What Would Audrey Do? Timeless Lessons for Living with Grace and Style by Pamela Keogh

When you think style icon, who immedately comes to mind?  Audrey, of course!  Who could forget that heart-stopping moment in Sabrina when she wows Humphrey Bogart in that to-die-for Givenchy gown?  Her romp through Rome on the back of Cary Grant's motorcycle in Roman Holiday? Or her unforgettable performance as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's?  Did women even long for that little blue box before there was Audrey?

Every girl has a little Audrey in her, whether your closet is filled with ballet flats and skinny black pants, you've swooned over Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart, love great eye make-up, just know your love story is right around the corner, or taken a photo of Audrey's pixie haircut to your stylist.  If you want to channel your inner Audrey, What Would Audrey Do? is full of insights, ideas, tips and tricks to be a little more Audrey and a lot more fabulous.  Learn how to travel in style, let romance come to you, make a house a home, weather a bad marriage without bad press, balance your personal life and your career so you're perfectly zen, be a humanitarian without fanfare, date a Kennedy, or iron a perfectly crisp white shirt.  Style and grace, class and beauty will all be yours after you've read this little gem of a book cover to cover!

Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub

In the late 1930’s, seventeen year old Elsa Emerson leaves her Door County home, headed for Hollywood intent on a movie career. Within ten years she has become Laura Lamont, a glamorous star with an Academy Award.  Married to a powerful movie producer, mother of three, best friends with a wacky red-headed television star, Laura seems to have it all. But this success has come with a price. She is unable to escape the nagging guilt that her fame and good fortune should really belong to a talented older sister who died when Elsa was a child. Her father’s death and mother’s disapproval give her second thoughts about the wisdom of leaving Door County. Her husband’s death leaves her unmoored and drives her career into a tailspin. Faced with dire health, family and money problems, she rallies, simplifies her life style, swallows her pride and takes any work she is able to get. From that point on, her story becomes one of triumph over adversity.

Emma Straub has said that Laura Lamont is based on actress Jennifer Jones. Readers who are familiar with movie and television stars of the black and white era will enjoy identifying the other stars characterized in Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Porto Vergona, Italy, 1962.  Young Pasquale Tursi has come home from university in Florence after the death of his father to care for his mother in their tiny fishing village on the Italian coast.  He dreams of making his father's tiny hotel over into an elegant pensione that wealthy American tourists will flock to.  It is one morning, Pasquale standing waist deep in the bay, tossing rocks to build up the breakwall so the waves will not wash away his tiny beach, that the lovely American actress appears from the sea.  From the set of Cleopatra in Rome, Dee Moray is frail, dying, and has been sent to Porto Vergogna to wait for a man.  Pasquale is instantly in love.

Hollywood, California.  Present day.  Claire Silver is contemplating quitting her job as chief development assistant to legendary Hollywood producer Michael Deane.  Once a force to be reckoned with, Michael is a washed up relic of golden age Hollywood, and Claire spends her days listening to terrible movie pitches.  But when an elderly Italian man turns up on the lot, looking for an American actress he last saw in Italy fifty years ago, Claire believes she may have found the story she's been waiting for.

Beautiful Ruins is a tangle of interconnected stories that unfold across time and over continents that offers a glimpse at the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.  Wry, funny, heartbreaking and brutally honest, this engrossing novel will have you craving a trip to the sun-soaked cliffs of the Italian seacoast.  Stretching from the second World War to the nerve-racking and more than slightly ridiculous production lots of modern Hollywood, this surprising adventure is at its heart an epic love story you definately want in your beach bag this summer!