Book Club of the Month Contest – August
Here’s one to make your heart race!
Register your book club with TLC Book Tours by August 31st and you could win up to 10 copies of Think of a Number by John Verdon for your book club!
Arriving in the mail one day is a taunting letter that ends with a simple declaration “See how well I know your secrets-just think of a number.” Eerily, those who comply find that the letter writer has predicted their random choice exactly.
For Dave Gurney, just retired as the NYPD’s top homicide investigator and forging a new life with his wife, Madeleine, in upstate New York, the letters are oddities that begin as a diverting puzzle but quickly ignite a massive serial-murder investigation.
Brought in as an investigative “consultant,” Gurney soon accomplishes deductive breakthroughs that have local police in awe. Yet, with each taunting move by his seemingly clairvoyant opponent, Gurney feels his tragedy-marred past rising up to haunt him, his marriage approaching a dangerous precipice, and, finally, a dark, cold fear building that he’s met an adversary who can’t be stopped.
.
.
Some great literary fiction that will prompt discussion.
Register your book club with TLC Book Tours by August 31st and you could win up to 10 copies of Finny by Justin Kramon for your book club!
Before I started writing my novel, I fell in love with some great coming-of-age books: The World According to Garp, Great Expectations, Catcher in the Rye, and several others. For me, these books brought back the excitement of reading. I loved their intricate and suspenseful plots, the slightly-larger-than-life characters, the humor, and the sense of bigness and adventure I got from even the opening sentences. I felt like these classic novels were treasure chests of funny characters and surprising moments and beautiful insights about the world.
And I realized: These are the kinds of books I want to write, books filled with unforgettable characters, books that make me laugh and cry (even at the same time), books that give me an almost childlike sense of wonder.
But one thing I noticed about a lot of these books is that they’re about young men. So I was interested in what it would be like to tell one of these big classic stories about a young woman coming into the contemporary world. And that’s how the idea for FINNY started.
Finny herself is a lonely, defiant young woman, with a wonderful sense of humor, and a great ability to cut through other people’s pretensions. She’s a character I’ve loved from the moment I met her, and I wrote this book that follows her over twenty years because I wanted to find out everything that happened to her. The book is a love story, about Finny’s relationship with a young man named Earl, but I also wanted Finny to live in a rich and detailed world, full of interesting and lively and sometimes mysterious characters, such as a narcoleptic pianist, a seductive New York heiress, and an unlikely mother figure with tastes for exotic Asian fruits and Irish fiddle music.
I hope this book will allow readers to completely immerse themselves in Finny’s world and her adventures, and leave them with the sense of enchantment I’ve found in my favorite books.
.
.
Register your book club with TLC Book Tours by August 31st and you could win up to 10 copies of Hothouse FLower and the Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin for your book club!
HotHouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire is one woman’s journey from the modeling and advertising world of New York City to the rain forests of the Yucatan Peninsula. From the hot and steamy plant dealers in the Union Square Green Market, to the curanderos, herbalists and shamans of Southern Mexico.
Lila Nova is a 32-year-old adverting copywriter who lives alone in a plain white box of an apartment. Recovering from a heartbreaking divorce, Lila has a simple mantra: no pets, no plants, no people, no problems. But when she meets David Exley, a ruggedly handsome plant dealer, a country-sexual, as she calls him, her lonely life turns into something far more colorful. From the harsh streets of Manhattan to the verdant jungles of the Yucatan, Hothouse Flower is the story of a woman who travels beyond sense and comfort to find out what she really wants.
A note from the Author
The story is based on a relationship with my good friend Armand who was kind enough to give me permission to use his name on these pages. Over the years Armand taught me a lot about life and relationships and plants. I’ve taken some of that knowledge and created this novel. I would say that the circumstances of the book are fictional in specifics and very real in the abstract.
Take it for what you will. Read it in whatever way gives you the most pleasure.