GROUNDS FOR MURDER
By Tara Lush
Never has a blend of mystery, quirky characters and a sweet, frothy romance tasted this good.
When Lana Lewis’ best — and most difficult — employee abruptly quits and goes to work for the competition just days before the Sunshine State Barista Championship, her café’s chances of winning the contest are creamed. In front of a gossipy crowd in the small Florida town of Devil’s Beach, Lana’s normally calm demeanor heats to a boil when she runs into the arrogant java slinger. Of course, Fabrizio “Fab” Bellucci has a slick explanation for jumping ship. But when he’s found dead the next morning under a palm tree in the alley behind Lana’s café, she becomes the prime suspect.
But Lana isn’t the only one in town who was angry with Fabrizio. Jilted lovers, a shrimp boat captain and a surfer with ties to the mob are all suspects as trouble brews on the beach. As scandal hangs over her beachside café, can Lana clear her name and win the championship — or will she come to a bitter end?
THE AUTHOR
Tara Lush is the pen name of Tamara Lush, a Florida-based author and journalist. She’s an RWA Rita finalist, an Amtrak writing fellow and the winner of the George C. Polk award for environmental journalism. Since 2008, she’s been a reporter with The Associated Press in Florida, covering crime, alligators, natural disasters and politics. Under her real name, Tamara Lush, she writes contemporary romance. Under the name Tara Lush, she writes quirky and sweet cozy mysteries.
She’s a fan of vintage pulp fiction book covers, Sinatra-era jazz, 1980s fashion, tropical chill, kombucha, gin, tonic, seashells, iPhones, Art Deco, telenovelas, street art, coconut anything, strong coffee and newspapers. She lives on the Gulf coast with her husband and two dogs.
LEARN MORE
Read BookTrib’s review of Grounds for Murder.
Follow Tamara Lush on Instagram.
Invite Tamara to your book club.
To learn more about Tamara, visit her website.
LIFE IS A RIDE
By Chris Joseph
Perfect for fans of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Julie Yip-Williams’s The Unwinding of the Miracle.
In October 2016, 59-year-old Chris Joseph was stunned when he learned he had third-stage pancreatic cancer. In the midst of the panic and tremendous fear that immediately ensued, Joseph followed the doctor’s orders and underwent chemotherapy — a choice that was almost a fatal mistake.
Months of chemotherapy poisoned his body and nearly destroyed his spirit. Joseph then fired his oncologist and embarked on an alternative path of recovery, including both natural and Western medicine immunotherapy. Life is a Ride documents Joseph’s journey from terror and doubt to independence, redemption, love and hope.
THE AUTHOR
In the last 33 years, Chris Joseph has started and managed three environmental consulting businesses, launched two fan-funded music record companies and founded a non-profit charitable foundation. He has also dabbled in philanthropy, songwriting and magazine writing, and he is currently studying for his real estate license. Chris lives in Santa Monica with his two teenage sons and his dog Max, and loves to spend time with Susie, his longtime girlfriend.
LEARN MORE
Follow Chris Joseph on Facebook and Instagram.
Invite Chris to your book club.
To learn more about Chris, visit his website.
THE SHADE UNDER THE MANGO TREE
By Evy Journey
After two heartbreaking losses, Luna wants adventure – an adventure in which she can make some difference. Lucien, a well-traveled young architect, finds a stranger’s journal at a café. He has qualms and pangs of guilt about reading it. His decision to go on reading changes his life.
Months later, they meet at a bookstore. Fascinated by his stories and adventurous spirit, Luna goes to a rice-growing village in a country steeped in an ancient culture and a deadly history. What she finds there defies anything she could have imagined. An epistolary tale of courage, resilience and the bonds that bring diverse people together.
THE AUTHOR
Evy Journey writes. Stories and blog posts. Novels that tend to cross genres. She’s also a wannabe artist, and a flâneuse. She studied psychology, so her fiction spins tales about nuanced characters dealing with contemporary life issues and problems. She believes in love and its many faces.
Her one ungranted wish: To live in Paris where art is everywhere, and people have honed aimless roaming to an art form. She has visited and stayed a few months at a time.
LEARN MORE
Follow Evy Journey on Facebook.
