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3 days ago
3 days ago
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with authors Moya Hession-Aiken and Elizabeth Birkelund, who will discuss their books Shoulder and A Northern Light in Provence. Refreshments will
About Moya Hession- Aiken: Moya Hession- Aiken studied art at Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester University) and the Central School of Art and Design (now Central St. Martins), graduating with a first class honors degree in textile design before moving to New York to work in the garment industry. However, before too long she was working for MTV earning an Emmy Award for her work as a paintbox artist. At MTV she met her future husband, producer Bill Aiken. They had a son, Liam, in 1990, a few years before Bill’s tragic death. She lives in Connecticut and pursues her work as a fine artist, exhibiting frequently.
About Shoulder: Growing up a headstrong Irish Catholic girl in a notoriously tough housing estate in Northern England, Moya has just one goal-to live a rich creative life in America. Shoulder tells the story of the riotous and hilarious path from her boisterous but warm family back home to her education in London and her escape to New York in the 1980s where she finds everything she’s looking for–exciting jobs in the fashion industry and later at MTV–but where she also meets the man of her dreams, only to lose him to cancer following the birth of their son. Told in a voice that is equal parts Alan Bennett and Frank McCourt, this is a story about the thrill of taking chances and the unbearable pain of loss, as well as a profound meditation on what it takes to survive and what it means to care for others.
About Elizabeth Birkelund: Elizabeth graduated from the Hewitt School in New York City, from Brown University with honors in Comparative literature, and from the Radcliffe Publishing Program. After college, she worked for a literary agent and was a member of the editorial staff for a start-up magazine, European Travel and Life. She began her fifteen-year freelance writing career as a monthly personal finance columnist for Cosmopolitan magazine, and has written for over fifteen publications, including The Runaway Wife, Glamour, Self, Working Woman, Victoria, and her first novel: The Dressmaker. She lives in New York City.
About A Northern Light in Provence: Ilse Erlund is a translator who lives in a house on stilts along the west coast of Greenland. Isolated and restless in her world by the sea, she convinces her publisher to pay for a trip to the country she has never visited but whose language she speaks fluently: France. Her mission is to translate the verses of Geoffrey “Po” Labaye, a charismatic poet known as “the last living troubadour of Provence.” Upon arrival in the medieval hilltop village of Belle Rivière, Ilse falls under the spell of the Provençal way of life, captivated by the air, the sun, the vibrant spring colors, and the dulcet sounds of the dialect. Soon enough, Ilse is captivated by the poet, too, and she and Po develop a daily rhythm and warm camaraderie—which is disrupted by the arrival of the poet’s son, Frey. Though he has a fiancée back in Paris, Frey turns his attentions to Ilse, and suddenly she is forced to learn another language, one her translation skills have not prepared her to decode. Where—and with whom—does her future lie? With an eye and ear attuned to the sensibilities of French life, Elizabeth Birkelund has created a love story about a woman forced to choose between the security of her quiet northern home and the possibility of the life of her dreams.
For more information about Moya Hession-Aiken, visit shoulderbymoyaaiken.com. For more information about Elizabeth Birkelund, visit elizabethbirkelund.com. For details on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Monday Nov 18, 2024
Monday Nov 18, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with bestselling authors Hank Phillippi Ryan and Carola Lovering as they discuss their new novels One Wrong Word (Phillipi Ryan) and Bye, Baby (Lovering).
Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today bestselling author of thirteen award-winning novels of suspense. National reviews have called her a “master at crafting suspenseful mysteries” and “a superb and gifted storyteller.” Her novel, THE HOUSE GUEST, received a starred review from Library Journal, calling it “Binge-worhty.” The rave review from Publishers Weekly says “Ryan is a master of suspense.” Her work has resulted in new laws, people sent to prison, homes removed from foreclosure, and millions of dollars in refunds and restitution for victims and consumers. She’s been a radio reporter, a legislative aide in the United States Senate and an editorial assistant at Rolling Stone Magazine, working with Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Avedon and Richard Goodwin. Hank is a founding teacher at Mystery Writers of America University and served as 2013 president of national Sisters in Crime. She blogs at Jungle Red Writers and Career Authors. She is a co-host at FIRST CHAPTER FUN and a founder and co-host of THE BACK ROOM, and the host of A Mighty Mystery on A Mighty Blaze.
Carola Lovering is the author of the novels Tell Me Lies, Too Good to Be True, and Can’t Look Away. She attended Colorado College, and her work has appeared in New York Magazine, W Magazine, Marie Claire, National Geographic, Outside, and Yoga Journal, among other publications. Her novel, Tell Me Lies, is now a drama series on Hulu. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two young children.
