LATEST NEWS

Thank you to my Amazon reviewers!

Thank you to my Amazon reviewers!

July 10, 2016

A big thank you to everyone who took the time to write a review of my novel Windy City Sinners and post their thoughts at Amazon.com. Many thanks to my 5-star reviewers! Here’s what they have to say: 5 stars: My Kind of Town By The Minderbinder Review of Books on October 14, 2016 Prepare to […]

Review of WINDY CITY SINNERS: A Magic Realism Crime Novel by Melanie Villines

Review of WINDY CITY SINNERS: A Magic Realism Crime Novel by Melanie Villines

November 26, 2015

On November 2, 2015 renowned Chicago journalist Patrick T. Reardon reviewed Windy City Sinners: A Magic Realism Crime Novel by Melanie Villines. Find the review at patricktreardon.com. Excerpt: “…unlike most modern-day novels, Villines is interested in — wants to — grapple with the idea of sin and with the other great questions of human existence… […]

Latest Novel: Windy City Sinners

Latest Novel: Windy City Sinners

September 13, 2013

Part crime caper à la Donald Westlake, part magic realism tale in the spirit of Gabriel García Márquez, part John Kennedy Toolesque hijinks and high comedy, Melanie Villines’ new novel Windy City Sinners offers mystery and mayhem with fun and froth mixed in for good measure. The story takes place on the Far Northwest Side of Chicago, right on […]

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

My work has been featured or referenced in these books.

A 2,000-word excerpt from my novel Windy City Sinners appears in a slightly different form in the Chicago Quarterly Review (Vol. 17/2014).

Salt  Sugar Fat by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Moss — a work of investigative journalism about the food industry released by Random House — cites The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese by Anne Bucher and Melanie Villines as source material. In an email, Moss says our book was “hugely helpful” in writing the #1 New York Times bestseller Salt Sugar Fat, which was named one of the best of 2014 by The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Men’s Journal, MSN (U.K.), Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly, and received the James Beard Foundation Award for Writing and Literature.

Storytelling in Business by Janis Forman (Stanford Business Books) features excerpts from an interview where I discuss my experience writing The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese for Kraft Foods.