The 12th Annual Harrisburg Book Festival will be held from October 9-13. The event is free and open to the public. Please check out the featured author and children events. Here is the link https://www.hbgbookfest.com/
Everyone get ready, the book festival at Morristown, NJ will be from October 18 & 19. I attended twice a few years ago and got to meet some awesome authors. The town uses churches and other locations in town to hold different authors each hour. They have adult and children authors discussing books and signing. Below are photos of when I attended the festival.
Here is the link to see the upcoming authors https://morristownbooks.org/2024-authors/
I got to meet @whoopigoldberg at @bookendsnj. I waited a long time to meet Whoopi. I remember when I was in middle school, I needed to write a biography essay. My love for Whoppi and her films led me to choose her life story. It was an epic moment to meet Whoopi and bond talking about fashion. Being able to bring someone a smile with an outfit is a feeling you will always take with you. Thanks, Whoppi, for being super cool!! #whoopigoldberg #bookevent #bookish #booktour #booklover #bookendsnj
I will be posting reviews from her two books soon.
She was loving my ladybug outfit theme. We both love two of the same shoe brands, Irregular Choice and Hot Chocolate Design.
Meet & Greet
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING YOUNG ADULT AUTHOR
KAREN M. McMANUS
TUESDAY, JULY 30TH 6:00PM
Link to purchase ticket: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/one-of-us-is-lying-author-karen-m-mcmanus-book-signing-tues-730-6pm-tickets-915371028387
Goodreads Blurb
The newest mystery from the author One of Us Is Lying, the Queen of thrillers, Karen M. McManus! When mother-daughter grifters set out on their final job, the heist gets deadly and dangerously personal.
For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie—except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since.
Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job—at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn’t know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The last two people she wants to run into. Liam and his father—a serial scammer who has his sights set on Ross Sutherland’s youngest daughter.
Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might actually be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can’t trust anyone—except each other.
Or can they? Because if there’s one thing both Kat and Liam know, it’s how to lie. They learned from the best.
It was a wonderful night meeting, Riley Sager. Had to wear some green to match the book cover.
It was wonderful that I got to meet the two sisters, Liv Constantine, while they are touring for their newly released book, The Next Mrs. Parrish. I’m currently reading The Last Mrs. Parrish, my review will be coming soon.
Goodreads Blurb
Amber Patterson is fed up. She’s tired of being a nobody: a plain, invisible woman who blends into the background. She deserves more—a life of money and power like the one blond-haired, blue-eyed goddess Daphne Parrish takes for granted.
To everyone in the exclusive town of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut, Daphne—a socialite and philanthropist—and her real-estate mogul husband, Jackson, are a couple straight out of a fairy tale.
Amber’s envy could eat her alive . . . if she didn’t have a plan. Amber uses Daphne’s compassion and caring to insinuate herself into the family’s life—the first step in a meticulous scheme to undermine her. Before long, Amber is Daphne’s closest confidante, traveling to Europe with the Parrishes and their lovely young daughters, and growing closer to Jackson. But a skeleton from her past may undermine everything that Amber has worked towards, and if it is discovered, her well-laid plan may fall to pieces.
With shocking turns and dark secrets that will keep you guessing until the very end, The Last Mrs. Parrish is a fresh, juicy, and utterly addictive thriller from a diabolically imaginative talent.
Goodreads Blurb
Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way from being an invisible wallflower. Her hard work and immaculate planning have paid off now that she’s a prominent socialite, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been bumps along the way. Less than a year since her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber is still at the top of the Bishops Harbor community pecking order, free to do as she wishes while Jackson sits in prison. But that freedom is quickly coming to an end. With Jackson getting released from prison, Amber’s time—and money—is vanishing.
Meanwhile, Daphne Parrish left Bishops Harbor after her divorce from Jackson Parrish, swearing she would never go back. But when one of her daughters runs away from home, desperate to see her father, Daphne agrees to return for the summer to allow him supervised visits. Once out of prison, Jackson swears he’s a changed man, but Daphne knows all too well that he can’t be trusted.
