Robert B. Parker, Erich Segal

Fiction lovers lost two friends recently. Within 24 hours of each other Robert B. Parker and Erich Segal each succumbed to a heart attack. Parker was 77 and said to be in otherwise excellent health, Segal was 72 and had battled Parkinson's disease for 25 years.

Each left his mark - Segal with the classic "Love Story," Parker with his venerated Spenser series of mysteries.

I interviewed Erich Segal in 1988, upon publication of his novel "Doctors." Parker and I met enough times - starting in 1989, most recently in 2002 - for me to think of him as a good friend.

Now let me share with you.

Listen to Robert B. Parker

Listen to Erich Segal

Like culture and leisure? We have theater tickets, concert tickets, and tickets to the entire NFL schedule, including Superbowl Champs Indianapolis Colts, and the Chicago Bears

An apparently deranged man tries to deface a painting in a Washington, D.C. museum, in Elizabeth Kostova's new novel "The Swan Thieves." The attacker, it turns out, is himself a painter, a renowned artist, in fact. Getting to the root of Robert Oliver's mysterious attack falls to psychiatrist Andrew Marlow, who at first can't even get Oliver to talk to him. But when Oliver shows Marlow a stack of old letters, an obsession takes root.

The neoconservative movement was not born in the George W. Bush era. Or even in the Clinton years that preceded "Dubya." It was born four decades ago, in the Nixon presidency, according to the authors of the book "The Forty Years War." Veteran investigative reporters Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman traced the neocons' origins back to an almost entirely unknown figure, a low-profile but high-influence German immigrant who handpicked, groomed, and mentored Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, among others.

Coming soon - new interviews with:

David Hoffman  •  Nena Baker  •  Antony Beevor  •  Sully Sullenberger  •  Sen. Bill Frist  •  Jake Adelstein  •  James Dashner  •  Christopher Andersen  •  Alan Jacobson  •  David Sax  •  John Connolly  •  Bruce Feiler  •  Steven Winn  •  Mireille Guiliano  •  Haleh Esfandiari  •  Harold Levinson  •  Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson  •  Mignon "Grammar Girl" Fogarty  •  Mitch Albom  •  Jonathan Lethem  •  Shushannah Walshe & Scott Conroy  •  Bobby & Jamie Deen  •  Linda Gordon  •  David Lehman  •  David Baldacci  •  Philip Kunhardt  •  Anne Rice  •  Joseph Sebarenzi  •  Matthew Continetti  •  Dinesh D'Souza  •  Charlie Murphy  •  Gordon Livingston  •  "Cousin Brucie" Morrow  •  Shaye Areheart  •  Timothy Ferriss  •  Steve Liebowitz  •  Steven Roberts

Share this page now:

Share on Facebook

What's hot right now?

See the Hot Ten list of the most popular interviews right now on Eye on Books