Karen’s Killer Fixin’s **AUTHOR SPECIAL** with AMY ROSSI!
Welcome to my Friday bonus feature called Karen’s Killer Fixin’s **Author Special**!! Today, instead of one of my recipes, I will introduce you to a new author who will share a favorite recipe. Not only will you and I occasionally learn how to make something new and delicious, but we’ll also get a chance to check out some fantastic authors. Introducing author AMY ROSSI and her favorite recipe for La Scala Chopped Salad!
THE COVER GIRL
Coming of Age Women’s Historical Fiction
BY AMY ROSSI
Blurb
Find them early enough, and they will always be her girls.
Birdie Rhodes was only thirteen when legendary modeling agent Harriet Goldman discovered her in a department store and transformed her into one of Harriet’s Girls. What followed felt like the start of something incredible, a chance for shy Birdie to express herself in front of the camera. But two years later, she meets a thirty-one-year-old rock star, and her teenage heart falls hard as he leads her into a new life, despite Harriet’s warnings. Then, as abruptly as it began, it’s over, like a lipstick-smeared fever dream. Birdie tries hard to forget that time—starting over in Paris, in the dying embers of the LA punk scene, in Boston at the height of the AIDS crisis. She’s not that person anymore. At least, that’s what she’s been telling herself.
Decades later, Birdie lives a quiet life. She works modest gigs, takes Pilates and mostly keeps to herself. Maybe it’s not the glamor she once envisioned, but it’s peaceful. Comfortable. Then a letter arrives, inviting Birdie to celebrate Harriet’s fifty-year career. Except Birdie hasn’t spoken to her in nearly thirty years—with good reason.
Almost famous, almost destroyed, Birdie can only make her own future if she reckons with her past—the fame, the trauma, the opportunities she gave up for a man who brought her into a life she wasn’t ready for. Just like she’s not ready now. But the painful truth waits for nobody. Not even Birdie Rhodes.
THE COVER GIRL (MIRA/HarperCollins; on sale: August 5, 2025) is a striking debut novel that explores the dizzying fallout of being seen and not heard in a high-stakes industry that leaves no silhouette unscathed.
THE COVER GIRL
Coming of Age Women’s Historical Fiction
BY AMY ROSSI
ADDITIONAL ADVANCE PRAISE
“Thrilling and glamorous as its runways and backstage parties, The Cover Girl is also heartbreaking and redemptive with an ending that made me cry. Birdie is a singular, unforgettable character whose story encapsulates so much of what led up to the #MeToo movement, and why the movement was so necessary.”
—Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the
“Who’s to blame when a beautiful girl becomes a rock star’s muse before she can even drive? The Cover Girl is a haunting meditation on the price of fame, the slipperiness of memory, and the long tail of #MeToo. Almost Famous meets She Said, this book will stay with you long after its final page.”
—Alison B. Hart, author of April May June July
“The Cover Girl is an unforgettable, unputdownable, well-told retrospective that pierces the mesmerizing facade of rock star worship, and the glitter and glamour of the beauty and fashion industries. Amy Rossi crafts an intimate story of how one woman confronts her fractured past to heal, emerge and move forward.”
—Monica Chenault-Kilgore, author of The Jewel of the Blues
“The Cover Girl is not just the glossy coming-of-age story of a model and muse. It’s an immersive work of historical fiction, Rossi masterfully capturing the bombastic seventies and eighties, and an expertly woven retrospection, toggling between teenage Birdie Rhodes, blasting onto the modeling scene, and her older self, relegated to acting in drug ads. Rossi circles the enigmatic phenomena that is the It Girl, on the arm of a powerful and significantly older rocker, immortalized in song but forever unknowable, even to her older self. The result is a propulsive and richly layered story that shines a light on the women and girls who become collateral damage for the music, even as the men rock on, and a panoptic reflection on what happens to the cover girl after the world has forgotten her.”