When a ghost from Amber’s past emerges looking for revenge, the three of them find unlikely allies in one another, but who is playing who? When all is said and done, they’ll have to fight tooth and nail for everything they have left in this zero-sum game.
With shocking turns and entertaining characters, The Next Mrs. Parrish will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about duplicity and betrayal.
Author Biography
Liv Constantine is the pen name of sisters Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine. Lynne and Valerie are national and international bestselling authors with over one and a half million copies sold worldwide. Their books have been translated into 29 languages, are available in 34 countries, and are in development for both television and film. Their books have been praised by The Washington Post, USA Today, The Sunday Times, People Magazine, and Good Morning America, among many others. Their debut novel, THE LAST MRS. PARRISH, is a Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection. Visit Liv at http://www.livconstantine.com
Mary Beth is a local author. The event took place at the Suffern Free Library, which is absolutely beautiful. It was great learning more about her career and how she came up with the different book ideas.
Goodreads Blurb
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne—sets the stage for explosive events to come.
Ask Again, Yes is a moving novel about two families, the bond between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.
Author Biography
Mary Beth Keane attended Barnard College and the University of Virginia, where she received an MFA. She was awarded a John S. Guggenheim fellowship for fiction writing, and has received citations from the National Book Foundation, PEN America, and the Hemingway Society. She is the author of The Walking People, Fever, and Ask Again, Yes, which was a New York Times Best Seller and was translated into twenty-two languages.
On June 27th at 7 pm, Riley Sager will be talking about his upcoming book Middle of the Night at the Barnes and Noble in Princeton, NJ.
Goodreads Blurb
The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.
Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.
The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
Upcoming event hosted by @newburghhistoricalsociety. Author @alexhortis5 will be discussing his new book, The Witch of New York. Below, you will find more information on this upcoming Sundays event. I will also share a post on my blog. You can find the link in my bio. #bookevent #booksigning #thewitchofnewyork #alexhortis #booklover
#booknerd #nybookevents
Come to this FREE presentation on the 1846 Newburgh trial of Polly Bodine–the “Witch of New York”–for the murders of her sister-in-law and niece. America’s attention was focused on Newburgh for this sensational trial, including Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. This event is being held inside the historic old courthouse where the original trial took place in April 1846. See you there at 3:00 pm, Sunday, April 21, 2024!
Goodreads Blurb
Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony—before even Lizzie Borden—there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in our nation’s debut media circus.
On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emeline Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned to death a mother and child in their home—and then covered up the crime with hellfire.
When an ambitious district attorney charges Polly Bodine (Emelin’s sister-in-law) with a double homicide, the new “penny press” explodes. Polly is a perfect media villain: she’s a separated wife who drinks gin, commits adultery, and has had multiple abortions. Between June 1844 and April 1846, the nation was enthralled by her three trials—in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Newburgh—for the “Christmas murders.”
After Polly’s legal dream team entered the fray, the press and the public debated not only her guilt, but her character and fate as a fallen woman in society. Public opinion split into different camps over her case. Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman covered her case as young newsmen. P. T. Barnum made a circus out of it. James Fenimore Cooper’s last novel was inspired by her trials.
The Witch of New York is the first narrative history about the dueling trial lawyers, ruthless newsmen, and shameless hucksters who turned the Polly Bodine case into America’s formative tabloid trial. An origin story of how America became addicted to sensationalized reporting of criminal trials, The Witch of New York vividly reconstructs an epic mystery from Old New York—and uses the Bodine case to challenge our system of tabloid justice of today.
Author Biography from his website
Alex Hortis is a constitutional lawyer and historian of crime. He has appeared on
national television as an on-screen personality for AMC’s The Making of the Mob
(2015), Hortis has been interviewed on NPR stations across the country and for true
crime podcasts. He has also been a featured speaker at the New York Public Library, the
Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
Hortis’s first book, The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the
Mafia Captured New York (Prometheus, 2014), was praised by Jerry Capeci, the dean
of mob reporters, who wrote: “If there’s a better book on the early history of
Cosa Nostra in America, I haven’t seen it.”
