Dialogue

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jill Stukenberg’s novel News of the Air (previously titled Labor Day) was selected as the 2021 winner of the Big Moose prize from Black Lawrence Press and will be published in fall 2022. Her short stories have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, The Collagist (now The Rupture), The Florida Review, and other literary magazines. An Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, she has published in the area of creative writing pedagogy and has over twenty years of experience as a writing teacher. (Photo credit: Emma Whitman) ABOUT THE BOOK - NEWS OF THE AIR Allie Krane is heavily pregnant when she and her husband flee urban life after a rash of eco-terrorism breaks out in their city. They reinvent themselves as the proprietors of a northwoods fishing resort, where they live in relative peace for nearly two decades. That is, until two strange children arrive by canoe. Like the small ecological disasters lapping yearly at their shore, have the problems of the modern world finally found Allie, her husband, and their troubled cypher of a teenage daughter? This eco-novel of a family, told from three points of view, explores how we remake our lives once we open our hearts to all the news we've chosen to ignore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - JULIETTE GODOT With over 40,000 ancestors catalogued in her family tree, genealogist Juliette Godot has found many memorable characters. All of them have a story, some must be told. Her award-winning debut novel, From the Drop of Heaven, brings one of her sixteenth-century families to life. ABOUT THE BOOK - FROM THE DROP OF HEAVEN It’s 1582. Banned books in tow, accused seditionist, Martin, escapes the pyre, finding safety with Nicolas’s family. When Nicolas and his love, Catherine, are caught with the books, all three are forced to fight for their lives. From the Drop of Heaven is based on the author’s family tree.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR William Martin is the New York Times bestseller of twelve novels, a PBS documentary, book reviews, magazine articles, and a cult-classic horror movie. His first Peter Fallon novel, Back Bay, established him as "a master storyteller." He has been following the lives of the great and anonymous in American history ever since. His latest, the "propulsive" December '41, captures the atmosphere in the United States int he weeks after Pearl Harbor. ABOUT THE BOOK - DECEMBER '41: A World War II Thriller On the day after Pearl Harbor, shocked Americans gather around their radios to hear Franklin Roosevelt declare war. In Los Angeles, a German agent named Martin Browning is planning to kill FDR on the night he lights the National Christmas Tree. Who will stop him? Relentless FBI Agent Frank Carter? Kevin Cusack, a Hollywood script reader who also spies on the German Bund of Los Angeles, and becomes a suspect himself? Or Vivian Hopewell, the aspiring actress who signs on to play Martin Browning's wife and cannot help but fall in love with him? The clock is ticking. The tracks are laid. The train of narrow escapes, mistaken identities, and shocking deaths is right on schedule. It's a thrilling ride that will sweep you from the back lots of Hollywood to the speeding Super Chief to that solemn Christmas Eve, when twenty thousand people gather on the South Lawn of the White House and the lives of Franklin Roosevelt and his surprise guest, Winston Churchill, hang in the balance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Dr. Victor Acquista Dr. Victor Acquista is an international author and speaker following careers as a primary-care physician and medical executive. He is known for "Writing to Raise Consciousness." He is the creator and narrator/host of a podcast series, Podfobler Productions. Dr. Acquista has a longstanding interest in consciousness studies, is a student of Integral Theory, and strives to do his part to make our planet a wee bit better. He lives with his wife in Florida and is a member of the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Florida Writers Association.  ABOUT THE BOOK - REVELATION (Out Today!) An ancient conspiracy is about to be exposed… Since the dawn of civilization, a clandestine Brotherhood has been secretly organizing a hidden agenda. As the Illuminati orchestrate worldwide catastrophic events to establish a New World Order, only Serena Mendez and an ancient society with ties to Atlantis can save humanity from centuries of manipulation. Serena may have completed her training, but she is a warrior without a weapon. As Serena and her allies work to defeat the Illuminati, she must decipher seven mysterious messages that hold the key to survival in this thrilling race to unlock a secret that will change humankind—forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Coco Picard is a writer, cartoonist, and curator. She is the author of The Chronicles of Fortune (Radiator Comics, 2017), which was nominated for a DiNKy Award. Her art criticism and comics have otherwise appeared under the name Caroline Picard in Artforum, Hyperallergic, The Paris Review, and Seven Stories Press, among others. She started the Green Lantern Press in 2005, received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute and was a Bookends Fellow at Stony Brook University. Her novel, THE HEALING CIRCLE is out as of yesterday, August 16th.  