Home For Christmas - Pub Week Giveaway

In a charming Maine seaside town, a single mother longs to create a memorable Christmas for her two daughters—and receives a chance to make her own wishes come true . . .
 
At first glance, Nell King’s cozy home in Yorktide seems a step down from the impeccably decorated Boston house she shared with her husband. But in the six years since he abruptly left to marry another woman, Nell and her almost-grown daughters have found real happiness here. Now, faced with what may be their last Christmas together, Nell feels anxious. She gave up her own ambitions when she married. With the daily obligations of motherhood coming to an end, what role is left for her to fill?
 
Twenty-one-year-old Molly worries about sacrificing her independence the way her mother did. Should she stay in Maine with her dependable boyfriend, or move to the city and prove herself? Felicity, meanwhile, is torn between loyalty to Nell and wanting to spend time with her glamorous stepmother. Nell is eager to make this holiday picture-perfect. But there’s a complication—and an opportunity . . .
 
Nell’s first love, now a successful novelist, is in town for a book signing. As the two rekindle their friendship, Nell confronts the choices she once made in the name of stability. And as the days unfold with revelations and unexpected gifts, this Christmas promises to herald a bright new beginning.

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About the author:

Holly Chamberlin was born and raised in New York City. After earning a Master’s degree in English Literature from New York University and working as an editor in the publishing industry for ten years, she moved to Boston, married and became a freelance editor and writer. She and her husband now live in downtown Portland, Maine, in a restored mid-nineteenth-century brick townhouse with Betty, the most athletic, beautiful and intelligent cat in the world.

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Home for Christmas by Holly Chamberlain

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The Beautiful Ones - Release Day Giveaway

In a world of etiquette and polite masks, no one is who they seem to be.

Antonina Beaulieu is in the glittering city of Loisail for her first Grand Season, where she will attend balls and mingle among high society. Under the tutelage of the beautiful but cold Valerie Beaulieu she hopes to find a suitable husband. However, the haphazard manifestations of Nina’s telekinetic powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.

Yet dazzling telekinetic performer and outsider Hector Auvray sees Nina’s powers as a gift, and he teaches her how to hone and control them. As they spend more and more time together, Nina falls in love and believes she’s found the great romance that she’s always dreamt of. But Hector’s courtship of Nina is deceptive.

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About the author:

SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Signal to Noise and Certain Dark Things and the short story collection This Strange Way of Dying, which was a finalist for the Sunburst Award in Canada. She was a finalist for the Manchester Fiction Prize and a recipient of the Gloria Vanderbilt/Exile Award for Best Emerging Writer. She lives in Canada.

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Christmas in London - release day review & giveaway

Review by Deb Czajkowski

Since she was a young girl baking in the kitchen with her mother, Louisa has wanted to own her own restaurant that specializes in delicate pastries and unusual desserts. Beyond experience, that requires a commercial-sized sink full of cash.  Thus, twelve hour shifts at a bakery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side are the norm for Louisa, especially the week before Christmas. Louisa is just finishing up the trays of treats for the morning’s Christmas special (cinnamon rolls) when Noah dashes in for a shelf full of ─pause─ cinnamons rolls.

Noah is working his way through law school as a cooking show assistant.  Making problems ─poof!─ disappear is what he’s paid to do.  That includes dashing out in the rain when the show burns the cinnamon rolls they were supposed to film that day.  Or finding a substitute host ─“Please, Louisa! Pleeeease be our host!”─ for their annual Christmas Eve Dinner TV special at Claridge’s in London when the cooking show host has an allergic reaction to the secret ingredient (nutmeg) that was in Louisa’s prize-winning cinnamon rolls.

Of course Louisa must do it! After all, this predicament is (sort of) her fault.  And think of the publicity! So Louisa is off to London.  But will this trip prove delicious or disastrous?

The show’s producer, Kate, a graduate of St. Andrew’s in Scotland, is no stranger to London’s corner of the world. And it’s a small world after all when, on her first night in London, she runs into her college best friend, Trevor, while she’s dining at Claridge’s.

