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Laura Pedersen was the youngest columnist for the The New York Times, where she still writes regularly, and is host of the TV show Laura Pedersen's Your Money and Your Life on Oxygen. Prior to that Laura was the youngest person to have a seat on the floor of the American Stock Exchange and wrote her first book, Play Money, about that experience. Her second book, Street-Smart Career Guide is about entrepreneurship. Laura has a finance degree from New York University's Stern School of Business. As a public speaker she has been exclusively represented by Keppler Associates since 1990 and was chosen by meeting planners as one of best speakers of the new millennium. Her official website is http://www.laurapedersenbooks.com.
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Beginner's Luck
The second of seven children (with another on the way), Hallie Palmer has one dream: to make it to Vegas. Normally blessed with an uncanny gift for winning at games of chance, she’s just hit a losing streak. She’s been kicked out of the casino she frequents during school hours, lost all her money for a car on a bad bet at the track, and has been grounded by her parents. Hallie decides the time as come to cut her losses.
Answering an ad in the local paper, she lands a job as yard person at the elegant home of the sixty-ish Mrs. Olivia Stockton, a wonderfully eccentric rebel who scribes acclaimed poetry along with the occasional soft-core porn story. Under the same wild roof is Olivia’s son, Bernard, an antiques dealer and gourmet cook who turns out mouthwatering cuisine and scathing witticisms, and Gil, Bernard’s lover, whose down-to-earth sensibilities provide a perfect foil to the Stocktons’ outrageous joie de vivre. Here, in this anything-goes household, Hallie has found a new family. And she’s about to receive the education of her life.
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Laura Pedersen's Summer Reading List
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
by Sarah Vowell
This humorous essayist tackles some of the stickier problems of being American in the new millennium, such as when your government asks you to shop and spend money to help fight terrorism. Vowell is young, female, fun, and her father makes guns. Count me in.
Chanel
by Axel Madsen
The inside scoop on the empress of fashion and perfume. I must read one grande dame bio per year in order to remain interesting to my gay male friends.
Ready, Steady, Go!
by Shawn Levy
The smashing rise and giddy fall of swinging London. I'm hoping it's the thinking person's Austin Powers. My fix of pop culture and slang.
The Dark Bride
by Laura Restrepo
Latin American author who mixes realism and imaginative storytelling. I've finished Isabel Allende so I'm hoping this fills the gap.
Why I Am a Catholic
by Gary Wills
Despite deep resentments against the church, Wills explains why he's going to stick with it. Having grown up in Buffalo, NY, in the 1970s, when 80% of the population was Catholic, and it was the heyday of the Friday fish fry, I'm just plain obsessed with the subject.
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