In the mid-1990s, Merlin began writing a biography of “the posthumous existence” of Oscar Wilde. Nearly 30 years later, he finished it. After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal was released last month in the UK by Europa Editions, ahead of its publication in the US next April.
So, what took so long? “Having criticized other people for sloppy research and inventions and exaggerations and so on, I knew I had to get it right myself,” Merlin, 79, tells me during an interview over Zoom from his home in the Burgundy region of France, where he lives with his wife, Emma, who teaches English to employees of the French nuclear industry.
As Merlin investigated the details of Wilde’s tragic last years and charted the dramatic swings in his literary reputation in the century following his death, his book became a family memoir as much as a scholarly biography. Combing through letters, diaries, and photos (many not published before), he eventually came to terms with his complicated legacy.
Given how celebrated Oscar Wilde is today, people might find it hard to fathom “the ricochet effect of the atom bomb of the Oscar Wilde scandal,” as actor Rupert Everett phrased it during a launch event for After Oscar at the British Library on October 16 (which would have been the author’s 171st birthday). “But it’s a ricochet that you are still living,” Everett said to Merlin.
During my chat with him, Merlin elaborates: “I wanted people to know that the echoes of that scandal back in 1895 can still be heard—faintly, admittedly—right up to the last 20 years.”
He also explains why his last name isn’t Wilde. Soon after Oscar Wilde began serving his sentence of two years’ hard labor in 1895, his wife, Constance, adopted the surname Holland for herself and the couple’s two boys, Vyvyan and Cyril, who were eight-and-a-half and 10 years old at the time. Given the scandal that convulsed Victorian society, it was, he writes, “a necessity dictated by public prejudice and concern for her children’s future rather than any sense of shame on her part.”
Prior to his fall, Wilde was the toast of London. He and Constance, the daughter of an Anglo-Irish barrister whom he married in 1884, were bringing up their boys in their home on Tite Street. It was there that she met her husband’s beautiful younger lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, a son of the Marquess of Queensberry, when Wilde brought him for a visit. In 1895, the marquess visited the Albemarle Club in London, where the Wildes were members, and left a messagewith the porter accusing Wilde of being a sodomite. Goaded on by Bosie, who loathed his father, Wilde brought a libel action against the marquess. He later withdrew the libel case, but the Crown then successfully brought charges of gross indecency against Wilde.
For the last decade, Queen Camilla has established herself as the United Kingdom’s biggest book lover. From her Queen’s Reading Room foundation and festival to her role as patron of the Booker Prize, she has lavished praise on England’s authors, sparking up a few friendships with them along the way. Now she’s the star of a new literary thriller by Peter James called The Hawk Is Dead.
In a video on his Facebook account, James said that the novel is “set in London, largely in Buckingham Palace, where Queen Camilla is one of the key characters.” In another video, he added that King Charles III is also a character. The Hawk Is Dead, the 21st book in James’s long-running Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, centers on an assassination attempt on the royal train. Though the royals’ lives are spared, the queen has to spring into action to help evacuate the train after it crashes in a tunnel. Her fictional private secretary, Sir Peregrine Graves, is murdered, and it’s up to Grace to figure out if he was actually the intended target. The novel also includes a scene where the queen takes the detective on a private tour of Buckingham Palace.
In an interview with ITV, the British network that airs a TV series based on the Roy Grace novels, James said the idea for the novel was actually suggested by the queen herself. “She has been brilliantly helpful. I was given complete access to Buckingham Palace,” he said. “There’s a big chase scene in the book and I had a three-and-a-half-hour tour to get it right. I love the fact that she’s such a fan of books.”
The novelist added that initially he thought the queen was joking when she said she wanted to read a book set in the palace. “Then a senior member of the royal household told me Her Majesty was serious,” James said. “She would love to see Roy Grace in London, and perhaps Buckingham Palace might be a good location? Perhaps there might be a murder in the palace, or two? Might I come up with an idea he could run by her?”
The queen’s love for Grace first became public in April 2020, when she posted a quarantine “shelfie” of her workspace in Scotland that prominently featured several of James’s books. In 2024, James appeared on her podcast series, The Queen’s Reading Room. There, Camilla said that Roy Grace is her favorite fictional detective.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan, Will Heath/NBC), Everett Collection (Geffen Pictures, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros.), Toei Animation, Supercell, Roblox, MrBeast via YouTube
Ask a kid who Mikey Day is and they won’t rattle off his SNL bona fides or call out his recent guest spot on Abbott Elementary. They won’t cite his work as the Dollar Rental Car spokesperson or the fact that he penned 2021’s Home Sweet Home Alone alongside longtime writing partner Streeter Seidell. Instead, they’ll point to just one thing: his role as the host of Netflix’s hit baking series Is It Cake?
“If I meet a kid and they’re between the ages of 4 and 9,” Day says, “I know they’ll have watched Is It Cake? A lot of SNL hosts with kids that age have even come to me and said, ‘I’ve got to get a picture with you at some point, because my kids love your show.’ It’s crazy.”
And it’s because of kids, Day thinks, that Is It Cake? has been able to soldier on. “I think that after season one, adults would have been like, I get the concept, I’m ready to move on. But when kids like something, they’re all in, so that’s great,” he says. “That means we get to keep doing it.”
With new holiday-themed Is It Cake? episodes hitting Netflix today — just in time for family movie nights and Thanksgiving baking marathons — we asked Day what he’s watching, playing, and reading with his 13-year-old son, Abbott.
Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
Everything’s so different now with the internet and streaming. I don’t know if my son has ever watched a regular TV show like how I used to. His mother and I have made a point of showing him classic movies. We’ll announce them, though, like “It’s movie night on Sunday and we’re all going to sit down for two hours and watch something,” because kids are so used to the internet and YouTube that the idea of committing to something for two hours can seem astronomical to them.
We’ve shown Back to the Future, Gremlins, The Princess Bride, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Back to the Future went over the best and we ended up showing him the entire trilogy. It’s my favorite movie so I think he was a little biased going into the first one, but he really liked it. Weirdly, though, he did say the third one was the best — I think because he liked the flying train.
I’ve also shown him clips from movies like Spaceballs, just because I mentioned it, and then he wanted to watch that.
Photo: Universal Pictures/Everett Collection
My son is really into the Jurassic Park franchise now, too, mostly because he saw Rebirthafter getting into the commercials this past summer. He wants to watch all of them, but I’m trying to show them to him in the order of how good I think they are, so we started with the original after we saw the most recent one, then we went over to Jurassic World. But slowly, I think we’re going to watch them all.
Photo: Toei Animation
My son really likes this anime called One Piece, which he found independent of me. I try to sit with him to watch stuff like that, but it’s intense. It’s just very loud. Like all the people he watches playing video games online, they just scream all the time.
I kind of missed the whole anime thing as a kid. I’m sure if I’d done it, I’d be more into it now, but he loves it.
He’s been One Piece characters for Halloween a few years in a row, too, which I love because that’s how I was with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I did try to show him the ’90s TMNT movie, which changed my life as a kid because I was so enraptured by it, but I think I tried to do it a little too young because he was pretty unimpressed. Maybe if we came back to it now he’d like it.
Photo: MrBeast via YouTube
My son is super into YouTube. So much so that he’ll ask, like, “When is Josh Plays Minecraft X1 or whatever going to host SNL?” One time, MrBeast was backstage at SNL and so I briefly introduced myself to him when I walked by. When I came home, I was like, “You know who I met? MrBeast.” On SNL you meet a lot of famous people, but for my son, when I said I met and talked to MrBeast for 30 seconds, that’s what he thought was super exciting.
Photo: Supercell
We play games together sometimes, but I play a lot of console games and he’s more into mobile games. I’ve played some Roblox with him and there are certain games that I like more on there than others, but I try. We used to play Lego Ninjago together, but now he plays mobile stuff like Brawl Stars,and I’m not as into that. I feel like I’m constantly like, “Want to play this game I found?” Like there’s this one called Split Fiction, and he’ll be nice about it, but he’s also like, “I’m good.” Like, “Yeah, maybe this weekend!” He just politely puts me off.
I guess it’s understandable. He’s 13. I don’t know if I was watching a lot of stuff with my dad when I was in eighth grade.
Photo: Golden Books
There’s this Sesame Street book called There’s a Monster at the End of this Book that I loved as a kid that we’d read to my son all the time when he was little. I loved that.
We also had a storybook version of Back to the Future that I read him long before he saw the movie.
I tried to get him into Harry Potter, even though I never really read that as a kid, but I think we did it too early because it was just too dense. It was like “Dad, I’m 4. I’m checking out.” Maybe if we’d done it when he was a little older we might have captured his imagination, but we missed the sweet spot.
He does love to read, though. He just finished all the Hunger Games books, so that’s cool.
Photo: Paramount/Everett Collection
I used to show my son clips from Airplane! all the time, so eventually I got to the point where it was like, “All right, I’ve got to just show him the whole movie,” which he loved. He thinks it’s so funny.
There’s this other Albert Brooks movie, Defending Your Life, which I think is criminally underrated. We showed him that, which was fun, because he really liked it and it’s one of my favorite films of all time.
I think when he gets old enough, I’ll show him the British Office, which is my favorite piece of media of all time, but I don’t want to hit it too early. Maybe when he’s in high school.
Photo: Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images
Because of where I work, he’s been exposed to some sketches from SNL, but he doesn’t actively seek it out. Sometimes he’ll sit down and watch stuff, but it’s not appointment viewing. I’ll make a point of showing him stuff sometimes, like years ago we did a Mario Kart sketch with Pedro Pascal that he thought was pretty funny, and during election years he’ll watch a little more because his mom gets really into it and talks about the election a lot so he’ll know all the players involved, but I think it just hits different for him.
I used to tape Saturday Night Live off Comedy Central as a kid, when they’d show the episodes edited down to an hour and I’d be confused because at good nights people would be dressed as things that I hadn’t seen in the episodes. My son has been to the studio and everything, but I think for him, the show is just Dad’s job, and that’s fine with me.
The New York Public Library honored German novelist Daniel Kehlmann and other distinguished writers, including Bruce Springsteen and Shonda Rhimes, at their annual Library Lions Gala this month. Michelle Miller sat down with Kehlmann to discuss his latest work, “The Director,” which was inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst.
Every month, audiobook connoisseur Marshall Heyman listens to hours and hours of freshly published novels and nonfiction. He then recommends his favorite new titles, which often include juicy celebrity memoirs, buzzy literary fare, gripping thrillers, sweet romances, thoughtful essays, and even some poetry. He also provides his preferred listening speed for anyone else looking to maximize their audiobook intake. Check back next month for new releases.
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Read by: Kenneth Branagh Length: 9 hrs, 5 mins Speed I listened: 2.2x
A bonus of this audiobook is that, at the end of it, the 87-year-old double-Oscar winner takes over narrating duties from Kenneth Branagh and reads a few Shakespeare soliloquies and poems, like T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Even if you don’t like that sort of thing, it’s amazing. Some of my other favorite takeaways from this memoir are: the title, which I just love; Hopkins’s unexpected use of the word “razzmatazz” and his stories about James Woods and Oliver Stone badmouthing Paul Sorvino as “that fatso” (and even worse) on the set of Nixon; and Hopkins’s admission that he’s probably on the autism spectrum but prefers the term “cold fish.” In the rest of the book, Branagh is an amazing narrator, mostly because there are a lot of times you think Hopkins himself is reading. It’s surreal.
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Read by: the author Length: 13 hrs, 1 min Speed I listened: 2.7x
I don’t know how the former MTV honcho ends up on so many nude beaches, but there are more mentions of clothing-optional sand dunes in this memoir than in any book I’ve read or listened to in recent memory. That makes this memoir sound spicier than it is. Mostly, Freston just references the conversations he has on said nude beaches — not much else. Though I loved the inspiring words at the end of Unplugged, I’ll admit it. I’m here for the entertainment gossip about Vice founder Shane Smith, not Freston’s recollections of his trips on psychedelics or to Afghanistan. When it comes to Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, who acquired MTV in the ’80s, Freston really goes for the jugular. That’s my kind of audiobook nude beach, anyway.
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Read by: the author Length: 8 hrs, 42 mins Speed I listened: 2x
Patti Smith makes so many highfalutin references to poets and artists and other intellectual pursuits in her books that, half the time, I have no idea what she’s talking about. This memoir, which covers her childhood in South Jersey as well as some later adventures with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the playwright Sam Shepard, is no exception. That’s why I listen to her books instead of reading them. There’s also something so deliberate and weird about Smith’s speaking voice that relaxes me. Nothing beats her breaking into song in the audio of Just Kids, which is still the pinnacle of her oeuvre, but in Bread of Angels, I love how she makes the first E silent in “atelier” and turns the O sounds into “eh” at the end of the words “mosquito” and “pillow.”
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This novel, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, comes in the form of a letter from a mother to her daughter — an attempt to explain why she abandoned her many years prior. What makes this audiobook so listenable is the narration by Rubin-Vega, the original Mimi in Rent on Broadway. Her voice is sultry, and I listened to this in one white-hot shot because of her.
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Read by: a full cast, including Cush Jumbo, Hugh Laurie, Riz Ahmed, Ruth Wilson, and Matthew Macfadyen Length: 8 hrs, 41 mins Speed I listened: 2.3x
If you read this column, you know I haven’t had much luck connecting with Audible Originals. I’m also not a Potterhead. But this full-cast reading of the first novel in the series is a stellar example of the form. It’s certainly the best Audible Original I’ve heard, too. The cast is great, especially the interstitial narration by Cush Jumbo. It could be a budget thing. I can’t imagine licensing these novels comes cheap so, by extension, the production values and sound effects feel en pointe. It also could be a storytelling thing. Whatever you think about Rowling, she’s a very clever world-builder. This first journey made me want to continue listening to the subsequent dramatizations. They’ll be released one a month through May.
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Read by: the author Length: 3 hrs, 43 mins Speed I listened: 2.2x
Cynthia Erivo is monumentally talented and impressive. I also think that, like Elphaba in Wicked, she can exude a holier-than-thou confidence that perhaps her monumental talent allows. I alternated between those feelings listening to this self-help book slash memoir. I appreciate its simplicity. Tiny pieces of fairly obvious advice — don’t listen to the haters, for instance; don’t take no for an answer — are mixed with anecdotes about Erivo’s rise to near-EGOT territory. Erivo is superhuman, so a lot of the advice she gives is easier said than done. But her speaking voice is as mellifluous as her singing voice, and there are moments of genuine realness, i.e., when she alludes to her complicated relationships with her sister, her mother, and her father. But maybe it’s just me. The subtitle to Simply More is “A book for anyone who’s been told they’re too much.” Guess what I’ve been told? Also, I appreciate that Erivo thanks her therapist in her acknowledgements.
