Monday, March 30, 2015

The Year My Mother Came Back - Shout Out with Interview Link

The Year My Mother Came Back
Algonquin Books
Publication Date: March 31, 2015

Thirty years after her death, Alice’s mother appears to her, seemingly in the flesh, and continues to do so during the hardest year of parenting Alice has had to face. As it turns out, it’s entirely possible for the people we’ve lost to come back to us when we need them the most. Although letting her mother back into her life is not an easy thing, Alice navigates it with humor, intelligence, and honesty. What she learns is that she must revisit her childhood and allow herself to be a daughter once more in order to take care of her own girls. Alice needs to walk in her mother’s shoes in order to understand her and forgive her, and rediscover her love for her. In this compelling story of mothers lost and found, Alice finds her mother and rediscovers herself as a mother, finally able to accept her own imperfections.

A love story. A ghost story. Alice’s memoir is a contemporary tale that reaches back through the generations. This book will speak to anybody who has ever loved their mother, struggled with their mother, lost their mother, or dreamt of reconciling with their mother.

Julie Metz, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, Perfection, interviewed Alice Eve Cohen about her upcoming book, The Year My Mother Came Back. It was the sort of conversation only two friends can have about mothers and daughters and what it means to be both. It’s the sort of conversation you’ll have with friends after reading The Year My Mother Came Back.

Follow the Link HERE to read the article.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Reading Life: On Books, Memory, and Travel

Idgie Says: Planning on taking this one to the beach with me.  Seems like the perfect type of read - short, interrelated stories about travel and books.  Cannot beat that!

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Mercer University Press
March 16, 2014

"At the heart of Reading Life is the belief that stories are vital to our existence."

Reading Life: On Books, Memory, and Travel
By author: Michael Pearson

A unique blend of memoir, literary appreciation, and travel narrative, Reading Life is a series of interrelated essays tracking the relationship between books and experience, dramatizing and reflecting on how stories lead us into the world, and how we transform that engagement with the world back into personal narrative. 

A love story about books and travel, Reading Life is, by turns, comic and serious. Chapters shift in tone—from a lyrical quality akin to Adam Gopnik’s to a tongue-in-cheek humor reminiscent of Ian Frazier’s. The book transports the reader from the high desert landscape of Cather’s New Mexico and the rocky coastline of E. B. White’s Maine to the pilgrimage paths of Cervantes’s Spain and the hallucinogenic heat of Bowles’s Morocco. 

At the heart of Reading Life is the belief that stories are vital to our existence. Pearson invokes the same spirit that Tim O’Brien did in The Things They Carried when he said, “Stories are for joining the past to the future… Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” Books, like travel, compel us to venture into new worlds, to renew our acquaintance with old ones, and, ultimately, to learn how to see. Books are both window and mirror, allowing a view of something deep in us and a glimpse of some distant truth beyond what is familiar and known.

 Willie Morris, former editor of Harper’s, said, “Michael Pearson is one of our nation’s finest memoirists.”

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The Walls Around Us

Suma_WallsAroundUs_jkt_rgb_2MB_HRIdgie Says:
This novel is filled with choppy chapters that keep you off center and uncertain as to the events that are occurring, have already occurred, are imagined or yet to come.

Once again Algonquin Young Readers presents a novel with grit and grip. These are not kiddie books.  You have to absorb the words and concentrate on the story.  

The ending is a twist you wouldn't imagine coming. 

One of my proudest achievements is that I believe I have every book this division has ever published. Why? Because they are worth it.

On sale March 24.
Algonquin Young Readers

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The Walls Around Us


“Ori’s dead because of what happened out behind the theater, in the tunnel made out of trees. She’s dead because she got sent to that place upstate, locked up with those monsters. And she got sent there because of me.”
The Walls Around Us is a ghostly story of suspense told in two voices—one still living and one long dead. On the outside, there’s Violet, an eighteen-year-old dancer days away from the life of her dreams when something threatens to expose the shocking truth of her achievement. On the inside, within the walls of a girls’ juvenile detention center, there’s Amber, locked up for so long she can’t imagine freedom. Tying these two worlds together is Orianna, who holds the key to unlocking all the girls’ darkest mysteries.

We hear Amber’s story and Violet’s, and through them Orianna’s, first from one angle, then from another, until gradually we begin to get the whole picture—which is not necessarily the one that either Amber or Violet wants us to see.

