beautificia

August 2024 Newsletter

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Life in Calgary

Back in the summer of ‘67, my pal Bennie bought Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and invited me over to hear it.

I was especially intrigued by one song; Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

“What’s that all about?” I asked.

“LSD,” said Bennie.

“Ooh.”

Before it was banned in the late 1960s, chemistry undergraduates at McMaster University were enthusiastically whipping up batches of a potential stress reliever called lysergic acid diethylamide. While the relief of stress was negligible, a microgram of LSD did have the side effect of glorious hallucinations.

Alas, that era is long past, but the visual effects live on in Beautifica, a highly entertaining music and visual extravaganza created by the musician James Hood.

We caught a showing at the TELUS Spark Science Center in Calgary, and were treated to the wonderful sensation of zooming through the universe in a psychedelic starship. The show is on its last leg in Calgary, but you can catch it at various locations in the US this summer.

Available this Fall!

Click Here to Read Excerpt

FBI AGENT JACK KENYON is back! When a bomb in Myron Buckstar’s software lab kills an innocent woman, Jack and the crew are called in to find out if terrorists are targeting the flamboyant billionaire.

They soon discover that the victim was a member of Scotland Yard working undercover on a mysterious case.

As Jack pursues her murder, he uncovers a race to steal the Crystal Ball, an invention that allows its owner to peer into the future. Follow Jack from San Francisco to London as he pursues a host of murderers, conmen and criminals who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

Recipe: Veal Burgers

This is easy to mix together and creates a delightful summer BBQ meal!

Ingredients

1 lb. of minced veal (if the butcher doesn’t have it, check the frozen food section).

2 oz. of parmesan, grated

1 tsp salt

1 tsp of paprika

Garnishing

Cob’s Bakery buns.

Directions

Mix parmesan, salt and paprika into the veal. Let it sit for 10 minutes, then form in to patties.

Grill on the BBQ, and garnish with onions, pickles, caramelized onions etc., and serve on lightly toasted buns from Cob’s Bakery.

Enjoy!

Book Review

A Death in Cornwall

By Daniel Silva

This is the 24th  book in the Gabriel Allon series, and it’s a peach.

Allon is an Israeli secret agent who served for many years as a Mossad assassin, rising through the ranks to become the boss of ‘The Office’. His legendary exploits took him around the world, hunting Israel’s sworn enemies in Europe, the Middle East and North America.

Now retired, he devotes his life to restoring the Masters, whether it’s an altarpiece by Raphael or a painting by Rothko. He lives the quiet life with his wife Chiara in Venice with their two children, striving to stay out of the limelight.

Until something royally pisses him off, that is. The effrontery in question is the brutal hatchet murder of an Oxford professor. Allon soon discovers she was on the trail of a Picasso painting, looted from a Paris art collector by the Nazis in WWII.

His investigation leads him to the Geneva Freeport, a tax-free haven where billionaires and crooks store their tax-free loot, including gold and valuable paintings.

Naturally, the bad guys hiding trillions would rather not have the light of the law shone on their shenanigans, and the body count starts to climb. Allon relies on his coterie of contacts and faithful sidekicks to stay one jump ahead of the pack as he dashes across Europe, pursuing his goal with laser focus.

You don’t have to read any of the previous series; each book stands on its own. But it you aren’t familiar with Silva’s work, I highly recommend you start at the beginning and peruse through the lot; you won’t be disappointed!

TV Series Review

The Perfect Couple

Streaming on Netflix September 6, 2024

I don’t normally review something I haven’t seen yet, but there’s a first time for everything!

The Perfect Couple is based on the novel of the same name by Elin Hildebrand. She has written several dozen books set on the island of Nantucket; they chronicle the lives of both the rich summer residents as well as the full-time citizens who (literally) cater to them.

Greer and Tag Winbury (played by Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber), are hosting the wedding of their son Benji and his bride Celeste at their fabulous beachside mansion on the island of Nantucket. Hundreds have been invited to the lavish affair, which is expected to be the talk of the island.

The eve of the wedding is tragically marred by the death of the maid of honor, however. Merritt is found on the beach below the mansion, apparently drowned. But when Chief of Police Ed Kapenash begins to investigate, he soon discovers an undercurrent of deceit and chicanery that belies the reputation of ‘the perfect couple’ and their family.

The novel is a very entertaining mix of whodunit and soap opera as the author explores both the backstories and the unraveling of the mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and I look forward to seeing the mini-series!

Upcoming Book Launch in Calgary!

