Insider Reviews

January 1, 2015Reviews

Reviews: January

Edited by Ann Christenson Tosa Resurgence Wauwatosa’s freeways are getting face-lifts to match the new business park on the County Grounds. The Mayfair Collection is reinventing retail in western Tosa. Even restaurateurs are expanding to this happening ’burb. hyde park mke (6738 W. Wells St.), a fixture since the 1930s, has evolved, too – to a tailor/cleaners-cum-boutique. Third-generation owner Sydney Deutsch, has folded in an array of sweaters, feathered skirts, locally made Madam Chino dresses, and sparkling accessories, buffing the space into an on-trend women’s retail spot that takes dressing smartly to another level. The shop still offers tailoring and…

August 26, 2014Reviews

Reviews: September

Edited by Ann Christenson Garden State Franco-Fiction New York Times bestselling author Susan Vreeland, born in Racine, didn’t find literary inspiration until 1971, when she took a tour of the Louvre and promised to devote herself to the study of art. Since, Vreeland, who showed a fondness for Dutch painter Vermeer in 1999’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue, has offered written hymns in the form of novels imbued with art history. Her latest, Lisette’s list (Random House), describes prim Lisette’s hunt for post-impressionist and modernist paintings set against the backdrop of 1940s Provence, often in the shadow of World War II.…

July 28, 2014Reviews

How The Cookies Crumbled

This article appears in the August 2014 issue of Milwaukee Magazine. Read the rest of August issue online here, or subscribe to Milwaukee Magazine.

June 2, 2014Reviews

Read These

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris Say hello to the new Dan Brown? Two years ago, Joel Dicker, a 28-year-old Swiss, penned The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (Penguin, May 2014), a thriller (en Francais) that overtook Brown’s Inferno on the best-seller lists in Europe. Now, the anticipated English translation is out, and the roguish author is scheduled to read at Boswell Book Company on June 3. Stateside, nobody does French pastries like Jacquy Pfeiffer, co-founder of Chicago’s The French Pastry School. A mentor to young chefs, including Milwaukee’s Kurt Fogle, Pfeiffer swung through town in late 2013 to promote…

June 4, 2013Reviews

Hot Type

Letters from Hillside Farm, the new young adult novel from Madison man of letters Jerry Apps, is intended to teach its impressionable readers the importance of a well-written letter. The tale, set during the Great Depression, unfolds in brisk letters penned by a boy for his grandmother. (MH) Milwaukee art gallery proprietor Dean Jensen’s fourth novel, Queen of the Air, follows one of the biggest circus stars of the 20th Century, Lillian Leitzel, as she discovers a soul mate in Alfredo, a world-renowned trapeze artist. Jensen will be at Boswell Book Company June 13 for a reading. (CH) Esquire magazine…

June 24, 2011Reviews

Reviews

This article first appeared in the May 2011 issue of Milwaukee Magazine. * Thorn of Plenty Blackthorn Pub and Grill’s (750 N. Jefferson St.) sexy marketing photo – a close-up image of the backside of a lass wearing a short plaid skirt – is misleading. Friendly female (and male) bartenders are conservatively clad, and no one dances sultry jigs on top of the long, lacquered wood bar. (Go to Water Street’s Coyote Ugly Saloon if that’s your thing.) Blackthorn’s gig is modern Irish pub, not Celtic cheese. Cozy dark wooden booths sit next to floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on Jefferson…