To learn more about Evy, visit her website.
HOW THE DEER MOON HUNGERS
By Susan Wingate
Nominated for selection in the 2020 National Book Awards.
Perfect for fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, this is “a powerful and memorable saga that is hard to put down and lingers in the mind long after the story is over,” says Midwest Book Review.
Mackenzie Fraser witnesses a drunk driver mow down her seven-year-old sister, and her mother blames her. Then she ends up in juvie on a trumped-up drug charge. Now she’s in the fight of her life … on the inside! And she’s losing.
THE AUTHORS
Susan Wingate is a #1 Amazon bestselling, award-winning author of over 15 novels. Her latest novel, How the Deer Moon Hungers, has won five book awards, including the 2020 SABA Book Award for the Judge’s Selection “Best Fiction Author” and the 2020 Pacific Book Award for Best Fiction.
Susan Wingate writes “unputdownable, surprising and twisty stories with crackling dialogue that exhibit a rare deftness in style offering up stories that are riveting, original and with a humanity rarely seen in contemporary fiction.” Susan lives with her husband on a tiny island off the coast of Washington State where she tends to a lovable herd of deer.
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
Visit Susan Wingate’s Author Profile Page on BookTrib.com.
Follow Susan on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Invite Susan to your book club.
To learn more about Susan, visit her website.
UPRUSH
By Jo Barney
Four women, old college friends, meet at Madge’s beach house, as they have done before, for a weekend retreat. This time, they discover that Madge, a successful novelist, has included them in her next book containing the stories of their lives following their days and nights in the sorority solarium smoking Pall Malls and talking as sexy as one could in the late 50s.
“Your stories aren’t finished,” Madge tells them, “just as your lives aren’t. And I need your help with my own story.” But what Madge is asking of them may be more than they are willing to do.
This story is about women who have faced challenging changes in their lives, have kept friendships despite these changes, and who understand that they do have choices about which path to take next. Even at 60.
THE AUTHOR
Jo Barney spent 30 years teaching and counseling teenagers but has worked with all ages of children in crisis. Barney’s first book used her teaching life as inspiration and served as a way for her to leave a profession she loved. Her stories and essays, as well as her novels, reflect Barney’s observations of women’s lives and the people who inhabit them: the children, husbands, parents, friends, along with strangers who happen by and change everything. She currently resides in Oregon.
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Jo, visit her website.
AUGIE SWEETWATER AND THE DOLPHIN’S TALE
by William Harrigan
An imaginative adventure filled with humor that’s perfect for any reader ages 8 to 98! Augie Sweetwater is a brilliant 11-year-old with a gift for inventing amazing things that always get him in hot water. Coop Cooperlick is the new kid in school, a 14-year-old with a passion for rock climbing and a knack for quick action. Mika Deerwood is a lovely 13-year-old Native American with aspirations of Olympic gold in fencing.
Together, they are going to make history.
A book that demonstrates just what kids are capable of when they’re given support and understanding. Augie Sweetwater and the Dolphin’s Tale brings out every reader’s sense of adventure — whether they be a child or an adult — and shows them just how powerful friendship can be.
THE AUTHOR
A 1972 graduate of Yale University, William Harrigan has enjoyed a wide variety of experiences around the world. As an officer in the Army and then the NOAA Corps, he flew helicopters, managed the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary and headed up NOAA’s Office of Special Operations. After earning a master’s degree in marine area management from the University of Rhode Island in 1991, he directed the U.S. National Marine Sanctuary Program and later served as head of planning and management for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Townsville, Australia.
Bill retired from the NOAA Corps in 1993 to pursue a second career as a photojournalist and marine park consultant. He has written and photographed over 200 articles on diving in the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific for Skin Diver, Sport Diver and Alert Diver magazines and also has assisted in setting up marine parks in Kenya, Egypt and Thailand.
Now a full-time novelist, Augie Sweetwater and the Dolphin’s Tale is Bill’s first book in the young adult genre. This story is the first in a planned series following the amazing adventures of a brilliant young inventor and his friends.
LEARN MORE
Read BookTrib’s review of Augie Sweetwater and the Dolphin’s Tale.
Invite William to your book club.
To learn more about Harry, visit his website.