Bring it, 2024 -- And by "it" I mean BOOKS!

JENN MCKINLAY: It’s that time again, Reds, to tabulate the total of our bookstore gift cards received during the holiday season (woo hoo!) and plan our purchases for 2024! So, what are your most anticipated reads (excluding the Reds because of course we’re on the top of each other’s lists) for the coming year?

I’ll go first:

ONCE UPON A MURDER by Samantha Larsen

I absolutely loved, loved, loved the first in this new series - A NOVEL DISGUISE - An impoverished woman masquerades as a male librarian to an earl to keep the roof over her head, set in 1754. Brilliant!

ONE OF US KNOWS by Alyssa Cole

I really enjoyed WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING and am eager to see what this author does next for a suspense/thriller read.

JUST FOR THE SUMMER by Abby Jimenez

I've read all of Abby's books - she is fantastically funny, poignant, and delightful. I will read anything she writes, even her grocery list.

All right, Reds, your turn! What titles are you most looking forward to? 

HALLIE EPHRON: Top of my list: I’m looking forward to reading a book that slipped by me this year, a memoir by Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. 

It’s Bringley’s first book. In it he tells the story of how, after his younger brother died, grief-stricken and lost, Bringley quit his job in publishing and took a job at the Met as a guard–where  he found the time and space (and the beauty of the works of art) that he needed to grieve and heal.

I love the Met. Spent untold hours there when I was an undergrad and an art history minor at Barnard. I’ve become intimately acquainted with grief in the last two years. I don’t know how I missed this book when it came out but I’ll be making up for that in January. 

RHYS BOWEN:  with various health concerns looming over us, including a new knee for me sometime soon I need good suggestions for comfort reads!

But I am looking forward to Jackie Winspear’s last Maisie Dobbs novel. That will be bitter-sweet reading as I’ve enjoyed Maisie’s journey.

LUCY BURDETTE: Rhys, have you tried the Lane Winslow series set in western Canada? I just finished the first, A KILLER IN KING’S COVE. After a slow start, I loved the book.

I’m also hoping Santa brings me Richard Osman’s THE LAST DEVIL TO DIE, and François-Régis Gaudry’s LET’S EAT PARIS. And I’m finally going to read ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, which is already waiting on my nightstand.

JENN: I loved ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE but haven't watched the Netflix version - afraid they'll ruin it. Anyone see it?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm looking forward to Deborah Harkness's THE BLACKBIRD ORACLE, the long-awaited fifth book in her All Soul's series, but that's not out until July. A little sooner is Natalie Jenner's, EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE, out in May. And I am hoping there will be a new Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London novel in 2024, although I haven't seen anything about a release yet. 

In the meantime, maybe I will get to the copy of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE on MY nightstand!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I am about to devour my idol Lisa Scottoline’s THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEVLINS, which I know will be fabulous. Oh, what else–Soon I’m going to interview Elizabeth Gonzalez James about her new THE BULLET SWALLOWER, which is billed as a magical realism Western. What?  Yup. It is fabulous so far!   SWIFT RIVER by Essie Chambers, so looking forward to it. And the wonderful Mary Kubica’s new SHE’S NOT SORRY. One more? Michael Koryta, one of my favorite authors ever, has a new novel which he’s written as Scott Carson called LOST MAN’S LANE. Cannot wait! 

(Don't you love how our choices are different?)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, I didn’t know about the Michael Koryta book - he’s one of my faves, so thank you or the heads up!

As one of our resident SF fans, top of my list is THE MERCY OF GODS by James S.A. Corey, the pen name for the writing duo that brought us the brilliant Expanse series. Humans become the captive and unwilling helpers of their alien conquerors as the latter attempts to dominate the galaxy. No one does realistic political space opera like these guys, so I’m already pre-ordered, and the book doesn’t come out until August.

And my most anticipated “haven’t read it yet but will in 2024” is YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang. I think Jenn has read this? It’s gotten major attention since it came out at the beginning of last summer, but of course, I’m always reading a year behind or a year ahead…

JENN: Yes, I did read Yellowface. Let me just say, it is a wild ride. There is some very cutting observations made about publishing that I enjoyed tremendously.

All right, Readers, your turn. What are you most eager to read in 2024?

