In her holiday blog post,
Carolyn McBride shares some family history and a cookbook that inspired her to finish writing her holiday novella,
SANTA OVERBOARD, which was published this fall. When Carolyn’s mother passed away in 2019, she became the keeper of the family heirlooms and channeled this transition from daughter to family matriarch into her coming-of-
middle-age novel, THE CICADA SPRING. Not surprisingly, some of the treasures she found in her mother’s house guided her in developing her latest tale of a female boat captain restoring her inner compass on a rollicking cruise of second chances.
Carolyn McBride grew up exploring the Potomac River on her dad's Boston Whaler. Her Potomac Shores series is immersed in the places she lives and loves, from South Florida's Intracoastal Waterway to Virginia’s Occoquan River. Like Carolyn, her characters are grandmothers, mothers, wives, daughters, friends, pet lovers and boat captains. Carolyn is a former editor and columnist for National Geographic Traveler and professional copywriter. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, she is completing an MFA in fiction writing.
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We kick off this year’s Holiday Author Blog series with
Amanda Peters, whose nationally bestselling debut novel,
THE BERRY PICKERS, is now available in paperback. This
Bookreporter.com Bets On pick won the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. Her first collection of short stories,
WAITING FOR THE LONG NIGHT MOON, releases on February 11th. Amanda’s grandfather passed away when she was just a teenager. One Christmas, her grandmother gifted her one of many books that he would read aloud to his family. Amanda has long cherished that book for a very special reason.
Links to https://tbrnetwork.com/podcasts/bookreporter-talks-to/bookaccino-live-book-group-with-ariel-lawhon/.
Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection, while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife. Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?
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