Although Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, the story he tells in One Years of Solitude has uncanny parallels to the life, times and military exploits of recently deceased Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner. Diana Jean Schemo brings the obituary to dazzling new heights of literary journalism and may just make you reconsider magic vs. realism.

Obituary of Alfredo Stroessner (New York Times)

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Amazon)

I'm back. This week, I wrote a Guest Blog at Powells.com, the online book store of the Portland, Oregon bookselling institution. If you haven't visited this site, it is a great source for book reviews, author interviews, blogs from a variety of writers and, of course, new and used books.

Read the entire week's blog:

Summer Lightning (Aug 11)

I Want You to Meet a Friend of Ours (Aug 10)

Book Club Math (Aug 9)

Post Mortem Dos and Don'ts (Aug 8)

A Chekhov/Weisberger Reunion and a Secret Ingredient (Aug 7)

Makes 8 drinks.

This week might be the best time of the year to make these beautiful drinks. If your club meets in the summer, toast your diligence and the all too brief season.

• 5-6 large white peaches, peeled, to yield about 2 cups of peach puree
• 8 ounces of peach liquor
• 2 bottles of chilled Presecco or Champagne
• Chilled flutes

In a blender, puree the peach slices until the mixture is thick. Strain through a sieve into a small bowl. Spoon 2 ounces of the puree and 1 ounce of the peach liquor into each chilled flute. Slowly add the chilled Prosecco or Champagne until it reaches the top of the glass while stirring with a spoon.

Serve immediately. Keep Prosecco or Champagne chilled in an ice bucket.

It is a well-known piece of literary history that golden couple Nicole and Dick Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night was based on real-life expatriates Gerald and Sara Murphy. But have you ever seen the family’s summer retreat in its glory days? New York Magazine uncovered a trove of snapshots of the East Hampton estate of Sara’s father, Frank B. Wiborg. The best photos are appropriately sepia-toned and there is a good recap of the Murphy/Diver connection, tragedies and all. The article will make you want to reread Tender Is the Night, a smashing mid-summer selection of romance and decline in the heart of the Jazz Age. Like The Great Gatsby, the reputation of Tender Is the Night soared after Fitzgerald’s early death. Please discuss.

A South Fork Story (New York Magazine)

Tender Is the Night (Amazon)

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields is an endless source of fascinating information about Harper Lee and a worthy companion to book clubs' most sacred text, To Kill a Mockingbird. Find out who is who in Monroeville, Alabama vs. the fictional Maycomb. Discuss the fun facts (Nelle Harper Lee wanted to be the Jane Austen of Alabama, she hated eggs) and both sides of the Truman Capote legend. Critics and bloggers are weighing in on the biography and To Kill a Mockingbird itself. Revisionist theories abound, especially in Thomas Mallon’s take-down in The New Yorker. "The novel sometimes makes up for dramatic shortcomings by squeezing yet another puff of rhetoric from its adult protagonist..." Choose your weapons. And while preparing to rumble, read the letter from Herself to Oprah in the July issue of O, Oprah’s first Summer Reading Issue. It’s a lovely appreciation of books in our modern age, but the letter’s mere existence is the best part of all. Mockingbird is No. 224 on Amazon while the mass-market edition of To Kill a Mockingbird is in the Top 100 of all books, currently hovering around No. 60 on Amazon.

Big Bird: A biography of the novelist Harper Lee review by Thomas Mallon (New Yorker)

Good Scout review by Garrison Keillor (New York Times)

On First Looking Into Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: How Sentimental and Nostalgic Is It? By Stephen Metcalf (Slate)

Dear Oprah: A Letter from Harper Lee (GAWKER)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Amazon)

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields (Amazon)