What We're Writing: To Be Read by Jenn McKinlay

 Jenn McKinlay: Having just returned from Ireland, I am in the process of turning that adventure into my next romcom TO BE READ (2024). 

Woo hoo! Because I do love my research, I have entirely too much information and the book appears to be heading in the direction of being 100 pages too long. Oops. Sorry not sorry.

I mean I have to work ALL of this in, don't I?

Sheep in Kerry

Lady's View 

Ring of Kerry

Ballyseede Castle

Graveyard near Tralee

Cliffs of Moher

Kenmare

I do, I totally do!!! LOL.

TO BE READ: Emily Allen, a librarian on Martha's Vineyard, has always dreamed of a life of travel and adventure. Feeling trapped, she writes a letter to the Irish author Siobhan Riordan, who saved her life. By which, Emily means that Siobhan's books got her through some of the darkest days of her existence. 

Emily is shocked when Siobhan offers her a job as an author assistant/bookshop clerk in the Last Chapter, Siobhan's bookshop in Finn's Hollow, Ireland. Of course, Emily goes, but she doesn't reckon on the bookshop manager, Siobhan's son Kieran Murphy, being unhappy about her arrival. 

As Emily helps Siobhan write the final book in her acclaimed series--after a ten year hiatus due to a scorching case of writer's block--Kieran throws every obstacle he can think of in Em's way. When Siobhan's health takes a bad turn, Emily discovers that the novelist is dying, which is why finishing the book is so important to her. It's also why her son wants her to stop. Kieran believes that finishing the book will hasten Siobhan's passing and he can't face that. Emily is torn between helping Siobhan find closure with her series and her growing feelings for the mercurial Irishman, who is slowly staking a claim on her heart. 

Here's the very rough opener for anyone who wants a gander: 

Chapter One

     “Em, are you all right?” Samantha Gale, my very best friend in the entire world, answered her phone on the fourth ring. Her voice was rough with sleep and it belatedly occurred to me that nine o’clock in the morning in Finn’s Hollow, Ireland was four o’clock in the morning in Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard.

     “Oh, I’m sorry. Damn it. I woke you up, didn’t I?” I asked, knowing full well by then that I had and feeling awful about it.

     “No, it’s fine,” Sam said. “I told you when you left that I’m always here for you.” There was a low grumbling in the background and she added, “And Ben says he’s here for you, too.”

     That made me laugh. Sam and Ben had become couple goals for me. Not that I thought I’d ever find anything like the connection they’d made but they kept the pilot light of my innermost hope aflame.

     “Thank you and thank Ben,” I said. “I’m going to hang up now and let you go back to sleep. Forget I ever called.” 

     “Emily Allen, don’t you dare hang up on me,” Sam said. Now she sounded fully awake. Oops.

     “No, really I—” I began but she interrupted me.

     “Tell me why you’re calling, otherwise I’ll worry and no one wants that.” There was more grumbling in the background. Sam laughed and said, “Ben says he’s begging you to tell me so that I don’t drive him crazy with speculation.”

     I grinned. She would, too. Then I grew serious. 

     Glancing around the Last Chapter, the quaint bookstore in which I was presently standing, I noted objectively that it was a booklover’s dream come true. A three story brick building chock full of books of all kinds with a small café at the back of the first floor, where the scent of fresh brewed coffee, berry filled scones, and cinnamon pastry permeated the air. I felt myself lean in that direction as if the delicious aromas were pulling me toward them. 

     One of the store clerks had just unlocked the front door of the shop a few moments ago, and I had drafted in behind a handful of customers who’d been waiting. I’d been agog ever since. 

     This was it. The bookshop where I’d be working for the next year. My heart was pounding and my palms were sweaty. The black wool turtleneck sweater I was wearing, in an attempt to defeat the early November chill, felt as if it were choking me and I was quite sure the pain spearing across my head meant I was having an aneurysm.

     “I’m supposed to meet my boss in a few minutes, and I think I’m having a heart attack or potentially a stroke,” I said.

     There was a beat of silence on the other end of the phone. Then Sam said, “Tell me your symptoms.”

