For those that have never had the luxury of being in the same room as Henry Winkler, his memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz… And Beyond, is the equivalent of gathering around his dining table and hearing his best stories firsthand.

In just under 250 pages, Winkler gives readers an intimate look into his life and career. He said he can’t remember not feeling an intense need to perform. What he never felt, however, was support. He shares anecdotes from his childhood, where unfortunately his parents did not understand or seem to care that their son had a learning challenge.

Winkler has been candid about his struggles with dyslexia, going so far as to create a children’s book series called Hank Zipzer. Along with writer Lin Oliver, the title character is a child that shares Winkler’s struggles and the powerful message of overcoming.

“I couldn’t read and everybody said that I was lazy, I was not living up to my potential,” he said during his book tour stop in Naperville, Ill. “I was told I would never achieve, I would never amount to much, and in my mind I was thinking, ‘How is that possible?’ But if all of these adults are saying the same thing then it must be true.”

“I think a heard child is a powerful child,” he continued. “It is so important to listen. I think that the ear is the center of the universe.”

It took a life of success and failure to fully comprehend who he was, and he makes sure the messages of the book are fully understood to his audience each night on his book tour.

“When I looked at the whole book, I finally realized it literally was the journey from where I started being who I thought I should be to becoming a more authentic me to being who I am,” he said.

During his conversation with Barry co-star D’Arcy Carden for the Chicago Humanities Festival, he acknowledged that while his reputation of being one of the nicest people in Hollywood still seems foreign to him, it took him years and the help of a therapist to accept love. Carden shared many instances where Winkler has been a wonderful friend: weekly phone calls, pep talks, congratulations gifts, just because flowers, a place to stay… She agrees that nice is not a strong enough word to describe him.

“He’s so much more than that,” she said. “Nice is pretty easy, actually.”

Most importantly, his memoir shows that he’s human. A surprising point of view in the book is of his wife, Stacey. She shares her honesty, much like Winkler does in the rest of the book, but her passages speak of topics that range from his immaturity to his anxieties. It’s refreshing to read her thoughts and understand a side of him that hasn’t been publicly expressed before.

Henry Winkler may not personally invite every reader to his dining room table this Thanksgiving, but Being Henry: The Fonz… And Beyond shares the same warm, personal touch. Yes, it is about the specific stories that have shaped his life. It is also about how anyone’s journey can be similar if they trust the process, and trust and believe in themselves.

“I am going to be presumptuous enough to tell you this,” he said each night. “Every single one of you is powerful. Every single one of you. Some have tasted your power, some of you are afraid of your power, some of you don’t know you have it yet. But I’m here to tell you that your head only knows some things. Your instinct knows everything… Your instinct is your guide to living and I am telling you that you don’t know what you can accomplish until you just listen to your instinct.”

Poisonous plants, sharp tools, shady corners and ready-made burial sites are all mainstays in garden-themed mysteries, but what is it about a garden that entices authors to incorporate it into their plot? Marta McDowell explores this connection in her latest book, Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, And Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers.

After a successful corporate career, McDowell took her love for gardening to the next level by taking continuing education courses at the New York Botanical Garden and eventually teaching there. In her landscape history and horticulture classes she said that she is able to share her love of gardening with so many different people.

Spending time gardening and writing about gardening led her to a fun fact: Emily Dickinson was a gardener. As an avid reader, this fact interested McDowell and led her to the parallels between writers and gardens.

With the advice of a family member who worked as a literary agent, McDowell knew she had to make her name known. She began pitching to magazines and booking public speaking events which ultimately led to a British garden journal called Hortus. They published a 4,000-word piece from McDowell titled “With Malus Aforethought”, which she calls a bad horticultural pun (Malus meaning apple in botanical Latin). Those 4,000 words ultimately led to Gardening Can Be Murder.

The first book in the genre she recalls reading is Mulch by Ann Ripley. Amateur gardener and housewife Louise Eldridge has big plans for her family's new Sylvan Valley home, situated among the flower of suburban Washington, D.C., society. Some Japanese iris here, some skunk cabbage there… and her own cozy cabin for her horticultural writings. But barely has she turned the topsoil when her organic mulching unearths the unidentifiable remains of a murder victim. Suddenly her elegant garden is a crime scene blighted by garish yellow police tape.

