It became a home-away-from-home for America’s “greatest generation.” “Coming to you live from Frank Dailey’s Meadowbrook, Route 23, the Newark-Pompton Turnpike in Cedar Grove, New Jersey,” said the announcer in those all-so-familiar radio broadcasts beamed at home and abroad. This is where Frank Sinatra sang with the Dorsey Brothers in the age of swing and the big bands. Glenn Miller. Harry James. Kay Kraser. All played here, and more. It’s time came and – oh, so quickly – went. In the 1960s, it made history again at a premiere dinner-theater in the round, drawing Van Johnson and scores of other headliners of the day. Finally, it became a rock ‘n’ roll venue, drawing the likes of Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, and The Romantics, until one late evening its last DJ spun Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” not knowing it marked an eerie farewell to arguably America’s greatest music venue of its time.

Making the Scene in the Garden State explores New Jersey’s rich musical heritage through stories about the musicians, listeners and fans who came together to create sounds from across the American popular music spectrum. The book includes chapters on the beginnings of musical recording in Thomas Edison’s factories in West Orange; early recording and the invention of the Victrola at Victor Records’ Camden complex; Rudy Van Gelder’s recording studios (for Blue Note, Prestige, and other jazz labels) in Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs; Zacherley and the afterschool dance television show Disc-o-Teen, broadcast from Newark in the 1960s; Bruce Springsteen’s early years on the Jersey Shore at the Upstage Club in Asbury Park; and, the 1980s indie rock scene centered at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. Concluding with a foray into the thriving local music scenes of today, the book examines the sounds, sights and textures of the locales where New Jerseyans have gathered to rock, bop, and boogie.

In this lyrical novel, Julie Martin and Rachel Hardy both have an attachment to Meadowbrook Acres, and both try to reinvent their lives in its ghostly, antique embrace. Julie struggles to define herself in an adult role, bucking against demons until an encounter with Grandma Mary helps her realize they’re mostly in her head. Rachel is also looking for definition and returns to her childhood home with the idea she might rewrite her past. The two women’s stories—Julie’s told through the main narrative; Rachel’s through others’ recollections and her journal—intersect in the most delicious way. Dreams are a big part of life at Meadowbrook Acres, and the protagonists’ dreams overlap as their lives do. Indeed, the creaking house that is their centrepiece becomes a “dream house,” swollen with stories that haunt them both. The stories that have ferried them thus far take on new meanings, and a certain peacefulness pays a visit to this remote old home.

‘A lovely heart-warming hug of a book about family and following your heart.’ Zara Stoneley One divided family, one life-changing year...

Members of the newly renovated Meadowbrook Health Resort are dropping like flies, including famed chef Edith Chiles! On the eve of the grand re-opening, this is not the best advertisement. It's up to John Stone, the manager, to find the cause and the murderer. Delightfully sarcastic and cynical, Stone finds himself teaming up with Ed Parlor, mystery writer and amateur sleuth, in a wacky race against time. The clues point to a sinister box of chocolates, and the suspects include all the outlandis