For more information about Hank Phillipi Ryan, visit hankphillippiryan.com. For more information about Carola Lovering, visit carolalovering.com. For details on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Tuesday Nov 12, 2024
Tuesday Nov 12, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times bestselling authors Martha Hall Kelly and Katherine Reay as they discuss their books The Golden Doves (Martha Hall Kelly) and The Berlin Letters (Katherine Reay).
About Martha Hall Kelly: Martha Hall Kelly’s debut novel LILAC GIRLS, about socialite Caroline Ferriday and her fight to help a group of concentration camp survivors, became an Instant NY Times bestseller in 2016 and sold over two million copies. Once the paperback stayed on the NYT list for fifty-four weeks and became published in fifty countries, she wrote two more novels: LOST ROSES, about Caroline’s mother, and SUNFLOWER SISTERS, about her great grandmother, which also became Instant NY Times bestsellers. Martha grew up in Massachusetts and now splits her time between Connecticut and New York City.
About The Golden Doves: Two female spies risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi in this sweeping, profound tale of bravery from the bestselling author of Lilac Girls.
About Katherine Reay: Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels and one nonfiction work. For her fiction, Katherine writes love letters to books, and her novels are saturated with what she calls the “world of books.” They are character-driven stories that examine the past as a way to find one’s best way forward. In the words of The Bronte Plot’s Lucy Alling, Katherine writes of “that time when you don’t know where you’ll be, but you can’t stay as you are.” Katherine holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University and, after several moves across the globe, lives outside Chicago.
About The Berlin Letters: Bestselling author Katherine Reay returns with an unforgettable tale of the Cold War and a CIA code-breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East German prison.
For more information about Martha Hall Kelly, visit penguinrandomhouse.com. For more information about Katherine Reay, visit katherinereay.com. For details on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Monday Oct 21, 2024
Monday Oct 21, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with author Terah Shelton Harris to discuss her novel Long After We Are Gone.
About Long After We Are Gone: “A big, beautiful, devastating, and ultimately hopeful novel.” – Erica Bauermeister, New York Times bestselling author of No Two Persons
An explosive and emotional story of four siblings–each fighting their own personal battle–who return home in the wake of their father’s death in order to save their family’s home from being sold out from under them, from the author of One Summer in Savannah.
“Don’t let the white man take the house.”
These are the last words King Solomon says to his son before he dies. Now all four Solomon siblings must return to North Carolina to save the Kingdom, their ancestral home and 200 acres of land, from a development company, who has their sights set on turning the valuable waterfront property into a luxury resort.
While fighting to save the Kingdom, the siblings must also save themselves from the secrets they’ve been holding onto. Junior, the oldest son and married to his wife for eleven years, is secretly in love with another man. Second son Mance can’t control his temper, which has landed him in prison more than once. CeCe, the oldest daughter and a lawyer in New York City, has embezzled thousands of dollars from her firm’s clients. Youngest daughter Tokey wonders why she doesn’t seem to fit into this family, which has left an aching hole in her heart that she tries to fill in harmful ways. As the Solomons come together to fight for the Kingdom, each of their façades begins to crumble and collide in unexpected ways.
Told in alternating viewpoints, Long After We Are Gone is a searing portrait on the power of family and letting go of things that no longer serve you, exploring the burden of familial expectations, the detriment of miscommunication, and the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children.
About Terah Shelton Harris: Terah Shelton Harris is a collection development librarian based in Alabama and a freelance writer. She has been published in Women’s Health, Natural Solutions, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Backpacker, Draft, and Women’s Adventure.
For more information about Terah Shelton Harris, visit terahsharris.com. For details on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Tuesday Oct 15, 2024
Tuesday Oct 15, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, who will discuss her latest novel, A Most Intriguing Lady.
About A Most Intriguing Lady: From Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, a sweeping, romantic, compulsively readable historical saga about a Duke’s daughter–the perfect Victorian lady–who secretly moonlights as an amateur sleuth for high society’s inner circle.
Victorian London was notorious for its pickpockets. But in the country houses of the elite, gentleman burglars, art thieves, and con men preyed on the rich and titled. Wealthy victims–with their pride and reputation at stake–would never go to the police. They needed a society insider, one of their own, a person of discretion and finely tuned powers of observation, adept at navigating intrigue.