It was the first in the genre that McDowell added to her shelf, and before long her bookcase needed more room for more garden murder mysteries. While the books continued to pile up, it wasn’t until the global pandemic that she began writing this book. Her previous books involved many hours researching archives, but with that off the table during lockdown, she researched murder mystery novels instead.

“This was a weird book for me because rather than writing about one author, I was writing about dozens of authors,” she said. “I decided because there it was staring at me, we’ve got detectives and suspects and motives, means, setting… I could use all of that. Then I just had to decide how much I wanted to talk about each thing, which was determined by how long it interested me.”

Gardening Can Be Murder is the first book to explore the many surprising horticultural connections in the mystery genre. McDowell introduces readers to the detectives and scene of the crime, then explores the motive, means and clues before gathering the suspects and solving the case of why gardening can be murder. She also shares her conversations with modern day writers such as Ruth Ware, Karen Hugg and Cynthia Riggs, who use their own gardens to find creativity.

She said that at one point she had devoured so many books in the genre that she wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested in the correlations. Thankfully, she has a wonderful group of friends who aren’t afraid to tell her if something is boring.

The last piece of the book was illustration, and McDowell’s frequent collaborator, Yolanda V. Fundora, was up for the challenge. After meeting at an art show, Fundora has illustrated many of McDowell’s books, usually a mix of period images and contemporary photographs. This time, she wanted an Edward Gorey-inspired style, with silhouette cutout art that reminded her of Highlights For Children magazine.

“I didn’t give her much direction other than that, and she skimmed the chapters,” McDowell said. “It was fun because I didn’t really need to tell her much. I think she can read my mind at this point or we’re like sisters separated at birth.”

According to author Gavriel Savit, there are two types of readers: those that read while sitting in the stands of a baseball game, and those who read while standing in the outfield of a baseball game.

Guess which one he was.

His childhood involved any fantasy or science fiction-themed book he could get his hands on, including the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series that he brought to his little league game.

He took that connection for storytelling with him all the way from Michigan to New York as he pursued musical theater. In between his time working on- and off-Broadway, there were periods where he spent several hours a day in the basement of a Mexican restaurant in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Placing delivery orders proved to be incredibly tedious, and in order to keep his sanity he began putting together what he planned to be a solo performance piece.

The piece became more complicated than he initially thought, and required him to write a fake memoir set in the second world war. It blended realism with enchantment, and when Savit showed it to his then-girlfriend now-wife, she said, “I think you accidentally wrote a novel.”

That accidental novel became Anna and the Swallow Man, released in 2016, followed by The Way Back in 2020. His latest novel, Come See the Fair, continues to blend realism with enchantment, this time based around the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

He admits that anyone who writes about this time in Chicago’s history automatically is in the shadow of the 2003 Erik Larson book, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. However, it was part of the inspiration behind Savit’s interpretation.

“I’m deeply indebted to that book because one of the things that it demonstrates very well is the double sidedness of the fair; the bright, sparking top side and the dark, grimy bottom side,” he said.

Savit was also inspired by the 1890s-built Illinois home he was living in when he wrote Come See the Fair. The idea constantly felt like it was sitting on his shoulder, but it was a local fundraiser that became the first moment he knew he had to write the book. A local cultural institution brought in a medium to contact the spirit of the house, which Savit found to be both very unconvincing and remarkably effective.

“It was really striking to me because he kept on giving the same messages to people,” he said. “But it was still super effective. When he started to feel things out, everyone in the room would lean forward. I was really struck by that combination of clear truth and clear falsehood and a moment of reaching for transcendence.”

This inspired the main character of Come See the Fair, Eva Root. The 12-year-old orphan is a traveling spiritualist medium who knows from the jump that mediums aren’t real. When she witnesses something that seems real, she is compelled to figure out what is going on and how she fits into it all.

While the book contains fantastical ideas, the real history of Chicago flows through each page. From the World’s Columbian Exposition to the Great Chicago Fire to the spiritualist movement, Savit was as historically accurate as possible.

