Merry and bright

Every year, I gather up my favorite holiday books for rereading: Lee Smith’s The Christmas Letters, Mary Kay Andrews’  Blue Christmas (e-book on sale this week for $1.99), Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ Certain Poor Shepherds and Barbara Robinson’s Best Christmas Pageant Ever. They make me laugh or cry, sometimes both, and they’re nifty stocking stuffers. This year, [...]

Read Full Post »

Summer fun fare

Chill out with your favorite cool beverage and a new novel. It’s summer, and hey, readers wanna  have fun. So do the three women in Mary Kay  Andrews’ breezy Summer Rental, who used to channel Cyndi Lauper’s peppy anthem as Catholic schoolgirls in the 1980s. Now Ellis, Julia and Dorie have planned a reunion on  North [...]

Read Full Post »

Armchair BEA

As noted in a previous post, BookExpo America — the annual publishing/bookselling convention-marathon-extravaganza — is in NYC this week. I’m not there, but thanks to social networking (this blog, FB, Twitter), I have a pretty good idea what’s happening, and I’m not totally exhausted with sore feet and sensory overload. Armchair BEA was set up [...]

Read Full Post »

Love and literacy

Love is in the air — and in town — as the Romance Writers of America hit Orlando for their annual conference Wednesday through Saturday at Walt Disney World’s Swan and Dolphin. Best-selling authors will be rubbing shoulders with novices, agents, editors and industry insiders in what is truly one of publishing’s grand affairs, a [...]

Read Full Post »

Easy, breezy summertime

Hollywood calls them rom-coms, as in romantic comedies. Publishers label them chick-lit. I’ve always thought of them as beach books, even if I’m reading them in winter. They make me think of sun and porches and peaches and girl-talk. But now it really is summer, and I’ve been downing them like pink lemonade. Jill Murray, the likeable heroine [...]

Read Full Post »