• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (October 5, 2010)

Hummingbirds is a wonderfully compelling novel about the intertwining and darkly surprising relationships at the elite Carmine-Casey School for Girls on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where the rivalries and secrets of teachers and students intersect and eventually collide.

In the world of students, popular Dixie Doyle battles to wrest attention away from Liz Warren, who spends her time writing and directing plays based on the Oresteia. In the world of teachers, Leo Binhammer must now share his territory with Ted Hughes, the new English teacher who threatens Binhammer’s status as sole owner of the girls’ hearts. Seasons change and tensions mount as the students, longing for entry into the adult world, toy with their premature powers of flirtation. The deceptive innocence of adolescence becomes a trap into which flailing teachers fall, as the line between maturity and youth begins to blur.

About Joshua Gaylord

Joshua Gaylord lives in New York with his wife, the Edgar-award-winning novelist Megan Abbott (The Song Is You, Queenpin, Bury Me Deep). For the past nine years, he has taught high school English at an Upper East Side prep school (a modern orthodox co-educational Yeshiva). Since 2002, he has also taught literature and cultural studies courses as an adjunct professor at the New School. Prior to coming to New York, he grew up in the heart of Orange County: Anaheim, home of Disneyland. He graduated from Berkeley with a degree in English and a minor in creative writing, where his instructors included Bharati Mukherjee, Leonard Michaels and Maxine Hong Kingston. In 2000, he received his Master’s and Ph.D. in English at New York University, specializing in twentieth-century American and British literature.

Visit Joshua at his website, www.joshuagaylord.com.

Follow along as we give away copies of Dracula, My Love on various blogs, then come back and chat with us about all things vampire.

On August 13th at 1:00 pm PST/4:00 pm EST, we’ll have a Vampire Lit Twitter chat (#TLCbookchat) with Syrie joining us in the chat. We’ll be giving away copies of Dracula, My Love before, during, and after the chat.. please join us!

About Dracula, My Love:  The Secret Journals of Mina Harker

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Avon A (July 20, 2010)

What if you were in love with an immortal being
who everyone you knew was determined to destroy?

Syrie James approaches Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula with a breathtaking new perspective–as, for the first time, Mina Harker records the shocking story of her scandalous seduction and sexual rebirth.

Who is this young, magnetic, handsome, fascinating man? And how could one woman fall so completely under his spell?

Mina Harker is torn between two men. Struggling to hang on to the deep, pure love she’s found within her marriage to her husband, Jonathan, she is inexorably drawn into a secret, passionate affair with a charismatic but dangerous lover. This haunted and haunting creature has awakened feelings and desires within her that she has never before known, which remake her as a woman.

Although everyone she knows fears Count Dracula and is pledged to destroy him, Mina sees a side to him that the others cannot: a tender, romantic side; a man who’s taken full advantage of his gift of immortality to expand his mind and talents; a man who is deeply in love, and who may not be evil after all. Soon, they are connected in a way she never thought humanly possible.

Yet to surrender is surely madness, for to be with him could end her life. It may cost Mina all she holds dear, but to make her choice she must learn everything she can about the remarkable origins and unique, sensuous powers of this man, this exquisite monster, this … Dracula!

Read an excerpt HERE.

“A spooky yet thoroughly romantic love story.”
—Chicago Tribune

About Syrie

Syrie James is the bestselling author of The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. A member of the Writers Guild of America, she is also a screenwriter and lecturer. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two sons, and welcomes visitors to her website at www.syriejames.com.

Connect with Syrie:

On her Website

On Facebook

On YouTube

Follow the tour for Dracula, My Love:

Monday, August 2nd:  LoveVampires

Monday, August 2nd:  Tynga’s Reviews

Tuesday, August 3rd:  All Things Urban Fantasy

Tuesday, August 3rd:  Pirate Penguin’s Reads

Wednesday, August 4th:  Parajunkee

Wednesday, August 4th:  Hist-Fic Chick

Thursday, August 5th:  Book Junkie

Thursday, August 5th:  Peeking Between the Pages

Friday, August 6th:  Mindful Musings

Monday, August 9th:  Scandalous Women

Monday, August 9th:  Passages to the Past

Monday, August 9th:  Stephanie’s Written Word

Tuesday, August 10th:  Historical-Fiction.com

Tuesday, August 10th:  Stiletto Storytime

Wednesday, August 11th:  Dark Faerie Tales

Thursday, August 12th:  Lovin’ Me Some Romance

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (November 2, 2010)

Wally Lamb, the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone, delivers a holiday treat with Wishin’ and Hopin’—an unforgettable novella of warmth and joy. Poignant and hilarious, in a vein similar to Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story and David Sedaris’s The Santaland Diaries, Lamb’s Christmas tale focuses on a feisty parochial school fifth grader named Felix Funicello—a distant cousin of the iconic Annette!

About Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb’s first two novels, She’s Come Undone (Simon & Schuster/Pocket, 1992) and I Know This Much Is True (HarperCollins/ReganBooks, 1998), were # 1 New York Times bestsellers, New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and featured titles of Oprah’s Book Club. I Know This Much Is True was a Book of the Month Club main selection and the June 1999 featured selection of the Bertelsman Book Club, the national book club of Germany. Between them, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True have been translated into eighteen languages.

