Star watching: Lynne Jordan, James Harden, Erik Larson

SHARE Star watching: Lynne Jordan, James Harden, Erik Larson
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“The Devil in the White City” author Erik Larson’s next book will be about Winston Churchill. | Photo Credit: Benjamin Benschneider

SEEN ON THE SCENE: One of Chicago’s great musical divas — Lynne Jordan — will be joining other famous folks for the next “Concert for America: Stand Up, Sing Out!” Along with Lynne, the March 20 concert at the Auditorium Theatre will feature Chita Rivera, Melissa Manchester and Ana Gasteyer, among others. The project is the brainchild of James Wesley and Seth Rudetsky, who launched the idea with an Inauguration Day concert in New York to showcase various charitable causes threatened with budget cuts by the new administration. For more information on the Chicago event, go to concertsforamerica.com. … NBA star James Harden of the Houston Rockets was spied dining at Tortoise Supper Club on North State Street last week, when the Rockets were in town to play the Bulls. … Erik Larson, the bestselling author of such books as the Chicago-centric “The Devil in the White City” — plus “Dead Wake,” “In the Garden of Beasts” and “Isaac’s Storm” — has been signed by his longtime publisher, Crown Publishing Group, to write a new book about Winston Churchill’s first challenging year as the British prime minister at the advent of World War II. Larson quipped that the book, due out in 2019 and tentatively titled “The Splendid and the Vile,” will be “a kind of ‘Downton’ on Downing,” referring to the melodramatic twists and turns of the popular TV series “Downton Abbey.”

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