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Read by: Kevin R. Free Length: 8 hrs, 7 mins Speed I listened: 2.5x
Are you really alone if you’re listening to an audiobook? I’ve been wondering that since I finished listening to this treatise on how we could all spend a little extra time by ourselves. Clearly if I’ve listened to this many audiobooks this month I spend a lot of time alone, so it’s nice to have a reminder — if, at over eight hours, an overlong one — that not only is it okay but it can actually be good for you.
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Read by: the author Length: 5 hrs, 53 mins Speed I listened: 2.7x
The tabloid headlines may get exhausting, but I feel a lot of empathy for Britney Spears and her predicament. I hadn’t given much thought to her ex K-Fed, the father of her two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James. I certainly never considered him impressive. Whether the information in his book is true or not — there are three sides to every story — listening to this tell-all certainly made me see the onetime backup dancer in a totally new way. Maybe this will be a controversial opinion, but, reader, I feel for him, and I think he comes off well here. He admits to plenty of mistakes — partying, for instance, in a lurid way that he shouldn’t have been. But in his telling, at least, he seems like a decent, hardworking dad (of, okay, six kids with three different moms) who found himself in an insane situation (i.e., falling for one of the world’s biggest pop stars). Then, after that life exploded, he tried to find a daily existence where his children could live as normal a life as possible.
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Read by: the author Length: 3 hrs, 30 mins Speed I listened: 2.3x
This memoir has a very simple purview: Fox recalls making Back to the Future, which, if you can believe it, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. God, I feel so old. The movie was Fox’s first real big-screen break. He took over the role of Marty McFly after Eric Stoltz, who had already shot a month or so as the character, was fired. Not only that, but Fox was simultaneously filming the sitcom Growing Pains, too. The recollections of that crazy time make for an adorable book, full of sharp observations from Fox and some of the movie’s big players, who often appear in recorded interviews. Future Boy is more than just a trip down memory lane; it’s a book about perseverance and hard work. The memories, though, are very much worth it. Lea Thompson, for instance, gave the sitcom actor a hard time when they first started working together because she felt he stole the role from Stoltz. Meanwhile, Fox had trouble driving the DeLorean. “Let’s face it,” Fox says. “It was a shit car.”
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Read by: Michael Beck Length: 14 hrs, 23 mins Speed I listened: 2x
Since I started writing this column, I’ve come to really appreciate it when Grisham publishes a new novel, and I liked his latest a lot. It’s about a small-town, rural Virginian lawyer named Simon Latch who helps an eccentric older woman, Eleanor Barnett, rewrite her will. She insists she’s worth millions from her late husband’s Coca-Cola and Walmart stock. When she turns up dead, he’s accused of murdering her. Simon and Eleanor are just great characters in what is being billed as Grisham’s “first-ever whodunit,” and having regular Grisham narrator Michael Beck read the mystery makes this production somehow suspenseful and cozy at the same time.
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Read by: the author Length: 10 hrs, 40 mins Speed I listened: 3.2x
Curry, perhaps best known as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror and Wadsworth the butler from Clue, suffered a stroke in 2012. He’s done quite a bit of voice-over work since, but the narration of his memoir is still slow, muted, and shaky. If you can get beyond that, there’s so much fascinating stuff, like his almost Dickensian relationship with his mother. Or how his experience playing Long John Silver in 1996’s Muppet Treasure Island was so positive he was “sad to go back to work with humans again.” Curry is extremely observant — about his circuitous career, his alcoholism, Bianca Jagger’s proclivity for carrying many different types of suntan lotion — that it’s hard not to enjoy this peripatetic ride.
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Read by: the author Length: 6 hrs, 14 mins Speed I listened: 2.1x
Mike Albo’s The Underminer(which he wrote with Virginia Heffernan) is one of my favorite books of the past two decades. It’s about those frenemies who always remind us, intentionally or not, of what losers we think we are. The Underminer is not meant as self-help, but it’s helped me through too many situations to count, with people in my life who just make me feel bad about myself. Hologram Boyfriends is an audio original that’s mostly about being a hopeless romantic in a gay dating world focused entirely on hookups. (Hello, me.) Some of this audiobook is performed live; some isn’t. The transitions between the two are a bit shaky, and so are the sound effects. But I felt super-seen listening to his essays here. I also laughed a lot. As an interesting companion piece, I’d suggest Jesse James Rose’s grittier memoir. Sorry I Keep Crying During Sex, though I found it more powerful as a read than as a listen.
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Read by: Emily Woo Zeller Length: 6 hrs, 27 mins Speed I listened: 1.9x
If there was any self-help book title that went straight to my emotional core, it’s this one. I can’t say I’m so much less miserable since I listened to it, but I think I’m a little bit less miserable. And that’s no small victory. I don’t think Zeller is the most genial self-help narrator in the world, but I thank her profusely for reminding me to try to treat myself as a friend. To talk nicer to myself and to speak to myself with more compassion.
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Read by: Ferdelle Capistrano Length: 6 hrs, 10 mins Speed I listened: 2.6x
Am I an extroverted introvert or an introverted extrovert? The jury’s out. But I do find it super-hard to promote myself and my work, including this column. (When Rami Malek told me he enjoyed reading it, I told him to stop fucking with me.) I hoped Personal Branding for Introverts by a writer who, I guess, became famous by posting videos on LinkedIn, would be a panacea toward fixing my problems. It wasn’t, though it helped remind me that I still need to work on defining the way I want to be seen by the world. It’s a bit hard to relate when Chan’s examples of introverts who’ve done well with just that include Taylor Swift, Keanu Reeves, and Rihanna, but maybe that’s my problem: I just need to be more like Taylor Swift, Keanu Reeves, and Rihanna.
Gabrielle Hamilton, the chef behind the influential restaurant Prune and the author of Blood, Bones & Butter, returns with a compellingly written and read memoir. Next of Kin is about the ways even our family members undermine our personal success, hopes and dreams. (Undermining is clearly a theme in October’s audiobook recommendations!)
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Read by: the author Length: 8 hrs, 17 mins. Speed I listened: 2x.
These essays from the Girls star and daughter of playwright David Mamet are disarmingly revealing. Like Zosia, I, too, sometimes feel like one of the most anxious people in the world, so I related to her struggles with her monkey mind. But it’s also impressive that she goes there — to her troubles as an outcast in school; to the deep insecurity of her parents (mom is actress Lindsay Crouse); to pretty bleak stories about her encounters with male Hollywood agents and, one assumes, Matt Weiner. I don’t know if this book makes Zosia Mamet funny, but it’s a terrific listen.
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Read by: the author Length: 10 hrs, 10 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
This is an audiobook you can really sink your teeth into. I sped through it. I couldn’t turn it off. There’s Gilbert’s lucid writing and wrenching self-analysis, and then there’s her acute vocal narration. It’s the story of her longtime relationship with Rayya, a former-drug-addict hairstylist, and their almost vampiric symbiosis. (An excerpt appeared in New York Magazine.) At first I was super into the interstitial music between chapters. Then it became a bit repetitive and cloying — but at the end of the book, Gilbert announces that the music is one of Rayya’s original compositions which made it all worthwhile.
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Read by: the author Length: 9 hrs, 38 mins Speed I listened: 2.3x
It can be a bit annoying how much the pop singer Debbie Gibson laughs while reading the audiobook version of her new memoir. Her jokes and anecdotes aren’t that funny. But her giggle regularly serves as a reminder of all the kid stars who didn’t mature into people bemused by their adult lives. That, to me, is a huge score for Debbie Gibson and made me want to keep listening to her journey — from very early stardom to The Apprentice, to touring with Tiffany, to driving around in her Kia with friends to find an outfit for some pre-Grammy parties. She also does an excellent Eartha Kitt, who starred opposite Gibson in a national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
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Read by: a full cast Length: 4 hrs, 34 mins Speed I listened: 1.4x
I still haven’t found an Audible Original in which I feel completely immersed. Like all the other Originals I’ve tried, this version of Pride and Prejudice has awkward sound effects, slightly uncomfortable breathing and forced laughter, all in the background. What kept me listening here, though, was the promise of a pretty impressive cast that includes total babe Marisa Abela (Industry) as Elizabeth Bennett, and total babe Harris Dickinson (Babygirl) as Mr. Darcy. Even then, it’s still a mixed bag, just as all these productions seem to be; Abela is amazing, Dickinson barely blips on the radar. Otherwise, the stand-outs here are a screeching Marianne Jean Baptiste as Mrs. Bennett; Glenn Close in a wish-it-was-longer cameo; and Jessie Buckley, who, these days, seems to be great in everything.
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Read by: the author Length: 6 hrs, 57 mins Speed I listened: 2x
I have a major crush on Mark Ronson and his slightly weird transatlantic accent now that I’ve finished the audiobook version of his memoir, subtitled “How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City.” He had me at his lovely pronunciation of chuppah in a passage about his mother’s wedding to Foreigner’s Mick Jones in 1985. When Ronson reads an excerpt from Andy Warhol’s diaries, his vocal take on the infamous artist is to die for — as in, so good I swooned. While the book is generally a bit light on gossip, it’s dynamic on atmosphere. His description of the innumerable jackets friends would leave under his booth instead of at the coat check in his early days of working had me hollering.
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Read by: the author Length: 8 hrs, 58 mins Speed I listened: 1.6x
I expected this memoir to be much funnier and raunchier than Debbie Gibson’s, but it’s quite academic and sobering (excuse the pun). I respect that. Sheen seems to take the act of writing seriously. I think he’s shooting for something more like Open by Andre Agassi than a purely titillating tell-all, despite the stories of prostitutes and rehab. Though told in a literary tone, I’m not entirely sure Sheen really transcends the celebrity-autobiography genre. I still prefer Rob Lowe’s Stories I Only Tell My Friends. Still, Sheen’s Hollywood stories about working on Wall Street, for instance, kept me going. I also loved some words he uses, like “dabloonery,” for instance, and when he describes a time in his life as one of his “top three moments of awkward mcfuckness.” (Also worth noting? Sheen does an awesome impression of Nicolas Cage.)
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Read by: the author Length: 2 hrs, 11 mins Speed I listened: 1.6
I barely have a clue what Matthew McConaughey is talking about in most of this book, which consists of his writings over the past 40 years. But that’s what made it such a joy. (After listening, I realized it might be better to listen along with a copy of the text.) It’s unhinged in both a “Who in the hell does Matthew McConaughey think he is?” way as well as in a “Maybe this hot Texan actor really has the secret to life” way. I alternated between the two but mostly relished these bizarre poems, such as one called “Deuces.” McConaughey describes being stuck in the car while having to do a number 2. He finds a “roadside loo” and, it so happens, the janitor has just cleaned it. That “gave me faith/and relieved my doubt./See, I consider a porta-potty/an absolute win/long as the first butt in the mornin’s mine/on the porce-lin.” I mean, is this guy for real?
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Read by: the author Length: 1 hour, 17 mins Speed I listened: 1.5x
This is mostly worth a listen as a companion piece to McConaughey’s new book. I appreciated that Duchovny seemed to put some actual thought into what a poem is, not that I could always follow what the Californication actor was trying to say. It turns out, it’s kind of just nice to have a mellow celebrity reading poems in your ear.
I caught up on Wally Lamb’s The River Is Waiting, which came out earlier this summer. I liked the book quite a lot, even if it’s a real downer. The surprise here is Jeremy Sisto’s incredibly poignant narration.
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It’s August: You deserve a treat, like a big cone of soft-serve ice cream kind of book. This is a confident and brazen memoir about the sexual escapades of an up-and-coming female chef in the UK. Her pen name is annoying, but her book is a balls-out romp. (It’s read by a comedian too.)
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There were some things I needed to remember about Gwyneth Paltrow, so I’m grateful for this new biography. For instance: that she was just 26 when she won her Oscar for Shakespeare in Love in that pink Ralph Lauren dress. That “Goop” is her initials with two “o”s in the middle. That she enjoyed being “teabagged” by Ben Affleck. I could have easily listened to 27 more hours of this biography, even if the narrator pronounces the l in Ralph Fiennes.
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Read by: Roger L. Jackson Length: 9 hrs, 43 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
I honestly can’t believe I listened to this whole book, which documents the making of the Scream movie franchise over the last three decades. When it comes to chronicles of Hollywood, the book is pretty thin and sycophantic. But remember: I could listen to over an entire day’s worth of content about Gwyneth Paltrow, so you’re not dealing with a full deck when it comes to me. A major selling point of the audio version of this book is that it’s read by Roger L. Jackson, the actor who plays the voice of Ghostface in all the Scream films. Every time he read a chapter title in that psychotic intonation, I melted.
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Read by: the author Length: 7 hrs, 2 mins. Speed I listened: 2.1x
One reason I connect with (and need) this new (and excellent) self-help book is that I’m already worried Gwyneth Paltrow is mad at me for listening to her unauthorized biography and then writing about it. Gwyneth and I don’t know each other, though we once spoke on the phone. Clearly, I should listen to Meg Josephson’s book — about “how to stop focusing on what others think and start living for you” — at least once or twice more. As a guide to the new me (or you), Josephson is very genial and wise. It blew my mind when she said that I’m not responsible for the version of me that exists in other people’s heads.
Read by: the author Length: 11 hrs, 26 mins. Speed I listened: 2.6x
Read by: the author Length: 5 hrs, 41 mins. Speed I listened: 2.6x
I’m still having withdrawal from Jennette McCurdy’s book, I’m Glad My Mom Died. (It actually just reappeared on the Times Best Sellers list, so I’m not the only one.) As was the case for me with McCurdy, I have no idea who Alyson Stoner was before this. I guess she was in the Jonas brothers–Demi Lovato Disney vehicle Camp Rock? McCurdy’s book is better, though Stoner’s tales of her own substance-abusing mother and horrific Hollywood experiences scratched an itch. It’s a good companion to the recently released audio of Jodie Sweetin’s UnSweetined, which has an equally excellent title. (It was first published in 2009.) Where Stoner’s book is sometimes too baggy and woke, Sweetin’s just feels like an appetizer to her real post–Full House misery. I especially loved when she refers to her husband as “not that one, not that one either, but the last one.”
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Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian. Even if its elliptical style is slightly anathema to the audiobook format, it’s a funny novel about perception, campus crushes, and sex.
Though I preferred Gareth Brown’s previous novel, The Book of Doors, I also enjoyed his recently published follow-up, The Society of Unknowable Objects. Both are in a grounded world of magical realism, somewhere between Matt Haig and Harry Potter.
If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die, written and read by Lee Tilghman, affirms what I’ve always thought: that it must be really, really annoying to be an influencer.
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The milieu of this novel is niche; the gender politics are universal. It’s the tale of two critics (Alex and Haley) covering the Edinburgh Fringe. Alex does something a bit nasty. He beds an actress without telling her that he’s given her a one-star review in the next day’s paper. When the actress essentially gets Alex canceled, Haley needs to pick up the pieces. Farah narrates with great authority and humor, but that may be a given. She’s a British Lebanese comedian who’s brought three shows to the Fringe herself. Worth a try even if you’re not a theater nerd like I am.