That person was Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, the youngest child of Queen Victoria’s close friends, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. Bookish, fiercely intelligent, and a keen observer, Mary has deliberately cultivated a mousey persona that allows her to remain overlooked and significantly underestimated by all. It’s the perfect cover for a sleuth, a role she stumbles into when trying to assist a close friend during a house party hosted by her parents at their stately Scottish home, Drumlanrig Castle.
It is at this party that Lady Mary also meets Colonel Walter Trefusis, a distinguished and extremely handsome war veteran. Tortured by memories of combat, Walter, like Mary, lives a double life, with a desk job in Whitehall providing a front for his role in the British Intelligence Service. The two form an unlikely alliance to solve a series of audacious crimes and indulge in a highly charged on-off romance.
Pacy, romantic, and fun, A Most Intriguing Lady documents one remarkable woman’s ability to be both the perfect lady and a perfectly talented detective…and, of course, to find love too.
About Sarah Ferguson: Sarah Ferguson is the Duchess of York. She is also a bestselling novelist, memoirist, children’s book author, and film producer, and has been a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers and Wedgewood China. She currently campaigns for her Children in Crisis international charity and works on historical documentaries and films that draw on her deep interest in Victorian history. The mother of two daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, and grandmother of three precious grandchildren, she lives in Windsor.
For more information about Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York's books, visit www.amazon.com/Sarah-Ferguson-Book. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Monday Sep 23, 2024
Monday Sep 23, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with our featured authors. This week, New York Times bestselling authors Allison Pataki and Emily Franklin discuss their books Finding Margaret Fuller (Pataki) and The Lioness of Boston (Franklin).
About Allison Pataki: Allison Pataki is the New York Times bestselling author of FINDING MARGARET FULLER, THE MAGNIFICENT LIVES OF MARJORIE POST, THE QUEEN’S FORTUNE, THE TRAITOR’S WIFE, THE ACCIDENTAL EMPRESS, SISI: EMPRESS ON HER OWN, WHERE THE LIGHT FALLS, as well as the nonfiction memoir BEAUTY IN THE BROKEN PLACES and two children’s books, NELLY TAKES NEW YORK and POPPY TAKES PARIS. Allison’s novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. A former news writer and producer, Allison has written for The New York Times, ABC News, The Huffington Post, USA Today, Fox News and other outlets. She has appeared on The TODAY Show, Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, Good Day New York, Good Day Chicago and MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Allison graduated Cum Laude from Yale University with a major in English.
About Finding Margaret Fuller: A “sweeping” (Entertainment Weekly) novel of America’s forgotten leading lady, the central figure of a movement that defined a nation—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post
About Emily Franklin: Emily Franklin is the bestselling author of more than twenty books. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, and The Journal of the American Medical Association among many other places as well as featured and read aloud on National Public Radio, and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She lives outside of Boston with her family including four children and two dogs large enough to be lions. Her novel The Lioness of Boston, based on the life of trailblazer Isabella Stewart Gardner is in its sixth printing.
About The Lioness of Boston: “Brings Isabella Stewart Gardner fully, intimately alive—irrepressible and avid for life. In this richly compelling novel, Emily Franklin beautifully conjures this extraordinary woman and her world.”—Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children.
For more information about bestselling author Allison Pataki, visit allisonpataki.com; for Emily Franklin, visit emilyfranklin.com. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Tuesday Sep 17, 2024
Tuesday Sep 17, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with our featured author. This week, New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams will be discussing her new novel, Husbands & Lovers.
About Beatriz Williams: Beatriz Williams is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of nineteen novels, including four novels in collaboration with bestselling authors Karen White and Lauren Willig. She graduated from Stanford University with an MBA in finance from Columbia University. Williams has won numerous awards for her novels, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She lives near the Connecticut shore with her husband and four children.
About Husbands & Lovers: Two women—separated by decades and continents and united by an exotic family heirloom—reclaim secrets and lost loves in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.
New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952 and her all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams— one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.
Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.
Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.
For more information about bestselling author Beatriz Williams, beatrizwilliams.com. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Friday Aug 23, 2024
Friday Aug 23, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with author, podcaster, and book influencer Zibby Owens about her newly published novel, Blank.
