April 6, 2022 | Issue #89 |
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Announcing the Paperback of Surviving Savannah!
The Steamship Embarks!
The paperback edition of Patti Callahan’s Surviving Savannah is finally here! As Kristin Hannah says, “Patti has created an atmospheric, compelling story of survival, tragedy, the enduring power of myth and memory, and the moments that change one’s life.”
In Surviving Savannah, Patti Callahan has woven a captivating dual-timeline tale. Meet Everly Winthrop—a contemporary museum curator lost in a fog of grief who finds solace, and finally redemption, as she uncovers the long-buried secrets of a nearly forgotten shipwreck. Then there’s Augusta Longstreet, a known survivor, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth who, along with her child, was never found after that fateful night at sea. Come along for the sweeping adventure as each of these courageous women is faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions and made to bear witness to history.
Based in fact, impeccably researched, and steeped in stunning detail, Surviving Savannah raises the little-known, 180-year-old story of the “Titanic of the South” to the forefront of American historical fiction. This is a moving and powerful exploration of what women will do to endure in the face of tragedy, the role fate plays, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.
If you are looking for a deeper dive into the world of Surviving Savannah, visit Patti’s website for an interview with her, an author letter, a timeline, family tree, and ship maps, among many other resources.
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Parade Essay by Patti Callahan
Each month, the Friends & Fiction authors take turns writing an essay for Parade.com, the online home of Parade magazine. This week, Patti wrote a column about the artifacts that define our lives and connect us to our history.
My parents recently moved to a smaller home and gifted me with a box filled with the kinds of things that only a mother saves: report cards, art, scribblings, photos and first-time stories. This box was overflowing with the artifacts of my past and mostly un-remembered life.
I stuck the stash of it all in my office and mostly forgot about it until recently when I opened the drawer and discovered a story I’d written in the fourth grade. Scribbled on now-yellowed paper with pencil, Susie was the name of the main character. She was new at school and embarrassed by the freckles on her nose. After that, it is a terrible story with a sad ending. In fact, it’s hardly a story at all. But I keep it, along with my Brownie uniform and the little blue diary with the key and bubble handwriting of my grade school self. I also keep the Eeyore my son couldn’t sleep without as a baby and the handwritten notes from my once 5-year-old daughter...
To continue reading Patti’s essay on Parade.com, click HERE.
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Bookseller of the Week
Bookshop.org
Find all the books by every F&F guest, past and present, in the F&F Bookshop.org Shop! Portions of all sales placed in our shop help fund F&F and support our guests! Proceeds from every sale made anywhere across Bookshop go straight into the pockets of indie booksellers nationwide. Since its inception, Bookshop.org has raised nearly $20 million for indie bookstores! Grab Patti’s brand new paperback of Surviving Savannah and Kristy’s new book The Wedding Veil, plus recent books by all F&F hosts and guests on our Friends & Fiction 2022 Guests list!
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Sponsor Spotlight
Charleston Coffee Roasters
We’ve just recently announced the F&F Book & Coffee Bundles with our friends at Charleston Coffee Roasters! Check them out HERE. They make great Mother’s Day, hostess, and teacher gifts! Remember to ENTER our ongoing coffee-of-the-month giveaway. Congrats to our March winner, Debby Stone! We’ve got two more 3-month subscriptions up for grabs with winners announced in each April and May. Will you be one of the lucky ones? And don’t forget that everyone in the F&F community gets 20% off all bagged coffees on the Charleston Coffee Roasters website with code coffeewithfriends. SHOP NOW! While you’re on their website, please follow CCR on Facebook & Instagram and sign up for their email newsletter.
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Spring Subscription Box
Subscribe Today for Signed Books & an Exclusive Gift!
Friends & Fiction co-hosts & co-founders Mary Kay Andrews and Kristy Woodson Harvey have teamed up with Oxford Exchange to offer this fun Spring Reading Box! Order the box from Oxford Exchange to get a signed copy of THE WEDDING VEIL (out now!), a signed copy of THE HOMEWRECKERS when it releases in May, and this fun, exclusive Friends & Fiction notebook with sticky flags for marking all your favorite parts! (We hope there are tons!) Get more information and place your order with Oxford Exchange HERE.
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Latest News From "The Fab Four"
Patti Callahan Henry had such a great time filming our special video for tonight with the whole Friends & Fiction crew in Savannah – Including our managing director Meg Walker and our podcast rockstar Ron Block. And she’s thrilled to be talking about Surviving Savannah again now that it is in paperback!
Kristy Woodson Harvey is having the best time on her THE WEDDING VEIL tour and cannot thank each of you enough for supporting her so incredibly much during this first week post-launch. She was so excited to see her interview about the book published on Southernliving.com. Check it out if you’d like to know more! Kristy has been logging a lot of reading time on the airplane and is so excited to re-read her friend Patti’s SURVIVING SAVANNAH that is now out in paperback!
Mary Kay Andrews is busy signing mountains of copies of THE HOMEWRECKERS. Did you know that you can pre-order signed books from Oxford Exchange and Nantucket Book Partners? She is also working on more super fun book trailers and putting the finishing touches on her book tour. You can view all the event details HERE. Meanwhile, she’s rooting Kristy on as she blazes the book tour trails for The Wedding Veil and is toasting Patti on the paperback release of Surviving Savannah!