ABOUT THE BOOK - THE HEALING CIRCLE A mother abandons her family in California to pursue a miracle cure in Munich. Once she gets there however, she wonders if she might have already died. Bedridden with a terminal diagnosis, memories, nurses, immoral doctors, foreign television broadcasts, and phone calls from children intrude upon her consciousness. An aloe plant called Madame Blavatsky is her primary companion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Corie Adjmi is the author of the short story collection Life and Other Shortcomings, which won an International Book Award, an IBPA Benjamin Franklin award, and an American Fiction Award. Her prize-winning essays and short stories have appeared in dozens of journals and magazines, including HuffPost, North American Review, Indiana Review, Medium, Motherwell and Kveller. She’s been featured in Travel and Leisure, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Times, Parade and BuzzFeed. Her forthcoming book the novel titled The Marriage Box, was named a Must-Read New Book of 2022 on Katie Couric Media, and is due out in August 2022. When she is not writing, Corie does volunteer work, cooks, draws, bikes and hikes. She and her husband have five children and a number of grandchildren, with more on the way. She lives and works in New York City. ABOUT THE BOOK - THE MARRIAGE BOX Casey Cohen, a Middle Eastern Jew, is a sixteen-year-old in New Orleans in the 1970s when she starts hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she gets in trouble—and her parents turn her whole world upside down by deciding to return to their roots, the Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. In this new and foreign world, men pray daily, thanking God they’re not women; parties are extravagant events at the Museum of Natural History; and the Marriage Box is a real place, a pool deck designated for teenage girls to put themselves on display for potential husbands. Casey is at first appalled by this unfamiliar culture, but after she meets Michael, she’s enticed by it. Looking for love and a place to belong, she marries him at eighteen, believing she can adjust to Syrian ways. But she begins to question her decision when she discovers that Michael doesn’t want her to go to college—he wants her to have a baby instead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Judge, author, litigator, wife, step-mom, mother of twins, and civic volunteer, are all words used to describe Debra Goldstein. Debra's life and writings are equally diverse. She's the author of the Sarah Blair mystery series (out by Kensington Press). The main character, Sarah, like her, is a cook of convenience who might be scorched if she gets too close to a kitchen.  ABOUT THE BOOK - FIVE BELLES TOO MANY (Sarah Blair Mystery, Book 5) When Sarah Blair’s mother participates in a reality show competition for brides in Wheaton, Alabama, things get a little too real as a murderer crashes the wedding party. Sometimes Sarah’s mother, Maybelle, can be higher maintenance than her Siamese cat RahRah. Maybelle and her friend, Mr. George Rogers, have been chosen to be one of five couples competing for a small-town “perfect” wedding and dream honeymoon on a Southern Belles reality show—and guess who has to be chaperone. Even more vexing, the producers have decided to put up the crew and participants at the restaurant/bed and breakfast owned by Sarah’s nemesis Jane Clark.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR The daughter of a law professor and a potter, Leslie Karst learned early, during family dinner conversations, the value of both careful analysis and the arts—ideal ingredients for a mystery story. She spent her early years in various locales from Columbus, Ohio to South America and England. Leslie was able to parlay her humanities degree into employment waiting tables and singing in a new wave rock and roll band. Exciting though this life was, however, she eventually decided she was ready for a “real” job, and ended up at Stanford Law School. Leslie worked for twenty years as a research and appellate attorney for a civil law firm. She rediscovered a passion for food and cooking