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"Lippman shows herself to be a master of short fiction....read them fast, like a glutton, or slowly to savor each one. Either way, this is a treasure. " - Library JournalThe Crack Cocaine DietTwo best friends in the Baltimore suburbs go into the city to buy cocaine to help them lose weight and the afternoon takes a turn that at least one of them never expected. "Lippman fans won’t be disappointed with these small treasures. "- Kirkus Reviews
Laura Lippman grew up in Baltimore and returned to her hometown in 1989 to work as a journalist. After writing seven books while still a full-time reporter, she left the Baltimore Sun to focus on fiction. She is the author of ten Tess Monaghan novels, including Baltimore Blues, The Sugar House, and Another Thing to Fall; five stand-alone novels, including Every Secret Thing, To the Power of Three, What the Dead Know, and Life Sentences; and one short story collection, Hardly Knew Her. She is also the editor of another story collection, Baltimore Noir. Lippman has won numerous awards for her work, including the Edgar, Quill, Anthony, Nero Wolfe, Agatha, Gumshoe, Barry, and Macavity.
Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.
Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since.
Biography from author's website.
"I can do an imitation of Ethel Merman singing ‘Satisfaction.'"
"I'm not a Baltimore native -- I arrived here about six years too late for that. But I love the fact that I've convinced the world that I am."
"Like my character, Tess Monaghan, I used to row. Unlike her, I was very, very bad at it."
"I've written eight books in my series -- one not yet published -- and a stand-alone crime novel, but my subject is always, on some level, Baltimore.
It's a problem-place, neither northern nor southern, somewhat addicted to nostalgia, yet amnesiac about the more dicey parts of its past. I used an epigraph from H. L. Mencken in one of my books: ‘A Baltimorean is not merely John Doe, an isolated individual of Homo sapiens, like every other John Doe. He is a John Doe of a certain place -- of Baltimore, of a definite home in Baltimore.' I am a person of a certain place, and that place happens to be Baltimore."
Read this during my lunch hour, enjoyed every minute of it. I would have liked it to be a little longer but I guess that's why it's called a short story.
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Overview
"Lippman shows herself to be a master of short fiction....read them fast, like a glutton, or slowly to savor each one. Either way, this is a treasure. " - Library JournalThe Crack Cocaine DietTwo best friends in the Baltimore suburbs go into the city to buy cocaine to help them lose weight and the afternoon takes a turn that at least one of them never expected. "Lippman fans won’t be disappointed with these small treasures. "- Kirkus Reviews