About Zibby Owens: Zibby Owens is the author of Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature and the children’s book Princess Charming and is the editor of two anthologies: Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids: A Timeless Anthology and Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology. Creator and host of the award-winning daily podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, Zibby is the founder and CEO of Zibby Media, dubbed “the Zibby-verse” by the Los Angeles Times. It includes publishing house Zibby Books, online magazine Zibby Mag, Zibby’s Book Club, retreats, classes, and events. She also owns Zibby’s Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Santa Monica, California. A regular contributor to Good Morning America and other outlets, she loves recommending books as “NYC’s Most Powerful Book-fluencer” (Vulture). A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Zibby currently lives in New York (with frequent visits to LA) with her husband, Kyle Owens of Morning Moon Productions, and her four children ages nine to sixteen. Follow her on Instagram @zibbyowens and on Substack, where she tells it like it is.
About Blank: A wife, mother, and frustrated writer faces an impossible deadline for turning her life around in a hilarious debut novel about family, friendship, success, and exhilarating self-(re)discovery.
Pippa Jones is a fortyish former literary sensation who fears she will be a one-hit wonder. After the follow-up book she was almost done writing, Podlusters, had to be tossed (it ended up sharing a plot and title with superstar author Ella Rankin’s summer blockbuster!), she couldn’t write a thing. Months of staring at a blank page made her confidence vanish like a one-night stand. When she finds out that she has only five days left to finish (or rather, start) or repay an advance she’s already spent, Pippa has a brilliantly original idea. Okay, fine, her twelve-year-old son came up with it as a joke, but Pippa and her teenage daughter approved.
Pippa’s not only going to make a bold statement, but she’ll change the book world while she’s at it! Can she pull it off? At this point, she doesn’t have a choice.
When Pippa’s publisher gets intimately involved, it unlocks a series of plot twists she never saw coming. From the courtyards of posh Beverly Hills hotels and Malibu mega-mansions to Brentwood and Santa Monica bookstores, Pippa races against time—in her used Volvo—and discovers more about her career, marriage, family, friends, and herself than she ever could have dreamed up.
For more information about bestselling author Zibby Owens, please visit www.zibbyowens.com. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit www.deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Tuesday Aug 13, 2024
Tuesday Aug 13, 2024
Join Ocean House owner and author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with bestselling author Dawn Tripp as they discuss her new book, Jackie.
About Dawn Tripp: Dawn Tripp is the author of the novel Georgia, which was a national bestseller, a finalist for the New England Book Award, and the winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature. She is the author of three previous novels: Game of Secrets, Moon Tide, and The Season of Open Water, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, AGNI, Conjunctions, and NPR. Tripp lives in Massachusetts with her sons.
About Jackie: Jackie is the story of a woman—deeply private with a nuanced, formidable intellect—who forged a legacy out of grief and shaped history even as she was living it. It is the story of a love affair, a complicated marriage, and the fracturing of identity that comes in the wake of unthinkable violence.
When Jackie meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy in Georgetown, she is twenty-one and dreaming of France. She has won an internship at Vogue. Kennedy, she thinks, is not her kind of adventure: “Too American. Too good-looking. Too boy.” Yet she is drawn to his mind, his humor, his drive. The chemistry between them ignites. During the White House years, the love between two independent people deepens. Then, a motorcade in Dallas: “Three and a half seconds—that’s all it was—a slivered instant between the first shot, which missed the car, and the second, which did not. . . . A hypnotic burst of sunlight off her bracelet as she waved.”
This vivid, exquisitely written novel is at once a captivating work of the imagination and a window into the world of a woman who led many lives: Jackie, Jacks, Jacqueline, Miss Bouvier, Mrs. Kennedy, Jackie O.
For more information about bestselling author Dawn Tripp, please visit www.dawntripp.com. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit www.deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Monday Jul 22, 2024
Monday Jul 22, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times bestselling author Kristy Woodson Harvey will be discussing her new novel, A Happier Life. Refreshments
About Kristy Woodson Harvey: Kristy Woodson Harvey is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including The Wedding Veil, Under the Southern Sky, and The Peachtree Bluff series, which is in development for television with NBC. A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of journalism, her writing has appeared in numerous online and print publications, including Southern Living, Traditional Home, USA TODAY, Domino, and O. Henry. Kristy is the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. Her books have received numerous accolades, including Southern Living’s Most Anticipated Beach Reads, Parade’s Big Fiction Reads, and Entertainment Weekly’s Spring Reading Picks. Kristy is the cocreator and cohost of the weekly web show and podcast Friends & Fiction. She blogs with her mom, Beth Woodson, on Design Chic, and loves connecting with fans on KristyWoodsonHarvey.com. She lives on the North Carolina coast with her husband and son where she is (always!) working on her next novel.
About A Happier Life: With “her signature warmth and Southern charm” (E! Online), the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer of Songbirds and the Peachtree Bluff series presents a tender and touching novel about a young woman who discovers the family she has always longed for when she spends a life-changing summer in North Carolina.
