Confessions Of A Serial Entertainer

Menus and anecdotes give away one man’s secrets for entertaining in style. Steven Stolman has a gregarious personality. He loves to entertain: cocktail parties in Palm Beach, football game-day gatherings in Wisconsin, family Passover Sedars in Connecticut, and dinner parties in his New York apartment. “Of all our friends, we have the smallest places, yet we seem to do more entertaining than anyone.” It’s about the people and the food, he says. He also loves old community and church cookbooks from the 1950s to the ’70s. And these are his inspirations for party food: dips and cheese spreads with crackers, family recipes for delicious roasts, breakfast casseroles, and desserts. What Stolman confesses is that he hates hostess gifts and isn’t afraid to say so. He advises women not to take a purse to a party and just “tuck it behind here” to avoid holding it—thanks for ruining my furniture arrangement! He advises about the importance of having silver serving pieces and how to dress for a cocktail party or a dinner party (at least try!). And he confesses that even when he has hired servers to pass hors d’oeuvres, he can’t help but carry a tray around himself! This book will give any novice party host ideas and confidence, and it will inspire seasoned hosts to simplify and enjoy the party. Steven Stolman is the author of 40 Years of Fabulous and Scalamandré: Haute Décor. He divides his time among homes in Palm Beach, New York, and Milwaukee.

Raise your entertaining ante with Steven Stolman, and make every party an affair to remember. You’re invited as everyone’s favorite “serial entertainer” returns to share memories, recipes, and photographs from his favorite parties over the years in The Serial Entertainer’s Passion for Parties. Playful yet elegant in scope, these extravagant celebrations leave nothing to be desired, and you’ll take it all in from a front row seat. With Stolman’s engaging storytelling and signature sense of humor, learn ideas and tips you can integrate into the most meaningful occasions in life: dinner parties, fundraising galas, weddings, and birthdays and the like. New recipes, artful flower arranging, and more is revealed as Stolman divulges the wisdom he has gleaned from party planning over the years. Allow The Serial Entertainer's Passion for Parties to inspire you. There are get-togethers, and there are parties. If you ask Steven Stolman, the former should always become the latter. Steven Stolman was born in Boston, raised in West Hartford, and now divides his time among homes in Florida, New York and Wisconsin. He graduated from Parsons School of Design in New York, he had a career as a fashion designer and was president of Scalamandré textiles house for a time. He is now a designer and a brand strategist. His published works include Scalamandré: Haute Décor, 40 Years of Fabulous, and Confessions of A Serial Entertainer.

A formidable textiles house and decorative tastemaker for more than 80 years in the world of high-end interior design. Scalamandré is revered for its comprehensive offerings of fabrics, wallcoverings and trims available to-the-trade through design centers across the United States, Europe, and Asia. The Scalamandré touch has also been applied to compelling collections of china, crystal, flatware and gifts along with ultra-luxury bedding and related decorative accessories showcased in fine stores worldwide. Scalamandré: Haute Décor celebrates the world of Scalamandré as seen through the eyes of the international design elite while paying homage to the people, places and events that contributed to the nearly cinematic Scalamandré story. All those who appreciate and cultivate beauty in their lives will enjoy this insider’s look at this interior design treasure. Steven Stolman, designer, writer and all-around style provocateur, was born in Boston, raised in West Hartford and attended Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern Universities before graduating from New York’s Parsons School of Design. Known for his lighthearted use of decorative fabrics in apparel design, he now serves as president of Scalamandré, bringing the legendary American textiles house into its future. He divides his time between homes in Florida, New York, and Wisconsin.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the New York Times food editor and former restaurant critic comes a cookbook to help us rediscover the art of Sunday supper and the joy of gathering with friends and family “A book to make home cooks, and those they feed, very happy indeed.”—Nigella Lawson NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Town & Country • Garden & Gun “People are lonely,” Sam Sifton writes. “They want to be part of something, even when they can’t identify that longing as a need. They show up. Feed them. It isn’t much more complicated than that.” Regular dinners with family and friends, he argues, are a metaphor for connection, a space where memories can be shared as easily as salt or hot sauce, where deliciousness reigns. The point of Sunday supper is to gather around a table with good company and eat. From years spent talking to restaurant chefs, cookbook authors, and home cooks in connection with his daily work at The New York Times, Sam Sifton’s See You on Sunday is a book to make those dinners possible. It is a guide to preparing meals for groups larger than the average American family (though everything here can be scaled down, or up). The 200 recipes are mostly simple and inexpensive (“You are not a feudal landowner entertaining the serfs”), and they derive from decades spent cooking for family and groups ranging from six to sixty. From big meats to big pots, with a few words on salad, and a diatribe on the needless complexity of desserts, See You on Sunday is an indispensable addition to any home cook’s library. From how to shuck an oyster to the perfection of Mallomars with flutes of milk, from the joys of grilled eggplant to those of gumbo and bog, this book is devoted to the preparation of delicious proteins and grains, vegetables and desserts, taco nights and pizza parties.