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Read by: January LaVoy Length: 9 hrs, 48 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
On an ordinary day, Bryden, a wife and mother working at home, just disappears from her “luxury” condominium in Albany. Her cell phone’s still there. Her car is still in the garage. Did the creepy guy with the shady past living on another floor kidnap her? Is the hot Tesla driver with whom Bryden got into a fender bender involved? This is a spoiler, but Bryden is found dead, stuffed in a suitcase, in her condo’s storage room. What does it say about me that this plot twist didn’t faze me? I don’t want to know. Still, this is a totally enjoyable, propulsive summer book. As a listen, it has enough misdirects and, yes, discussions of stuffing people in suitcases, to be a kind of a kick. Though one of the greater mysteries remains: What kind of amenities do luxury condos have in Albany?
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In the early 1970s, Maurice and Marilyn decide to sail away. Like escape their lives for real. A year into their journey, a whale knocks a hole in their boat. They’re at sea, on a rubber raft, for months, trying to survive. This nonfiction account is compelling, romantic, and, at just under six hours, a particularly good length for an audiobook. A caveat: I may have enjoyed it more because I listened to it while I was on a cruise in Iceland. I told everyone I knew on the ship to read or listen to it, too.
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Read by: Imogen Church Length: 15 hrs, 11 mins. Speed I listened: 2.4x
You may remember the British travel writer Lo Blacklock from her first adventure on a luxury cruise ship in 2016’s The Woman in Cabin 10. In that installment, she witnessed a passenger being thrown overboard. In this follow-up, Lo has written a best-selling book about that crazy nightmare. Now she lives in New York. She’s married to a Times reporter, has a kid, and feels very much out of the travel journalism loop. Her hubby convinces her to attend the press opening of a hotel owned by a reclusive Swiss billionaire. If you can believe it, bad things start to happen when she gets there. I couldn’t necessarily follow all the callbacks to Cabin 10, but I still enjoyed the ride. Church is a great narrator when she’s tracking Lo’s misadventures or delving into a Swiss French accent, but she reads Lo’s husband as if he’s one of the Sopranos, and that’s a weird choice.
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Read by: Jacques Roy Length: 11 hrs, 46 mins. Speed I listened: 2.2x
There’s not much new I learned from this history of Condé Nast. But I may be an outlier, having worked there (at W and The New Yorker) for years. I’ll also have you know I scored 32 out of 32 on that recent “Could You Have Landed a Job at Vogue in the ’90s” quiz in the New York Times. Roy’s narration feels a bit pedestrian for what is meant to be a glamorous insider account, but I don’t know if I’ll ever turn down a book that includes a bowlful of anecdotes about Graydon Carter, Tina Brown, and Si Newhouse. This is my version of a comfort listen.
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I don’t love a plot that hinges on a person keeping a secret for an extremely long time. That if he would just tell it, he wouldn’t cause so much emotional distress for himself and everyone else. (Think Monster’s Ball, Dear Evan Hansen.) So it’s a tribute to Rothschild and Button, her narrator, that I found this novel compelling and tender even if that secret-keeping struck me as far-fetched. The book starts with Tom losing his wife, Honor, and their daughter in a terrible, grisly incident. As narrated by Honor, we learn how Tom goes on. Add this to your stable of sweet-and-tart British novels like One Day by David Nicholls or Good Material by Dolly Alderton.
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Edoardo Ballerini is certainly one of the best-known audiobook readers, but his narration of this novel was the first time I really understood the hype. Walter is a frequent Ballerini collaborator; they created an audiobook original together. Here, Ballerini is a stand-in for Rhys Kinnick, an off-the-grid journalist who has to reclaim his grandchildren. Kinnick is one of those great curmudgeonly creations you just want to spend time with, and Ballerini brings him to humorous, relatable life.
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Read by: the author Length: 5 hrs, 54 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
Somehow — probably better not to ask why — Luella van Horn, the nom de plume of kooky Staten Island divorcée Marie Jones, gets hired to investigate a missing cast member of a reality show. In general, this is a pretty off-center “cozy mystery,” but it made me laugh a lot—as did Firestone’s dry observations about life, love, and reality television and her heightened, blousy narration. It surely helps that, as a comedian, Firestone knows how to deliver funny.
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Read by: the author Length: 7 hrs, 57 mins. Speed I listened: 2.5x
I barely knew who Tommy Dorfman was before I listened to this memoir. Dorfman is perhaps best known for the Netflix teen drama Thirteen Reasons Why, though she recently starred with Rachel Zegler in a revival of Romeo and Juliet on Broadway. I recognized Dorfman most from a 2021 paparazzi shot holding hands with the actor Lucas Hedges. Dorfman really takes Hedges to task here about his behavior during their time together, so I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about the book. It’s all pretty self-indulgent but extremely hard to stop listening to. And the indie-actor-gossip value is A-plus.
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Read by: Gina Gershon Length: 10 hrs, 29 mins Speed I listened: 2.2x
Frey modeled this soapy novel, set among the wealthy and bored residents of a Connecticut suburb, after the work of Jackie Collins. Just like most things that Frey writes, this ensemble drama consistently teeters between wry and perceptive and ridiculously bloated. Funnily enough, what kept me listening was Gershon who, as narrator, brings a groovy, louche voice to the proceedings, even if her pronunciation of French words feels a bit forced.
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Read by: Kristen DiMercurio and Julia Whelan Length: 9 hrs, 52 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
This astronaut drama doesn’t quite have the fun factor of previous Jenkins Reid novels, but I still found it more enjoyable to listen to than when I started actually reading it a few months ago. The author of the far superior The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Carrie Soto Is Back takes outer space exploration and the stars a little too seriously, at least for my summer-reading speed.But lesser Jenkins Reid is still a treat, and the drama between the main character, Joan, a successful scientist, and her selfish sister Barbara is juicier than anything that takes place in a NASA shuttle over the course of the book.
I also enjoyed: Soundtrack, an audiobook original by Jason Reynolds about a New York City band that finds success doing pop-up concerts in the subway. The creepiness of Aisling Rawle’s The Compound is only heightened by the English actress Lucy Boynton as narrator. The small cast narrating Leila Mottley’s The Girls Who Grew Big really accentuates the longing of the lost teenage mothers. Meanwhile,Happy Wife, by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores, about a Florida woman whose husband up and vanishes, could be the fun summer listen you’re looking for.
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Read by: the author Length: 12 hrs, 40 mins. Speed I listened: 2.4x
Barry Diller has always terrified me, but this memoir makes him seem a little less intimidating. He’s just a guy — he describes himself at 42 years old as “something of an innocent” and later he’s worried about being a “mogul manqué” and “discarded like yesterday’s fish” — who’s never been able to express his inner life thanks to the fear of his homosexuality coming to public light and the emotional inertia of his upbringing. (His parents, he says, “never asked me a personal question” in all his life.) Me being me, I find the little things in this audiobook weirdly mesmerizing. For instance: his awkward pronunciation of “diaspora” and French expressions like “coup de foudre.” Wife Diane von Furstenberg awkwardly pipes in to re-create a few romantic letters she sent Diller over the years of their unusual courtship. The muted vitriol he vocalizes when describing Arnold Schwarzenegger as a “dumbfuck oaf” or addressing Rupert Murdoch (who ruined one of Diller’s big surprise birthday parties) as “you fucking asshole.” Call me crazy, but of everything here, in a section where Diller describes his lack of interest in Pixar, I perhaps found this detail most bemusing: “I didn’t get any of the charm of Toy Story.” Who doesn’t like Toy Story?
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Read by: Will Damron and Christine Lakin Length: 8 hrs, 50 mins. Speed I listened: 2.2x
Somehow this thriller is both preposterous and genius. When Blake loses his big marketing job, he worries about making the payments on the Upper West Side townhouse (!) where he lives with his fiancé Krista. Krista suggests they bring in a tenant, and they find Whitney, who seems normal until … Blake starts having allergic reactions to his clothing, he finds hair in his leftover Chinese food, and his life is generally ruined. The hair in the food thing is so gross (dumb) I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before ( brilliant). There’s an equally nightmarish moment involving maggots in a bed that just made me think, Touché Freida McFadden, whomever you are. I hope I haven’t ruined The Tenant for you, because I found listening to it a total hoot.
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Read by: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw Length: 11 hrs, 15 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
On rare occasions, I enjoy a book so much that, while listening to it, I develop an intellectual crush on the author. Then I gently stalk him on Instagram to try and deduce if he’s single. I’ll admit I did this with Adam Roberts. That’s because I fell in love with this very funny novel about Isabella, a boring food writer who tries to ghostwrite a cookbook slash memoir for a washed-up Mischa Barton–like star who barely ever eats but pretends to love to cook. It’s completely charming with on point references about celebrities and the food world. And it’s delightfully read by Hutchinson-Shaw. The author, however, lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend. Sigh.
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Read by: Julianne Moore Length: 6 hrs, 33 mins. Speed I listened: 1.5x
I used to idolize the relationship between Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. I loved both of their work — in particular the novels — and I imagined their partnership as the height of intellectual romance. That’s at least partly why I found this book (which came out in late April) fascinating. It comprises letters Joan wrote to John outlining in exacting detail sessions Didion had with a therapist to discuss their daughter Quintana’s alcoholism. It’s an intimate, telling window into all their lives. There’s an added layer of celebrity with Julianne Moore’s narration.
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Read by: Daniel Henning Length: 12 hrs, 42 mins Speed I listened: 1.9x
In this clever ’80s-set supernatural romantic comedy, the disarmingly handsome underdog Joe moves to the Pines in Fire Island for the summer to let loose after losing his boyfriend to AIDS. Joe shacks up (platonically) with Howie and Lenny, local house cleaners who also happen to be part of a paranormal coven. Henning is a great guide to this loopy scene, even if his acting of the ancillary characters (in particular Howie and Lenny) can get a bit strident.This is such an enjoyable romp that his more annoying voices are easy to forgive.
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Read by: Peter Ganim and Helen Laser Length: 11 hrs, 42 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
Jane lives in a remote cabin with her dad in Montana with few genuine connections to either technological or social advancements in the outside world. As she grows up, she starts to question this arrangement and, in the process, helps her father commit a strange crime. In the second part of the book, she unravels many of the lies he told her and needs to reconcile if he was justified in doing so. This is more of an introspective thriller than a twisty one, but its puzzles have really stayed with me. It’s a particularly good listen because the bulk of the story is told from Jane’s naive perspective.
In a cross-section of this month’s themes, Keith McNally’s overlong but generally absorbing memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, has titillating gay awakenings and restaurant gossip, and it’s read by the actor Richard E. Grant.
Even if the Florida jokes are maybe a bit too easy these days, Carl Hiassen’sFever Beach, also read by Damron, made me laugh out loud.
For better French pronunciations than Diller’s and some creepy recollections about Billy Joel, check out Christie Brinkley’s surprisingly self-aware Uptown Girl.
Though I wish there were more crazy revelations in it, Rich Cohen’s Murder in the Dollhouse is at a cross section of things that fascinate me: the downtown theater scene, Brown University, and wealthy New Yorkers.
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Yes, this novel owes a lot to Daisy Jones & the Six, but I still loved it. It’s set in two time periods. In the early aughts, Zoe (beautiful, ambitious) and her sister, Cassie (think a closed-off Mama Cass), find mainstream popularity as a kind of Tegan and Sara rock band. Twenty years after they split, Zoe’s daughter, Cherry, runs away to enter an American Idol competition. She tries to reconnect with her estranged Aunt Cassie, who now lives off the grid in Alaska. Dakota Fanning’s narration never distracts from the big, warm hug this novel gave me every time I returned to it and pressed play.
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Read by: Daniel Weyman Length: 9 hrs., 25 mins. Speed I listened: 2.2x
This is another novel I just loved this month, and it couldn’t be any more different from Jennifer Weiner’s. Like Szalay’s other very good fiction, this one is about men dealing with the strange disappointments of life. Flesh tracks the ups and downs of István, from the accident he causes as a teenager in Hungary to his life on the sidelines as a limo driver for rich businessmen in London. István doesn’t say much, but he’s such a compelling figure. When he does speak, often just responding “Okay,” the actor Daniel Weyman (Gandalf onAmazon Prime’s The Rings of Power) captures him perfectly.
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Read by: the author Length: 4 hrs., 16 mins. Speed I listened: 1.7x
I didn’t know I cared about birds or that I cared about Lili Taylor (Mystic Pizza, Say Anything) until I listened to this memoir about the actress discovering community in the world of bird watching. Taylor’s voice and personality is so quirky and recognizably off-center that I just so enjoyed spending a few hours in her presence. Even if I must admit I still don’t really care about birds. Sorry, Lili. I know you tried.
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Read by: Kristen Sieh Length: 9 hrs., 23 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
Like me, you probably initially hear the conceit of this novel and think, Pass. It’s about Linda, a middling worker in San Francisco, who gets her ya-yas from flying on planes. As in she’s sexually attracted to jumbo jets, notably one she has been trying to reconnect with since she was a kid. She’d like to marry it. The plane. Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, it’s a metaphor for the confusions of sexuality. And yes, partially thanks to Sieh’s straightforward and honest reading, I also thought this book was touching and a total and complete hoot.
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Read by: the author Length: 6 hrs., 35 mins. Speed I listened: 1.8x
Jeremy Renner, the action star, house-flipper, and self-proclaimed “pain in the ass to many,” says he did not want to write this memoir, which details his near-fatal accident in January 2023 with a 14,000-pound snowplow. I’m not sure I wanted to listen to it either, but I’m very glad I did. His description of his recovery is life affirming and just pretty incredible. His narration is particularly harrowing. There are occasional cuts to 911 calls on the day of the incident, and you can even hear Renner fighting to stay alive in the background. I’m of the mind that not every celebrity needs a memoir, but this one’s worth it.
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Read by: the author Length: 5 hrs., 11 mins. Speed I listened: 1.6x
Every blue moon or so, a self-help-ish book comes along that truly seems like it can help our complicated, messy lives. This is one of them. I can’t urge you enough to listen to Time Anxiety. Guillebeau, a seemingly very affable fellow with quite a bit of common sense, explains that we’re all very focused on “managing time,” but when it comes to brass tacks, time really can’t be managed. His advice is practical and doable. Things like: Stop evaluating your productivity based on a single day. Instead, look at a whole month. Learn to leave things unfinished (lame books, boring audiobooks, uninteresting Netflix series). Don’t waste hours and hours looking for the best flight options, “just book the fucking ticket.” Write a “to dread” list instead of a “to do” list, and get the things done on it quickly and with as little pain as possible. One thing I’d like to do with my time this year is make Guillebeau my friend, and I feel like I’m already on the path forward. At the end of the audiobook he says, “Thank you. You’re awesome. I’m so glad we spent this time together.” Me too!
