A CLOSER LOOK AT DECEMBER’S
REEF ROAD
By Deborah Goodrich Royce
Two women’s lives collide when a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida.
THE BOOK
In a nod to the true crime that inspired Reef Road, Deborah Goodrich Royce probes unhealed generational scars. Stunning, sexy, and impossible to look away from, we follow a young woman whose life seems perfect until her family goes missing and a writer who lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.
THE AUTHOR
DEBORAH GOODRICH ROYCE began her career as an actress on All My Children and appeared in multiple films before transitioning to the role of story editor at Miramax Films. Her thrillers examine puzzles of identity. Ruby Falls won the Zibby Award for Best Plot Twist in 2021 and Finding Mrs. Ford was hailed by Forbes, BookRiot, and Good Morning America’s “best of” lists in 2019. Her newest, Reef Road, will be published on January 10, 2023.
Deborah holds a bachelor’s degree in modern foreign languages and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Lake Erie College.
AGAINST THE GRAIN
By Anne Dimock
Every small act of history is a drama of time, place and people.
THE BOOK
Six characters intersect in a conflict of change and complacency. During desegregation battles in the early 1960s, one African American family in a leafy NJ suburb experiences barriers quieter and more hidden than in the South. When the oldest child, Fleur, a high school student, gets an after-school job in an upscale store on Main Street, she becomes the catalyst for change no one in her town expects. Some want to help her, others want to impede her, and some end up doing both. Fleur learns the limits of trusting her future to others, while making and defending her own decisions.
THE AUTHOR
ANNE DIMOCK is the author of Against the Grain, the compelling novel about what befalls six characters and their staid community when they confront the prejudice in their town. Dimock is also the author of a nonfiction memoir—Humble Pie: Musings on What Lies Beneath the Crust. She also writes plays, operas, essays and short stories, and has published in print and online journals, had her plays produced, and won awards and residencies. She had an educational background in Anthropology and a long career raising money in the nonprofit sector. She resides in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
HELL OF HOSANNA
By Kip Langton
Can a trapped soul in a dystopian world find true freedom?
THE BOOK
Accolades are pouring in for this unique, fascinating and harrowing glimpse into our future. Imagine the Empire State Building removed from New York City and then being reconstructed brick-by-brick on your father’s private island … Imagine the trappings of the past stolen from the public to indulge unfettered hypocrisy. This is James’s defeated and ravaged landscape when his father, Fep Anglish, successfully monopolizes all forms of industry into one perfect company called U atop the collapse of the old world. In this new world, ownership becomes a thing of the past. Anyone can have anything—temporarily. Is this hosanna? Maybe on paper. But to James, the “rent and move on” lifestyle is a total hell. And in this hell, his impossible dream of becoming something fuels his transience and passivity.
THE AUTHOR
KIP LANGTON is widely recognized for his creative achievements, having won or been shortlisted for over forty creative awards, which include the Cannes Lion for Innovation, New York Festivals, Innovation by Design-Fast Company, London International Awards, W3 Award, Clio Award, Shorty Social Good Award, Epica Award, and Communication Arts Award of Excellence. He is a versatile writer who works across genres and has held a variety of creative position for some of the most famous agencies in the world Kip is a graduate of Davidson College and lives in New York City.
WHEN I WAS BETTER
By Rita Rozi
A moving chronicle of a refugee crisis from a different time that’s both dark and humorous.
THE BOOK
On a cold, winter day István leaves his wife and infant son in western Hungary, where Soviet tanks have crushed the Revolution and the spirit of the people. He is of the last of two hundred thousand refugees fleeing to Austria. His wife Etelka, traumatized by the war and violence of the occupation, is left to fend for herself and her baby after an act of desperation forces her husband to abandon his young family. Battered by private betrayals and public humiliations, the young couple learns that laughing at the absurd is a saving grace until a seven-year separation tests their endurance and their love.
THE AUTHOR
Raised by Hungarian refugees, RITA BOZI is a Somatic Relational trauma and psychedelic-informed Facilitator, a multidisciplinary creator, playwright and retired professional actor and dancer. For 25 years, her co-written play 52 Pick Up was staged in Canada, the US, England, Australia, France, Iceland and New Zealand and translated into French and Icelandic. Rita has been published in The New Quarterly, FFWD Weekly, WritingRaw.com, and Unlikely 2.0. THIS Magazine awarded her 3rd Prize in their Great Canadian Literary Hunt in 2012. Her travel stories have been broadcast on CBC Radio Calgary. She is an Alumna of The Humber School for Writers and a graduate of The National Ballet School. Her life practice is kindness and her life partner is Ken Cameron.