Kristin Harmel is gearing up to leave for her FOREST OF VANISHING STARS paperback tour in less than four weeks; she’ll be posting tour dates soon. For now, she’s finishing up writing a few new recipes for the 10th anniversary reissue of her 2012 novel, THE SWEETNESS OF FORGETTING, coming from Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster this October! She hopes you’ll pick up Patti’s SURVIVING SAVANNAH this week if you haven’t read it yet; it’s brand new in paperback!
What Kristin is Reading: Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn (coming Oct. 11 – reading for a blurb)
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The F&F 2022 Reading Challenge
Join the Fun in Our Reading Challenge!
Join us in 2022 for a fun 12-month reading challenge. We will challenge each other all year long to read books in a different category every month. This will help all of us broaden our horizons and read books in different genres we may not have chosen for ourselves. This is a fun way to join with the rest of the F&F community and share a fun reading experience. And the F&F Reading Journal makes the perfect companion piece to this challenge, helping you keep track of all the books you read all year long. Grab your reading journal HERE.
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Listen to the F&F Podcast!
Coming this Friday, April 8th—Ron & Patti talk to author Mary Laura Philpot about writing memoir in essay form as they dive into her new book, Bomb Shelter.
Out Now! WB_S2E14—Part 2 of a 2-parter…Patti and Ron continue the two part series with an interview with the founder of Audible, Don Katz. Hear all about how Audiobooks have expanded in ways we couldn’t have imagined. LISTEN NOW!
Out Now! WB_S2E13—Part 1 of a 2-parter…Ron & Patti interview Martha Hall Kelly and her co-author Kathy Murray about their Audible Original, The Munich Cowboys Cheerleaders, a novella based on Murray's underdog story of coaching a German cheerleading squad. LISTEN NOW!
Out Now! WB_S2E12—To round out our month of March Madness on the podcast, Ron chats with Kristy Woodson Harvey all about The Wedding Veil, in stores this week! LISTEN NOW!
Out Now! WB_S2E11—Ron & MKA sit down for an exclusive chat with the one and only Harlan Coben! Hear all about his new book THE MATCH while enjoying some publishing career dish and dad jokes. LISTEN NOW!
Out Now! WB_S2E10—Ron chats with mega-bestselling author Brad Meltzer as he celebrates 25 years as a published author and the release of his latest thriller, The Lightning Rod. LISTEN NOW!
Listen, download, subscribe, rate, review & share wherever you get your podcasts!
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News from the F&F Official Book Club
We have a lot of fun events coming up. Take a look at our book club schedule and be sure to save the dates! All events begin at 7pm Eastern unless otherwise noted.
May 6: Happy Hour with Ron Block and special guest Patti Callahan Henry
Grab these books and start reading now!
Friends and Fiction Book Club is now officially on YouTube. You will be able to see our past Book Club events there. Feel free to subscribe to us there and share the fun news!! If you click HERE it'll take you right to our channel!!
Not a member of the Friends & Fiction Book Club? Join us! We would love to have you!
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F&F is Now on LoCo+!
Come join Friends & Fiction on LoCo+, a brand-new streaming platform that launched just a few days ago. The platform specializes in locally produced content and will eventually include channels from all over the country, but this is your chance to get in on the ground floor with us; we're part of the platform's rollout, and we'd love for you to be there, too. Eventually, it will be a paid subscription (like Netflix or Hulu), but if you sign up now, you can get the first month free--and you can see past and current episodes of Friends & Fiction as well as lots of other great, independently produced content, including the "Good News Lady" show from our friend (and former F&F guest) Daryn Kagan. Sign up for your free trial here and check it out: https://golocoplus.com/.
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F&F is on YouTube!
Subscribe Today!
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Did you miss last week’s episode with the launch party for Kristy’s The Weddng Veil? You can watch the whole thing on our YouTube channel HERE. We air our show live on YouTube every Wednesday night at 7pm ET. And every episode since our show’s inception can be found there too. So if you ever miss one, or Facebook is being difficult, check us out on YouTube. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode and get alerted every time we post new content. We also have book trailers and highlight clips on our channel too! Watch the March 30th show HERE.
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Friends & Fiction Merchandise
SHOP THE F&F MERCH STORE!
NEW! Stay on track with the exclusive Friends & Fiction Reading Journal, featuring 52 book entries (one for every week of the year), a lending library, reading list, and books you put down. With a cloth cover, gold foil embossing, a satin ribbon page marker, elastic band, heavyweight paper, and a back pocket to store notes, this is the perfect gift for the book lover in your life—or for yourself! ORDER READING JOURNALS HERE.
Cozy cotton with a flattering v-neck and our signature Friends & Fiction logo, these comfy t-shirts are the perfect way to show your Friends & Fiction pride! ORDER T-SHIRTS HERE.
Friends & Fiction wine sippies are available and shipping now from Oxford Exchange!
But that’s not all! We also have F&F 20oz travel tumblers for on-the-go coffee of drinks!
We can’t wait to see you model your merch!
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CONNECT WITH THE FRIENDS & FICTION HOST AUTHORS! |
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