Even if Lauren Ambrose’s narration is consistently amazing, I was starting to get bored with Nita Prose’s Maid series, but her latest, The Maid’s Secret, is a solid triple. There’s some great skewering of Antiques Roadshow, and our seemingly neurodivergent protagonist, Molly, becomes a minor celebrity.
I would probably listen to Harriet Walter (the mom on Succession) read the phone book, but I’d much prefer to listen to her perform a novel like The Usual Desire to Kill, by Camilla Barnes. Propulsive plot this does not have, but brittle British witticisms it certainly does.
After a stellar first half, the plot gets way, way off track in The Last Session, by Julia Bartz,but I love a novel about therapy and I still enjoyed the listen.
I’ve had problems getting into books by Emily Henry, but I survived — and enjoyed — A Great Big Beautiful Life, probably because it has a bit of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in it. Everyone’s cribbing from Taylor Jenkins Reid and with good reason!
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Read by: the author Length: 13 hrs, 16 mins. Speed I listened: 2.2x
This is a completely fascinating memoir by a former Facebook employee (in international relations and public policy) about her journey at the company. Wynn-Williams leaves no asshole behind, not Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg, which makes the book, titled after a description of Tom and Daisy in The Great Gatsby, compelling and, well, perfectly relatable. The author’s charming New Zealand accent heightens the listenability, even when she takes a few too many diversions or gets on her soapbox.
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Read by: Louise Brealey Length: 6 hrs, 26 mins. Speed I listened: 1.8x
Anyone who knows me can attest that I’m not an animal guy. At all. But from the moment it started, I was both rapt and moved by this memoir of an overworked Londoner who saves and raises a leveret at her country home during the pandemic. More than most self-help books I’ve listened to recently, this carefully observed book made me very conscious of taking time to breathe and appreciate the world around me. Even if it definitely did not convince me to get a bunny as a pet.
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Read by: a multicast Length: 9 hrs, 35 mins. Speed I listened: 2.1x
Not that I’m one to forget its existence, but listening to books often reminds me of my misanthropic side. A novel like this hits that sweet spot. Dominic Salt, a widower, and his three kids are the last inhabitants on Shearwater, an island near Antarctica that was once teeming with researchers. And then, suddenly, a woman washes ashore, and she’s looking for her husband. It’s all very romantic, which clashes with my bitter distrust of people, but, I guess, one can’t exist without the other. Each character has his or her own narrator, which keeps this briskly moving along.
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In this comic thriller, Florence Grimes, a former girl-bander who lives in Notting Hill, thinks her 10-year-old son, Dylan, might have something to do with the disappearance of his classmate, Alfie. I listened to this book while I was in London recently, which may have amplified my enjoyment. Even if the last act is a bit muddy, I enjoyed Grimes’s hyperactive narration, as performed by Sadler.
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Read by: the author Length: 8 hrs, 37 mins. Speed I listened: 2.2x
I’m dating myself, but I saw Say Anything (1989) in the movie theater with my mom. Obviously the actress Ione Skye was a big deal then as John Cusack’s love interest, but I can’t say I’ve given her a ton of thought since. That said, I found this memoir surprisingly sexy and up-front. Especially fascinating are Skye’s descriptions of her romantic dalliances, including with the actor Keanu Reeves (attempted, at least); Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz (married him); singer Anthony Kiedis (dated), and interior designer David Netto (had a kid).
It’s actually a decent month for book-club books: Broken Countryby Clare Leslie Hall (Reese’s pick) is a very well-narrated throwback period mystery/thriller with an ending that I didn’t expect. I found the memoirThe Tell by Amy Griffin (Oprah’s pick), about a wealthy New York mom of four who uncovers old, upsetting memories, totally riveting — especially because of Griffin’s cogent and immediate reading of it. And though Sophie Stava’s Count My Lies(Good Morning America’s pick) defies some probability, I was really taken in by its two female narrators: a rich woman and a poor one who poses as her nanny. Who’s Ripley-ing whom? There’s a nice, final turn of the screw there.
Though it’s an occasionally circuitous slow burn, I was rapt by the experience of listening to Dream Countby Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And Graydon Carter’s When the Going Was Good made me super nostalgic for my salad days at Condé Nast, even if I didn’t learn much new.
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Read by: Jenna Coleman Length: 12 hrs, 38 mins Speed I listened: 2x
I usually savor a new Jojo Moyes novel in print. This time, I gave her latest a listen, and I loved the experience just as much. In this one, a divorced mom finds herself with a complicated full house when her estranged (and broke) father comes back to live with her, her stepfather, and her daughters. Charming, funny, warm, unexpected — like all of the Jojo Moyes canon, it’s a delight.
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Read by: the author Length: 4 hrs, 56 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
Everything seemed fine, and then suddenly, on Memorial Day 2019, the writer Geraldine Brooks got a call that her 60-year-old husband, the journalist Tony Horwitz, had dropped dead. This memoir alternates between the history of their marriage and the grief she attempts to work through while on a remote Australian island. Part of what’s thrilling about the audio production is how Brooks’s lyrical accent elevates her lovely and spare prose.
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Read by: J. Smith-Cameron Length: 4 hrs, 23 mins. Speed I listened: 1.8x
I’ve never been an Anne Tyler reader, but the brisk length of her latest novel made a listen particularly appealing. An added bonus: The book is narrated by actress J. Smith-Cameron from Succession. She’s the awkward mother of a bride who doesn’t really think her daughter should get married to the groom. The weight of this one really sneaks up on you. Or, at least, it snuck up on me.
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I’m not a huge fan of the actress Marin Ireland as a narrator. But I found that her voice slipped away whenever the narrative of this family — a Philip Roth-like writer, his artist wife, and their gallerist son — perked up, and that’s quite often. It takes a minute to get used to the form the book takes, as it’s told from several different perspectives. But otherwise, this is a moving and compelling Manhattan story.
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I’m usually not that keen on a memoir that’s not read by the author, but I’m glad I gave Bill Gates’s new book a pass. (It’s read by the actor Wil Wheaton, who, thanks to narrating Ready Player One and The Martian, has become almost synonymous with heady and slightly dorky audiobooks.) I found Gates’s self-analysis here quite relatable and his journey from precocious kid to major player in the tech world very compelling. My favorite detail is that his favorite drink to order while in college was a Shirley Temple.
I excitedly tore through the nearly 23 hours of Lorne, by Susan Morrison, in a weekend. (I was her assistant for three years.) The surprising grotesquery of Victorian Psycho, by Virginia Feito, made me laugh out loud. Chelsea Handler did too, in her new memoirI’ll Have What She’s Having, which also convinced me I could use a life-lessons master class from the comedian. And I’m always here for thoughtful analysis about gossip, which is why I enjoyed You Didn’t Hear This From Me, by Kelsey McKinney.
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I normally bristle at a 20-hour audiobook, but I found this second sequel to Turow’s 1987 thriller Presumed Innocent (first a Harrison Ford movie, which I have seen; more recently, a Jake Gyllenhaal Apple series I haven’t) completely gripping. Early on, I thought Grover Gardner’s voice was a bit fuddy-duddy, but I got used to it. In this installment, our protagonist Rusty chooses to defend his stepson, who is accused of murder. He’s now in his late 70s, and his company is addictive as ever.
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Read by: the author Length: 22 hrs, 9 mins. Speed I listened: 2x
It’s so unlike me, but here’s another 20-plus-hour audiobook that I couldn’t turn off. Well, that’s not completely true. A few hours into the saga of Griffin — a child actor growing up in New York City in 1980 — I was frustrated that he was caught between the sexual advances of two adults, one an older female family friend, the other his wrestling coach. But the book takes off when Griffin is cast in a movie by a Woody Allen–esque director. Ross, a former child actor himself, is an engaging reader of what must be a semi-autobiographical roman à clef.
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Read by: Marin Ireland and others Length: 9 hrs, 52 mins. Speed I listened: 2.2x
For a while, the actress Marin Ireland was reading every big audiobook, and I just got tired of listening to her voice. So it’s a testament to the author and this novel that I found it so compelling. The book, a Reese Witherspoon pick about a best-selling writer and her hidden, tumultuous past, shares some similar DNA with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (which I loved), and that’s definitely not a bad thing.
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Read by: the author Length: 5 hrs, 35 mins. Speed I listened: 1.9x
I thought the actress/singer Lola Kirkewas great in Mozart in the Jungle and Mistress America. I had a fun afternoon writing about her when I worked at TheWall Street Journal. But in the last few years, she’s dropped off the Hollywood scene. She focused more on country music and, one assumes, writing this very honest, sometimes even shocking, book of essays about growing up in New York City in a dysfunctional family of eccentrics. In fact, the most pedestrian thing about the book is the title. Otherwise, Kirke comes off wise and introspective. She even got under my skin.
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Read by: the author Length: 8 hrs, 4 mins. Speed I listened: 2.1x
I didn’t want to like this memoir by the actor behind the voice of Olaf in Frozen and from The Book of Mormon, but almost immediately, Gad won me over. Or, Sacha Baron Cohen did, reading a short foreword in which the artist sometimes known as Borat says he’s wearing “very noisy clogs.” Gad is pretty name-droppy. Friends include Anne Hathaway, Bryce Dallas Howard, Johnny Depp, the late Chadwick Boseman, and pretty much anyone with whom he’s ever co-starred. Besides Cohen, Mel Brooks and Ron Howard pop in for seemingly unnecessary vocal cameos. But Gad is awfully charming, whether he’s detailing his tempestuous relationship with stage director James Lapine, his rise on the high-school forensics circuit, or his endearing emotions toward his growing daughters. We’d probably be friends, too. Josh — call me.
In the department of challenging relationships between daughters and their mothers, I enjoyed both the singer Neko Case’sThe Harder I Fight the More I Love Youand Shari Franke’s The House of My Mother, as painful as both could occasionally be.
Long before Lucien became the bistro of choice for Lady Gaga, Bella Hadid, and Chloë Sevigny to nibble on petits filets and French fries, there was Davé—a Chinese restaurant in Paris’s 1st arrondissement that Tai “Davé” Cheung opened in 1982 and closed in 2018. For more than three glittering decades, Davé was the discreet hot spot for the biggest names in fashion, film, art, and music. Helmut Newton and Grace Coddington were early regulars, but as The New York Times recounted in 1998, the real origin story began in the mid-1970s: “Barney Wan, a BritishVogue art director, dined at Davé’s father’s Chinese restaurant, Pergola du Bonheur, in Oberkampf, a terribly unfashionable Paris neighborhood, and liked it so much that he took his colleague Coddington to lunch there. Then Davé met a photographer named June Newton and invited her and her husband, Helmut, to the restaurant. They quickly became regulars.” From there, the crowd only grew, with the restaurant playing host to Iggy Pop, Rei Kawakubo, Lou Reed, Yoko Ono, Madonna, Alexander McQueen, Kate Moss, Tina Turner, Janet Jackson, and Mariah Carey over the years.
The food at Davé was, by most accounts, secondary to the experience. There were no menus, and a sign on the red-and-gold façade read “COMPLET” (“full”), even when it wasn’t. Guests came not for the cuisine but for the atmosphere, late-night mischief, and Davé himself, who swanned about the space, greeting VIPs, taking pictures, and covering the quilted red walls with photos of his famous customers. “My guests are tired, and this is where they can relax at the end of the day and be with each other socially,” he told The Guardian in 2005. “They don’t want to be disturbed by a bunch of tourists.… My job is to make fabulous people feel fabulous. I mean, really, anybody can serve a spring roll.”
But not everybody could draw a crowd ranging from Allen Ginsberg and Keith Haring to Yves Saint Laurent, Grace Jones, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Davé took Polaroids of them all, often in a proto-selfie style. Now, the new book A Night at Davé offers an inside peek at the hijinks and glamour of the former hot spot through Davé’s own lens. The limited-edition tome, conceived and edited by Charles Morin and Boris Bergmann alongside Davé himself, features a foreword written by Sofia Coppola (her father, Francis Ford Coppola, is a lifelong friend of Davé, and Sofia grew up frequenting the restaurant). Plus, there is an interview with Davé in which he tells the stories behind the photos. For a preview of the book, out now from IDEA, keep scrolling.
The granddaughter of E.B. White, the author of the classic 1952 children’s book “Charlotte’s Web,” slammed the Trump administration on Monday for using the book’s title as an inspiration for its immigration raid in Charlotte, North Carolina, which officials are calling “Operation Charlotte’s Web.”
Martha White said her grandfather, who died in 1985, would not support the immigration sweeps in Charlotte and across the country, as she denounced the Department of Homeland Security’s reference to her grandfather’s beloved tale.
“He believed in the rule of law and due process,” Martha White, who works as her grandfather’s literary executor, said in a statement. “He certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons.”
She emphasized that in “Charlotte’s Web,” the spider devoted her life on the farm to protecting a pig named Wilbur and securing his freedom.
U.S. Border Patrol Commander at large Gregory Bovino, right, looks on as a detainee sits by a car, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, in Charlotte, North Carolina.(AP)
The administration and Republican leaders have used various catchy phrases for immigration operations as they seek to carry out President Donald Trump‘s mass deportation agenda, including by naming migrant holding facilities Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, Speedway Slammer in Indiana and Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska.
Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official now leading the operation in Charlotte, was the face of the “Operation At Large” in Los Angeles and “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago earlier this year.
“‘Wherever the wind takes us. High, low. Near, far. East, west. North, south. We take to the breeze, we go as we please,’” Bovino quoted from “Charlotte’s Web” in a social media post on Sunday, shortly after the immigration sweep in North Carolina’s largest city began.
“This time, the breeze hit Charlotte like a storm. From border towns to the Queen City, our agents go where the mission calls,” he continued.
The immigration sweep began over the weekend, and DHS said on Monday that more than 130 migrants were arrested in two days. The agency also said nearly 1,400 detainers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement have not been honored by local authorities.
Martha White said her grandfather, who died in 1985, would not support the immigration sweeps in Charlotte and across the country.(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Officials in Charlotte have vowed to resist the immigration sweeps and stand up for the migrant community.
In a joint statement on Monday, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners Chair Mark Jerrell and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education Chair Stephanie Sneed said the raids are “causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty in our community as recent operations in other cities have resulted in people without criminal records being detained and violent protests being the result of unwarranted actions.”
“Our organizations believe that our diversity makes us stronger,” the statement reads. “And with that belief, we are unwavering in our commitment to a safe and welcoming community where everyone can grow and thrive. It is critical for all residents to feel secure in our community and know they can live their lives without being fearful while walking down the street, going to school, work or the grocery store.”