“One of the great things about fantasy fiction is that the great pieces of fantasy are always tied to the reflections of place,” Savit said. “I think there’s been a strange reluctance to explore the connection between magic and place in American fantasy, maybe because we all bring our own brand of magic from wherever we came from, but it turns out everyone’s been moving around for a long time. I was just really excited for the possibility of exploring place and history and fantasy, which are all the things that I love.”

Although essentially everything built for the World’s Columbian Exposition is long gone, minus the Museum of Science and Industry, the birth and death of the fair can still be felt in Jackson Park. The 551-acre park, located on the South Side, is still very much in the shape of the fair. Savit describes it as if hanging out with a ghost.

This “magical murder mystery history tour” is dedicated to “anyone who has ever been Burned”. Savit doesn’t provide easy answers in his writing, but instead does his best to raise hard questions for readers.

“It’s really a book about the price of glittering impossible beauty and what you do when you realize that price, and whether or not you can hold onto the beauty without paying the very darkest price.”

Southern-California based author and journalist Steve Baltin has lived a life most writers dream of. With bylines in Rolling Stone, Billboard, Playboy and more, he has had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview many music legends.

His latest book, Anthems We Love: 29 Iconic Artists On The Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives, examines anthems from The Temptations to My Chemical Romance and answers the question: what transforms a song into an anthem?

Interviews with these artists reveal their creative processes, making the reader feel as though they were sitting in the room during a writing session or backstage at a show. While it offers a behind-the-scenes look at the songs, it mostly shares how the song grew in popularity and how fans made them personal. Songs are meant to transport someone back to a certain time - a wedding, a high school graduation, a first love - and reading about how these artists watched their songs grow into something beyond their imaginations is fascinating.

“If you’ve ever bounced along to TLC’s ‘Scrubs’ in your car on a girls’ night out, acted out a three-act play in your head to My Chemical Romance’s ‘The Black Parade,’ or swooned to Barry Manilow’s ‘Could It Be Magic,’ and wondered, How did these anthemic songs come to be? - join the club!” singer-songwriter Deborah Gibson wrote as praise for Anthems We Love. “Steve Baltin so brilliantly takes you deep into an insightful journey of these songs from inception to recording and beyond… So many fascinating artists and songs that are woven into the soundtrack of our lives in a new and unique way that will leave you hungry for a next edition. This book resonates with me as a songwriter, but more importantly, it hits home for the music fan that lives in all of us!”

In the foreword written by fellow journalist Cameron Crowe, he shares his belief that most great anthems start as a want to please everyone, and when that backfires, a song emerges that was meant for one person but instead resonates with the world. Having a song that means so much to someone is widely discussed, whether they are sharing the song with their friends or seeing the song performed live while standing next to a group of strangers, but hardly ever have the artists delved deep into what it was like for them to watch fans make those songs their own.

“I have done thousands of interviews over the years and one of the most common refrains, no matter how big the artist, is songs are like children,” Baltin said in a press release. “Anthems is what happens when those songs have grown up. All 29 of these songs have gone into the world and been a huge part of people’s lives, whether they’ve been played at weddings, funerals, births. And my favorite part of writing this book was hearing from the artists how they’ve been moved - and even shocked - by the way these songs have become part of the fabrics of listeners’ worlds in ways the artist could never have imagined. Anthems proves that when a song leaves the nest, it becomes the world’s.”

In the superhero universe of A LA BRAVA, Latinas of different upbringings fight against female injustices.

The creator and founder of the series, Kayden Phoenix, comes from the film industry and has a background in screenwriting and directing. One of the first things she noticed in her field was the character generalizations that didn’t reflect her own background, and gave her the idea of wanting to bring a Latina superhero to the big screen.

As a third generation Chicana based in Los Angeles, her first real superhero was her mother. She was the inspiration behind the first in the series, Jalisco, named after the place her grandmother was born. This Mexican Latina superhero is a blade-wielding folklorico dancer that uses her culture as her weapon.

The second in the series, Santa, is also heavily influenced by her family. Inspired by her family members with military backgrounds, this SJW Latina superhero is a brawler that takes down the ICE detention centers.