Join me on Sunday, September 15, 2024, 4 pm., at Owl’s Nest Books for the launch of Crystal Ball. I’ll be doing a reading and signing and greeting all our pals from Calgary!

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July 2023 Newsletter

by Newsletter

Life in France

We’ve been in France for over a month now, and if there’s one thing that stands out more than anything else, it’s the fact that the French worship their stomachs. Or, more specifically, all the wonderful things they put in their stomachs.

People ask us; ‘how do you spend your day?’ I’d like to wax lyrical about the endless hours spent contemplating immortal works of art and graceful architecture, but that would be wrong. The vast amount of daylight hours are spent rapturing over the many amazing ingredients on offer.

Every day, we stop at Mary’s cheese shop and buy some scrumptious soft cheese for spreading on baguette, a bit of feta for Greek salads, and a tangy Roquefort to accompany the lovely Burgundy we purchase right next door at Virginie’s Les Caves du Roi.

Monsieur Bardot, the neighborhood butcher, always has a delightful selection of veal, from cordon bleu (breaded veal wrapped around cheese and prosciutto), to tender belly for cooking blanquettes de veau, a beef stew in creamy sauce served on pappardelle pasta.

Not to be forgotten, is the patisserie. The smell of chocolate wafts through their door and down the street, drawing you forcefully in by the nose. Caramel dipped in dark chocolate, delicate strawberry tarts on custard, and an endless array of cake.

The only reason, of course, that I don’t look like the Michelin man is because we walk an average of 150 km per month buying all this stuff.

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You can also order eBooks and paperbacks on Amazon!

Book Review

The Five Star Weekend

By Elin Hilderbrand

Linda and I have been reading Elin Hilderbrand’s novels for several years now. ‘The queen of the beach reads’ has written several dozen novels set in the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, featuring the misadventures of both the full-time islanders and the summer visitors.

Their stories are a mix of the trials and tribulations of the super-rich and those scraping by from paycheck to paycheck. Some of my favorites include The Identicals, a tale of twin sisters raised separately, and 28 Summers, which follows a secret affair between an independent island woman and the husband of a Washington senator.

The Five Star Weekend follows the recovery of a food blogger after the tragic death of her husband. Hollis Shaw has an international following on her Hungry with Hollis blog, in which she videos her recipes and sports wonderful attire. But her glamourous life is turned inside out when Matthew, a respected Boston surgeon, is killed in a car accident.

Hollis retreats to their summer home in Nantucket, where she lives like a hermit, neglecting her blog and her young adult daughter Caroline. She is finally stirred from her depression after reading about a woman who, recently widowed, rebooted her life by holding a five-star weekend where she invites four women friends, each from an important part of her life, and treats them to a fun and rejuvenating time.

Hollis invites Tatum, her closest childhood friend, Dru-Ann, a roommate from college, Brooke, a former neighbor when Hollis was raising her child, and, most intriguingly, Gigi Ling, a follower of her blog whom she has never met. She then hires Caroline to video the entire encounter.

The author excels in crafting fully-fledged characters who have serious issues of their own, and Five Star Weekend is one of her best novels. Each of Hollis’s friends brings significant emotional baggage that needs resolution, promising the potential for a five-alarm fire! This is a great page-turner, and ensures that Hildebrand will be retaining her crown for quite some time to come. I highly recommend The Five Star Weekend!

Book Review

A Visit from the Goon Squad

By Jennifer Egan

Generally, when I see a book cover with the blurb ‘Winner of the So-And-So Award’ I run like hell. I can’t think of the number of winners I’ve purchased that I doubt even the author’s mother has read cover to cover. They’re just awful.

So, it was with trepidation that I approached A Visit from the Goon Squad, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Right from the very first chapter, I was drawn into the mesmerizing world of Sasha, a record producer’s assistant based in New York, and the strange and fascinating cadre of friends, family and circumstances that orbit her in a cosmos of weirdness.

Sasha, it seems, is a kleptomaniac who can’t resist stealing objects every week so that she has something new to tell her therapist (this is New York, remember). Her boss, the legendary record producer Bennie Salazar, gets seized by paralyzing bouts of cringe unless he drinks pure gold flakes in his coffee and sprays his arm pits with Raid to ward of cooties.

And these are the normal ones. The author parades her characters through a series of chapters that act as vignettes to pivotal parts of their lives using a spectrum of tones and styles (was that a Power Point presentation?) that impressively displays her prodigious writing talents. I highly recommend A Visit from the Goon Squad!