For more information about New York Times bestselling author Kristy Woodson Harvey, please visit www.kristywoodsonharvey.com. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit www.deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Monday Jul 15, 2024
07-13-24 Author Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg - Ocean House Author Series
Monday Jul 15, 2024
Monday Jul 15, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with author Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg. She will discuss her latest novel, Daughter of a Promise.
About Daughter of a Promise: Days after graduation, Betsabé Ruiz’s life in New York is turning out to be nothing less than cinematic. Although her first job at a white-shoe Wall Street investment bank is the opportunity of a lifetime, she is not prepared for the magnitude of wealth swirling about her, the long hours and close quarters that infuse her professional relationships with intimacy, nor an unexpected attraction to her boss. And like all great films, Betsabé’s New York dream comes with a twist that challenges her to find a balance between where she came from and where she’s going.
Narrated in the retrospective as a letter of wisdom to her unborn son, Daughter of a Promise captures not only Betsabé’s coming of age but also her journey to understand that deep-seated forces such as desire and love are more complicated than she ever could have imagined.
About Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg: Jeanne Blasberg is an award-winning and bestselling author and essayist. Her novel The Nine (SWP 2019) was honored with the 2019 Foreword Indies Gold Award in Thriller & Suspense and the Gold Medal and Juror’s Choice in the 2019 National Indie Excellence Awards, among others. Eden (SWP 2017), her debut, won the Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Best New Voice in Fiction and was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction. A Smith College graduate, Jeanne is both a teacher of writing and a lifetime learner who serves on the boards of the Boston Book Festival and GrubStreet. She reviews contemporary fiction for the New York Journal of Books and was named a Southampton Writer’s Conference BookEnds Fellow in April 2021. She splits her time between Park City, Utah, and a regenerative farm in Verona, Wisconsin.
For more information about author Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg www.jeanneblasberg.com. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit www.deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Tuesday Jun 11, 2024
Tuesday Jun 11, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times bestselling authors and mother/son duo Elliott Ackerman and Joanna Leedom-Ackerman. They discuss their books: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman’s The Far Side of the Desert and Elliott Ackerman’s 2054.
About the Authors:
Elliot Ackerman is the author of the novels Halcyon, Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, Green on Blue, and the memoirs The Fifth Act and Places and Names. His books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Marine veteran, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.
About 2054:
From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034 comes another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America’s violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the world
It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, holding power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media but is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he’ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war.
A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence, and business have a fairly good idea of what happened. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this breakthrough. As some of the world’s great powers, old and new, state and nonstate alike, struggle to outmaneuver one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of American democracy.
Combining a deep understanding of AI, biotech, and the possibility of a coming Singularity, along with their signature geopolitical sophistication, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis have once again written a visionary work. 2054 is a novel that reads like a thriller, even as it demands that we consider the trajectory of our society and its potentially calamitous destination.
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include Burning Distance, The Dark Path to the River, and No Marble Angels. She has published PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line and was the editor for The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. Former International Secretary of PEN International, she is a Vice President of PEN International and a former board member and Vice President of PEN American Center. She serves on the boards of Refugees International, the International Center for Journalists, the American Writers Museum, and Words Without Borders and is an emeritus director of Poets and Writers, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and Human Rights Watch and an emeritus trustee of Brown University and Johns Hopkins University. Joanne is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Texas Institute of Letters. A former The Christian Science Monitor reporter, Joanne has taught writing at New York University, City University of New York, Occidental College, and the University of California at Los Angeles extension.
About The Far Side of the Desert: A terrorist attack—a kidnapping—the ultimate vacation gone wrong Sisters Samantha and Monte Waters are vacationing together in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, enjoying a festival and planning to meet with their brother, Cal—but the idyllic plans are short-lived. When terrorists’ attacks rock the city around them, Monte, a U.S. foreign service officer, and Samantha, an international television correspondent, are separated, and one of them is whisked away in the frenzy.
The family mobilizes, using all their contacts to try to find their missing sister, but to no avail. She has vanished. As time presses on, the outlook darkens. Can she be found, or is she a lost cause? And, even if she returns, will the damage to her and those around her be irreparable?
Moving from Spain to Washington to Morocco to Gibraltar to the Sahara Desert, The Far Side of the Desert is a family drama and political thriller that explores links of terrorism, crime, and financial manipulation, revealing the grace that ultimately foils destruction.
