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May 2, 2016 - June 1, 2016

Here are audiobook recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for the contest period of May 2 - June 1.

We are very excited to kick off our seventh annual Mother’s Day Author Blog series with Viola Shipman --- award-winning memoirist Wade Rouse, writing under a pen name --- whose debut novel, THE CHARM BRACELET, couldn’t be a more perfect place to start. It’s the story of three women who rediscover the importance of family as an heirloom charm bracelet changes their lives. Here, Viola warmly recounts early memories of reading with her mother and grandmothers, women who inspired not only her love of books, but her first novel as well.

Editorial Content for Father's Day

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FATHER'S DAY is the moving story of an orphaned girl named Harvey and the troubled uncle who raises her --- an unforgettable tale of loss and redemption from the award-winning author of THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS.

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FATHER'S DAY is the moving story of an orphaned girl named Harvey and the troubled uncle who raises her --- an unforgettable tale of loss and redemption from the award-winning author of THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS.

About the Book

The moving story of an orphaned girl named Harvey and the troubled uncle who raises her --- an unforgettable tale of loss and redemption from the author of THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS.

At the age of six, a little girl named Harvey learns that her parents have died in a car accident. As she struggles to understand, a kindly social worker named Wanda introduces her to her only living relative: her uncle Jason, a disabled felon with a violent past and a criminal record. Despite his limitations --- and his resistance --- Wanda follows a hunch and cajoles Jason into becoming her legal guardian, convinced that each may be the other’s last chance.

Moving between past and present, FATHER'S DAY weaves together the story of Harvey’s childhood and her life as a young woman in Paris, as she awaits her uncle’s arrival for a Father’s Day visit. To mark the occasion, Harvey has planned a series of gifts for Jason --- all leading to a revelation she believes will only deepen their bond.

With extraordinary empathy and emotional impact, the award-winning writer Simon Van Booy has crafted a simple yet luminous novel of loss and transcendence, second chances and forgiveness: a breakthrough work from one of our most gifted chroniclers of the human heart.

Editorial Content for Glory Over Everything

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The latest New York Times bestseller from the author of the beloved book club favorite THE KITCHEN HOUSE is a heart-racing story about a man’s treacherous journey through the twists and turns of the Underground Railroad on a mission to save the boy he swore to protect.

Promo

The latest New York Times bestseller from the author of the beloved book club favorite THE KITCHEN HOUSE is a heart-racing story about a man’s treacherous journey through the twists and turns of the Underground Railroad on a mission to save the boy he swore to protect.

About the Book

The latest New York Times bestseller from the author of the beloved book club favorite THE KITCHEN HOUSE is a heart-racing story about a man’s treacherous journey through the twists and turns of the Underground Railroad on a mission to save the boy he swore to protect. GLORY OVER EVERYTHING is “gripping…breathless until the end” (Kirkus Reviews).

The year is 1830, and Jamie Pyke, a celebrated silversmith and notorious ladies’ man, is keeping a deadly secret. Passing as a wealthy white aristocrat in Philadelphian society, Jamie is now living a life he never could have imagined years before when he was a runaway slave, son of a southern black slave and her master. But Jamie’s carefully constructed world is threatened when he discovers that his married socialite lover, Caroline, is pregnant and his beloved servant Pan, to whose father Jamie owes his own freedom, has been captured and sold into slavery in the South.

Fleeing the consequences of his deceptions, Jamie embarks on a trip to a North Carolina plantation to save Pan from the life he himself barely escaped as a boy. With the help of a fearless slave, Sukey, who has taken the terrified young boy under her wing, Jamie navigates their way, racing against time and their ruthless pursuers through the Virginia backwoods, the Underground Railroad, and the treacherous Great Dismal Swamp.

“Kathleen Grissom is a first-rate storyteller…she observes with an unwavering but kind eye, and she bestows upon the reader, amid terrible secrets and sin, a gift of mercy: the belief that hope can triumph over hell” (Richmond Times Dispatch). GLORY OVER EVERYTHING is an emotionally rewarding and epic novel “filled with romance, villains, violence, courage, compassion…and suspense” (Florida Courier).

Editorial Content for Go Set a Watchman

Teaser

Originally written in the mid-1950s, GO SET A WATCHMAN picks up 20 years after the events of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, as Jean Louise Finch --- Scout --- returns home to Maycomb to visit her father and struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.

Promo

Originally written in the mid-1950s, GO SET A WATCHMAN picks up 20 years after the events of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, as Jean Louise Finch --- Scout --- returns home to Maycomb to visit her father and struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.

About the Book

An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

Originally written in the mid-1950s, GO SET A WATCHMAN was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.

GO SET A WATCHMAN features many of the characters from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD some 20 years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch --- Scout --- struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.

Exploring how the characters from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD are adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America, GO SET A WATCHMAN casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee’s enduring classic. Moving, funny and compelling, it stands as a magnificent novel in its own right.

Editorial Content for The Versions of Us

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THE VERSIONS OF US is a tale of possibilities and consequences that rings across the shifting decades, showing how even the smallest choices can define the course of our lives.

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THE VERSIONS OF US is a tale of possibilities and consequences that rings across the shifting decades, showing how even the smallest choices can define the course of our lives.

About the Book

In one moment, two lives will be changed forever...and forever...and forever.

The one thing that’s certain is they met on a Cambridge street by chance and felt a connection that would last a lifetime. But as for what happened next... They fell wildly in love, or went their separate ways. They kissed, or they thought better of it. They married soon after, or were together for a few weeks before splitting up. They grew distracted and disappointed with their daily lives together, or found solace together only after hard years spent apart.

With THE VERSIONS OF US, Laura Barnett has created a world as magical and affecting as those that captivated readers in ONE DAY and LIFE AFTER LIFE. It is a tale of possibilities and consequences that rings across the shifting decades, from the '50s, '60s, '70s and on to the present, showing how even the smallest choices can define the course of our lives.

Morihei Ueshiba

Loyalty and devotion lead to bravery. Bravery leads to the spirit of self-sacrifice. The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love.

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Morihei Ueshiba

Rudyard Kipling

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

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Rudyard Kipling

Desmond Tutu

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

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Desmond Tutu

April 29, 2016

Today I attended and moderated a panel at the Random House Open House, the second in a series of events that I have lined up for the next few months where I get to meet up with readers and professionals in the publishing community. As I love both talking to authors and meeting readers, this day afforded me the perfect combo. It was nice to say hi to the readers I know, and to put faces to the names of some of our readers who I have not met, including one who truly is a doppelganger of Ina Garten!