Five Random Questions with LAURA LIPPMAN

Laura Lippman is a veteran journalist and the Edgar®, Anthony, Agatha, Shamus, Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry Award-winning author of 14 novels and a collection of short stories. The Girl in the Green Raincoat, a novella featuring Lippman's series character Tess Monaghan, was serialized in the New York Times Magazine in 2008. Her latest novel, a standalone called LIFE SENTENCES, comes out in paperback next week. She lives in Baltimore, where her books are set, and in New Orleans. (Photo by Jan Cobb)

1. What is your favorite movie theater snack?
A box of Butterfingers miniatures, although I seldom indulge these days.

2. A first-time visitor to Baltimore has one day to spend in the city. Where do you send him/her?
The American Visionary Art Museum.

3. What was the unlikeliest course you took as an undergraduate?
A course in archaeology. I stopped going about three weeks in, took it pass-fail and ended up with a passing grade after an anthro major in my dorm gave me a brief overview.

4. If John Waters made a movie of your life, who would play you?
Mink Stole!

5. How can the Orioles turn things around?
New owner. It's my opinion that self-made millionaires (and billionaires) really have a hard time grasping that there are things they can't do. We need some happy-go-lucky dude who doesn't want to do anything but sit in the owner's box.

Thanks, Laura! Laura's next book, I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, will be in stores late this summer. Maybe the Orioles will be winning by then.