Body Contact [NOOK Book]

An award-winning, bestselling novelist, Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York is the author of close to 80 books. Ever since she can remember, Ruth has loved making stories full of adventure, romance, and suspense. As a child she corralled her friends into adventure games or acted out stories with a cast of dolls.

But she never assumed she could be an author, because she couldn't spell. Her life changed, however, with the invention of the word processor and spell checker--and the help of her husband who spots spelling errors from 50 paces.

In addition to her fiction career, Ruth is also an award-winning author of 12 cookbooks, although she admits that her first culinary adventure was a spectacular failure.

At the age of three, she made a cake out of modelling clay and asked a friend to share it with her. They were both sick for a week. The early misadventure failed to dampen her culinary enthusiasm. By the age of eight she had mastered the skill of doctoring canned soup with herbs and spices.

When she married during the summer between her junior and senior years in college, she dazzled her new husband by making 40 different main dishes before repeating herself. The only failure was devilled crab. Because she had no cayenne pepper, she tried to compensate by using double the amount of black pepper. Her husband, who likes his food hot, ate the fiery dish anyway.

Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for spinning out her fantasies, she also gets paid for playing with food in the kitchen. Her creativity is further evident in the fabulous European-style garden she has designed and in the eclectic furnishings throughout her home.

Ruth's many awards include the 1998 Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Harlequin Intrigue of the Year for Nowhere Man, and the 1998 Affaire de Coeur Choices des Critiques (Critics' Choice) Award for Best Contemporary Romance Novel, also for Nowhere Man. She has also won two Career Achievement awards from Romantic Times. Michael Dirda, of Washington Post Book World, calls her "a real luminary of contemporary series romance."

If left to her own devices, Ruth would stay home working on her novels. But every few months her husband pries her away from her word processor for a trip.

They have travelled across the U.S. and Canada and frequently visit foreign locals. Their wanderings have taken them to the British Isles, Central and South America, France, Italy, Greece, and Tunisia.

Ruth makes a point of trying a wide range of foreign dishes, which often inspire recipes in her cookbooks. Many of her unique experiences find their way into her novels--like the time she encountered a coral snake in the Guatemalan jungle, taking a helicopter over a burning lava field, or a hot-air balloon flight. And the dry creek in her front garden is filled with the rocks her husband has kindly lugged home for her from around the world.

Ruth holds a B.A. in American Thought and Civilization from the George Washington University and an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Maryland. She heads the Columbia Writer's Workshop, a group of writers who have been meeting every two weeks to critique each other's work for the past 25 years.