Mary Norris, Comma Queen

Mary Norris is the author of The New York Times bestseller Between You & Me an account of her years in The New Yorker copy department. Greek to Me (W. W. Norton & Company) is a charming account of Mary Norris’s lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine―and more than a few Greek men― Greek to Me is the Comma Queen’s fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own. Steve Martin, an unabashed fan, wrote: “I fell in love with Mary Norris’s first book, and am now even more in love with this charming, ribald, highly informed, and always funny excursion through the language, culture, and oddities of Greece and the Greek language. An adventure tale for intellectuals―and also for the rest of us.”

Roxanne Coady is the owner of R.J. Julia, one of the leading independent booksellers in the United States, and founder of Just the Right Book, the largest online personalized book-of-the-month subscription service. Authors of every genre choose R.J. Julia as the place to begin their publicity tours and the store was named the best independent bookstore by Publishers Weekly magazine. Coady is sought frequently for her opinion on the latest books. She appears periodically on the Today Show and Good Morning America.