Summer Sizzle – Under the Covers on Fridays this Summer
Who’s Under the Covers on Fridays in June, July and August?
June 5 John Gerdy Alphabone Orchestra
Alphabone Orchestra is a creative and wildly illustrated book designed to help children get excited about music while offering adults tidbits of music education with Grace Notes sprinkled throughout. Author and illustrator John Gerdy is a lifelong musician who has served as an artist in residence teaching the Blues to children from Pre-K to grade 6. He performs regularly under the stage name Willie Marble.
June 12 Betsy Mack Mid-Reach
Author Betsy Mack is Executive Director of the Charlotte Hornets Foundation, with experience in public relations, community development, fundraising, and marketing. Her book, Mid-Reach, is a book written with early career professionals in mind that is meant to inspire, empower, and celebrate failing while in the midst of success. Betsy highlights the importance of fostering relationships, owning mistakes, and celebrating successes (even the small ones).
June 19 Tracie Barton-Barrett Buried Deep in Our Hearts
Author Tracie Barton-Barrett, recipient of The Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Society of Leadership & Success, has been a life-long devotee to animals. This love has spanned from her first job working in a veterinarian’s office, to pet-sitting, to becoming a Licensed Professional Counselor with a specialty in pet loss. Inspired by her love of animals, she wrote Buried Deep in Our Hearts, a novel that follows three families and their lives together with their furry family members.
June 26 Nicole Ayers Love Notes to My Body Collection
Teacher, editor and author Nicole Ayers penned this collection to focus on issues of body image. Love Notes to My Body is a whimsically illustrated celebration of the author’s body, while Love Letters to My Body is a collection of personal essays that digs into the grittier side of her journey to accept herself. Writing Your Way to (Self-)Love is a guided journal experience for people who feel called to write their own love notes to their bodies.
July 3 Alison Paul Klakowicz Mommy’s Big, Red Monster Truck
Mommy’s Big, Red Monster Truck, Alison’s first children’s book, was the recipient of the Mom’s Choice Awards Gold Award. It’s an epic travel and adventure children’s picture book born of the author’s son’s imagination and love of monster trucks during his toddler years. Every kid knows that mommies are the greatest. But did you know they are also cool! One little boy sure does. Because his mommy drives a big, red monster truck, and it’s awesome!
July 10 Danielle Stewart The Bend in Redwood Road
In this novel by USA Today Best-Selling Author Daniel Stewart, author of more than thirty books, the story centers around the secret of an unusual adoption, where years later the mother who gave up her baby girl and the daughter who was adopted must reckon with the outcome that changed their lives and which in the end, could tear families apart. Kirkus Reviews says that The Bend in Redwood Road is “an engaging and lifelike representation of two families at a turning point.”
July 17 Catherine Goodman Farley Explore with Mimi children book collection
The mission of Catherine Goodman Farley’s three book collection is to share lessons in history, conservation and faith with children and their families as they explore the South Carolina Lowcountry with Mimi the deer and her wildlife friends. Each book takes place on an island. Mimi is mischievous on Seabrook Island, adventurous on Kiawah Island and an explorer on Sullivan’s Island. The series has been widely reviewed and has been a vehicle for interactive speaking engagements with writers, school children, and adults as well.
July 24 Jeanne Adams and Nancy Northcott Christmas on Outcast Station
In this Christmas in July in outer space episode, award-winning authors Jeanne Adams and Nancy Northcott team up in their book with Jeanne’s novella, The Princess Problem, and Nancy’s novella, Scorpions for Christmas, both set on Outcast Station, a backwater posting of the Terran colonies in outer space. It is set in a world where careers go to die and where Chief Station Marshall Brad Carruthers has problems top side protecting a young princess about to be crowned Queen and where Federated Colonies Deputy Marshall Hank Tremaine has his hands full on the planet below with the murder of a Drachan scorpiod and the theft of a relic that could lead to an inter-stellar conflict.
July 31 Lexi Aidyn Candid
In this sweet romance love story, a widowed father of two young girls moves to a new town looking for a new start where he meets and is interested in a young woman who is a career-driven photographer. Believing that his late wife’s parents will not understand his attraction to someone so different and much younger so soon after losing his wife, he keeps his relationship a secret, a choice that could undermine his second chance at love.
August 7 Reita Pendry In the Frame
In the Frame is the fifth novel in Reita Pendry’s legal thriller series, featuring criminal defense attorney Mercy Johnson, a Washington, D.C. attorney who takes on difficult clients and hard-to-win cases. Reita knows something about what she writes, having spent most of her career as a criminal defense attorney in D.C. and then in Charlotte.
August 14 Mary Bess Dunn Fate Havens
Pushcart Prize nominee Mary Bess Dunn’s Fate Havens is a set of inter-linked character driven stories that attempt to make sense of the world around us. The literary fiction tales address societal expectations and the persistence of familial love. Again and again, the stories return to core questions: What is a good life? What do we owe to family? Dunn’s characters never settle into simple emotions, and many stories have an engaging mood of nostalgia, tinged with sadness.
August 21 Molly Grantham The Juggle is Real: The Off-Camera Life of an On-Camera Mom
WBTV anchor Molly Grantham’a second book, The Juggle Is Real, shines a raw and funny light on the messy realities many face with the constant rotation of life. The memoir is a continuation of her first book, Small Victories: The Off-Camera Life of an On-Camera Mom. Both are truth-telling accounts of juggling too much, and showing imperfections in relatable ways. The Huffington Post says: “Molly Grantham’s authenticity as a mom and a fallible human being shines through every one of her pages in this compelling collection of parenting essays.”
August 28 Paloma Capanna Nearly Fifty, A Collection of Essays
Part memoir, part women’s lit and part self-help, Paloma Capanna’s book is about how to get through the unscheduled, messy bits in life. It’s what to read when life doesn’t let up, when it feels like you have no options, and when you’d really rather sit down and cry. Larry Jaffe, poet, author of Lying Half-Naked in the Doorway, says that “if you are looking for insight into a life well-lived, then you have come to the right place.
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