Lamb is also the editor of the nonfiction anthologies Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters (HarperCollins/ReganBooks, 2003) and I’ll Fly Away (HarperCollins, 2007), collections of autobiographical essays which evolved from a writing workshop Lamb facilitates at Connecticut’s York Correctional Institute, a maximum-security prison for women. He has served as a Connecticut Department of Corrections volunteer from 1999 to the present.

Wally Lamb is a Connecticut native who holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in teaching from the University of Connecticut and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College. Lamb was in the ninth year of his twenty-five-year career as a high school English teacher at his alma mater, the Norwich Free Academy, when he began to write fiction in 1981. He has also taught writing at the University of Connecticut, where he directed the English Department’s creative writing program.

Wally and Christine Lamb are the parents of three sons, Jared, Justin, and Teddy.

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (October 14, 2010)

Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, beloved artist and author Maira Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., on inauguration day, launching a national tour that would take her from a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vermont, to the inner chambers of the Supreme Court. AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (The Penguin Press; October 18, 2010) is the result of this wholly idiosyncratic journey, a yearlong investigation of democracy and how it works.

With the delightful Kalman as our travel companion, we fall in love with Lincoln as she imagines making a home for herself in the center of his magisterial memorial; ponder Alexis de Toqueville’s America, witness the inner workings of a Bronx middle-school student council; take a high-speed lesson in great American women in the National Portrait Gallery; and consider the cost of war to the brave American service families of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Democracy, Kalman discovers, is at work all around us.

Equal parts informative and charming, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is a remarkable tribute to our history and a powerful reminder of the potential our future holds, from a true national treasure.

About Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman is an illustrator, author, and designer. She is the author of The Principles of Uncertainty and she illustrated the bestselling edition of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Ms. Kalman’s twelve children’s books include Max Makes a Million, Stay Up Late, Swami on Rye, and What Pete Ate. She also has designed fabric for Isaac Mizrahi, accessories for Kate Spade, sets for the Mark Morris Dance Company, and, with her late husband Tibor Kalman under the M&Co. label, clocks, umbrellas, and other accessories for the Museum of Modern Art. Ms. Kalman’s work is shown at the Julie Saul Gallery in Manhattan.

Find out more about Ms. Kalman’s work at her website, and be sure to check out her blog in the New York Times.

About The Financial Lives of the Poets

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 7, 2010)

The Financial Lives of the Poets is a comic and heartfelt novel from National Book Award nominee Jess Walter, author of Citizen Vince and The Zero, about how we get to the edge of ruin—and how we begin to make our way back. Walter tells the story of Matt Prior, who’s losing his job, his wife, his house, and his mind—until, all of a sudden, he discovers a way that he might just possibly be able to save it all . . . and have a pretty damn great time doing it.

“The ultimate something-for-everyone-don’t-skip-must-read” (Sara Nelson, The Daily Beast)

“Walter is one of my favorite young American writers. . . . [Financial Lives] made me laugh more than any other book published this year.”- Nick Hornby, Parade

“Darkly funny, surprisingly tender . . . witheringly dead-on.”- Los Angeles Times

“Jess Walter is a brilliant writer, one of the freshest new voices in American literature.”- Dallas Morning News

About Jess Walter

Jess Walter is the author of five novels, including The Zero, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award, and Citizen Vince, winner of the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel. He has been a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and the PEN USA Literary Prize in both fiction and nonfiction. His books have been New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR best books of the year and have been translated into twenty languages. He lives in Spokane, Washington. Vist Jess Walter at his website, www.jesswalter.com.

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 17, 2010)

A finalist for the Governor General’s Awards, Vanishing and Other Stories is the stunning debut short story collection from Deborah Willis. Evocative and passionately written, Vanishing brilliantly explores emotional and physical absences; the ways in which people leave and are left; and whether it’s ever possible to move on.

A French teacher who collects fiancés; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages.

In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remarkable economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.

About Deborah

Deborah Willis’s work has appeared in the Bridport Prize Anthology, Event, and Grain, and she was a winner of PRISM International‘s annual fiction prize. Short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Vanishing and Other Stories is her first book of fiction.

Visit Deborah at her website.

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Avon A (September 28, 2010)

In 1797, when aspiring novelist Jane Austen becomes one of the Damned, the beautiful, fashionable, sexy vampires of Georgian England, her family insists she takes the waters at Bath, the only known cure. But the city becomes a blood bath when the French invade and the Damned are the only ones who can overthrow the French and save England. Jane now regards her creation as a vampire as a gift. She rejects the cure and discovers a world of freedom, love, and adventure as a vampire. But as an immortal, she loses her ability to write and must sever ties with her beloved sister Cassandra and the rest of her family. Under the shadow of the guillotine, Jane will have to decide whether eternal life and love are too high a price to pay for the loss of what means most to her as a mortal.

About Janet Mullany

Janet Mullany was reared in England on a diet of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, and now lives near Washington, D.C. She has worked as an archaeologist, waitress, draftsperson, radio announcer, performing arts administrator, proofreader, and bookseller.

