hypocritical and Plays Into Conservative Mistrust - Mediaite “There’s Nothing to Doooo” - Slate Posted: 10 Jun 2019 02:48 AM PDT Get your child genuinely excited to read this summer with Slate's kids' summer reading package . Got a reluctant reader on your hands? This librarian can help . Got an awkward middle schooler on your hands? He should read these books . Want to broaden your high schooler's horizons? Read YA author Tochi Onyebuchi on school summer reading lists . I Couldn't See Myself in Any Book I Read in Prep School. It Changed Me More Than You'd Think. Ask a Teacher: How Can I Prepare My Awkward Child for Middle School? Got a Re...
famous canadian short stories :: Article Creator Alice Munro: Five Classic Short Stories Text size Nobel-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro was best known as a master of the short story. Here are five from her celebrated trove: In one of her earliest stories, Munro delved into what would become a signature theme: the complex, often fraught transition to adulthood. Set on a fox farm and told from the point of view of a young girl, "Boys and Girls" explores gender conventions in 1940s small-town Ontario -- Munro's birthplace and home, and the setting for much of her writing. The story was included in her first book "Dance of the Happy Shades" (1968). This story is about daily family violence in a rural Canadian town begins with stepmother Flo's threat to administer a "royal beating" to her fiery teenaged stepdaughter, Rose. The girl's imagination is sparked by the term, and she imagines cha...
Comments
Post a Comment