Both Kate and Trevor are currently unattached, and their secret attraction for one another still hovers under the surface. But their college years were fraught with misunderstandings and youthful heartaches. More than one heart was broken at graduation.  Although it’s now ten years later, the obstacles Kate and Trevor experienced in college are still there, and they appear to be just as insurmountable today as they were ten years ago. Even the sugar plum fairies see the dilemmas disturbing their dreams. Isn’t that indication enough to let the past be the past?

Anita Hughes’ novel, Christmas in London, is set in a magnificent city in which to be during the Christmas season. Hughes’ lovely descriptions of London sparkle with Christmas traditions and holiday cheer so magical that I both felt like I was there at Christmas but also dreamt of experiencing it all live and in person. Buckingham Palace, The Nutcracker at Covent Garden, the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, Harrods, just a few ‘musts’ to whet your site-seeing appetite and get you dreaming.  And that’s not even talking food!  Ah, the sweet treats the author describes will have your mouth watering and your fingers googling recipes.

Are you thinking, “Is Christmas in London a travel book?”  No, that’s just a bonus. Anita Hughes’ novel focuses on one week in the lives of two young women, Louisa and Kate. It’s a week filled with fun, fabulous food, and fairy tales. It’s a week marked with mistakes, mishaps, and misunderstandings. We glimpse visions of the future and visit haunts of the past. It’s a week that changes lives.

Should you wait for the holidays for Christmas in London. No need! Pour yourself a relaxing cup of hot tea, help yourself to a flaky, raspberry scone, and enjoy.  It is, after all, tea time somewhere!

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About the author:

Anita Hughes was born in Sydney, Australia and had a charmed childhood that included petting koala bears, riding the waves on Bondi Beach, and putting an occasional shrimp on the barbie. Her writing career began at the age of eight, when she won a national writing contest in THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper, and was named "One of Australia's Next Best Writers." (She still has the newspaper clipping.)

She received a B.A. in English Literature with a minor in Creative Writing from Bard College, and attended UC Berkeley's Masters in Creative Writing program.

She lives in Dana Point, CA with her family, where she interrupts her writing to watch the glorious sunsets.

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Winter Solstice - pub week giveaway

Raise one last glass with the Quinn Family at the Winter Street Inn. 

It's been too long since the entire Quinn family has been able to celebrate the holidays under the same roof, but that's about to change. With Bart back safe and sound from Afghanistan, the Quinns are preparing for a holiday more joyous than any they've experienced in years. And Bart's safe return isn't the family's only good news: Kevin is enjoying married life with Isabelle; Patrick is getting back on his feet after paying his debt to society; Ava thinks she's finally found the love of her life; and Kelly is thrilled to see his family reunited at last. But it just wouldn't be a Quinn family gathering if things went smoothly. A celebration of everything we love--and some of the things we endure--about the holidays, WINTER SOLSTICE is Elin Hilderbrand at her festive best. 

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About the author:

Elin Hilderbrand has a twin brother who is not a bestselling novelist. She does her best writing on the beaches of Nantucket, as well as on the charming streets of Beacon Hill in Boston. She has three magical children who beg her not to sing along to the radio or dance in public.

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Virtually Perfect - Pub Day Review & Giveaway

Review by Deb Czajkowski

People are saying Lizzie Glass is washed up, a ‘has been’, not marketable anymore, and Lizzie can’t very well disagree with them.  It’s been five years since she had her successful television show and her cookbook deal.  Today she’s no longer a celebrity, no longer in demand.  Invitations to parties and events stopped arriving ages (and ages!) ago.  And now her magazine column is being canceled.

Unemployed and seriously in need of income ─and some distance between her and New York would be a breath of fresh air as well─ Lizzie accepts the only paying job on her proverbial (kitchen) table: personal chef for wealthy Jim and Kathryn Silvester at their beach house ─correction: beach mansion!─ on the Jersey Shore.

Creative challenges are Lizzie’s specialty, thank goodness, because the Silvesters have very specific requirements. Jim loves meat but shouldn’t have it.  He’s only at the beach house on weekends, so that’s a help, but every weekend the Silvesters seem to throw a theme party.  Kathryn “I only eat paleo” seems to live for her parties, keeping everyone’s glass (especially hers) full. Son Nate supposedly only eats pizza and not the paleo kind! Daughter Zoe has her one gluten free cupboards that apparently have invisible do-not-touch signs on them.  But that’s not her only obsession. Zoe also has a website she calls The Clean Life, but the entire site smells more than a little fishy.