and returned to school for a degree in culinary arts from Cabrillo College. ABOUT THE BOOK - THE FRAGRANCE OF DEATH Restaurateur Sally Solari is a champion, both in the kitchen and on the case, but after getting mixed up in one too many murders, she's noticed her Nonna's friends have now taken to crossing themselves when they see her in the street. Adding to her woes, a sinus infection has knocked out her sense of smell, making cooking on the hot line difficult, indeed. Nevertheless, Sally is determined to stay out of trouble and focus on her work. But then her old acquaintance Neil Lerici is murdered at the annual Santa Cruz Artichoke Cook-Off, and her powers of investigation are called into action once more. Could Neil have been killed by the local restaurant owner who took his winning spot at the competition? Or maybe by one of his siblings, who were desperate to sell the family farm to a real estate developer?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Randall Silvis is the multi-genre author of nineteen critically acclaimed novels, three story collections, and two books of creative nonfiction. He was the first Pennsylvanian to win the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize (1984), and was chosen for that award by author Joyce Carol Oates. His work has been published in over a hundred editions in several languages. Silvis has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction, and was a two-time Hammett Prize finalist for literary excellence in the field of crime writing (for An Occasional Hell and Two Days Gone.) The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Award, and six writing fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for his fiction, drama, and screenwriting. ABOUT THE BOOK - THE DEEPEST BLACK (Pre-order now and get it 8/16/22) Where does the line blur between fact and fiction? Acclaimed author Randall Silvis is looking for a story—any story to follow up the series of gripping mystery novels that catapulted him to success. And then, out of nowhere, a story appears. A mysterious stranger named Thomas Kennaday tips Silvis off about a series of murders in a small Pennsylvania town, sending Silvis off on a tentative investigation in hopes of finding material for his next novel. What Silvis discovers is much more than a typical small-town murder case, and it soon becomes clear that Kennaday, who seems to have disappeared into thin air, is somehow pulling the strings of the investigation from behind the scenes. Based on true events, The Deepest Black is a profoundly thoughtful, unsettling read, and a crime novel unlike any you've ever read before.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dennis Galloway has lived in a variety of cultures, giving him a wide range of experiences. He incorporates many of these experiences in his writing so the characters you meet feel real and it seems like you are really there in the places he writes about. Dennis grew up with a vivid, active imagination which serves him well in developing unique and exciting stories. His imagination provides him with ideas in the creative areas not only of writing, but in video, photography, and public speaking. Dennis's stories have been incorporated in documentaries, videos, podcast programs, articles, short stories and novels that cover a wide range of venues from children's stories to adult fiction. ABOUT THE BOOK - THE PEN: Sultan's Wisdom Harold wanted a better life. He wanted a life that would free him from the shackles of his mundane existence. He wanted freedom, love, and a life that made his soul soar high. But how could he obtain those things? The surprising solution lay in an antique pen Harold purchased. At first, he thought he would just write down his thoughts, but he soon discovered the pen had a mind of its own. The pen took over, forcing Harold to write what it wanted, using a beautiful curly script in a language he didn’t understand.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  Marty Ambrose is the award-winning author of a historical mystery trilogy: Claire's Last Secret, A Shadowed Fate, and Forever Past, all set around the Byron/Shelley circle in nineteenth-century Italy. Her fiction has earned starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly as well as a gold medal for historical fiction in the FL Writers Association's Literary Palm Awards. Marty teaches English at FL Southwestern State College and taught for the SNHU Creative Writing MFA program. She teaches 19th-century British literature, composition, and fiction writing. She has edited the FSW literary journal, served on student scholarship boards, and is a member of The Byron Society, Historical Novel Society, and Women's Fiction Writers Association. ABOUT THE BOOK - FOREVER PAST (A Lord Byron mystery