Nova Ren Suma tells a supernatural tale of guilt and innocence, and what happens when one is mistaken for the other.


The Wisdom of Perversity

Algonquin Press
March 24, 2015

I have three children and just cannot read this story.  It is too much a fear.  But I sense it's a very powerful story that should be read.....if not by me, then by others.  

You might want to check it out. 


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Brian and Jeff were best friends when they were young, leading lives of promise in New York City in the late 1960s, until something happened that brought an end to both their childhood and their friendship. Forty years later, when their secret surfaces in a terrible new context, they are forced to reunite by Jeff’s cousin, Julie, who was also a victim of their childhood trauma. Together they must decide whether to tell all — unbalancing their lives and threatening their future — or continue to hide the truth and allow others to be victimized.Rafael Yglesias, critically acclaimed bestselling novelist and screenwriter, has crafted a novel that tells the stories of these three childhood friends who join together as adults to acknowledge the ways in which their lives were altered by the actions of a predator who sexually abused them, and who now, many years later, has been exposed by more recent victims but, thanks to his wealth and influence, is on the verge of escaping punishment.

The Wisdom of Perversity unmasks the headlines, giving voice to what has been left unsaid and light to what has been hidden. Yglesias has created a startling, engrossing, unsettling, and moving story of surviving an insidious evil and of a triumphant struggle to heal its wounds.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Kiss of the Jewel Bird

Idgie Says:
 Okay, the first two books of Dale Cramer's that I reviewed dealt with Amish frontier life in Mexico. Wholesome with a bit of an edge. I called them westerns, Dale did not agree but I meant it in a very positive manner. They were enjoyable books. Now I receive a book of his for review that is about a reincarnated man - thousands of years old - currently residing in a chicken and writing a book for a want-to-be author. 

My first reaction was WTH!? My second thought was this is a bizarre change of pace for an author from his other books that I have seen. My third reaction after opening the pages and reading for an hour..... "OMG this is effing fantastic!"

I read it in a day and a half.

Bravo, Dale Cramer, Bravo.

On a much deep level than a chicken who is brilliant with words and smokes cigarettes, this is a story about losing yourself, finding "you" again and taking life chances that you have shied away from.  It's a convoluted fantastical tale, too unreal to believe - but that's part of the draw of the book, that and the writing itself. 

As I am writing to you, highly recommending that you read this book, I am also wondering if Stephen King owns birds...............

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Recipient of the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction
Kiss of the Jewel Bird
By author: Dale Cramer
ISBN: 
9780881465259 
Mercer University Press
March 16, 2015

Good ole boy Dickie Frye vanishes from the Georgia hills and the urbane Fletcher Carlyle bursts onto the New York publishing scene, winning the Nobel Prize for literature. But when a psychotic rampage lands Carlyle in Weatherhaven, eminent psychologist Anton Kohl finds himself talking to Dickie Frye. Kohl’s instincts tell him Frye is not lying—but what he says can’t possibly be true.

A fallen priest comes out of Sumerian mythology, the love of Kohl’s life comes out of his past, and a chicken comes out of a posh apartment on Central Park West to meet his fate. Anton Kohl’s carefully constructed world is about to be deconstructed.

One part fable and one part Southern yarn, Kiss of the Jewel Bird soars from ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day Manhattan, rewriting history and opening a window onto a wider, more magical world, where the path to destiny is anything but straight.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Meet Me In Atlantis

Idgie Says:
Much like a Bill Bryson travelogue, Mark Adams speaks with sarcasm, humor and sometimes advanced high-brow language that you have to struggle to get a handle on. By that I only mean he has studied his subject intensely, while we are merely browsing through his novel so we may be very unfamiliar with details he just rolls off his tongue.

The entire pretense of this novel is that Plato was the one that first spoke about Atlantis and then went on to explain in detail where he thought it was, how the people lived and what happened to it. Unfortunately he used terminology that turned it into a riddle and people have been searching for it ever since.

Mark Adams spends the entire book hooking up with "experts" and life-long seekers who travel the globe and spend their life savings looking for Atlantis. With humor and in-depth descriptions of discoveries, combined with his knowledge of the story of Atlantis, he makes it a fascinating tale.