Wednesday May 22, 2024
Wednesday May 22, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times bestselling authors Susannah Marren, Laura Zigman, and Dara Levan, who will be discussing their novels, new in paperback.
About the Authors:
Susannah Marren is the author of Between the Tides, A Palm Beach Wife, A Palm Beach Scandal, and Maribelle’s Shadow. Susannah has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Elle, and Marie Claire and has appeared on national television, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. Several of her titles have been optioned by Lifetime and HBO. She has served as a literary panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a judge for the International Emmys, and as Vice Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Women’s Leadership Board at the JFK School of Government, Harvard. Her featured novel is Maribelle’s Shadow.
About Maribelle’s Shadow: When her adored and impressive husband, Samuel, dies suddenly, the secrets and lies between Maribelle and her sisters rise to the surface. Compounding the anguish, the authenticity of their socially ambitious mother and lavish lifestyle of mansions, privilege, and couture clothes is thrown into doubt.
Each sister realizes she must fend for herself as their carefully constructed image unravels. The pathway out is steep and worth any risk. Until the winner takes all.
Laura Zigman is the author of six novels, including Small World, Separation Anxiety (which was optioned by Julianne Nicholson and the production company Wiip for a limited television series); Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie Someone Like You, starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Her, and Piece of Work. She has ghostwritten/collaborated on several works of non-fiction, including Eddie Izzard’s New York Times bestseller, Believe Me; been a contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post; produced a popular online series of animated videos called Annoying Conversations; and was the recipient of a Yaddo residency. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she helps clients via Zoom, phone, and sometimes in person with their writing. Her featured novel is Small World.
About Small World
A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and she’s developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site, Small World, for posts that help solve life’s easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, calls to tell her she’s moving back east from Los Angeles after almost thirty years away, Joyce invites Lydia to move into her Cambridge apartment. Temporarily. Just until she finds a place of her own.
But their unlikely cohabitation—not helped by annoying new neighbors upstairs—turns out to be the post-divorce rebound relationship Joyce hadn’t planned on. Instead of forging the bond she always dreamed of having with Lydia, their relationship frayed. They rarely discuss the loss of their sister, Eleanor, who was significantly disabled and died when she was only ten years old. When new revelations from their family’s history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart or, of course, correct their connection for the future?
Written with wry humor and keen sensitivity, Small World is a powerful novel of sisterhood and hope—a reminder that sometimes you must look back to move ahead.
Dara Levan is the creator and host of Every Soul Has a Story, a podcast in which she interviews inspiring people from around the globe. Her calling to impact others began at the age of twelve in her hometown of North Miami Beach, Florida, when she interviewed the nursing home residents where her grandmother lived and wrote their stories. As an undergrad at Indiana University, Dara earned a BA in English and pursued a career in journalism but decided to pivot and return to South Florida to earn her MS in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Dara stopped practicing speech therapy to return to full-time writing. Actively involved in her community, she is currently a board member of the Community Foundation of Broward and a board member of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital Foundation/Memorial Hospital Foundation and the Community Foundation of Broward. Dara served as a board member of the Goodman Jewish Family Services (JFS) of Broward County and Junior Achievement of South Florida. She is also a founding member of the Circle of Friends for the Alvin Sherman Library Research, Information, and Technology Center at Nova Southeastern University. Dara is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Women’s National Book Association, and the Authors Guild. Her featured novel is It Could Be Worse.
About It Could Be Worse
Mired in self-doubt and blind loyalty, Allegra Gil suspects her charmed life may be a gilded cage. She has a devoted husband, Benito, two loving children, a thriving therapy practice, and lifelong friends. But when a surprising discovery in a piano bench reveals a shocking family secret, Allegra questions everything she thought she knew about the two people who raised her. Was it true? Did her father, a respected pediatric neurosurgeon, harm instead of heal? And Allegra’s mother—how much did she know?
As the past threatens the present, Allegra plays the song of what was, what is, and what may never be in this “powerful and poignant story about letting go” (Jean Meltzer, international bestselling author of The Matzah Ball).