Book 3) Italy, 1873. Claire Clairmont, one of the last surviving members of the Byron/Shelley circle, is determined to uncover the true fate of Allegra, her daughter conceived with Lord Byron. But her quest so far has been fraught with danger, and Claire knows she has enemies who will stop at nothing to keep past secrets hidden. When she learns of a stunning revelation involving the abbess and Allegra, Claire returns to the convent of Bagnacavallo with her close companions to confront the abbess, and soon finds herself grappling with a series of chilling and threatening events. As Claire finally closes in on the truth, could someone in her closest circle be plotting against her? And can she survive long enough to get the answers she craves?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sue Mell earned her MFA from Warren Wilson, and was a 2020 BookEnds fellow at SUNY Stony Brook. Her work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, Jellyfish Review, Cleaver Magazine, and elsewhere.  Her collection of micro essays, GIVING CARE, won the 2022 Chestnut Review Prose Chapbook Prize, and her story collection, A NEW DAY, was a finalist for the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award. PROVENANCE is her debut novel. ABOUT THE BOOK - PROVENANCE - WINNER OF MADVILLE'S BLUE MOON NOVEL COMPETITION Still grieving his wife's early death, DJ has spent the last three years-and the money from her insurance policy-collecting guitars, composing music, and continuing to shop the Brooklyn stoop sales and flea markets they'd always enjoyed. When his building is sold, he takes refuge in his younger sister's half-finished basement, imagining a comfortable and solitary retreat in Hurley, the small Hudson Valley town where they grew up. Instead, he finds himself caught up in her troubling divorce, drafted as caregiver for his 11-year-old niece, and unable to face or afford a storage unit crammed with hundreds of vinyl records and every other scrap of his former life. DJ gifts his niece a marbled glass egg, a porkpie hat, and one of his prized guitars. But what's asked of him, on his return to Hurley is not to give the perfect object-it's to give of himself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  Anne Whitney Pierce is a lifelong Cantabrigian and the author of two books, Galaxy Girls: Wonder Women (1993) and Rain Line (2000). While raising her three daughters, she taught writing in the graduate Writing Program at Emerson College in Boston and to younger students in the Cambridge Public Schools.  Her short fiction has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kansas Quarterly, Crosscurrents, and the Southern Review, among others.  ABOUT THE BOOK - DOWN TO THE RIVER Down to the River is a family saga set in the late 1960s in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the Vietnam War. Twin brothers, Nash and Remi Potts, have grown up as entitled, Harvard-educated, golden boys, heirs to an old, but dwindling family fortune. With the passage of time, the gold veneer of prosperity begins to chip away, and their lives begin to falter. We meet Remi and Nash in 1968, in their mid-forties and partners in a sporting goods store in Harvard Square. The twins' marriages are in trouble. Their youngest children, Chickie and Hen are coming of age during the turbulent urban wilderness of the late 1960s— school bomb threats, racial tensions, war protests and demonstrations at Harvard and beyond. With all hell breaking loose at home, and any semblance of “parenting” hanging ragged in the wind, the two cousins are left largely to their own devices. Suddenly freed from old rules and restrictions, they head out onto the streets of Cambridge, which become their concrete playground, tumbling headlong into a world of politics, sex, drugs, rock and roll. Chickie and Hen forge an unbreakable bond as they join forces and hearts to stay afloat in the sea of upheaval that surrounds them, the lines of family love and loyalty often blurring.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - DANA KING Dana King was born in New Kensington PA; the building is no longer a hospital. He spent the first four years of his life living in an apartment in Arnold PA; that building has since burned to the ground and is now a vacant lot. Dana grew up in Lower Burrell PA, which is still there, though everyone is nervous when he comes to visit. The first memory he can attach to a time and place is riding in the car to the new house on October 13, 1960, as Bill Mazeroski hit the home run that won the World Series. A classically-trained musician, Dana holds a Bachelor’s degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (no, not the other one), and a Master’s in Trumpet Performance from New England Conservatory, where he studied with Charles Schlueter of the Boston Symphony.  