Connect with Janet:

• On her website
• On Twitter: @Janet_Mullany
• On Facebook

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Avon A (October 5, 2010)

A gifted artist, Cate has come to London from New York to escape her recent past. Working for her aunt’s auction house, she is sent down to Devon to value the contents of Endsleigh House, the once gracious but now crumbling estate of a former socialite. There, hidden in the back of a dusty bookshelf, Cate discovers an old shoebox. Inside is a strange assortment of objects: an exquisite pair of dancing shoes circa 1930; a diamond brooch; a photograph of a young sailor; a dance card; and a pearl and emerald Tiffanys bracelet.

Intrigued by her find, Cate sets out to solve the mystery of the box, becoming immersed in the story of its owner, Baby Blythe. Bright, beautiful, and reckless, Baby was the most famous debutante of her generation . . . and the most dangerous. As the clues begin to reveal a shocking tale of destructive, addictive love, Cate finds herself being drawn deeper into Baby’s tragic life story—a story that will force Cate to face some dark truths about her own.

About Kathleen

Born in Pittsburgh, Kathleen Tessaro emigrated to London where she worked as an actress in films, television, and theater, while training to be a drama teacher and voice coach. She is the author of the novels Elegance, Innocence, and The Flirt. Kathleen currently lives in Pennsylvania.

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (August 17, 2010)

Her mother, Gloria, was a brainy knockout whose fierce wit could shock an audience into hilarity or silence. Her father was James Jones, the award-winning author of From Here to Eternity and other acclaimed novels of World War II . Kaylie Jones grew up amid such family friends as William Styron, Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, and Willie Morris, and socialized with the likes of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Kurt Vonnegut. When her father died from heart failure complicated by years of drinking, sixteen-year-old Kaylie was broken and lost, which in turn left her powerless to withstand her mother’s withering barbs and shattering criticism, or to halt Gloria’s further descent into the bottle—or that of her own.

Lies My Mother Never Told Me is a beautifully written tale of personal evolution, family secrets, second chances, and one determined woman’s journey to find her own voice.

About Kaylie

Kaylie Jones is the author of five novels: A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Speak Now, Celeste Ascending, As Soon As It Rains, and Quite The Other Way. Her novels have been translated into many languages, including French, German, Polish, Turkish, and Japanese.

Jones chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. During the past 15 years, 12 of the winners have been published to impressive critical acclaim.

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, based on Jones’s experiences growing up as the daughter of celebrated novelist James Jones (From Here To Eternity, The Thin Red Line, Whistle), was made into a Merchant-Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson, Leelee Sobieski, Jesse Bradford, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Barbara Hershey, and Isaac de Bankole.

Jones is a graduate of Wesleyan University. She received her MFA from Columbia University and studied Russian at The Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the Pushkin Institute for Russian Studies in Moscow.

Jones currently teaches in the MFA Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton and at the Wilkes University MFA program in professional writing.

Born and raised in Paris, Jones lives in New York with her husband, daughter, and two mixed-breed mutts, Layla and Natalie.

Learn more about Kaylie at her website, www.kayliejones.com.

Connect with Kaylie:

• On Twitter: @kayliejones
• On Facebook

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 24, 2010)

Spring 1937. Ukrainian immigrant Theo Mykolayenko returns to his wife, Maria, and their five children after nearly a year spent in prison—two hundred and seventy five days and nights, each a scratch on his cell wall—for the crime of stealing grain. Scrapping to make ends meet during Theo’s absence, the Mykolayenkos had been living under the care of Theo’s sister, Anna, on the harsh and unforgiving Canadian prairies. Now, home at last, Theo has determined to make a better life for them all. Channeling the willpower that enabled him to survive drought, starvation, warfare, and Stalin’s crimes in the Ukraine, he takes to the land with great resolve.

As the crops grow, so do the strength of his children and Theo’s fierce pride. But family peace is quickly disrupted by the return of Anna’s rogue husband, Stefan. Tensions between the two men heighten as Stefan increasingly treats Theo like a hired hand and demands a cut from the sales of the crops. Soon, the family is splintered—with brother pitted against sister, son against mother, and in a disturbing twist, a new mother against her newborn.

Building to an unforgettable climax, this is the story of an immigrant family trying to find their way in a new world, where small and innocent acts have enormous and catastrophic consequences. It is a harrowing tale of fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sisters, and brothers whose desperate hands till the earth, while equally desperate minds plot much darker deeds. Everything that the Mykolayenkos have hoped for, dreamed of, worked for beyond exhaustion is now at stake—their loved ones, and their lives. Rich in emotion and suspense, this sublimely crafted first novel hails the arrival of a superbly talented literary voice.

About Shandi Mitchell

Shandi Mitchell is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter. Her short films have screened at numerous international festivals, and she is a recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts endowment. Mitchell spent her childhood on a military base on the prairies and now makes her home in Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada, with her husband, Alan, and their dog, Annie. Under This Unbroken Sky is her first novel. 

Visit Shandi at her website, www.shandimitchell.com.