Congratulations to John Temple, author of The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates, which has won The American Society of Legal Writers’ 2010 Book of the Year.

The book follows the story of Bo Jones, and begins in 1987 when an elderly bootlegger was shot to death in Duplin County, a poor rural region in eastern North Carolina. Nearly four years later, Bo’s ex-girlfriend–a sometime prostitute named Lovely Lorden (really)–told police that he was the killer, and on her testimony alone, Jones was convicted and sentenced to death. The Last Lawyer is the true inside story of how a disheveled legal genius named Ken Rose and his diverse band of investigators and lawyers thwarted Bo’s death sentence. Readers get to know Ken’s staff, like Sara, a social-worker-turned-investigator, witnesses like the lazy prosecutor who first tried Bo, Ken’s opponents like the colorful and sharp DA as well as Bo himself, a man who is difficult and delusional but a man who must be saved.

Intrigued? Find out more at the author’s website: http://johntemplebooks.com/index.php

What could be better than Botox? A few years back I wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine about Raisa Ruder, a Russian born aesthetician who contended that her all-natural beauty potions could take on Botox any its ilk any day. Hollywood agreed: Raisa has used her Ukrainian grandmother’s tried-and-true recipes on everyone from Madonna to Kelly Preston to Nicole Kidman.

Her get-gorgeous-for-less tricks were too good not to share, so we teamed up to write a book, BABUSHKA’S BEAUTY SECRETS: Old World Tips For A Glamorous New You (Grand Central Publishing). The recipes are easy, quick and inexpensive.

Here’s one our favorite summer recipes:

Strawberry Scrub
Keep your hands and feet feeling fresh and renewed with this homemade scrub.

9 strawberries
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt

Mix all the ingredients in a blender on high for about 2 minutes. Now massage into the hands an feet for 10 minutes. Rinse it off and pat dry. Strawberries contain a natural fruit acid that is fantastic for exfoliating.