“We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives, contributing to our larger community,” it added. “Each of our organizations have made commitments to the people we serve to protect their rights and dignity. We are committed to following the law and to protecting the rights of all people who call Charlotte and Mecklenburg County home.”
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said the operation is “stoking fear and dividing our community.”(Getty Images/Allison Joyce)
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein also stated that the operation is “stoking fear and dividing our community.”
“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks,” Stein said in a video posted to X.
Trump has targeted Democrat-led cities for migrant sweeps as part of his mass deportation plan. His administration earlier this year reversed a Biden administration rule that prohibited raids in sensitive areas such as churches, schools and hospitals.
The original “Dork Diaries: Tales From a Not So Fabulous Life” was released in 2009 and became an instant bestseller. More than a dozen “Dork Diaries” followed. Now, author Rachel Renée Russell and her daughter, Nikki – who illustrates the series – are out with a full-color edition of the first book. They talk to “CBS Mornings” about the new edition, inspiration for the series and the messages they want readers to take away.
Olivia Nuzzi is sharing new details of her alleged affair with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The New York Times previewed the journalist’s new book, American Canto, in a profile published on Friday, November 14, where Nuzzi details her account of their alleged relationship.
In the book, Nuzzi, 32, claims that RFK Jr., 71, told her he wanted to have her baby despite previously suggesting their relationship was “never physical”, per the Times.
The outlet reported Nuzzi also claims in the book that RFK Jr. was the first to say “I love you,” wrote her poems and promised to take a bullet for her. Nuzzi claims via the book, which will be released on December 2, that RFK Jr.’s nickname for her was “Livvy.”
Us Weekly has reached out to RFK Jr.’s representatives for comment.
In October 2024, Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé Ryan Lizzaclaimed in court documents that Nuzzi told him that RFK Jr. wanted to “impregnate” her, among other claims.
“Nuzzi had been cheating on me with a married man for almost a year,” Lizza claimed in court documents filed on October 14, 2024, and obtained by Page Six.
He added, “She admitted the affair and over the course of weeks of conversations she confided how she fell into what she described as ‘toxic’ ‘unhealthy’ ‘stupid’ ‘psychotic’ ‘crazy’ ‘indefensible’ relationship with a 70-year-old ‘sex addict’ who told her he wanted to ‘possess,’ ‘control,’ and ‘impregnate’ her.”
Us Weekly reached out for comment to Nuzzi and RFK Jr. at the time.
News broke of Nuzzi’s alleged “inappropriate personal relationship” with RFK Jr. shortly after she conducted an interview about his political career for New York Magazine in September 2024. The same month, the magazine addressed Nuzzi allegedly failing to disclose her relationship status with Kennedy.
“She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers’ trust,” the magazine’s statement read, in part.
Olivia Nuzzo.(Photo by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Vox Media)
At the time, neither New York Magazine nor Nuzzi publicly named RFK Jr., but CNN and The New York Times both reported that he was indeed the subject. In a statement to The Times, Nuzzi denied having a physical relationship with the politician.
“I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source. The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict,” Nuzzi said via her statement. “I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”
RFK Jr. also denied the affair through his spokesperson. “Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece,” the rep told NBC News in a statement in September 2024.
Many Hollywood marriages have overcome allegations of infidelity over the years. Former Vanderpump Rules stars Brittany Cartwright and Jax Taylor worked through Taylor’s cheating past — he was caught hooking up with former costar Faith Stowers during season 6 — before getting married in June 2019. “I see him every single day making efforts and […]
Both Nuzzi and RFK Jr. were involved in preexisting relationships, with Nuzzi’s then-fiancé Lizza ending his engagement to Nuzzi following the scandal.
For his part, RFK Jr. has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014.
Hines addressed the speculation and headlines surrounding her marriage during an October episode of “The Katie Miller Podcast.”
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“I think you always have to consider the source, right?” she said on the podcast at the time. “So that’s where I start. And then it ends with a conversation with Bobby.”
Hines added, “Bobby had been running for president, and it was an exhausting year-and-a-half of headlines and rumors and articles and chaos. And at that time, I thought, ‘OK, this is more chaos and more rumors.’ And, um, it was a lot.”
After she was asked about Nuzzi’s upcoming book release, Hines responded, “I don’t know this person. Don’t know their intentions. I could guess, but I won’t. But you can if you want.”
Christmas is the season of romance so it’s no surprise that The CW is giving viewers the gift of love with six brand-new original movies all inspired from Harlequin romances. The network promises “heartwarming stories [that will] bring love, drama, and holiday magic to life,” which also bring together fan-favorite stars including Shadowhunters actresses Kat McNamara and Emeraude Toubia. The pair played best friends Clary and Isabelle in the Freeform series, and will both appear in new CW originals.
Kat, who is a CW favorite after appearing inWalker: Independencewith Jared Padalecki, and Arrow as Mia Smoak, will play Heather in Montana Mavericks, a NYC author who inherits a rundown ranch but finds that her plan to sell goes up in smoke when she meets the charming cowboy veterinarian next door. In Paws in the City, Emeraude plays Issa, a social media whiz who takes on a dog sitter job, and elsewhere, fans will see The Flash’s Danielle Panabaker in Second Guessing Fate, while Glee’s Amber Riley will fall in love with her contractor in Savvy Sheldon Feels Good As Hell.
Heather (Katherine McNamara) is a best-selling author struggling with writer’s block until she unexpectedly inherits a family ranch in Montana. With her two best friends, Heather heads out for a “Yellowstone” adventure, intent on a quick sale – but surprise, surprise, Heather is left blindsided when she meets Cliff (Dennis Andres), the charming cowboy veterinarian next door.
Gemma (Danielle Panabaker) is a successful event planner who is told by a strange fortune teller that she is one last horrible date away from true love. Gemma then goes on what she hopes is her last blind date with Nick (Corey Sevier) but anything and everything goes wrong, including crashing her car into a handsome stranger, Enzo (Brendan Morgan). Is Gemma misreading the signs? And will the cynical big city girl take a leap of faith?
Glee star Amber Riley stars as Savvy Sheldon, a busy working woman who has inherited a kitchen and a treasure trove of recipes from her grandmother. But when Savvy decides to invest in the kitchen and renovate, she meets Isaiah (Dorian Grey), a “dashing contractor [who] falls for more than Savvy’s delectable cuisine and may just be the secret ingredient to heating up Savvy’s love life’.
When Issa (Emeraude Toubia) accidentally ruins a young starlet’s career, she becomes the most unemployable social media manager in Manhattan and is forced to take a job caring for Camila, a glossy-maned dachshund diva, whose owner is the attractive, yet reclusive Theo (Carter Jenkins). “What starts as a way to keep a roof over her and her 14-year-old sister’s heads turns into an opportunity for Issa to showcase her skills and reunite her family; it also might be the key to her success in life and love.”
Recipe for Romance is a classic enemies-to-lovers story as Sari (True O’Brien) is given the long overdue opportunity to prove herself when her parents put the family’s coffee shop in her hands. But when a new bakery, run by the annoyingly handsome and charming Gabe (Alex Mallari Jr.) opens right next door, the pair find themselves in the prank war to end all prank wars…
Caro Cartwright (Katharine King So) is a vintage fashion devotee who agrees to harbor her childhood nemesis turned couture heiress Philippa Levreaux (Kathryn Gallagher). But despite—or perhaps because of—their differences, these two women help each other wrangle the challenges around them to find a way forward, be their best selves, and fulfill their dreams.
How to watch:
Saturday, December 20 (8:00-10:00pm ET/PT)
How to watch The CW:
For traditional viewing, local The CW channels are available, or if you are a cord-cutter you can watch on The CW app on devices like Roku, Apple TV, and smartphone. Services such as YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, or Fubo all also carry The CW. The CW website also has free streaming.
Read an excerpt below, in which Schwartz finds the inspiration of what will become his most successful musical production to date, when he discovers Gregory Maguire’s prequel to L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” – the genesis of the long-running Broadway musical “Wicked.”
And don’t miss Mo Rocca’s interview with Stephen Schwartz on “CBS Sunday Morning” November 16!
“It’s time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap!” —Wicked
At the start of 1996, Stephen Schwartz never imagined he would end the year envisioning his next Broadway musical, Wicked. Movie songwriting seemed to be his future, especially after one eventful evening in March. He donned his newly-purchased black tuxedo and white silk dress shirt, strode across the red carpet, and met up with his Pocahontas writing partner Alan Menken at Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. For forty-eight-year-old Schwartz, being nominated for an Academy Award was a welcome twist on his childhood dream of writing musicals for the stage. With his parents and wife in the audience, he waited for the announcement.
“And the Oscar for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score goes to…” An expectant silence settled in the hall while presenter Quincy Jones opened the envelope.
“Alan Menken, musical and orchestral score, and Stephen Schwartz, lyrics, for Pocahontas.” Applause burst out while the pair made their way to the stage. As Menken thanked their Pocahontas music team, Schwartz clutched his golden statuette and smiled, looking down at Mel Gibson in the front row making funny faces at him and soaking in the acknowledgment from Hollywood. That evening he and Menken also stepped up to accept the award for Best Original Song, “Colors of the Wind.”
Back home in Connecticut, he placed his gold-plated statuettes beside his Grammy gramophones in a trophy case converted from an aquarium that his kids no longer used.
The rest of the year was a busy one, with the premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and early work on The Prince of Egypt involving meetings with the DreamWorks team and the writing and demo-ing of songs. He was also working on an early production of a revue musical Snapshots in Seattle, confident that when finally finished, the show would go direct to stock and amateur licensing rather than to a commercial production. The one thing he was emphatically not doing was planning anything new for Broadway.
Then towards the end of the year, a phone call came that would change everything. He was in Los Angeles finishing some work on The Prince of Egypt when his long-time buddy, songwriter John Bucchino, called him from the island of Maui in Hawaii. Singer-songwriter Holly Near had hired Bucchino as a piano accompanist for her performances at a conference at the tropical getaway. Once on Maui, Bucchino decided it was too good not to share. His room included an extra bed, and he had a car and free food. “If you can cash in some frequent flyer miles and come for the weekend, you’ll have a free vacation in Hawaii,” Bucchino offered.
“Why not?” thought Schwartz. He had the weekend free, and after all, it was Hawaii. “I am so there,” came Schwartz’s answer from LA, and by December 16th, he was.
When Bucchino and Near had a block of time away from the stage, they organized a snorkeling adventure with Schwartz and Near’s friend, Pat Hunt. A small boat sped them over to Molikini, a mostly submerged volcanic crater popular for its rainbow spread of sea creatures that delight snorkelers.
On the trip back, Holly casually mentioned to Stephen, “I’m reading this really interesting book called Wicked, by Gregory Maguire.”
The novel’s title sounded intriguing. “I think I’ve heard of it. What’s it about?” he inquired.
“It’s the Oz story from the Wicked Witch of the West’s point of view.”
In an instant, Schwartz’s imagination flashed through the implications of a backstory for The Wizard of Oz told from the perspective of the unpopular witch. His reaction was visceral: “All the hairs on my arms stood on end,” he recalls. “I thought it was the best idea for a musical I had ever heard.”
As soon as he returned to his LA apartment, he called his attorney in New York, inquiring about Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. “Okay, this book has been out for a while, so somebody has the rights. I need you to find out who has them. Meanwhile, I’m going to get the book and read it, because I think I have to do this.”
There was no way around it. This was a Broadway concept not suited to a small-budget theater company. And he knew it was a highly theatrical idea, not one meant for film or television. Although he had firmly decided, indeed pledged, never to work on Broadway again, his instincts didn’t leave him a choice.
“Wicked” by Gregory Maguire, first published in 1995.
HarperCollins
But with such a popular novel, surely someone in Hollywood was converting it to the silver screen. Schwartz would have to stop them, and somehow inspire the rights holders to consider instead the risky, expensive, and time-consuming venture of producing a musical in New York City.
While his attorney, Nancy Rose, followed clues on the rights trail, Wicked‘s prospective composer-lyricist read the novel and confirmed that his hunch had been right: musicalizing the Wicked Witch’s story seemed “quintessentially an idea for me,” meaningful enough to be worth the potential struggle.
For one thing, he loved looking at traditional stories from a new angle. When he was in college he saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard’s play in which two minor characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet are made the central characters. “It was a revelation to me,” he recalls. “From that point on, the idea of looking at familiar material from an unfamiliar point of view became a goal for my own work.” Godspell had approached the New Testament in a fresh way, Children of Eden reworked Genesis for a new take on family life, and The Prince of Egypt explored the Exodus story from the standpoint of the brother relationship between Moses and Ramses. But Gregory Maguire’s twist on The Wizard of Oz was a chance to do something more directly like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern concept. “I recognized immediately that this was a genius idea and that it was an idea for me: the way it took a familiar subject and spun it,” Schwartz recalls.
Wicked also felt inherently musical to him. “Elphaba is a very musical character with big emotions. She is fantastical. The world is fantastical. Glinda is very musical.” To him it was clear that the world of musical theater was where the story belonged.
And then there was the character Maguire’s vision had moved to the center of the story: Elphaba, the quirky and misunderstood green girl who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. Maguire named her after L. Frank Baum, who penned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, when he pondered the sound of the author’s initials “eL” “Fa” “Ba.” Elphaba’s story seemed close to Schwartz’s own emotional experience. He knew what it felt like to be “green” and what inner resources are needed to carry on with life. “The idea of the story created a sympathetic resonance in me,” Schwartz affirms, “and I know that I’m not alone. Anyone who is an artist in our society is going to identify with Elphaba. Anyone who is of an ethnic minority, who is black or Jewish or gay, or a woman feeling she grew up in a man’s world, or anyone who grew up feeling a dissonance between who they are inside and the world around them, will identify with Elphaba. Since that’s so many of us, I think there will be a lot of people who will.”
“There were things that I knew right away. I knew how it was going to begin, I knew how it was going to end, I knew who Elphaba was, and I knew why— on some strange level—this was autobiographical even though it was about a green girl in Oz.” —Stephen Schwartz
Schwartz bought a spiral notebook in which he would capture all his story and lyric ideas—snatches of inspiration, research notes, lists of rhyming words, first drafts of lyric lines, and later drafts. On the black cover, the manufacturer’s slogan, “Five Star—In a Class By Itself,” hinted at what would become of the musical that began as penciled scrawls on the lined pages.
Maguire had created, as the author himself described it, a dense, almost nineteenth-century-type novel that takes place over thirty-eight years and has thirty-eight speaking parts. Could any group of musical collaborators successfully distill these ingredients into a viable evening of theater?