ABOUT THE BOOK - WHITE OUT It’s been a tough winter in Penns River and things aren’t getting any better. A major snowstorm looms as a police officer shoots and kills a man after a bar fight. There are four complicating factors: 1. No weapon is found on the dead man. 2. The cop is Black; the victim is white. 3. The victim is not just white; he’s a white supremacist. 4. A national leader of the movement wants to use Penns River to set an example and create a martyr for the cause. Fellow travelers from several neighboring states converge on the town for the funeral as an even bigger snowstorm roars in with them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Donna Gordon is a fiction writer and visual artist from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Brown, and was then a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a PEN Discovery, and Ploughshares Discovery. She received the 2018 New Letters Publication Award, and was a finalist for the 2019 Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Award, a semi-finalist for the 2019 Dzanc Books publication award, a semi-finalist for the 2019 Eludia Award, Hidden River Arts, and is currently a semi-finalist at YesYes books for her novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me. ABOUT THE BOOK - WHAT BEN FRANKLIN WOULD HAVE TOLD ME A vibrant thirteen-year-old boy who is facing premature death from Progeria (a premature aging disease); his caretaker TomÁs, a survivor of Argentina's Dirty War, who is searching for his missing wife, who was pregnant when they were both "disappeared;" and Lee's single mother, Cass, overwhelmed by love for her son and the demands of her work as a Broadway makeup artist. When a mix-up prevents Cass from taking Lee on his "final wish" trip to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia to pursue his interest in the life of Ben Franklin, TomÁs--who has discovered potential leads to his family in both cities--offers to accompany Lee on the trip. As one flees memories of death and the other hurtles inevitably toward it, they each share unsettling truths and find themselves transformed in the process. Set during the Ronald Reagan presidency, this lyrical novel transcends an adventure story to take the reader on an unforgettable journey which explores love, family and the inevitability of change.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of twenty-one novels. His books have been translated into 41 languages with over 25,000,000 copies in 52 countries. They consistently appear in the top echelon of The New York Times, USA Today, and Indie bestseller lists. Somewhere in the world, every thirty seconds, one of his novels is sold. ABOUT THE BOOK - THE OMEGA FACTOR Enter UNESCO investigator, Nicholas Lee, who works for the United Nations’ Cultural Liaison and Investigative Office (CLIO). Nick’s job is to protect the world’s cultural artifacts—anything and everything from countless lesser-known objects to national treasures.  When Nick travels to Belgium for a visit with a woman from his past, he unwittingly stumbles on the trail of a legendary panel from the van Eyck brothers' Ghent Altarpiece, stolen in 1934 under cover of night and never seen since. Soon Nick is plunged into a bitter conflict, one that has been simmering for nearly two thousand years. On one side is the Maidens of Saint-Michael, les Vautours—the Vultures—a secret order of nuns and the guardians of a great truth. Pitted against them is the Vatican, which has wanted for centuries to both find and possess what the nuns guard. Because of Nick the maidens have finally been exposed, their secret placed in dire jeopardy—a vulnerability that the Vatican swiftly moves to exploit utilizing an ambitious cardinal and a corrupt archbishop, both with agendas of their own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  Sarah Humpherys lives in Lehi, Utah and is a die-hard fantasy nerd that can't stop talking about dragons and anime. She is trying to get through high school by burying herself in Japanese TV shows and creating her own worlds and characters. She does make friends, but only with people who can stand her habit of constantly talking during movies to critique the plot, her memorization of the How to Train Your Dragon Wikipedia page, and a monologue explaining why Doctor Strange is obviously the best avenger. ABOUT THE BOOK - STONE COLD In a kingdom where emotion is punished by death, Princess Syona is forced into a marriage alliance to stop a thirty-year war. She must choose between her duty to the kingdom or the boy she truly loves. In the Kingdom of Ashlon, emotion is considered a weakness and a danger. To help their society run perfectly, the king has ordered everyone to wear enchanted stones that