Brandeis celebrates literary works

LEISAH NAMM
Assistant Editor

Rona Jaffe, Christopher Darden and Margaret Salinger are among the six authors featured at the 11th annual Brandeis Book and Authors Luncheon 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 14, at the Phoenician Hotel, 6000 E. Camelback Road, Scottsdale.

A boutique with items such as children's clothing, designer sweaters and bags, jewelry, sundries, books, gift items and home accents, starts at 9:30 a.m.

The luncheon is sponsored by the Phoenix chapter of the Brandeis University National Women's Committee.

Jaffe will discuss her newest novel "The Road Taken" (see accompanying story), about four generations of a family and their struggles with the tumultuous changes of the 20th century.

O.J. Simpson prosecutor and best-selling author Christopher Darden will discuss his new mystery "L.A. Justice" (Warner Books, $25.95 hardcover). This is the follow-up to "The Trials of Nikki Hill," and a second collaboration with author Dick Lochte.

In this book, the authors place their protagonist in a thorny plot of murder and lost innocence as she takes on an accused killer who is either a psychopath or innocent of the crime.

Margaret Salinger's life with her father J.D. Salinger, is divulged in "Dream Catcher: A Memoir" (Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, $27.95 hardcover).

Salinger writes about her childhood years in Cornish, N.H., and about the fictional characters her father created for her, such as "Irving and Julius Grosbeak," two birds who fed at their bird feeder each season and conversed in "heavy Brooklyn accents."

However, as she grew older, the fantasy world her father created for her came to haunt her.

In "Dream Catcher," Salinger reconstructs the world of her father as a boy and a young man. She then recalls her parents' divorce, her adolescent angst, boarding school experience, a brief first marriage, college years at Brandeis and Oxford University, and physical and emotional illnesses she had during her 20s and 30s.

In her mid-30s, she enrolled at Harvard Divinity School and became a chaplain intern at one of Harvard's teaching hospitals, joined the chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, remarried and had a son.

The birth of her son compelled her to pen her memoirs.

James Patterson brings back Alex Cross, a Washington D.C., detective and psychologist star of his former thrillers, in "Roses are Red" (Little, Brown and Company, $26.95 hardcover).

Cross was portrayed by Morgan Freeman in Paramount Pictures' feature film adaptation of "Kiss the Girls" and again in "Along Came a Spider," to be released in spring 2001.

In "Roses are Red" a mysterious criminal who calls himself the Mastermind orchestrates a series of chilling bank robberies that stun the nation's capital.

Patterson's newest thriller "1st to Die" (Little, Brown and Company, $26.95 hardcover) will be available March 5.

Ellen Perry Berkeley compiles reminiscences about the grandmothers of 68 contributors in her new book "At Grandmother's Table: Women Write About Food, Life and the Enduring Bond Between Grandmothers and Granddaughters" (Fairview Press, $24.95 hardcover).

She decided to write about this about 26 years ago after she and her cousin prepared and consumed the borscht that their Russian-born grandmother often made for her family.

In his epic tale of crime and punishment, "Mystic River" (William Morrow, $25 hardcover), author Dennis Lehane explores people irrevocably marked by a past they can't face and locked on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.

The Phoenix chapter of Brandeis, with more than 1,200 members, supports education and literacy by stocking school, prison and retirement center libraries, says President Connie Weiss Flegenheimer.

The authors will sign copies of their books after the luncheon.

Details

What: Brandeis Book and Authors Luncheon
Where: Phoenician Hotel, 6000 E. Camelback Road, Scottsdale.
When: 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 14
Cost: $75
Contact: Carol Kern, 480-948-9236 or Sue Karp, 480-451-9511

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