Fashion maven Kelly (Freakin’ Fabulous on a Budget, 2013, etc.) is more booster than basher in this collection of mostly autobiographical essays about his life on- and off-screen.
At one point late in his amiable memoir, the author, moderator of The Chew and former co-host of What Not to Wear, warns a group of graduating high school kids to “dump the fucking assholes” in their lives. That succinct yet salient exhortation sums up Kelly’s approach to life, both personal and professional. Whether chasing a lucrative career in media or a handsome suitor at the end of the bar, the former Long Island dork who always found fitting in difficult emphasizes his ongoing quest for common decency. Those wishing for a scathing takedown of the TV show he co-hosted with Stacy London for 10 years on TLC will be sorely disappointed. The most caustic Kelly gets on that score is when he concedes that he and the stylish London were like combining baking soda and vinegar: “after the fun part fizzles out, you’re left with a puddle of nothing in particular.” Southern-fried food guru Paula Deen earns a lot more of Kelly’s ire, but only after comparing him to “a turd in the punchbowl” during a live-to-tape broadcast. Usually taking the high road, Kelly recounts past love affairs, run-ins with rude diners, and correspondence from unfavorable viewers with equal, levelheaded aplomb. Kelly also displays a keen sense of slapstick comedy, hilariously portraying the time a trip to the mud baths with an old pal turned into a desperate rescue operation requiring the two childhood friends to see each other naked for the first time: “One might think I deserved a heartfelt thank-you from my oldest friend in the world. Instead, Lisa—covered in so much mud that only the whites of her eyes resembled human tissue—asked: ‘Do your balls always hang that low?’ ”
A thoroughly light and entertaining memoir.
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God—but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestseller Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization. The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story is his account of the expedition. “A story that moves from thrilling to sobering, fascinating to downright scary—trademark Preston, in other words, and another winner,” our reviewer writes in a starred review.
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Bestseller Kendare Blake’s latest novel, Three Dark Crowns, a dark and inventive fantasy about three sisters who must fight to the death to become queen. In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions. But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. The last queen standing gets the crown. “Gorgeous and bloody, tender and violent, elegant, precise, and passionate; above all, completely addicting,” our reviewer writes in a starred review.
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