The amendment was debated in the Senate in 1866, as the Reconstruction Congress attempted to suture the nation together after the Civil War and secure rights for freed slaves. At that time, discussion of the Citizenship Clause mostly focussed on the question of Native Americans on tribal lands within U.S. territory. The words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” Lyman Trumbull, a senator from Illinois, explained, prevented members of those tribes from receiving birthright citizenship, since they were beyond the nation’s “complete jurisdiction.” (Two other groups were similarly excluded: children born to foreign diplomats and those born to a hostile occupying force.)
To Schuck and Smith, that conclusion was revelatory. The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” must mean more than the mere accident of birth. It seemed to denote a mutual compact—people whose sole allegiance was to the U.S., and who were intentionally accepted by the government. Given that the phenomenon of illegal immigration didn’t exist when the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted, they reasoned, the clause simply didn’t apply to children born on U.S. soil whose parents had come here “without consent.” Nor did the prevailing Supreme Court precedent, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), seem to address them, since it concerned a man whose parents were legal immigrants. Schuck and Smith concluded that Congress could limit future birthright citizenship to the offspring of citizens and permanent residents—a notion that “has to our knowledge never been seriously considered.” Smith told me he didn’t believe Congress should do this, only that it could. “We thought it was provocative,” he said.
Various academic peers deemed their novel reading “seriously flawed,” “simply puzzling,” and “morally incoherent.” “People were shocked,” recalled the Harvard immigration scholar Gerald Neuman. “The settled understanding had been settled for so long.” Undocumented immigrants, critics pointed out in a flurry of law-review essays, were obviously bound by the U.S. legal system. Trumbull had been speaking of Native Americans on the frontier or on reservations that largely operated as quasi-foreign states under treaties with Washington. Like foreign diplomats and their families, they couldn’t be sued or prosecuted in federal court. (Native Americans wouldn’t be granted citizenship until 1924.)
Some of the book’s arguments, Neuman said, “are just made in ignorance of history.” Immigration was not entirely unregulated, he pointed out, before the Fourteenth Amendment was written. States barred the entry of “paupers” and the “infirm”; Southern legislatures prohibited the entry of free Black people. In 1803, Congress made it a federal offense to bring any “people of color” into the country, to prevent an influx of free Black immigrants fleeing the Haitian revolution.
The amendment’s opponents were also acutely aware that it would extend citizenship to the children of immigrants they did not want to let in. Edgar Cowan, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, warned of an invasion of “gypsies” who “pay no taxes; who never perform military service; who do nothing, in fact, which becomes the citizen, and perform none of the duties which devolve upon him, but, on the other hand, have no homes, pretend to own no land, live nowhere, settle as trespassers wherever they go.” He also feared “a flood of immigration of the Mongol race,” demanding, “Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen?” Although Chinese immigrants were then barred from naturalizing, the response from the California senator John Conness, another Republican, was unequivocal: U.S.-born children “of all parentage whatever” would be citizens. With these possibilities in plain view, the amendment was ratified in 1868.
Above all, legal experts concluded, Schuck and Smith had misconstrued the Fourteenth Amendment’s purpose. The Constitution barely mentioned citizenship, in part because disagreements over slavery made it impossible to agree on a definition. In the Dred Scott case, of 1857, the Supreme Court supplied one, ruling that no person of African descent, free or enslaved, could be an American citizen. The Fourteenth Amendment’s authors sought to establish an expansive, titanium-clad definition of citizenship that couldn’t be dismantled by the courts, Congress, or the President. In a blistering review of “Citizenship Without Consent” titled “Back to Dred Scott?” Neuman concluded that Schuck and Smith had, at best, “identified a strategy by which a court, determined to deny citizenship to American-born children of undocumented aliens, could justify such a holding.”
Personal finance books rarely capture mass appeal, but author David Chilton managed it through the relatable, conversational lessons from the wealthy Mr. White to mild-mannered Roy in his Sarnia barber shop. The sequel, The Wealthy Barber Returns, took a different approach in its 2011 release. Instead of his original characters, Chilton doled out advice by sharing his personal perspectives on money.
Timeless money lessons, reimagined for a new generation
The updated 2025 version of The Wealthy Barber was released on November 4 exclusively in Indigo stores and independent bookshops across the country. It has been completely re-written to include new realities of Canadian wealth building, like the Home Buyer’s Plan, tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs), and first home savings accounts (FHSAs). These additional account choices, along with new investment vehicles and the high cost of living, make it even more difficult to decide how best to pay yourself first. This is what makes the re-write even more relevant for a new generation of Canadians.
I spoke with David Chilton about the new edition. He said his motivation was to address the challenges that young people face today, from rising costs to new financial products. “The original book didn’t include ETFs or index funds,” he noted, “which are now common investment tools in Canada.”
I read the original book as a teenager, and while many Baby Boomers and older Gen-Xers may wonder if this re-write is for them, it is probably not. But it is for their kids and grandkids. According to Chilton, it targets “young adults in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, emphasizing passive investment strategies and basic financial principles like keeping costs low and paying oneself first.”
The broad appeal of the original book is probably due to the humour and relatable storytelling that simplifies complex financial topics. This helps readers feel less intimidated and more empowered. So, if you consider yourself less financially literate, the lessons will be easy to digest.
“Pay yourself first” still matters most
Chilton highlights the high cost of living, particularly housing, as making it tough for young people today to commit to regular savings. There is also the pressure of social media to spend on things that may feel like necessities but are not.
Saving has to be a necessity too, however, before making other financial commitments. In fact, when I asked Chilton for his most timeless lesson that remains relevant today, “pay yourself first” topped his list. He also highlighted the chapter in the updated book on saving savvy, which provides tips for managing daily finances to make sure there is money to set aside for the future. After all, you cannot invest if you cannot save.
Chilton expressed frustration with how much young people spend on cars despite the challenges of home ownership and rising living costs. But he gives them credit for recognizing the benefits of low-cost investment strategies, with younger generations becoming more fee-sensitive and aware of the impact of investment fees on their retirement accumulation.
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One of the key messages from The Wealthy Barber is to “save and invest 10 to 15 per cent of all you make by paying yourself first.” For those who remember the 1989 original but regret not taking that advice, the good news is that it is never too late. “The best time to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago,” writes Chilton. “The second-best time is now.”
From book to podcast, Chilton’s message stays relevant
The Wealthy Barber update touches on budgeting, investing, real estate, wills, and life insurance, among other topics. The result is a series of personal finance lessons weaved into a series of fables.
Chilton has complemented the book with his new The Wealthy Barber podcast, featuring Canadian personal finance voices. He notes that “it has become a top business podcast in Canada, without monetization, while focusing on providing valuable financial information to a wide audience.”
The concepts in the book are timeless messages that stand the test of time, but the update makes it even more relevant. The appeal of the Chilton brand is that he is prescriptive with his advice while being genuine in his intentions. In a world where many young people learn questionable financial lessons from biased finfluencers, The Wealthy Barber is as good a source as any to guide a young person on their path to real financial independence.
Jason Heath is a fee-only, advice-only Certified Financial Planner (CFP) at Objective Financial Partners Inc. in Toronto. He does not sell any financial products whatsoever.
Prince William allegedly wanted to cut back on royal duties in 2024 but was urged by his ailing father to “think again,” according to a new book.
The claim was made by royal biographer Robert Jobson in “The Windsor Legacy,” obtained exclusively by the U.K.’s DailyMail. According to the outlet, the British journalist said William was “shaken to the core” by the dual cancer diagnoses of his father and wife, Kate Middleton. Still, King Charles III denied his request.
Fox News Digital reached out to Kensington Palace for comment. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital, “We don’t comment on books.”
Royal author Robert Jobson claimed in his book, “The Windsor Legacy” that Prince William (center) was “shaken to the core’ after his father King Charles III (left) and his wife Kate Middleton (right) were diagnosed with cancer in 2024.(Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images)
Jobson also wrote that both William and Kate “became more religious” as they quietly dealt with the tumultuous year.
“Never known as a regular worshipper, William now attends church more frequently than in the past, though as privately as possible,” Jobson wrote.
According to Robert Jobson, both the Prince and Princess of Wales have become more religious.(Dominique Jacovides/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Several royal experts told Fox News Digital that William struggled in 2024, supporting his father, his wife and their three children while taking on more royal duties as heir to the throne.
WATCH: KING CHARLES WAS A DOTING FATHER TO PRINCE WILLIAM, PRINCE HARRY: BUTLER
“It proved to take a toll on him,” said British broadcaster and photographer Helena Chard, who described the year as “brutal” for the prince, 43.
“He struggled to keep everything on track,” she said. “The fact that he spoke to his father regarding the workload showed strength and a caring side. He needed a breather to bounce back and give his all to the monarchy. He should be applauded for his honesty and for recognizing he needed a moment to step back.”
The Prince and Princess of Wales with Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis arriving at Westminster Abbey ahead of the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on May 6, 2023. (Andrew Milligan/Pool via REUTERS)
According to Jobson’s book, the king had been “typically stoical about his mounting levels of pain” before being diagnosed with cancer. A senior royal told Jobson that the condition “had worsened so dramatically” that a doctor was summoned.
Robert Jobson claimed in his book that King Charles was struggling with pain before his cancer diagnosis.(Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
“The king was given morphine (one of the strongest painkillers available), fitted with a catheter and taken to Aberdeen Hospital,” Jobson claimed. “The cancer, however, was not discovered until a few months later, in January last year, while doctors were in the process of treating the king for an enlarged prostate.”
In early February 2024, Buckingham Palace announced the king had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer and had begun treatment. The palace said “a separate issue of concern was noted” during Charles’ treatment for an enlarged prostate.
King Charles III departs after receiving treatment for an enlarged prostate at The London Clinic on Jan. 29, 2024.(Carl Court/Getty Images)
Then, in March 2024, Kate announced she also had cancer. Jobson described the news as a “malign twist of fate” for William.
The Prince and Princess of Wales share three young children. From left: Prince George, Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte.(Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage/Getty Images)
“William’s desire to reduce engagements was actually more about the strains he was coping with — supporting Princess Catherine during her health challenges, the emotional demands of young children and, on top of that, his duties as heir to the throne,” British royals expert Hilary Fordwich told Fox News Digital.
“Everything he does is in service of others. Given his sense of duty, this is one of the many reasons he remains at the top of the popularity polls here in the U.K.”
Both the Princess of Wales and King Charles were diagnosed with cancer in 2024.(Karwai Tang/Getty Images)
“He’s extremely determined to protect his family while modernizing the monarchy,” Fordwich said. “He knows the future of the monarchy depends on his approval ratings, so he’s under considerable pressure. It was really causing him significant stress.”
Prince William, Prince of Wales (left) and King Charles III attend the Countdown to COP30 at the Natural History Museum on Oct. 9, 2025, in London. The event, hosted by the Natural History Museum and the U.K. government, brings together climate ambassadors from across the world ahead of the COP30 summit.(Henry Nicholls-Pool/Getty Images)
Jobson noted that while there’s “an underlying tension” between father and son over their work ethics and views on tradition, they “generally work well together.”
“The king happily consults him and largely trusts him to do what is right,” wrote Jobson.
Prince William (right, seen here with Prince Andrew on Sept. 16, 2025, in London) is known for his temper, claimed royal biographer Andrew Lownie.(Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)
Still, it “doesn’t help that both have a fiery temper that’s not always held in check. Working for Charles, some staff members say, can be like ‘treading on eggshells.’” And about Prince William, Jobson wrote that senior aides know “to tread lightly around the prince, mindful of his mood swings before attempting to raise sensitive issues.”
Royal experts told Fox News Digital Prince William is known for taking a tougher stance than his father, King Charles, who is still seeking treatment for cancer.(Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)
Chard said that while William and Charles “are on the same page,” the prince is known to take “a harder line than his father.”
“He is decisive and resolute,” she said. “He doesn’t suffer from analysis paralysis or suffer fools and quickly moves on. There’s no overthinking or kid gloves when initiating change. Instead, he has a can-do, hands-on, collaborative approach to his work. He has a knack for rallying his team and instilling optimism. And let’s not forget, as heir to the throne, he has a long working road ahead as king.”
A still image of Catherine, Princess of Wales from a video in which she gave a personal update on her treatment and recovery.(Will Warr)
In September 2024, Kate released a glossy video shot in Norfolk announcing she had completed chemotherapy. A senior household source told Jobson that while Queen Camilla was “deeply relieved,” she joked that the video was “like a shampoo commercial.”
Robert Jobson claimed Queen Camilla joked that Kate Middleton’s video announcing she completed chemotherapy looked “like a shampoo commercial.”(Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
Kate announced she was in remission from cancer in January of this year.
Jobson wrote that William had urged his father to slow down and listen to his medical team as the king, 76, continues treatment. Palace aides also said the monarchy has become “more emotional.” Charles has been “reduced to tears,” overwhelmed by the thousands of letters he’s received from around the world wishing him well.
King Charles III reads cards and messages sent by well-wishers following his cancer diagnosis, in the 18th Century Room of the Belgian Suite in Buckingham Palace on Feb.21, 2024.(Jonathan Brady/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
“Charles now takes regular afternoon naps,” Jobson wrote. “And he’s started having lunch again — often spinach soup — after skipping the meal for most of his life.”
Prince William is heir to the British throne.(Chris Jackson/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Fordwich said William is focused on strengthening the monarchy for his reign.
“Prince William is determined to avoid ghastly controversies and wants to bury the scandals which have so detrimentally distracted the focus from public duty,” she said. “He really wants a totally clean break from his despicable uncle Andrew. He’s steadfast and is being strategic with everything he’s doing to ensure the monarchy’s survival.”
Britain’s Prince William, Prince of Wales reacts as he meets people during his visit to a new mental health hub run by the Jac Lewis Foundation, at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, on Sept. 10, 2025. (Chris Jackson/AFP via Getty Images)
During a recent appearance on Eugene Levy’s series, “The Reluctant Traveler,” William admitted that 2024 was the “hardest year” he’s ever experienced.
Actor Eugene Levy is seen here with Prince William outside of Windsor Castle, where he filmed an episode of “The Reluctant Traveler.”(Apple TV+)
“I’d say 2024 was the hardest year I’ve ever had. You know, life is sent to test us, and being able to overcome that is what makes us who we are,” said William.
In November 2024, while in South Africa for his Earthshot Prize event, William reflected on the pain the past year had caused his family.
Prince William is greeted by well-wishers during a visit to Kalk Bay Harbour on Nov. 7, 2024, in Cape Town, South Africa. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
“It’s been dreadful. It’s probably been the hardest year in my life. So, trying to get through everything else and keep everything on track has been really difficult.”
Prince William continues to support his father, King Charles.(Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)
“But I’m so proud of my wife, I’m proud of my father, for handling the things that they have done. But from a personal family point of view, it’s been, yeah, it’s been brutal,” he said during a media interview.
Stephanie Nolasco covers entertainment at Foxnews.com.