Aristotle spent 20 years studying at Plato's Academy, which was the first university in the world, and he firmly debunks the myth of Atlantis. So when the fable of Atlantis is being argued between Plato and Aristotle - who do you believe?

I love books such as this one - not only entertaining, but you become more educated on a subject without even trying!

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Meet Me In Atlantis
My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City
Dutton
March 10th, 2015

Book Description:

“...there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune...the island of Atlantis ...disappeared in the depths of the sea.”—Plato, Timaeus


A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of Atlantis comes from the Greek philsopher Plato. Then he made a second, stranger discovery: Amateur explorers are still actively searching for this sunken city around the world, based entirely on the clues Plato left behind.

In Meet Me in Atlantis, the bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu racks up frequent-flier miles tracking down these Atlantis obsessives, trying to determine why they believe it's possible to find the world's most famous lost city—and whether any of their theories could prove or disprove its existence. The result is a classic quest that takes readers to fascinating locations to meet irresistible characters; and a deep. often humorous look at the human longing to rediscover a lost world.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The Wilderness of Ruin

http://645e533e2058e72657e9-f9758a43fb7c33cc8adda0fd36101899.r45.cf2.rackcdn.com/harpercollins_us_frontbookcovers_648H/9780062273475.jpgIdgie says: 
For the crime history fan. A great amount of history about our early cities and the people that lived in them. 

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The Wilderness of Ruin

A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer

ISBN: 9780062273475
ISBN 10: 0062273477
Imprint: William Morrow
On Sale: 03/17/2015

About the Book

In late nineteenth-century Boston, home to Herman Melville and Oliver Wendell Holmes, a serial killer preying on children is running loose in the city—a wilderness of ruin caused by the Great Fire of 1872—in this literary historical crime thriller reminiscent of The Devil in the White City.

In the early 1870s, local children begin disappearing from the working-class neighborhoods of Boston. Several return home bloody and bruised after being tortured, while others never come back.
With the city on edge, authorities believe the abductions are the handiwork of a psychopath, until they discover that their killer—fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy—is barely older than his victims. 

The criminal investigation that follows sparks a debate among the world’s most revered medical minds, and will have a decades-long impact on the judicial system and medical consciousness.

The Wilderness of Ruin is a riveting tale of gruesome murder and depravity. At its heart is a great American city divided by class—a chasm that widens in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1872. 

Roseanne Montillo brings Gilded Age Boston to glorious life—from the genteel cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill to the squalid, overcrowded tenements of Southie. Here, too, is the writer Herman Melville. Enthralled by the child killer’s case, he enlists physician Oliver Wendell Holmes to help him understand how it might relate to his own mental instability.

With verve and historical detail, Roseanne Montillo explores this case that reverberated through all of Boston society in order to help us understand our modern hunger for the prurient and sensational.
The Wilderness of Ruin features more than a dozen black-and-white photographs.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Lethal Code

Lethal Code by Thomas WaiteCyber-thrillers are the best!  Death and destruction via machine.  You'll never look at your computer the same way again.  Your smart phone will start to look smart... and devious.  It's amazing how crippled we would become if the lights simply refused to turn on again.

Throw in some terrorists ready to claim our country as their own and you have a fast-paced, edge of your seat read here. 

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Thomas Waite, author
47 North Press
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Book Description:
America’s worst nightmare has come true: a “cyber–Pearl Harbor” attack by unknown terrorists has crippled the nation’s power grid—and brought the land of the free to its knees. As widespread panic and violence ravage the country, its ruthless captors issue their ultimatums…and vow an apocalyptic reckoning.

A defenseless nation scrambles to fight an invisible invasion. Chief among America’s last line of defense is Lana Elkins, head of a major cyber-security company—and former top NSA operative—who returns to her roots to spearhead the Agency’s frantic efforts to combat the enemy’s onslaught on its own terms. While she and her superiors take action to infiltrate a terrorist hotbed overseas, much closer to home ruthless jihadists with a nuclear bomb hijack a busload of schoolchildren—including Lana’s daughter—and race toward a rendezvous with Armageddon in America’s greatest city.


With Lethal Code, Thomas Waite raises the international techno-thriller to dangerously exciting levels—introducing a valiant new action heroine, and initiating a series that brings a harrowing new edge of realism to sensational speculative fiction.