Lizzie soon discovers that challenge ─the verb─ may be the key word for this summer. Look out Lizzie!  Look out Silvesters!  The gauntlet(s) will be thrown down!

Virtually Perfect is a smorgasbord for reader. The life of the rich (if not famous). Great food menus for foodies (I do love good food!). Family drama (always good fodder for laughs). Intrigue (Who doesn’t love a mystery?). And romance (duh!). Author Paige Robert’s novel has it all.

No matter the month, reading a good book is always in season.  But as the temps drop and the leaves begin to fall, this is a great time to read Virtually Perfect. Just maybe it’ll remind you of the fun times you had this summer; help you laugh over family mishaps; encourage you to seek out fall flavors for fabulous foods; show you that life is messy ─everyone’s life─ at one time or another; make you smile as only love can do.

Fun and funny. Tasty and tempting. Drama and dilemma. Life and love.  Virtually Perfect.

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About the author:

Paige Roberts is a writer, journalist and author of the forthcoming novel, VIRTUALLY PERFECT. A graduate of Yale University and Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, she lives outside Philadelphia with her family and an ever-expanding collection of cookbooks.

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The Confectioner's Tale - Pub Day Giveaway

A sensual tale, set in Paris, of love against all odds, family secrets, and the art of confectionery.

At the famous Patisserie Clermont, a chance encounter with the owner's daughter has given one young man a glimpse into a life he never knew existed: of sweet cream and melted chocolate, golden caramel and powdered sugar, of pastry light as air. But it is not just the art of confectionery that holds him captive, and soon a forbidden love affair begins.

Almost eighty years later, an academic discovers a hidden photograph of her grandfather as a young man with two people she has never seen before. Scrawled on the back of the picture are the words “Forgive me.” Unable to resist the mystery behind it, she begins to unravel the story of two star-crossed lovers and one irrevocable betrayal.

A literary mystery and love story, The Confectioner’s Tale is as pleasurable as the finest French patisserie.

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About the author:

After a childhood spent acting professionally and training at a theatre school, LAURA MADELEINE changed her mind and went to study English Literature at Newnham College, Cambridge. The author of The Confectioner's Tale, she now writes fiction, as well as recipes, and was formerly the resident cake baker for Domestic Sluttery. She lives in Bristol, but can often be found visiting her family in Devon, eating cheese, and getting up to mischief with her sister, fantasy author Lucy Hounsom. She lives in the UK.

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P.S From Paris - promo & giveaway

On the big screen, Mia plays a woman in love. But in real life, she’s an actress in need of a break from her real-life philandering husband—the megastar who plays her romantic interest in the movies. So she heads across the English Channel to hide in Paris behind a new haircut, fake eyeglasses, and a waitressing job at her best friend’s restaurant.

Paul is an American author hoping to recapture the fame of his first novel. When his best friend surreptitiously sets him up with Mia through a dating website, Paul and Mia’s relationship status is “complicated.”

Even though everything about Paris seems to be nudging them together, the two lonely ex-pats resist, concocting increasingly far-fetched strategies to stay “just friends.” A feat easier said than done, as fate has other plans in store. Is true love waiting for them in a postscript?

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About the author:

Marc Levy was born in France. When he turned eighteen, he joined the Red Cross, where he spent the next six years. In 1983, he created a computer graphics company based in France and the United States. Six years later, he co-founded an interior design and planning company with two friends; the company soon became one of the leading architecture firms in France.

At thirty-seven, Marc Levy wrote a story for the man that his son would grow up to be. In early 1999, his sister, a screenwriter (now a film director), encouraged him to send the manuscript to a French publisher, who immediately decided to publish If Only It Were True. Before it was published, Steven Spielberg (Dreamworks) acquired film rights to the novel. The movie, Just like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, was a #1 box office hit in America in 2005.

After If Only It Were True, Marc Levy began writing full-time. Since then, he has written 18 novels. His work has been translated into 49 languages and has sold over 40 million copies worldwide. 

Marc Levy currently lives in New York City.

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