by Lisa Black Book people love books. We love books so much that we form clubs to sit around talking about books. We love books so much we read books about book clubs. Here are some favorites: Sloane Parker lives a small, contained life as a librarian in her small, contained town. She never thinks...

by Lisa Black Should you ever want proof that I was not a prodigy--and I'd rather you didn't--witness the first time I wrote my very own thriller, a mystery titled (with brilliant originality) The Haunted House. Except there was no mystery and very little thrills. As I recall, one of our teachers...

by Lisa Black Last month my sister and her two grown children and I vacationed in Bonaire, which, if you're not familiar, is a Caribbean island in the Leeward Antilles. It is a municipality of the Netherlands, which made grocery shopping a bit of a challenge as all the labels were in Dutch! It is...

by Lisa Black My husband and I are building a house. This house happens to be on top of a mountain with a killer view, with which we fell in love…and only belatedly discovered that the top of a mountain is a very impractical place to build a house. Modular construction turned out to be the way to...

By Lisa Black Last week a large group of people traveled to St. Petersburg, Florida, and checked into a large Hilton with marble floors and pricey valet parking. Did they walk across the street and catch a soccer game or a concert at the Al Lang Stadium? Walk a couple hundred feet to the Dali...

By Lisa Black Several years ago I was sent with the crime scene van to do a little show-and-tell with children of varying ages in a summer program at Fort Myers Imaginarium. Cleaning out my desk in advance of my retirement later this year, I found an envelope full of the thank-you notes the...

By Lisa Black When you vacation, what do you take pictures of? (And don't tell me you don't take pictures, not now when everyone has a camera in their phone and their phone is never out of arm's reach. If you're failing to pictorially document every beach, cruise ship casino jackpot and stunning...

By Lisa Black I retire in 163 days, and we're building a house in another state. My husband has finally gotten tired of our home being threatened with destruction every couple of years (we live near the water in Florida) and is willing to trade the Florida house for a Florida vacation condo....