Mountains Branch Library author luncheon series

Press release from Magic Time Literary Publicity:

“Books and Bites” luncheons take place beginning at 11:00 am at the Lake Lure Inn in Lake Lure. Meet and greet starts at 11:00 am and lunch is at 11:30 am. Tickets are $25 and available by calling the Library 828-287-6392 or in person at 150 Bills Creek Rd., Lake Lure.

Thursday, May 3

Michele Moore with her work of historical fiction, The Cigar Factory.

This work of historical fiction is the 2016 Gold Winner for the Foreward Indies Book Award for Historical Fiction and the 2016 winner of the Langum Prize for Best Historical Fiction. The late writer Pat Conroy described Michele’s work as courageous and transcendent.

Michele has served as a fellow in the English Department at Piedmont College in Demorest, GA. She was a 2006 finalist for the Bellwether Prize in fiction. Her creative nonfiction has been broadcast on Georgia Public Radio and published in the Louisville Review, Habersham Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Groundwater, and O, Georgia. She has also won awards and grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters.

Her father’s great aunt worked in the cigar factory in Charleston, SC, the main setting for The Cigar Factory. It was Michele’s family history and stories connected with the factory that inspired and motivated her research for writing this sensitive and beautiful novel that begins in Charleston in 1917. The story follows two families, one white and one African American, in both their joys, their sorrows, and their connections as they struggle to survive on assembly lines segregated by gender and race.

Thursday, June 7

Susan M. Boyer with her mystery Lowcountry Bonfire

Susan M. Boyer is the author of the bestselling Liz Talbot Mystery series set in the South Carolina lowcountry. Action in the books moves between Charleston and the fictional island of Stella Maris, with occasional jaunts up to Greenville, SC. Each novel mixes mayhem and charm, enveloping readers in sea, sand, and suspense.

Private Investigator Liz Talbot is a modern Southern belle: she blesses hearts and takes names. She carries her Sig 9 in her Kate Spade handbag, and her Golden Retriever, Rhett, rides shotgun in her hybrid Escape.

Susan’s lowcountry mystery series has been nominated for and won multiple awards including the 2012 Agatha Award for Best First Novel, the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, 2016 Daphne du Maurier finalist for Mainstream Mystery / Suspense, nomination for the Macavity, Spring 2015 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, and was short-listed for the 2016 Pat Conroy Beach Music Mystery Prize as well as the 2017 Southern Book Prize.

Wednesday, August 1

Christopher Swann with his debut novel, Shadow of the Lions

In the vein of novels like A Separate Peace and Dead Poet’s Society, Shadow of the Lions (Algonquin Books, August 2017), is set at a boarding school in Virginia. In this atmospheric mystery, Chris explores the nature of friendship, betrayal, and whether it is ever possible to escape the past. As the novel begins, it has been almost ten years since Matthias graduated from Blackburne, where his roommate and best friend, Fritz, vanished into the woods without a trace after the two boys had an argument. Matthias has long been haunted by the idea that he was somehow responsible for Fritz’s disappearance, and now he finds himself stalled, a professional failure, a bad boyfriend, an incomplete man. When he is offered the opportunity to return to Blackburne to teach English, he sees it as a chance to put his life back together. But once on campus, Matthias becomes driven to find out what happened to Fritz, caught up in events that begin to spiral swiftly out of control.

When it was published last summer, Shadow of the Lions was named a best summer book by Southern Living, Publishers Weekly, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Deep South Magazine. The Wall Street journal review said this book “comes alive with action and intrigue.” Currently, Shadow of the Lions, is a finalist for the Townsend Book Prize. Also, Chris has been nominated for the 2018 Georgia author of the year.

The author is a graduate of Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, a rich resource for the setting in the novel. He earned a B.A. in English from Washington and Lee University, an M.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from Georgia State University. He has won awards and recognition from GSU, Washington and Lee University, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Tara Fellowship for Short Fiction. He is the English department chair at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School.

Thursday, September 7

Lisa Patton with her novel Rush

Delving into the traditions, relationships, and collusions of big university sorority life in the South, popular author Lisa Patton’s newest novel, Rush (St. Martin’s Press, Aug. 2018), also develops commanding themes of racial exclusion and social injustice.

Wide-ranging age, economic, and social differences among the three characters who tell the story of Rush create tremendous tension as many in a class of freshman girls hope to become sorority sisters on the University of Mississippi campus. Miss Pearl, the dearly loved African American housekeeper at the Alpha Delta Beta House, yearns to become the housemother to earn more income and return to college herself, but faces a roadblock from bigoted House Corp President Lilith Whitmore. Cali Watkins, a freshman without the pedigreed background of the typical sorority recruit, faces condescension from supercilious girls. And Wilda Woodcock, an Alpha Delta alumna lacking in self-confidence, succumbs to the dominating and arrogant Lilith Whitmore’s influence.

Lisa Patton is the bestselling author of Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter, Yankee Doodle Dixie, and Southern as a Second Language. Born and raised in Memphis, the author attended the University of Alabama where she was a sorority member. The inspiration for Rush came after she visited her sorority’s new, $14,000,000 sorority house and unexpectedly spent a good portion of the day getting to know the beloved housekeeper.