take away emotion. However, there are some people, Malopaths, that are not affected by the stones and are hunted down and executed. The princess of Ashlon, Syona, is a Malopath. She becomes antisocial and stays in the shadows, afraid of her secret being exposed. When her brother dies, Princess Syona becomes the heir to the kingdom and must try harder than ever to fake being emotionless. As crown heir, she must navigate a marriage alliance with an enemy kingdom, political conspiracies, and a love triangle between her betrothed and her childhood friend and guard. Stone Cold shows that emotions are what make humans human and that people shouldn’t be afraid to be themselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Brooks Eason was born in New Orleans in 1957 and given up for adoption by his teenage mother, who was wealthy but unwed. He was adopted and raised by wonderful parents in Tupelo, Mississippi, and has practiced law in Jackson, Mississippi, for more than 35 years. He is the author of three books. ABOUT THE BOOK - REDEMPTION: The Two Lives of Harry Brooks In the first half of Harry’s life, he embezzled money from the Uniontown, PA, school district where he was the elected superintendent, left his wife for another woman, and sought to escape by booking passage on a Cunard liner to Liverpool. But his plan was foiled, Scotland Yard arrested him when the ship docked, and he was extradited, tried, convicted, and served three years in Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. In the second half of Harry’s life, he came to the South, where he spent his last thirty-five years as a revered and successful Methodist minister and church official. He was a district superintendent overseeing a hundred congregations at the time of his death in 1942. In 1934, when President Roosevelt spoke to a crowd of 75,000 in North Mississippi, Harry was chosen to give the invocation. Nobody in the huge crown knew the preacher at the lectern was an ex-con.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - KELLY HITCHCOCK Raised by a single father in the small town of Buffalo, Missouri, Kelly has fond memories of life being broke living in the Ozarks that strongly influence her writing and way of life.  She’s a graduate of Missouri State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. She has six-year-old identical twins and a full-time job, so writing and picking up LEGO are the only other things she can devote herself to. ABOUT THE BOOK - COMMUNITY KLEPTO As Ann battles the inner demons that plague her millennial psyche, she must also battle the fiends that plague her at the gym: the loudly grunting beefcake who can’t be bothered to drop his weights at a reasonable volume, the naked old lady in the locker room using a towel as butt floss, the housewife in yoga pants that obviate the need for yoga wheeling her double stroller up and down the indoor track. Set in suburban Kansas City in the early 2010s, Community Klepto—a droll combination of Bridget Jones’ Diary and Choke—makes incarnate the characters and shenanigans that go on in every gym in the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR USA Today Bestselling author Sariah Wilson has never jumped out of an airplane, never climbed Mt. Everest, and is not a former CIA operative. She has, however, been madly, passionately in love with her soulmate and is a fervent believer in happily ever afters—which is why she writes romance. She grew up in southern California, graduated from Brigham Young University (go Cougars!) with a semi-useless degree in history, and is the oldest of nine (yes, nine) children. She currently lives with the aforementioned soulmate and their children in Utah, along with cats named Pixel, Callie, and Belle who do not get along. (The cats, not the children. Although the children sometimes have their issues, too.) ABOUT THE BOOK - CINDER NANNY With her sister’s medical bills mounting, Diana Parker can’t say no to a high-paying opportunity like this: accompany a wealthy couple to Aspen and nanny their precocious five-year-old son for three months. Necessary qualifications? She must know how to ski and teach math, speak fluent French, excel at social graces, and hold a master’s degree in childhood development. Who’ll be the wiser that Diana’s only skill is packing for Colorado? So far, so good—having a con woman for a mother has turned out to be a benefit, even if Diana has complicated feelings about telling lies. But she’s doing this for her sister. And the perks—like a ticket to a lavish charity fundraiser, a new gown, and a Prince Charming–adjacent earl named Griffin Windsor—are pretty irresistible. Diana can’t deny the Cinderella vibe. Even so, wary of gold diggers and scandal, England’s most eligible bachelor is nevertheless falling for Diana.