At age 78, Patti Smith has much to celebrate, and not only because of her prolific career, but also because novelties are still present in her life. In honor of her new memoir, Bread of Angels and the 50th anniversary of Horses, which made the iconic singer and poet famous, Smith accompanied CBS Mornings journalist Anthony Mason on a visit to a stationary store to talk about her creative process.
“I have to say, I never get tired of stationary stores,” says Smith, whose previous literary work includes Just Kids (2011) and M Train (2015). “I love everything: the scissors, the pens, the paper clips…it’s all for me, like glorified school supplies,” she says while surveying the stock of paper goods. “Every notebook is a possibility. You open it up, and it’s a new adventure.”
Mason then asks Smith, who refers to herself as an “accidental rockstar,” during their wider interview segment, if she always has to write her work by hand before digitizing it. “I write 80% by hand,” Smith replies. “I never sit at the computer to write something. I’ve always written in notebooks. I like the sense of the mind and the pen, you know, with no technology. You have your paper and your pen. And I love the feel of writing. I loved it so much, I learned to write with a quill and a nib and ink bottle in school.”
Smith then transports viewers back to her childhood in across Chicago and South Jersey. “I used to spend a lot of time trying to copy the Declaration of Independence and that’s why my handwriting is sort of nice,” she explains of her penmanship, “because I spent hours just trying to replicate the way they wrote. Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting is beautiful, really,” she adds.
The foreword to her memoir, which contains reveals such as the true paternity of Patti Smith’s father, is a veritable ode to handwriting. “The pen scribbles across the page ‘rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump rebel hump’ What do those words mean, asks the pen. I don’t know, replies the hand,” Smith writes. “God whispers through a wrinkle in the wallpaper, a drop of water bursting like an equation.”
This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
“Golden Bachelor” star Gerry Turner believed he’d found “the one” in Theresa Nist — but just three months after saying “I do,” the fairy-tale romance came crashing down.
The 74-year-old Indiana widower made history as the first senior star of ABC’s hit dating series “The Golden Bachelor,” where he met Nist, also a widow. After a whirlwind courtship, they married live on TV in January 2024, only to announce their split that April. Now, Turner is reflecting on his search for a happily ever after in his new memoir, “Golden Years.”
Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist married on Jan. 4, 2024. The ceremony was chronicled in a special titled “The Golden Wedding.”(John & Joseph Photography/Disney via Getty Images)
“Well, I do admit that it was a monumental mistake, but it’s always easy to have 20/20 hindsight,” Turner told Fox News Digital. “I think that I hurt Theresa, I hurt my family. There were a lot of things that I was so imperfect about. … There was no one flash-bang moment where I realized the marriage was over. It was a gradual march toward the end.”
WATCH: ‘GOLDEN BACHELOR’ GERRY TURNER OPENS UP ABOUT SPLIT FROM THERESA NIST
In his memoir, Turner admits it was hard to accept how quickly things fell apart. He wrote that he’d “rushed into a wedding [he] didn’t believe in” and later found himself “in a very dark place.”
“I was already low from filing for divorce,” wrote Gerry Turner. “It’s hard to admit to yourself that you’ve made such a monumentally bad decision. For months, I could not shake my bitter resentment toward Theresa and the show. Nor could I rid myself of the feeling that I was a disappointment. I didn’t read people nearly as well as I thought I did. I’d rushed into a wedding that I didn’t believe in.”(Eric McCandless/Disney via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital reached out to Nist, 71, for comment. Ahead of the book’s publication, she told Us Weekly: “It makes me very sad to think that he felt empty and trapped. I wish he had said something and just ended it. But at least now I understand why he was so hurtful to me so many times. And I will say this. Those in glass houses should not throw stones. I do wish him all the best.”
Turner, a retired restaurateur, had found love before. He married his high school sweetheart, Toni, in 1974. Their union lasted until Toni died in 2017, six weeks after she retired and fell ill, People magazine reported. Their two daughters later encouraged Turner to join the show. The Midwesterner was hesitant but wondered if he could find love again.
Gerry Turner and his first wife Toni on their wedding day. “Many people expected our marriage to fail because we were so young,” he wrote. “It was our youth and commitment to each other that actually made us succeed for 43 years! We grew up together and never considered not being together.”(Courtesy of Gerry Turner)
“I was not interested,” Turner recalled to Fox News Digital. “I rebelled at the idea originally. But after a night of sleep, I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing going on here. Hopefully, this’ll work out for me.’ I threw my hat in the ring, and, of course, that began a really long process of getting to the point where I was actually named the first ‘Golden Bachelor.’”
Gerry Turner is seen here surrounded by his daughters and granddaughters.(Brian Bowen Smith/ ABC via Getty Images)
It was easy to fall for Nist among the contestants. They both experienced heartbreak after long, happy marriages. Turner and Nist were also devoted to their children and grandchildren. It seemed like a match made in heaven — at first.
Theresa Nist and Gerry Turner quickly bonded on set. They both expressed hope in finding love again.(John Fleenor/ABC via Getty Images)
Turner claimed Nist told him that once she found “the right guy,” she would quit her job to focus on a new chapter of adventure with her spouse. But months later, he claimed that Nist wanted to work “another year, maybe a year and a half.” Turner said he respected Nist’s goals but wished he had known sooner.
“I’d try to shorten that time span because I really looked at what I wanted out of that relationship and what she wanted in her job as mutually exclusive,” he explained. “We couldn’t have both of those things. … It really told me that there was no way I was going to be able to enjoy what I wanted to do, which was travel, have some adventures and have fun.”
Gerry Turner was hoping to find love again in his “golden years.” He was looking for a partner ready to enjoy retirement and embark on new adventures together.(John Fleenor/Disney via Getty Images)
Disagreements piled up — over where to live, how to spend their money and even the prenup. Turner claimed Nist “didn’t want anything to do with Indiana,” while he viewed her New Jersey roots as a vacation spot, not a home. Days before their wedding, he said his lawyer called frantically about her missing signature on the prenup. People magazine reported that the couple did put a prenup in place ahead of their nuptials.
Gerry Turner’s memoir, “Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss, and Reality TV,” is available now.(Grand Central Publishing)
Despite their efforts to find common ground, once cameras stopped rolling, the cracks deepened.
According to reports, Nist and Turner never lived together. During their brief marriage, they struggled to find a place they could both call home. In the book, Turner wrote that after sharing “a horribly awkward goodbye at the airport,” he realized they had “the warmth of a meeting between distant cousins.” It was not the second act he had envisioned for himself.
Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist struggled to find common ground after the cameras stopped rolling.(John Fleenor/Disney via Getty Images)
“That experience was very painful,” he told Fox News Digital. “There are expectations as you enter a relationship and then enter a marriage. There were things that I really wanted. I wanted those moments of intimacy, regardless of what they were. I wanted to build shared experiences. I wanted to begin to develop this catalog of memories that we would have. And those things didn’t happen. They just weren’t there.”
Gerry Turner proposed to Theresa Nist during the finale of “The Golden Bachelor,” which aired on Nov. 30, 2023.(John Fleenor/ABC via Getty Images)
“It felt empty at times,” he continued. “It felt like we were forcing a relationship and forcing feelings that weren’t coming naturally as they should. I don’t believe it was one huge thing that caused us not to find commonality and not find happiness with each other, but rather dozens of small things that accumulated.”
Turner said he struggled with the truth — that he and Nist just weren’t compatible.
Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s marriage played out on the world’s stage — but its ending unfolded quietly, away from the spotlight.(John & Joseph Photography/Disney via Getty Images)
“What made us go forward with the wedding? I think Theresa and I are of the same mind here,” he reflected to Fox News Digital.
“We had a lifetime of commitment to a marital partner. … We knew the importance of commitment. We knew the importance of setting an example for our kids and our grandkids. … We said, ‘We can get to know each other. We can iron out any areas where we don’t know each other well enough. We can make this work.’”
Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist announced their divorce on April 12, 2024, during a joint interview on “Good Morning America.”(Eric McCandless/Disney via Getty Images)
“We were trying one last time to see if we could reconcile our differences,” Turner said. “Finally, I just asked, ‘Do you think it’s time to call it quits?’ Her answer, without hesitation, was, ‘Yes, I think it’s time to call it off.’”
“I was of the opinion that the whole story, the whole story, hadn’t been told,” Gerry Turner told Fox News Digital. “And I really wanted to tell that.”(Brian Bowen Smith/ABC via Getty Images)
Turner later revealed he briefly had suicidal thoughts as he faced online criticism over the divorce.
In both his book and interview with Fox News Digital, Gerry Turner admitted he struggled with the aftermath of his divorce.(John Fleenor/ABC via Getty Images)
“One night, while I was lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, it all became too much, and for the briefest of moments, I thought about putting a gun to my head,” he wrote. “Just as quickly, though, I thought of Jenny and Angie. I could never do that to my daughters, but I don’t believe I truly wanted to kill myself. My suicidal thoughts were more an expression of my desire to disappear.”
“That was just a brief thought,” Turner clarified to Fox News Digital.
Ahead of the book’s publication, Theresa Nist told Us Weekly, “I wish he had said something and just ended” the relationship.(John Fleenor/ABC via Getty Images)
Months later, in December 2024, Turner revealed he had been diagnosed with a slow-growing bone marrow cancer. In the book, he claimed that Nist didn’t check in like some of the other contestants.
According to “Golden Years,” Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist are not on speaking terms.(John Fleenor/Disney via Getty Images)
“I didn’t have any great expectations for Theresa or any of the other women when I shared what was going on with me, but to be that insignificant to someone I had married, albeit briefly, was very painful,” he wrote. “We no longer talk; we have no reason to.”
Today, Turner is feeling hopeful about his future — and love. In October, he announced his engagement to his new girlfriend, Lana Sutton. He popped the question 15 months after his divorce was finalized.
Gerry Turner received a bone marrow cancer diagnosis last year. He has since found love again with Lana Sutton.(John Fleenor/ABC via Getty Images)
“I think there is a certain amount of resiliency that I have,” he said, looking back at the “dark period” in his life following the divorce.
Gerry Turner announced his engagement to Lana Sutton on Oct. 3, 2025.(Craig Sjodin/ABC via Getty Images)
“I refer to it as my marathon mentality, that you can endure anything for a certain period of time. And then, once that enduring of pain or unhappiness is over, it’s time to pick yourself up, put your big boy pants on and move on with life. And that’s what it was. I just had to shift gears.”
Stephanie Nolasco covers entertainment at Foxnews.com.
In thinking about the influence of Sassy, I remembered a Daria episode featuring a character that was a parody of you. Have you rewatched that at any point in time? How does satire about you make you feel now?
The Daria thing, it does come up a lot. Pretty much every comment thread about me, someone will be like, Oh yeah, and they’ll mention it. I didn’t even see it at the time! I was so busy working, and then people did bring it up to me. I did watch it eventually, around when I was starting xoJane. I liked it! The TV show Girls also had a parody of me, an editor named “Jame” who made Lena Dunham snort cocaine.
I love that stuff. Even if my true motives are not necessarily coming through in those parodies, it means I have a strong stance. People get what that is and either relate to it, or don’t relate to it, or like it, or hate it, or whatever. I was on the back cover of Mad magazine once. And then the Sassy sketch from Saturday Night Live. I like that stuff. I would love more of it.
Sassy only existed for about eight years, but you continued to loom large, at least in comedy writers’ rooms.
When I see things like the Daria parody or the Girls parody, I feel like I raised them right with Sassy. I taught you all exactly how to do that. Be outspoken, ballsy, not deferring to authority. It’s like, okay, I reap what I sow.
What do you think of the current media landscape?
I think it is really frightening how few outlets we now have that are not corporately owned. The opportunities to be different in mainstream media and gain an audience that way feel diminished. Social media is so controlled and so manipulated, particularly around politics and political issues, and everybody sucking up to Trump—that’s been a really scary change. A lot of my friends don’t go on social media anymore. I also boycotted it for a while, but then I felt I had to go back to it for my work. It feels like the messages we’re getting are definitely one-sided—and they’re not one-sided in the way that Evie Magazine is trying to say they are!
When I was starting “Another Jane Pratt Thing,” people would say, “Why another one?” Because it is my fourth publication, with my one good idea that I’m doing again and again and again. But the reason is because it’s still needed. Publications like Evie keep me in business, because we need to keep presenting the actual progressive alternative.
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Adam Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, “The Orphan Master’s Son,” and the National Book Award for his collection of short stories, “Fortune Smiles.” He returns with an epic tale set in Polynesia a thousand years in the past.
In “The Wayfinder” (MCD), a bold young woman and two sons of a king journey through storms, myths, and an empire on the brink of chaos.
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KŌRERO: THE PAST IS THE FUTURE
I’d opened my share of graves before finding something of value: a pendant in the shape of a fishhook, carved from greenstone. Greenstone only came from Aotearoa, the land our people had fled before we ended up on this island. The pendant, when held to the sun, glowed soft and green as dawn through miro trees. I was of the third generation born on this island, but the pendant was from our ancestors, from before. My father said a fishhook necklace had a special meaning: it ensured seafarers safe passage over water. To wear the pendant, I braided a cord from the inner bark of a hibiscus branch, which produced a fiber so strong, even parrots couldn’t bite through it.
Unpleasant as it was, and offensive to our ancestors, I was ready to open more graves.
Still, I had other duties to perform. I was up each morning before dawn to hunt birds. Pigeons in planting season, tūī birds when the flax blossomed. This time of year, it was parrots. They arrived on our island in closely bonded flocks, and it was these social connections we’d exploit to ensnare them. When our ancestors landed on this island, it was so full of birds, they named it Manumotu, or Bird Island. If only that were still the case. These days, we’d quietly crouch all morning, ready to trigger our snares, in the hopes of catching a bird or two. The worst part was the silence. I’m the talkative type. My mother says I was born speaking, which is why she named me Kōrero. Only after hours of silent birding was I free to open graves with my best friend Hine. The two of us could talk all day.
Hine’s duties, unlike mine, were endless. She’d been but a girl when her mother died and she was given to an older, childless woman named Tiri. But after a few years, when Tiri went blind, it was Hine who became the caretaker. Tiri was one of the most amazing persons in the world — I admit I only knew eighty-four people — but Hine, like me, was sixteen years old, and nobody likes it when they have to do something. And Hine had to do everything for Tiri.
After birding on the morning this story begins, I arrived at our island’s cove to continue digging. Many people trapped on this island before us were buried around the cove. This was considered a good resting place because of the view and the breeze and because this was where birds landed after open-water voyages. Where’d the birds come from? I always wondered. Where’d they fly off to?
I tethered my parrots to a branch. One was named Aroha — it was she who lured the wild parrots into our traps. I’d tug on Aroha’s tether, she’d squawk in distress, and wild parrots would come to her aid.
“I ohiti rā,” I said to Aroha. “I ohiti pō.”
This was a fisherman’s adage, shortened to fit a bird’s memory. Alert by day, the saying went. Alert by night. My father was a fisherman.