     I listed them all and she noted each one with an “uh-huh” which told me nothing whatsoever as to what she was thinking about my condition. I was three thousand miles away and starting a new job in a bookstore, having put my career as a librarian on Martha’s Vineyard on hold to chase some crazy fantasy where I traveled to a foreign destination and lived a life full of adventure.

      “I think I’m going to throw up,” I groaned. 

     “Take a deep breath,” Sam said. “You know the drill—in for eight seconds, hold for four, out for eight.”

     I sucked in a breath. My head pounded. “I can’t. It makes my head throb. See? Aneurysm.”

     “Or a lack-of-caffeine headache,” she said. “Have you had any coffee yet?’

     Come to think of it, I had not. I’d been too nervous to make any before I left my cottage this morning so the potential for this skull splitter to be from coffee deprivation seemed likely. 

     “No,” I said. “And I see where you’re going, but I still have brutal nausea and I’m sweating. I bet I have a fever. Maybe it’s food poisoning from the airplane food last night. I did have the beef stroganoff.”

     “You ate airplane food?” Sam sounded as incredulous as if I’d confessed I ate ice cream off the bathroom floor. She was a professional chef, so not a big surprise.

    “I know, I know,” I said. “It’s pure preservatives. I’ll likely be dead within the hour.”

     There was a lengthy pause where I imagined Sam was practicing her last words to me, wanting to get them just right.

     “Em, you know I love you like a sister, right?” she asked.

     Hmm. This did not sound like the beginning of a vow of friendship into the afterlife. 

     “I do,” I said. “I also know that’s how you would start a sentence that I’m not going to like.”

     “You’re panicking, Em,” Sam said. Her voice was full of empathy and patience. “And you and I both know that the bout of hypochondria you dealt with last summer was how you coped with your anxiety and your unhappiness.”

     “But I’m not unhappy,” I protested. “I’m living the dream, thousands of miles away from everyone I’ve ever known and loved, in a quaint village in County Kerry where the green is the greenest green I’ve ever seen and there’s an adorable sheep staring at me over the edge of every stone wall. Seriously, I’m drowning in charm, which is probably why I’m about to keel over dead.”

     A sound came from my phone that sounded like someone stepping on a duck. 

     “Are you laughing at me?” I asked. Rude but understandable.

     “No, never,” Sam said. She cleared her throat. “I just think you might be freaking out a little because it’s your first day of work at your new job.”

     “I’m not,” I protested. I was. I absolutely was. “I just think I need to get on the train back to Dublin and hop on the next flight home before they discover I have some highly contagious pox or plague and I’m quarantined to a thatched stone cottage to live out my days in a fairy-infested forest, talking to the trees and hedgehogs while farming for potatoes.”

     “Have you ever considered that you read too much?” Sam asked.

     “No!” I cried and I heard Ben, also a librarian, protest as well.

     Sam laughed. She did like to goad us. 

     “Just think if I leave now, we can meet for coffee and pastries at the Grape tomorrow morning. Doesn’t that sound nice?” I asked.

     “While I’d love to see you, you know that, you have to stay in Ireland and see your journey through,” Sam said. “Besides, if you go home now your mother will guilt you into never leaving again not to mention clobber you with the dreaded ‘I told you so.’”

     “Fair point.” I sighed. “I still think I might pass out and then I’ll likely lose the job and this entire conversation becomes moot.”

     “You’re not going to pass out,” Sam said. “Find a place to sit down. Can you do that?”

     “I think so.” I was standing in the stacks, okay, more accurately hiding in the fiction section. The shelves were dark wood, long and tall and stuffed with books. They comforted me. Scattered randomly amid the shelving units were step stools. I found one and sat down.

     “Are you sitting?” Sam asked.

     “Yes.”

     “Good, now put your head between your knees,” she ordered.

      “Um.” I was wearing a formfitting, gray wool pencil skirt. I tried to maneuver my head down. No luck. The skirt was too snug. The closest I could get was to look over my knees at my black ankle boots. “Sorry, Sam, nothing is getting between these knees not even a hot Irishman.”

     Sam chuckled, but over that I heard a strangled noise behind me and I straightened up and turned around to see a man in jeans and an Aran sweater, holding his fist to his mouth, looking as if he was choking. He had thick, wavy black hair and blue eyes so dark they were almost the same shade as his hair. Also, if I wasn’t mistaken, judging by the picture I’d seen on the Last Chapter’s website he was my new boss Kieran Murphy.

