Nancy Ruhling's Astoria Characters

It happened on his eighth birthday. Arun Luthra was strolling through town with his older brother when suddenly, they turned a corner, and there it was. Arun with his 1938 Selmer Balanced Action sax. A guitar leaning against a wall. Arun, a tall man with a sweet voice and soulful eyes, gets emotional every time he talks about this long-ago surprise gift and the key role it has played in his life. “I still have it,” he says. Arun was born loving music. And how could he not? His…

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In the back of the black vest, strapped in surreptitiously like a baby, there’s a shiny, sinister sword. In the front, there’s a dangerous dagger and a menacing mallet and a hive of knives, the kind you would need in a street fight when fists aren’t fast and furious enough. Bonafide Warhawk’s the co-owner of HardKnox. Bonafide Warhawk, a soft-spoken tough guy who possesses the composure of a monk, suits up. He has tats marching like soldiers up his arms, a shaved head…

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When they were growing up, Elena Toumaras-Kampouris and Stephanie Jerome-Narlis had one all-abiding dream: They wanted to – no, they were determined to –open a dance school. Stephanie, left, and Elena grew up together. The cousins – their mothers are sisters – are as close as sisters, and they look so much alike that it’s easy to think they are, indeed, siblings. They spent a lot of time together, much of it in Astoria, which they say still feels like home, so it was a simple…

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Sometimes all you need to change the course of your life is someone giving you a nudge in a different direction. Victoria’s new book will be out next month. For best-selling author Victoria Lee, that moment came when she was in graduate school, earning a doctorate in psychology to complement her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the same subject. Victoria, tall, dark and movie-star pretty, had been writing her entire life, usually penning a novel a year. But not once…

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At one point in the history of the history book he was writing, Richard Melnick got so fed up that he considered chucking the manuscript in the East River. He’s still not sure why he didn’t. Richard’s a doorman on the Upper East Side. It’s the first book he’s ever penned solo, and he figured it would be easy because in the past, which is what he’s passionate about, he had contributed to several other history volumes. So confident was he of the venture that he told…

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