I knew from old stories that parrots could be made to talk, though I’d had no luck at it.
The other parrot was freshly caught. We’d named her Kanokano — the complications she caused are soon to be described.
With only a digging stick and a basket, I picked a likely spot on the upper beach and began moving sand. If only our ancestors had thought to mark their graves. But I suppose they didn’t imagine being exhumed by their great-granddaughters. I ran into a lot of mangrove roots, which I hacked with the jagged edge of a mussel shell. By the time Hine and Tiri arrived, I was sweating.
“What’s the ocean like today?” Tiri asked. Her pearled-over gaze was directed at nothing.
Hine rolled her eyes and helped the old woman onto a mat before handing her her weaving.
“It’s blue, it’s wet,” Hine said impatiently. “The waves go up and down.” I described for Tiri how late-morning light penetrated the cove, illuminating the humps of mullet, how the distant reef-break frothed like coconut pulp, how sputtering waves reached up the beach before fingering all the little shells in retreat.
Hine half-heartedly stabbed at some sand with her stick.
I asked, “Did you hear the Toki brothers found an earring in a grave?” I was arm-deep in the hole, fighting roots.
“The Toki brothers are insufferable,” Hine said. She made a gesture to help me, but looking in the hole saw I was already to the point where smelly water was seeping in.
“The earring was greenstone,” I said. “From the old world. I bet one of the brothers brings it to you. Will it be the big, handsome, doltish one? Or the big, handsome, inane one?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” Hine said. “You’ll have to marry the one I reject. And have his baby.”
The Toki brothers were slow-witted, trusting, and humorless. But their father was charismatic and funny, and the truth was, Hine had a parent-crush on him. It was quite possible that when the marriage ban was lifted, she’d marry a Toki brother just to become the daughter of Papa Toki.
Tiri took a breath. She always did that before beginning a story. While Hine had no patience for the old tales, I could hear them all day. Today was the story of Paikea, who was one of the navigators who discovered Aotearoa. He was from a place called Hawaiki. Tiri didn’t start in the obvious places, like Paikea’s departure from Hawaiki or his arrival at Aotearoa. She didn’t start with Paikea sinking a canoe and drowning his seventy enemies. Nor with him being saved by a whale. Instead, she started that epic tale with a little moment: Paikea, succumbing both to vanity and shame, as he groomed his hair with a forbidden comb.
All the while, Tiri did her weaving — her fingers displaying their own kind of sight.
My hole reached the point where sand fell in as fast as I scooped it out. Hine scrunched her nose. It’s probably clear that Hine’s heart really wasn’t into digging up graves. She could barely bring herself to touch any bones, and when she did, she was afraid they might belong to her mother, even though we knew her mother was buried up the hill, above the kūmara fields. We’d both been there when she was put in the ground. Still, one person’s bones can look like another’s, which can look like anybody’s, which mightas well be your mother’s. I hoped Hine would change her outlook when she finally found something of value in a grave.
That’s when my digging stick made the unmistakable knock of wood striking bone.
Tiri paused her story. I reached into the dark water and felt something in the muck. Hine winced, afraid of what I’d pull out. “I’m sorry, ancestor,” I said. Then, with a sucking sound, I tugged out a dog skull. I reached back for its jaw, but the mud offered only bird bones and broken shells.
“Another junk pit,” Hine said, and started pushing sand back into the hole.
I contemplated the skull. Since we’d begun digging up the dead, I’d come across many dog remains. Did they happen to die at the same time as our ancestors? Were they slain and buried alongside? Or was it something else altogether? No living person on the island had ever seen a dog, and before we started digging, it was thought that dogs had never even been here.
“What is it?” Tiri asked.
“Another dog skull,” Hine said. “Look at those teeth. Who’d want to get close to one of those things, let alone share the afterlife with it?”
“Dogs had white fur, soft as tūī feathers,” Tiri said. “The old stories say they’d lick your face.”
“They supposedly had long tongues,” I said, marveling at the skull. Hine shook her head. “You don’t believe every story you hear, do you?” Hine knew that I did, indeed, believe every story I heard.
“There’s only one thing we know for sure about dogs,” Hine said. “They must’ve tasted good.”
What interested me was the size of a dog’s eye sockets. Kākā parrots also had large eyes. In fact, the eyes of a parrot were quite intelligent and expressive. “Ancestors are supposed to be wise,” I said. “But they didn’t leave us a single dog.”
Hine eyed its fangs. “I’m glad they’re gone.”
“Parrots have sharp beaks,” I said. “And they’re friendly.” Hine took the skull and threw it.
“One of these days, you’ll lose a finger to those birds,” she said.
Already, I’ve forgotten some stuff. That’s how bad a storyteller I am. I should’ve mentioned that I was absolutely forbidden from teaching my parrots human words, that Hine had a father who was alive and walking around our island — we just didn’t know his identity. That Papa Toki had lost an arm, with my mother and Tiri being the ones who cut it off.
But it’s too late, the story’s begun. Aroha looked toward the cove, spread her wings, and began screeching. We turned. Drifting in past the reef was the largest waka canoe imaginable. It had two hulls and rocked silently with the waves. Most canoes in the old stories were waka taua, war canoes. This one seemed empty — not a person or a paddle or a sail was visible. We beheld its pitched bows and soaring mast. Most ominously, the symbol of a death-bringing frigate bird was carved down its side. Then we heard it: upon the spar was a large parrot with a crimson body. It had spread its wings and was screeching back.
“What is it?” Tiri asked. “What’s going on?”
“We have visitors,” Hine said. She took my hand in hers, and then she screamed.
It seemed to me that, at the sound of Hine’s voice, dozens of warriors would sit up in the waka and reveal themselves. I took hold of my fishhook necklace because, like the waka before me, it felt both ancient and startlingly new.
Did I mention that in all our years on the island, we’d never had a visitor? As Hine’s scream echoed off the cliffs, the hum of island life stopped.
Silenced were the sounds of flax being beaten on the leeward shore and of our fathers excavating burial sites on the south-facing bluffs.
Our fathers — all the men of Bird Island — would be here in no time.
I should say the waka wasn’t a total surprise. We knew something was coming. There’d been signs.
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Charles Mitchell strode up the steps of 55 Wall Street, determined to project his usual sense of confidence and certitude. It had been a crushing afternoon. As he returned to his office, he knew that the eyes of Wall Street were on him — everyone from the traders in the street to his own secretary was assessing his gait and searching his face, trying to read meaning into every twitch, every line, every wrinkle.
In his gray three‑piece suit, shoulders back, Mitchell kept up his smile as he passed through the glass‑domed central hall of his National City Bank. With its eighty‑three‑foot ceiling and two solid bronze doors protecting a safe weighing some three hundred tons, the bank was the largest in the country.
Banker Charles Mitchell, c. 1925-29.
Library of Congress
It was just past 5:30 p.m. on Monday, October 28, 1929. Hours earlier, the stock market had closed with a sharp, dizzying drop of 13 percent after a week of downward convulsions; today was by far the greatest fall. The darkening downtown streets still teemed with anxious brokers in their fedoras and flat caps, messenger boys and switchboard girls, all gossiping and speculating about the collapse. What caused the fall? How much further might it go tomorrow? Would the markets even open?
As Mitchell made his way to his office, the teller windows he passed reflected the weary puffiness under his eyes and his disheveled, graying eyebrows. He collapsed into the chair behind his mahogany desk. The room was furnished with the high formality befitting an eighteenth‑century statesman: antique wood chairs, a grandfather clock that stood against the cream‑white woodwork flanked by portraits of George Washington orchestrating the newly independent nation with the purpose and resolve that Mitchell sought to emulate in his own life.
The athletic fifty‑two‑year‑old bank chairman — an unusually optimistic man whom the press called “Sunshine Charlie” — had spent the afternoon in emergency meetings at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, puzzling over how to calm the market. It was a moment for which a self‑consciously Great Man like Mitchell should have been utterly prepared. He had the experience, the stature, and the steely nerves necessary to steer Wall Street through these tough times.
Yet he felt exposed, vulnerable.
But he didn’t have time to consider his emotional state.
He walked upstairs to confer with Hugh Baker, who ran National City’s stock‑trading unit.
Baker, a tall, bald man with piercing eyes, began to explain to Mitchell, calmly, if somewhat obliquely, what had taken place while Mitchell had been at the Federal Reserve.
“Our portfolio today has been tremendously increased in our holdings of National City Bank stock,” Baker told him.
Mitchell stared at him, waiting to hear exactly what he meant.
Mitchell, who could calculate numbers instantly in his head, immediately grasped the nature and scale of the problem. That is unbelievable, he thought. The bank didn’t have the cash to pay for so many shares. He was outraged — and terrified. Everything he had built was suddenly at grave risk of collapse.
Barely a month earlier, Mitchell had been on top of the world. He had finalized an agreement to take over the Corn Exchange Bank, a bold acquisition that would turn National City from the largest bank in the country into the largest in the world, stealing the mantle from London and helping New York finally eclipse its rival city as the world financial center. This was history in the making, an overthrow of the established order, the kind of gambit that made Mitchell a king among men.
But to pull off the deal, Mitchell had made a big — and risky — bet on the strength of his own stock. Corn Exchange shareholders could take $360 in cash for each of their shares, or four fifths of a share in National City Bank. On paper, the stock was the better deal: As long as National City stock stayed above $450, four fifths of a share was worth more than $360 in cash. At the time the deal was struck, it was comfortably higher, trading at $496 a share. Mitchell needed it to stay there until the deal could be completed, likely in the next month — because, in truth, National City didn’t have the cash to pay everyone, a crucial detail he kept to himself.
So he quietly instructed his traders to buy the bank’s shares whenever the price slipped.
In a relatively stable market, this posed no problem. Big publicly traded companies bought back their own shares all the time. In a rapidly falling market, however, doing so could quickly become like shoveling money into a furnace, which was what had been happening that afternoon. In the chaos of all that selling pressure, National City’s bids had been accepted so quickly that they lost track of how many they had amassed. By the time traders got a handle on the situation, National City had committed to buy seventy‑one thousand of its own shares, far more than it could afford to hold.
“With that news,” he told Baker, “I could be knocked over with a feather.”
There were very few good options. To fund their daily operations, big banks like National City had to constantly borrow against their assets. But banking law prevented them from offering their own stock as collateral. Thus, those seventy‑one thousand shares — which cost about $32 million — were a deadweight that could possibly take down the whole bank.
“It would be embarrassing for us to attempt to borrow on that stock in other banks,” Mitchell said, knowing full well that his rivals would seize on any such move as a sign of vulnerability. With the market in free fall, short sellers — traders who bet that stocks would go down — were lining up targets, probing for weakness.
The stock market was at the breaking point. Sales volume had overwhelmed the human apparatus of the trading floor to such an extent that, on the previous Thursday, the ticker had fallen four hours behind in reporting stock prices, more than twice the longest previous delay.
What this meant was that the big board of prices that loomed over the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was hopelessly inaccurate. Trading stocks in this environment was like being a gambler at a baseball game in the eighth inning and looking at a scoreboard that hadn’t been updated since the third, while everybody around you was shouting conflicting opinions about which team was ahead and by how much. The prices of stocks sold privately — known as “off‑exchange,” which was the case with National City shares — were even further behind because they were tied to the broader market’s movements without being fully updated in real time, exacerbating the delay. For Wall Street traders, the only prudent decision was to sell and get the hell out of the market. Which is exactly what they were doing.
Mitchell knew that if he tried to unload even a small fraction of National City’s position back into such a weak market, rumors would begin to fly about the bank’s solvency, and that could easily turn into a vicious cycle that would be impossible to stop. If prices declined fast enough, it could trigger a much larger crisis: A “lack of confidence might bring a run,” Mitchell told Baker, envisioning depositors lining up outside every one of its fifty‑eight branches around the country.
A run on the country’s largest bank. There was nothing bankers feared more.
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Caroline Lea, the author of “The Glass Woman,” returns with a reimagining of how young Mary Shelley created her classic horror novel.
“Love, Sex, and Frankenstein” (Pegasus) brings to life that dark summer on Lake Geneva with Lord Byron and Mary’s lover, Percy Shelley, in 1816, capturing the thunder and thrill of a young woman awakening to her own awesome power.
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Dear Reader,
You are eighteen years old. Cast out by your father, shunned by society, you have fled to Geneva with your lover and your sister. The closeness of their relationship makes you furious, but if you protest, your lover will abandon you. Confined by terrible storms, you find yourself in a house with your lover, your sister and Lord Byron, an infamous and magnetically attractive poet. You know he is dangerous, but you find yourself drawn to him. When he sets a challenge to write a ghost story, all the turmoil that has boiled within you finds a voice.
The anger pours from your pen in a roar of rage. Even as the monster that emerges terrifies you, you understand that it belongs to you. This creature that crawls across the page is the woman you were always meant to be. And in Byron, this furious beast that you have kept hidden for so long may have found a mate. You are eighteen years old. The creature you have created will howl its way onto page and stage and screen, burning its path across history in its desire to be seen, to be known, to be loved. The monster will never be silenced. Neither will you.
Prologue
Geneva, 1816
At dusk, the sky over Lake Geneva is the colour of blood in a glass of water. The ash fragments falling over the city form a strange fog – a thickening of the air, which swirls through the deserted streets, past the spire of the old cathedral and over the walls of the new Protestant church. Inside, people are on their knees, praying for the uncanny cloud to lift. It is a judgement, they fear, a punishment from God, or else a curse.
This night, like so many before it, the choking dust has driven the residents of the city into the shelter of shuttered houses and places of prayer. Outside, there is no one to witness the way the ash gleams as it settles on the lake. The water flickers and shimmers, each tiny filament glowing like a candle, sinking into the silence, quickly snuffed out.
The lake is chill and dark and deep – not even the fishermen have fathomed its depths, or the small children who, on any other evening, would be taking turns to dive beneath the surface, competing to see who could swim down the furthest, stay under the longest.
No one is standing on the lake’s stony shores to watch the water’s surface glow, red as the strange sky above. No one is there to see the darkness beneath the water shift and stir and coalesce, parting for a breath, like two slick thighs, which fall back into the darkness with a gasp that is almost human.
Above, half masked by cloud, a thin slash of moon hangs hazy and indifferent. A lone figure stumbles down to the lake and scrambles into a small rowboat that one of the fishermen has left bobbing at the end of a long line. Looking right, then left, the man leans forward over the rope. Flash of steel from the blade in his hand. A quick tug and the boat is free. The man settles himself on the rocking boards, tugging the oars. No one will see him on this cloud-deadened, mist-muffled night. No one will stop him. Still, his breath stutters and stumbles. He must be quick. His hands ache, his chest burns. His eyes feel gritty as the mist parts before him, then closes around him, giving him the strange sensation of being swallowed.