Composed with the cadence of a waltz—up, up, down—through flashbacks to childhood memories in Miami and a music camp in Michigan, It Could Be Worse is a heartwarming, at times heart-wrenching, multigenerational story of a woman supported and embraced by many while shaken to the core by a few. “The gorgeous prose and raw, unflinching narrative both heal and inspire. A stunning debut.” (Samantha M. Bailey, USA Today and #1 international bestselling author of Woman on the Edge)
For more information about the authors, please visit Susannah Marren, Laura Zigman, and Dara Levan. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit www.deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Monday May 13, 2024
Monday May 13, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with award-winning author Jeffrey Blount. Blount discusses his latest novel, Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way. About Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way: James Henry Ferguson doesn’t belong here. After a highly publicized fall from grace, James attempts to flee from the chaos in his life. He ends up in a community he had never heard of before, one that has been neglected and ignored by everyone in rural Ham, Mississippi. A place of abject poverty, the neighborhood is commonly referred to as “Around the Way.” Within a place forgotten by the rest of the world, politics can be a dangerous game. When a troubling discovery is made, the entire neighborhood is rocked to its core and James is forced to confront his own past in order to help the community have a future. He will have to find the strength to fight for the neighbors he once disregarded and avert a heart-breaking disaster. A self-identified failure is forced to uncover the wisdom of his past in order to recognize that money can’t solve every problem. Full of never-ending twists and turns, no one can prepare themselves for the surprises in store. Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way is a story about failure, self-discovery, empowerment, and the possibility of redemption.
For more information about Jeffrey Blount, please visit www.jeffreyblount.com For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit www.deborahgoodrichroyce.com
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with veterinary oncologist and author Dr. Renee Alsarraf about her book Sit, Stay, Heal: What Dogs Can Teach Us About Living Well. Enjoy wine, light bites, and a signed copy of the book.
DR. RENEE ALSARRAF has created four veterinary oncology practices and led three veterinary radiation facilities. She has performed numerous veterinary clinical trials, co-authored peer-reviewed journal articles, and lectured both locally and nationally. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, and is married to a veterinary ophthalmologist. They have one son, whom she cherishes, and Dusty, her beloved, bossy, six-year-old female boxer.
For more information on Dr. Renee Alsarraf and her book, please visit www.harpercollins.com. For information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com.
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce as she is joined by novelist Julie Gerstenblatt to discuss her debut novel, Daughters of Nantucket. Julie Gerstenblatt holds a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her essays have appeared in The Huffington Post and Cognoscenti, among others. When not writing, Julie is a college essay coach, producer, and on-air host for A Mighty Blaze. A native New Yorker, Julie now lives in coastal Rhode Island with her family and one very smart shichon poo. Daughters of Nantucket is her first novel. For more information on Julie Gerstenblatt, please visit www.juliegerstenblatt.com. Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com.
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times best-selling authors Ann Hood and Michael Ruhlman.
Ann Hood is the author of eleven books, including the best-selling novels The Book That Matters Most and The Knitting Circle, and the memoirs Comfort: A Journey Through Grief and Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and New York City.
Michael Ruhlman is the author of award-winning cookbooks and nonfiction narratives. He is the author of chef Thomas Keller’s seminal The French Laundry Cookbook and the highly successful series about the training of chefs: The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and The Reach of a Chef. He is also the author of The Elements of Cooking and Ratio. Ruhlman has worked at The New York Times and as a food columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He attended the Culinary Institute of America and is the author of eighteen books about food and cooking and such wide-ranging subjects as pediatric heart surgery and building wooden boats. Michael lives with his family in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.
For more information on Ann Hood, please visit www.annhood.us, and for Michael Ruhlman, visit www.ruhlman.com. Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com.
Tuesday Jan 23, 2024
Tuesday Jan 23, 2024
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times and USA Today best selling author Victoria Christopher Murray. Victoria Christopher Murray is the best-selling author of more than 30 novels, including the New York Times Instant Best Sellers, The Personal Librarian, and The First Ladies. In both novels, Victoria co-wrote with Marie Benedict. A native New Yorker, Victoria Christopher Murray attended Hampton University, where she majored in Communication Disorders. After graduating, Victoria attended New York University’s Stern Business School, where she received her MBA in Marketing. Victoria spent ten years in Corporate America before she tested her entrepreneurial spirit. She opened a Financial Services Agency for Aegon, USA, where she managed the number one division for nine consecutive years. However, Victoria always dreamed of writing and in 1997, she pursued her dream. Find out more about Victoria Christopher Murray and her books at victoriachristophermurray.com. For more information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com.
Thursday Dec 21, 2023
12-16-23 Thriller Panel of Authors - Ocean House Author Series
Thursday Dec 21, 2023
Thursday Dec 21, 2023
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with Thriller Panel guests Megan Collins, Peter Swanson, Rea Frey, Wendy Walker, Vanessa Lillie, and Kathy Reichs. Deborah Goodrich Royce and a panel of fantastic thriller fiction novelists talk about their books, their writing process, and the thriller genre.