Long Way Down - A Shout Out

Long Way Down, by Michael Sears What would you do if you opened a note and it simply told you to run?  Ooh... grabs you, doesn't it? 

Excerpt below.
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Michael Sears
Putnam
2014
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Long Way Down

Read an excerpt

From the author of the acclaimed, award-winning debut novel Black Fridays, comes a story of murder, greed, and corruption—and the lengths to which one man will go for his family.

He approached me in the street—bone-thin, gray-bearded, holding out a small envelope. “The man said you’d give me five bucks for it.” Inside was a one-word message: RUN.

Two years in a federal prison has changed Jason Stafford, is still changing him, but one thing it has taught him as a financial investigator is how to detect a lie. He doesn’t think Philip Haley is lying. An engineer on the verge of a biofuel breakthrough, Haley has been indicted for insider trading on his own company, and Stafford believes him when he says he’s been set up. Haley does indeed have enemies. He is not a nice man. Doesn’t make him a criminal.

It does make him dangerous to be around, though. The deeper Stafford investigates, the more secrets he starts to uncover, secrets people would kill for. And that’s exactly what happens. Soon, it is Stafford himself who is under attack and, worse, his family—his fiancĂ©e, his young son—and he is a fugitive, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of both the killers and the law.

Monday, March 9, 2015

Fate Moreland's Widow: A Novel

book jacket for Fate Moreland’s WidowIdgie Says:
This novel is filled with "intellectual writing" and this of course makes sense as the author is an English professor.  I mean nothing by this, merely indicating the type of writing in the novel.  A little bit more high-brow than many other novels.  

The story is solid, sharing the friction found in mill towns between the workers dependent on the mill, and the owners that enjoy the profits.  When a tragedy occurs in the town and in a rare turn of events the owners are blamed by the workers, the tension raises.

The story goes back in forth in time, from the actual event timeline to the present, looking back at the events with regret and what-ifs. 
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John Lane
February, 2015
Story River Books
University of South Carolina Press

A mill bookkeeper's struggles with the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes and foothills justice in the aftermath of a long-forgotten tragedy
"All the men turned to watch the new widow depart, but not out of condolence. My gaze was a little too long and obvious. Her beauty was an open secret."

On a placid Blue Ridge mountain lake on Labor Day Weekend in 1935, three locals sightseeing in an overloaded boat drown, and the cotton mill scion who owns the lake is indicted for their murders. Decades later Ben Crocker—witness to and reluctant participant in the aftermath of this long-forgotten tragedy—is drawn once more into the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes and foothills justice.


The son of mill workers in Carlton, South Carolina, Crocker is caught between competing loyalties to his family and future. Crocker wanted more than a rough-hewn life on a factory floor, so he studied accounting at the local textile institute and was hired as bookkeeper to the owner, George McCane, a man as burdened by his familial ties as Crocker and even less prepared for the authority of his mantle. McCane's decision to renovate the Carlton Mill and lay off families connected to the Uprising of '34, one of the largest labor strikes in U.S. history, puts Crocker in the ill-fitting position as his boss's enforcer. Days after the evictions, the surprise indictment lands McCane in a North Carolina mountain jail and sinks Crocker even deeper into the escalating tensions between mill workers and the owners.


While traversing mountain communities in McCane's defense, Crocker must also manage the forced renovation of the Carlton Mill, negotiate with labor organizers led by local hero Olin Campbell, collaborate with McCane's besotted brother, Angus, and fend off his father's and wife's skepticism of his own social aspirations. Hanging distractingly over Crocker's upended life is his burgeoning infatuation with Novie Moreland—the young widow of one of those McCane is accused of killing. Though unrequited, Croker's relationship with Novie proves to be a beacon of hope amid the shadows of political and social machinations in the darkest chapter in his long life.


As the union retaliates and the McCane murder trial is settled, it is uncertain who the winners and losers have been in this generational clash of workers and owners, labor and capital, those tied to the land and its people and those who exploit both. When Crocker looks back from 1988 at these two crucial years in his life in the mid-1930s, he is left to wonder if he did right by himself and those closest to him. Against all better judgment, Crocker knows he must seek out Novie Moreland once more if he is ever to find closure with the past.