Loquita, a Boriqua/Cubana Latina superhero, is a teen detective in the supernatural world. Loquita is an ode to Phoenix’s childhood memories of ghost stories told at family gatherings.

Ruca is a Chicana Latina vigilante dispensing justice. Her story pays homage to Phoenix’s hometown and the overplayed stereotypes of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.

Bandita is the last in the series, who is a Dominican Latina, gun-slinging cowgirl based in modern-day New York.

For each story, a very real social justice issue is depicted. From femicide and government detention centers to suicide, human trafficking and domestic violence, Phoenix makes sure that Latinas are not only represented but heard.

“I hope that [readers] get a good story, because you are reading a book and learning about a new superhero,” she said. “And then also maybe to create change themselves; whether it’s the social justice issue that they’re learning about or just something in the community that they care about themselves.”

Although her main reasoning for creating this series was representation, she was informed during the middle of the series that A LA BRAVA is the first Latina superhero team in comic book history.

She wanted to make sure representation was found in all forms of the comics, including the designers. Several artists were a part of the story’s creations, from penciling and inking to coloring and lettering.

“I have so many amazing artists,” Phoenix said. “They’re all Latina artists. I’m so lucky I found them, all on Instagram and Twitter.”

After putting a call out online for Latinas artists to help a Latina writer create Latina superheroes, Phoenix received nearly 100 portfolios. Since then, she has been able to create a team of artists that specialize in all forms of illustration.

The importance of the A LA BRAVA series is much more than a typical superhero story. They tackle real-world problems with real-world solutions, and do so with a still-underrepresented community. This series is meant to spark conversation and bring forward a new kind of hero.

After an admirable career as a civil service firefighter and veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Alan E. Losure was enjoying the retirement life. However, on a fall day in 2017, his daily three-mile walk went a bit differently.

In his mind, Losure saw a vision. A man was sitting at a table, inside of a log cabin, writing. An oil lamp stood on the table next to the man, and using that light Losure was able to see what the man was writing.

“I just felt like I was an invisible part of his story, and it haunted me,” he said.

He went home and told his wife, but decided to try and ignore the vision. When it simply could not be ignored, he typed it out. He was encouraged to publish it, which had never even crossed his mind. Five years later, he has published 14 books and counting.

His stories tend to be set in the 1890s, in his hometown of Gas City, Indiana. The inspiration came from a building in town that sported its founding year - 1892 - and he found himself at the local library researching as much as possible.

“This is a unique time when automobiles began to slowly become a part of our daily lives, before airplanes; when the streets were made of dirt rather than asphalt and people rode horses instead of riding in Hondas,” he said.

Although he doesn’t use the names of real people that he comes across in newspaper clippings on the library’s microfilm readers, he does use real photographs that he feels match the characters perfectly. He typically searches for cabinet cards on eBay and purchases them so he is in possession of the original copy.

Losure said that his stories play like a movie in his mind, and when he doesn’t see anything else, he feels the story is complete. Despite not being an active viewer or reader of murder mysteries, that is typically the genre he writes. The historical aspect of his stories come from his love of history, which was his favorite subject in school and became a lifelong passion.

Typically the titles of the book come to him before he even begins writing, while the covers of his books also come to him as a vision, which he draws out and sends in for illustration.

His wife, Susan, plays a major role in publishing his works. Not only is she his biggest supporter, but she is a wonderful proofreader. This genre also isn’t her first choice as a reader, yet she happily shares his latest work with her fellow churchgoers.

“It's something I never in my life expected to do, and that makes it wonderful because it is a surprise,” he said.

His latest book, The Curse of the Hanging Tree, tells the story of Stanley, an intellectually disabled teenager who is savagely lynched for a crime he did not commit. Word of a terrible curse spread through the town as those involved with Stanley’s death met with a terrible death of their own.

Is the curse responsible for the strange occurrences that continue? Is there another force that may be involved? It is now up to Marshal Justin Blake and his deputies to solve this lingering murder mystery and put an end to the death and destruction that continues to torment the good people in present-day Gas City.