"Mark Edward is an equivocator, fibber, and mountebank. Which begs the question: if a liar admits to lying, can he be telling the truth? He is a literate, informative, intellectual, a student of the psychology of humans, a foe of those who would defraud the public for personal gain, and as an author and practicing psychic, he is first and foremost an entertainer."—Joel Moskowitz, International Brotherhood of Magicians Mark Edward admits that for years he exploited believers who wished to connect with supernatural ideas and sad family members who missed dead loved ones. Now Edward is a magician who works the Haunted Castle in Hollywood and is also on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine, where he reveals the means of psychic scamsters. This entertaining book is at once a confessional and instructional regarding human belief and those who exploit it. Though Edward believes that most practitioners of the psychic business are out-and-out scam artists, he also counters the skeptic belief that the supernatural is a lie. Both skeptic and skeptical of skepticism, Mark Edward has worked as a 900-number psychic, ghost hunter, and Hollywood Magic Castle medium. He has also worked vigorously to debunk psychic frauds and currently works on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine.

Entrepreneur Stuart Skorman—the founder of Elephant Pharmacy, Hungryminds.com, Reel.com, and Empire Video—grew up in a retailing family in Ohio. He worked every kind of job, from cab driver to professional poker player to CEO. In this entertaining, personal account of his coming-of- age in the business world, Skorman gives an insider’s view of what it takes to start a business from the ground up. Stuart Skorman offers his hard-won lessons in business for any entrepreneur or small businessperson who wants to create a company that has a heart and soul. He reveals what he learned about marketing while working a stint as a rock band manager and bares his soul about his failure during the dot-com bubble. He describes in vivid terms the roller coaster ride of the entrepreneur in good times and bad and explains how to survive in today’s uncertain business environment.

For more than four decades, the Kips Bay Decorator Show House has presented the creations of a stellar roster of interior designers in what is regarded as one of the finest decorator show houses in the world. A fixture on the New York City scene, this glittering expression of high design continues to set the standard for the world of decor. Forty Years of Fabulous provides an insider’s look at the history of this much-loved convention of society while revisiting the spectacular rooms by star decorators past and present—rooms that truly defined interior design while setting trends still evident in today’s homes. Steven Stolman is the author of Scalamandré: Haute Décor. He divides his time among homes in Palm Beach, New York and Milwaukee.

“Highly original . . . Ample dry humor leavens a plotline that thoughtfully explores the heart of human darkness . . . Michael Koryta admirers will be enthralled.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “What appears to be a humorous story set in Indiana farm country becomes a thriller with multiple shocking twists. Fans of TV's Dexter might want to try this disquieting book from Scott.” —Library Journal In the early 1980s, a tight-knit Indiana community is struck by a series of violent murders. Father Solomon Lancaster—the town’s dry-witted sheriff and priest at the community Catholic church—finds himself on the forefront of the investigation. Soon, he’s fighting to match wits with the serial killer terrorizing his town while trying to justify his law enforcement credentials to the FBI as their analysts and profilers take Crooked Creek, Indiana, by storm. But Father Solomon is hiding secrets of his own. Ones that threaten to rise to the surface as the murders continue and the investigation draws nearer to the truth. As the killer begins to escalate, Father Solomon finds that even the innocent have dark sides, and trust might be the deadliest weapon of all.