About the Authors:
Megan Collins is the author of Thicker Than Water, The Family Plot, Behind the Red Door, and The Winter Sister (Atria/Simon & Schuster). She received her B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and she holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she was a teaching fellow. She has taught creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Central Connecticut State University and is Managing Editor of 3Elements Review. A Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Compose, Linebreak, Off the Coast, Spillway, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Rattle. She lives in Connecticut. Her featured novel is Thicker Than Water.
Peter Swanson is the Sunday Times and New York Times best-selling author of eight novels, including The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and a finalist for the C.W.A. Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and his most recent, The Kind Worth Saving. His books have been translated into over 30 languages, and his stories, poetry, and features have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Atlantic Monthly, Measure, The Guardian, The Strand Magazine, and Yankee Magazine. A graduate of Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College, he lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts with his wife and cat. His featured novel is The Kind Worth Saving.
Rea Frey is the multi-published, award-winning bestselling author of Not Her Daughter, Because You’re Mine, and Until I Find You, as well as four nonfiction books. She’s been featured in U.S. Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Popsugar, Hello Sunshine, Marie Claire, Parade, Shape, Hello Giggles, CrimeReads, Writer’s Digest, W.G.N., Fox News, Today in Nashville, Talk of the Town, and more. She is also the C.E.O. and founder of Writeway, where aspiring writers become published authors. Her weekly Writeway podcast deeply delves into the publishing industry and empowers writers to make informed career decisions. Her featured novel is The Other Year.
Wendy Walker is the author of the psychological suspense novels All Is Not Forgotten, Emma in the Night, The Night Before, Don’t Look for Me, and American Girl. Her novels have been translated into twenty-three foreign languages, topped national and international bestseller lists, and have been optioned for television and film. Wendy holds degrees from Brown University and Georgetown Law School. She is a former family law attorney with training in child advocacy and has worked in finance and several areas of the law. Her featured novel is What Remains.
Vanessa Lillie is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the author of the bestselling suspense novels Little Voices and For the Best. With fifteen years of marketing and communications experience, Vanessa hosts a weekly Instagram Live event with crime fiction authors and was a columnist for the Providence Journal. She lives on Narragansett land in Rhode Island. Her featured novel is Blood Sisters.
Kathy Reichs’s first novel, Déjà Dead, catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Her other Temperance Brennan novels include Death du Jour, Deadly Décisions, Fatal Voyage, Grave Secrets, Bare Bones, Monday Mourning, Cross Bones, Break No Bones, Bones to Ashes, Devil Bones, 206 Bones, Spider Bones, Flash and Bones, Bones Are Forever, Bones of the Lost, Bones Never Lie, Speaking in Bones and the Temperance Brennan short story collection, The Bone Collection. In addition, Kathy co-authors the Virals Young Adult series with her son, Brendan Reichs. The best-selling titles are Virals, Seizure, Code, Exposure, Terminal, and two Virals e-novellas, Shift and Swipe. These books follow the adventures of Temperance Brennan’s great-niece, Tory Brennan. Dr. Reichs is also a producer of the hit Fox TV series Bones, based on her work and novels. Dr. Reichs is one of only 100 forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She served on the Board of Directors as Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She is currently a member of the National Police Services Advisory Council in Canada. She is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern. She now divides her time between Charlotte, NC, and Montreal, Québec. Her featured novel is Cold, Cold Bones.
For more information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com.
Tuesday Nov 28, 2023
Tuesday Nov 28, 2023
Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with Katie Couric (@katiecouric). Katie is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), which has raised more than $700 million for cancer research. Couric was the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast, serving as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 2006 to 2011, following 15 years as co-anchor of NBC’s Today show. In 2017, she founded Katie Couric Media (KCM), which has developed a number of media projects, including a daily newsletter, “Wake-Up Call”, a podcast, “Next Question”, digital video series, and several documentaries.
Going There is a heartbreaking, hilarious, and brutally honest memoir that shares the deeply personal life story of a girl next door and her transformation into a household name. For more than forty years, Katie Couric has been an iconic presence in the media world. In her brutally honest, hilarious, heartbreaking memoir, she reveals what was going on behind the scenes of her sometimes tumultuous personal and professional life – a story she’s never shared until now. Of the medium she loves, the one that made her a household name, she says, “Television can put you in a box; the flat-screen can flatten. On TV, you are larger than life but smaller, too. It is not the whole story, and it is not the whole me. This book is.” Find out more about Katie and Going There at katiecouric.com. For more information on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com.
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