Malcolm Gladwell quoted Hortis’s book in “The Crooked Ladder:
The criminal’s guide to upward mobility” New Yorker, Aug. 3, 2014. The New York
Post also featured Hortis’s groundbreaking work on the Mafia’s control of gay bars, in
“How NYC’s gay bars thrived because of the mob,” New York Post, May 3, 2014.
Hortis is a former federal law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit. He is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where he was a
member of the Law Review. His writings have appeared in New York University Law
Review, New York Law School Review, and in book anthologies on crime.
Alex lives with his family in Maryland.
Goodreads Blurb
THE RESERVOIR follows an unexceptional man in an exceptional time. We see our present-day pandemic world and New York City through the eyes of a former Wall Street veteran, Ridley, as he looks back upon his life in his enforced quarantine solitude, wondering what it all means and who he really is.
Sitting and brooding night after night, gazing out his huge picture window high above the Central Park Reservoir, Ridley spots a flashing light in an apartment across the park as if a lonely quarantined person is signaling him in Morse code. His determination to find out who this mystery woman is leads him on an epic quest that will ultimately tempt him with either delusional madness or the fulfillment of his own mythic fate.
Is he a dying man going mad or an everyman metamorphosing into a hero? Or both? We accompany Ridley as he leaves the safety of his apartment window to save the Fifth Avenue femme fatale and descends into a dangerous, increasingly surreal world of global conspiracies, madness, and sickness of this viral time. As Ridley’s actions grow more and more uncharacteristic, he realizes the key to all the mysteries of now, and even all of history, seem to lie deep beneath the freezing waters of the reservoir.
The Reservoir is a twisted rom-com for our distanced time, when the merest touch could kill and conspiracy theories propagate like viruses—a contemporary union of Death in Venice, Rear Window , and The Plague .
My Review: Rated 3 out of 5 stars
COVID-19 caused fear and dread to everyone all over the world. This story hits close to home with Ridley, who lives alone in his home in NYC while the pandemic has caused everyone to stay locked away. This story is about a man who sees lights flicker from an apartment building a few blocks away. He starts obsessing about what this Morse code means and who the person trying to reach him is. He starts leaving his house at night with no face masks, trying to find this woman he believes is trying to get his attention. You start living this obsession with Ridley and do not know if this is real or a dream-like state. David’s storytelling drags you into what Ridley was feeling and going through and makes you believe it’s happening for real, only to find out he was infected and trying to fight for his life. I could feel the fear and dread Ridley experienced in the last moments on this earth.
There was a short story at the end of the book called The Scare Owl, which was another interesting story. It was a story about nature, finding acceptance, revenge, raising an animal not from the same bird breed, and trying to bring peace to someone who views them as enemies. It was a sad story at the end, but I feel that the owl thought he did the right thing and went head-on into the danger that awaited.
Author Biography
Born and raised in New York City David Duchovny earned an A.B. in English literature from Princeton University, and an ABD in English literature from Yale University. He was on the road to earning his Ph.D. when his interest in playwriting led him to acting. Subsequently, he emerged to become one of the most highly acclaimed actors in Hollywood.
Globally known for his roles in the Fox Television’s monster hit The X-Files and Showtime’s Californication, David has made his way into our pop culture lexicon. David Duchovny remains the only actor to have won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television series in both the Comedy and Drama categories.
David Duchovny has published four novels, Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale (2015), a New York Times Bestseller; Bucky F*cking Dent (2016); Miss Subways (2018) and Truly Like Lightning (2021).
Additionally, David Duchovny has completed two studio albums, Hell or Highwater (2015) and Every Third Thought (2018), and his third album is slated for release in summer 2021.
Book Signing Event
This past December, Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ, invited David to sign books for everyone. It was wonderful finally getting to meet the X-Files actor.
FabulousReader4Ever 