Visit Sarah Pekkanen's website for more info! … [Read more...]

I love how books, movies, and TV shows give us a common history.  How many twenty and thirty-something women dreamed of their own Molly Ringwald storyline after watching Sixteen Candles as a teenager?  I know I did.  So I'm super excited to read Ernessa T. Carter's debut novel, 32 Candles, about a woman who didn't get her dreamy fade-to-black romantic ending in high school. Here's a description:Davie Jones—an ugly duckling growing up in small-town Mississippi with a mother who couldn’t get any meaner—is positive her life couldn’t be any worse. Just when she’s resigned herself to her fate, she … [Read more...]

Stephanie Cowell is author of Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest, 1996 American Book Award winner, The Physician of London, The Players: A Novel of Young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart, and the most recent, Claude & Camille: A Novel.  Her books blend facts with fiction to tell the fascinating stories of what could have happened in the lives of historical figures. Claude & Camille: A Novel has gotten rave reviews from critics and readers, and is out in paperback now, just in time to tuck in your beach bag or take along on your summer vacation. In her bio, Stephanie says:"Looking … [Read more...]

Rebecca Rasmussen's debut novel The Bird Sisters is on my must read list.Here's a description:When a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds’ heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can’t, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who’ve brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.But back in the summer of 1947, they knew nothing about trying to mend what had been accidentally broken. Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes and Twiss … [Read more...]

I'm completely fascinated with historical novelists, the depth of research they do, and the way they deftly mix fact and fiction, giving new life and personality to characters from our past.C.W. Gortner is the author of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, and The Last Queen.  His latest novel, The Tudor Secret, came out in February to rave reviews.Here's a description:Summer, 1553: Brendan Prescott, an orphan reared in the household of the powerful Dudley family, is brought to court, where he finds himself sent on an illicit mission to King Edward VI’s brilliant, enigmatic sister, Princess … [Read more...]

Evan Dawson's debut book, Summer in a Glass, hits shelves on April 5th. Evan, a Rochester news anchor, and managing editor of the New York Cork Report, spent two years interviewing Finger Lakes wine makers to uncover the stories of family, dreams and hope behind some of the great Finger Lakes wineries. Here's the description:How did a brilliant German winemaker end up in a small region in upstate New York after leaving his family in the middle of a harvest night? How did a Danish-born winemaker lose his family’s wine estate in southern France, only to see his career revived in the Finger … [Read more...]