Fate Moreland's Widow, the haunting first novel from award-winning poet, environmentalist, and storyteller John Lane, delves into historically inspired events of life, livelihood, death, and destiny against a rural Southern backdrop on the cusp of modernity. As Lane's nuanced characters contend with overarching questions of loyalty and responsibility, he leaves little doubt these vexing dilemmas of the past resonate still today. New York Times best-selling author and Gastonia, North Carolina, native Wiley Cash provides the novel's foreword.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover

Miss Julia's Marvelous MakeoverComing in paperback March 31, 2015
Penguin Books
#15 in the series

*** in April the newest installment, Miss Julia Lays Down the Law, comes out.

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Miss Julia is looking forward to an easy, restful summer, but before she can turn around good Sam announces that he is running for the state senate. Then a long-lost cousin announces that her granddaughter is on her way to Abbotsville so Julia can give her some polish and find her a husband.

On top of that, Sam has a gallbladder episode so that Julia has to take his place on the campaign trail, and the rude and unkempt Trixie proves more than Julia can handle. Hazel Marie takes Trixie in hand, but not before Trixie has set her cap for a mortuary science trainee by way of an online dating service. But that future mortician has his cap set, not only for Trixie but also for what Trixie might inherit. It takes Miss Julia, Etta Mae Wiggins, and Latisha to show him the error of his ways.

AWAKE - Shout out and Giveaway

This September publishing phenomenon Natasha Preston releases AWAKE. A truly terrifying Young Adult thriller that follows teen Scarlett as she comes to realize that her past – a past she can’t remember – is more dangerous than she ever thought possible.
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Retweet the Cover and this blurb to be eligible to win a free copy:
COVER REVEAL: @natashavpreston’s Young Adult thriller AWAKE will be released this September! #AreYouAwake
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AWAKE Summary

Scarlett doesn’t remember anything before the age of five. Her parents say it’s from the trauma of seeing her house burn down, and she accepts the life they’ve created for her without question—until a car accident causes Scarlett to start remembering pieces of an unfamiliar past.
 
When a new guy moves into town, Scarlett feels an instant spark. But Noah knows the truth of Scarlett’s past, and he’s determined to shield her from it…because Scarlett grew up in a cult called Eternal Light, controlled by her biological parents.
 
And they want her back.

Biography

UK native Natasha Preston grew up in small villages and towns. She discovered her love of writing when she shared a story online—and hasn’t looked back since. She enjoys writing romance, thrillers, gritty YA, and the occasional serial killer.


Social Networking Links:


 

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Seam Busters: A Novella

book jacket for Seam BustersIdgie Says: 
A lovely 92 page novella set in the heart of Georgia, based in a cotton mill.  A story of women of various ethnicities and countries of origin coming together to discover their problems are all the same, they are all the same, and that to be strong they need to come together and support each other.

Please note, in July Mary will release a full length book of short stories, "A Clear View of the Southern Sky: Stories.
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Mary Hood
February, 2015
Story River Books
University of South Carolina Press

A small Southern community seeks comfort from the burdens of war

"She had thought she was done with sewing, with being dragged forward all day with the cloth as it goes under the needle, doing her part, but never finishing anything, just shoving her piece on and picking up the next one. Now she was thanking God for the second chance."

Mary Hood's novella Seam Busters explores the connections we make to one another, from the simplest of acts to those moments that define life and death. When Irene Morgan returns to Frazier Fabrics, a family-owned cotton mill in the hardscrabble heart of Ready, Georgia, she joins an eclectic group of women workers sharing their interwoven lives inside and outside the factory. Under constant surveillance and beholden to production quotas and endless protocols presented under the auspices of American Pride, the women sew state-of-the-art camouflage for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, one of whom is Irene's son.


As Irene toils under the stress of the learning curve and production goals in her first ninety days, she comes to embrace the camaraderie of her peers, some of whom play on the mill's bowling team, the Seam Busters. She comes to know Coquita, a shaky veteran returned from three tours in the Middle East; Kit, an angel-haired rule breaker unlucky in love; the stoic Hmong woman Sue Nag; the beaten but not-yet-defeated K'shaundra; and Jacky, a well-intentioned fool determined to be heard. In time Irene comes to value her bonds with this motley crew as much as with her husband, Deke, on their small farm and her far-flung children and grandchildren. When the shadow of death travels from the war front to the home front, Hood deftly braids the threads of these disparate lives and stories into a lifeline for Irene, as her entire community gathers together in an impassioned act of mourning ultimately giving rise to mercy.