So, how about you, Reds? How much research do you have to cut out of your works in progress? Readers, do you prefer more or less when it comes to descriptions?

What We're Writing: To Be Read by Jenn McKinlay

JENN McKINLAY: Most of you know by now that I tend to set my stories in places that I want to travel to, consequently, my current work in progress TO BE READ is located in Ireland. I am getting the nuts and bolts of it written right now and I'll leave for Ireland in a couple of weeks to do the boots on the ground research that will fill out the pages with more accuracy and flavor. First stop, the Guinness Storehouse. Will it be in the book? No. Do I care? Also, no. Then it's on to visit Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Will that make it to the page? Probably.

Now because it's a women's fiction romcom, the meet cute is the stepping off place in the story. My character Emily Allen has just ditched her career as a librarian on Martha's Vineyard -- yes, she's in the ensemble cast in SUMMER READING (May 2023) -- and has taken the position of an author's assistant/bookstore clerk to her favorite author of all time Siobhan Riordan. 

Siobhan went into seclusion after her eighth young adult novel, leaving the protagonist of a hugely popular series at a wicked cliff hanger. Siobhan now owns and operates a bookstore with her grown son Kieran Murphy in a small village in southern Ireland. Kieran would like to maintain their quiet life, fearing for his mother's health and well-being if she takes up writing again. But Emily is there to do a job -- help Siobhan finish writing the last novel in the series -- and nothing, not even a hot Irish bookseller, is going to stand in her way.

This book has been so much fun to write. Not only because I get to go to Ireland but because I'm also examining the relationship between the author and the reader and the toll writing a novel takes on an author -- it's not all glitter bombs and cupcakes, people!

So here's the first meeting between Emily, who is a bit of a hypochondriac, and Murphy, who does not want her there.

“You're not dying. I just think you might be freaking out a little because it’s your first day of work at your new job,” Samantha said. It felt so good to hear my best friend's voice, even if I had woken her up in my flagrant disregard of the time change.

“I’m not,” I protested. I was. I absolutely was. “I just think I need to get on the train back to Dublin and hop on the next flight home before they discover I have some highly contagious pox or plague and I’m quarantined to a thatched cottage to live out my days in a fairy-infested forest, talking to the trees and chipmunks while farming for potatoes.” 

“Have you ever considered that you read too much?” Sam asked. 

 “No!” I cried and I heard her partner Ben, also a librarian, protest in the background. Sam laughed. She did like to goad us. “Just think if I leave now, we can meet for coffee and pastries at the Grape tomorrow morning. Doesn’t that sound nice?” I asked. 

“While I’d love to see you, you know that, you have to stay in Ireland and see your journey through,” Sam said. “Besides, if you go home now your mother will guilt you into never leaving Martha's Vineyard again not to mention clobber you with the dreaded ‘I told you so.’” 

“Fair point.” I sighed. “I still think I might pass out and then I’ll likely lose the job and this entire conversation becomes moot.” 

“You’re not going to pass out,” Sam said. “Find a place to sit down. Can you do that?” 

“I think so.” I was standing in the stacks, okay, more accurately hiding in the fiction section. The shelves were dark wood, long and tall and stuffed with books. They comforted me. Scattered randomly amid the shelving units were step stools. I found one and sat down. 

“Are you sitting?” Sam asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Good, now put your head between your knees,” she ordered. 

“Um.” I was wearing a formfitting, gray wool pencil skirt. I tried to maneuver my head down. No luck. The skirt was too snug. The closest I could get was to look over my knees at my black ankle boots. “Sorry, Sam, nothing is getting between these knees not even a hot Irishman.” 

Sam chuckled, but over that I heard a strangled noise behind me and I straightened up and turned around to see a man in jeans and an Aran sweater, holding his fist to his mouth, looking as if he was choking. He had thick, wavy black hair and blue eyes so dark they were almost the same shade as his hair. Also, if I wasn’t mistaken from the picture I’d seen on the bookstore’s website, he was my new boss.

 

***

This is my first run at the heroine meeting the hero. We'll see it if sticks the landing. 

Readers and Reds, weigh in. How important is that first meeting?