—Katie M. Flynn, author of The Companions and Island Rule
“What happens when you learn to be who other people want you to be long before you learn who you are? Birdie is a muse and a model—by definition, a gauzy projection of someone else’s desires. But The Cover Girl is her reckoning, an attempt to reclaim her story and her identity as her own. For fans of Pretty Baby, this is a rock’n’roll novel that resists a nostalgic lens, an industry takedown that never loses sight of fashion’s artistry, and a story about one woman’s journey to redemption. Birdie’s world might be a rarified one, but her late-in-life liberation is deeply relatable. Immersive, evocative, and profoundly empathetic.”
—Emily Layden, author of Once More from the Top
“The Cover Girl by Amy Rossi is the story of Birdie Rhodes, a teenage girl whose life is upended when she is scouted by a modeling agent at just thirteen. This chance encounter changes the trajectory of Birdie’s life, but most significantly when she is thrown into the orbit of a thirty-year-old rockstar, who quickly convinces Birdie’s parents to make him her guardian. This novel transports the reader to the dizzying worlds of both fashion and music in the 1970s and 80s. But more importantly, it examines the life of a child robbed of her childhood by an industry where girls and their bodies are commodities. For readers who loved Daisy Jones and the Six and My Dark Vanessa, The Cover Girl will be a captivating read.”
—T. Greenwood, author of Such a Pretty Girl, The Still Point, and Keeping Lucy
About Author Amy Rossi…
Amy Rossi received her MFA from Louisiana State University, and she lives in North Carolina, by way of Massachusetts, with her partner and two dogs. The Cover Girl is her first novel.
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Links to Amy’s website, blog, books, #ad, etc.:
Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/41HLUsC
Amazon Hardcover: https://amzn.to/3Jxn0pq
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Karen
P.S. We’re at 752 recipes and counting with this posting. Hope you find some recipes you like. If this is your first visit, please check out past blogs for more Killer Fixin’s. In the right-hand column menu, you can even look up past recipes by type. i.e. Desserts, Breads, Beef, Chicken, Soups, Author Specials, etc.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: If an author’s favorite recipe isn’t their own creation and came from an online site, you will now find the entire recipe through the link to that site as a personal recommendation. Thank you.
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La Scala Chopped Salad
NOTE FROM AMY: Learning about period-appropriate restaurants is one of my favorite parts of historical fiction research, and that’s how I encountered the La Scala chopped salad. Its appearance in The Cover Girl is brief, but the description was so much fun to write. I’ve since discovered the salad is still famous – viral, apparently! – and it’s become my go-to lunch. This recipe offers lots of ways to personalize. When I’m in a hurry, I just dress it with good olive oil and red wine vinegar.
And for the full The Cover Girl experience, serve with a chilled glass of Perrier.
https://kathleenashmore.com/famous-la-scala-chopped-salad/
Happy Reading!
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Special Giveaway: Amy will gift a print copy (U.S. only) of THE COVER GIRL to one lucky reader who comments on her Karen’s Killer Fixin’s blog. Good luck!
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Thanks, Amy, for sharing your book with us!
Don’t miss the chance to read this book!
My grandmother used to make a chopped salad, similar to this and would throw in stale bread cubes that she had toasted in the oven. It was enough to make a full meal. Thank you for reminding me of it. I am going to have to make it for dinner tonight lol.
Welcome to Karen’s Killer Fixin’s, Amy! I’m intrigued by your story premise. I knew a woman who was in that life…briefly. She had some stories to tell! It’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing your book with us today. Thanks, too, for sharing the recipe. I can’t wait to try it out.
Enjoyed reading the blurb about your book. Sounds intriguing. Thanks for sharing it and the recipe.
The book sounds fascinating. The salad, too. Looking forward to trying both.
Thank you for sharing your yummy recipe and your equally yummy-sounding book!
Hi , this book sounds and looks very intriguing, Thank you so much for sharing about it and for sharing your recipe. Have a great weekend.
The book The Cover Girl makes me want to read it if I win in print will read and review book
liked spotlight excerpt very intriguing
intriguing
The story sounds really interesting, and the salad sounds yummy!
Thanks for the recipe and the read sounds good!