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Mary Hood is the author of the novel Familiar Heat and two short story collections, How Far She Went (winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and the Southern Review/LSU Short Fiction Award) and And Venus Is Blue (winner of the Lillian Smith Award, the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and the Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists Author of the Year Award). Hood's work has also been honored with the Whiting Writers' Award, the Robert Penn Warren Award, and a Pushcart Prize. A 2014 inductee into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Hood lives and writes in Commerce, Georgia.

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"I don't believe Mary Hood is capable of writing an uninteresting sentence. She can say in three words what I can say in 160. Like all the great writers, Mary Hood has mastered the high wires of brevity and conciseness. Her deeply imagined characters in her novella Seam Busters, as in all of her writing, speak as if they are offering their own true and often fabulous commentary on the book of life itself."—Pat Conroy, author of The Death of Santini

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Southern Voices Continues to Succeed



Where do you go when you need a weekend hit of lively music, enchanting art, and more stimulating and exciting authors than you can throw a bookmark at?   You tap your fingers impatiently until February rolls around once more and you can make your way to Hoover, Alabama and the ever inspiring Southern Voices Festival.

Painting by Melanie Morris
This was my fifth year to attend the festival and I have never been even slightly disappointed.  The art is always inspiring, lovely and familiar to the heart and mind.  The music is lively, feisty and foot tapping.  The Authors.......... this is my love.  As a book reviewer and deep lover of libraries, the combination of interesting, fascinating, warm, open and lively authors talking about their love of books and writing - IN A LIBRARY - is the best thing since.... well, since ever!  I grew up in libraries and adored authors from afar like they were rock stars.  To be in one of the best libraries I have seen - ever -  watching wonderful authors talk about their love of libraries... well, that's the pot of gold.
Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors

I arrived in Hoover, Alabama on Friday night, ready for a lovely time with the authors that I know, and those I have yet to meet.  I was eager to get to the reception and have a great time yapping, schmoozing and eating the delightful finger foods that are presented each year.  Egg roll and tiny meat pies anyone?   

Wally Lamb
But first, Wally Lamb was to come on stage and speak for 45 minutes.  This is intimidating to any speaker, aside from an evangelical preacher.  Wally not only pulled it up without faltering a moment, but he was madly interesting, astoundingly humorous and completely inspirational.  From his comedic stories of waiting to sign books at Costco to his inspirational stories of bringing purpose to correctional institution inmates seeking a way to express their emotions, Wally hit home to all of us.  His words went straight to heart and mind.

When it came time for book signings, I completely gave up on even meeting this fine gentleman.  His line wrapped around the sumptuous hors d'oeuvres, around the magazine and private reading areas and past the turn in the room.  I lost the end.  The poor man must have had to ice his hand for hours after this event.

Melanie Morris
Before I entered the theatre for the Wally Lamb event, I had time to walk around and look at the lovely art of Melanie Morris.  I have seen her art before in smaller amounts, but to be able to walk through the gallery of her art and have the opportunity to stand up close and personal.... I felt I had come home.  Her art is warm and welcoming.  It wraps it's arms around you and holds you close.  I wanted to take it all back with me.  I highly recommend you look her up and see how her warmth and love could fit into your home. Follow this link to see more of Melanie.

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Meg Wolitzer
Day Two of the Festival starts off with gales of laughter from the listeners as Meg Wolitzer delightfully told us where her inspiration comes from, how she fits writing into her life and what brings her characters to life for her.  She was incredibly amusing, humorous and warm - exactly what Southern Voices looks for when they invite authors to their stage.  She was a hit with all of us.  I rarely purchase books as I receive so many for review - but her's missed my doorstep and I feel the need to own it.  She can take it as a compliment that I plan on opening my wallet for her book.  

Karen Abbott
Karen Abbott came into the room in perfect form.  Pleasant, warm and infused with excitement about the stories she was sharing.  Her book is non-fiction and while one can sometimes worry about a dry presentation - not with Abbott!  Her book is filled with frisky Civil War spies, who were more than willing to do anything, including throwing up those hoop skirts, to get the information they needed for their side of the war.  Rarely is a Civil War book (and I have read my share, trust me) sounded so tantalizing!


Amy Green
Amy Green speaks of what she knows.  The beautiful hills, valleys, hollers and homes of Tennessee.  She is sweet and wholesome and lovely to listen to.  You want to hug her and read her book at the same time.  Her books come from the heart and it shows. I'm not sure why, but the TVA has always been a fascinating subject to me, and Amy made it even more so.


Thrity Umrigar
Thrity Umrigar is from Bombay, educated in Ohio and she branches between those two worlds wonderfully.  Her words are wise and wonderful with a slight sarcastic bent.  Her life traveled from the assumption that she would be taking over her father's business in Bombay to instead becoming a reporter and then an author.  Her words present a wonderfully uplifting story filled with positivity. 


James Scott
James Scott took 8 years to write a kick ass book, all the while wandering around his home muttering to himself.  It was worth the wait.  His amusing depreciation of the time and effort it took to get his book to press is worthy of many a chuckle.


Jon Sealy
Jon Sealy is a lovely young debut author who apparently had his first book fall out of his head onto a manuscript.  This is how he tells his struggle to get a book to paper in his really adorable "aw shucks" speaking style.  We don't really believe it was that easy, but he's the type of person who keeps everything calm and low-key.  But his book is wonderfully full of very NON low-key people.


Chelsea Cain
Chelsea Cain kills people in the most amazing ways.  Her serial killer is on the way to becoming a rock star with the readers.  Chelsea is effervescent in her speaking, and while you might be concerned to be in a room alone with her (given her bloodthirsty writing style), after listening to her for 10 minutes, you are more than willing to give it try. I'm quite squeamish about this book genre, but she has me very interested in her female serial killer so I might just have to look into it.


I highly recommend this event if you can make it.  You won't be disappointed.  I have never met an author who has attended as a guest who has anything less than stellar comments about the library, the staff and the event itself. One telling point is how many authors come back each year to enjoy the festival themselves.

So now I am home again from a wonderfully uplifting weekend filled with authors, books, the coolest librarians around....................and I'm already pulling out the 2016 calendar and circling dates for next year's event.


Follow this Link for all the Photos of the event!

Original press material for Southern Voices 2015 HERE.

Watch and follow this link as videos of the authors are loaded!

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All photos in this article courtesy of the wonderful photographic abilities of Lance Shores. They can all be found on the Hoover Southern Voices 2015 link above.




Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Who Buries The Dead

Who Buries the Dead Idgie Says:
This is the 10th book in an ongoing series of a detective who is rather in the vein of Sherlock Holmes, but with a family life and good friends - not so much of a loner - this is a fun to read 18th century mystery murder/who done it type of read.   A very nice escapist read. 

While this is a stand alone novel (thank goodness - I hate when I am lost because I didn't read the first books), I wouldn't mind going back to the earlier books in the series and learning a little bit more about his life.

Out March 3rd from Obsidian Mysteries Hardcover.

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Overview

The grisly murder of a West Indies slave owner and the reappearance of a dangerous enemy from Sebastian St. Cyr’s past combine to put C. S. Harris’s “troubled but compelling antihero” (Booklist) to the ultimate test in this taut, thrilling mystery.

London, 1813. The vicious decapitation of Stanley Preston, a wealthy, socially ambitious plantation owner, at Bloody Bridge draws Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, into a macabre and increasingly perilous investigation. The discovery near the body of an aged lead coffin strap bearing the inscription King Charles, 1648 suggests a link between this killing and the beheading of the deposed seventeenth-century Stuart monarch. Equally troubling, the victim’s kinship to the current Home Secretary draws the notice of Sebastian’s powerful father-in-law, Lord Jarvis, who will exploit any means to pursue his own clandestine ends.

Working in concert with his fiercely independent wife, Hero, Sebastian finds his inquiries taking him from the wretched back alleys of Fish Street Hill to the glittering ballrooms of Mayfair as he amasses a list of suspects who range from an eccentric Chelsea curiosity collector to the brother of an unassuming but brilliantly observant spinster named Jane Austen.

But as one brutal murder follows another, it is the connection between the victims and ruthless former army officer Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, that dramatically raises the stakes. Once, Oliphant nearly destroyed Sebastian in a horrific wartime act of carnage and betrayal. Now the vindictive former colonel might well pose a threat not only to Sebastian but to everything—and everyone—Sebastian holds most dear.