March 2, 2022 | Issue #83 |
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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 more than $19 million for indie bookstores! Find recent books by our Wed March 2nd guest Colleen Hoover—and books by the Fab Four—on our Friends & Fiction 2022 Guests list!
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Sponsor Spotlight
Charleston Coffee Roasters
We’ve launched the “Coffee with Friends” 3-month promotion with our partner Charleston Coffee Roasters! What goes together better than coffee and a great book? How about friends to chat with over a cup of joe about the books you love? We call that a match made in heaven! Over the next three months everyone in the F&F community can get 20% off on all bagged coffee on the Charleston Coffee Roasters website with the code coffeewithfriends. We will also have book & coffee bundles, giveaways, and lots of other fun things in store! Meanwhile, let’s show our new partner the power of the F&F community! Be sure to sign up for the Charleston Coffee Roasters email newsletter and follow them on Facebook & Instagram!
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Sponsor Spotlight
Announcing our March Partnership
with Page 1 Books!
We are so thrilled to welcome back Page 1 Books as a presenting sponsor of Friends & Fiction!. The Page 1 Book Subscription provides the personal touch of an indie bookstore with the delight and surprise of an online subscription service, curated just for you. The literary matchmakers at Page 1 Books hand-select books just for you based on your preferences and their knowledge. At Page 1 Books you are more than an algorithm. Shop now at page1books.com. Choose their 3- 6- or 12-month subscription plan. The gift of Page 1 is always a custom fit! And now, you can get 15% off all book subscriptions with code FRIENDS15. Be sure to sign up for the Page 1 email newsletter and follow them on Facebook & Instagram!
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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 when it releases in March, 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"
Kristy Woodson Harvey is so thrilled to share the first sneak peek of her brand new book trailer for THE WEDDING VEIL with all of you on the show! And, she is beyond flattered that women.com called THE WEDDING VEIL “a masterclass in storytelling” and included it in its list of “12 Historical Must-Reads for 2022.” We’re less than a month out from launch, and she couldn’t be more excited!
Patti Callahan Henry Last week, live on the Wednesday night show Patti was so thrilled to announce her new novel, tentatively titled The River Child with Atria’s Simon and Schuster. Patti is fast and furiously editing for its summer 2023 release. Patti loved writing about Five Books Featuring Protective Siblings (just as in Once Upon a Wardrobe). And she is so thrilled to see that her Audible Original with Cynthia Erivo, Wild Swan won another award: The Earphone Award for Audiofile Magazine. She’s trying not to be too nervous about addressing her alma mater, Auburn University this week for the Distinguished Lecture Series. And she absolutely loved talking to The Storied Outdoors in a podcast interview; one of her favorite discussions this year!
Mary Kay Andrews has been reading all the cards and expressions of sympathy from Friends and Fiction fans, following the loss of her daughter Katie Abel, and is so grateful for your kind thoughts. Last week, she and Ron interviewed #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben for the Friends and Fiction Writer’s Block Podcast. Look for that episode in a couple weeks. In the meantime, she’s hard at work on her next book project, which she hopes to announce soon.
Kristin Harmel had a great time on Sunday talking with author Sarah Penner at Friends & Fiction favorite Oxford Exchange in Tampa, and she’s looking forward to being in conversation with author Erika Robuck this Thursday at her local bookstore, Writer’s Block Bookstore in Winter Park, Florida. She’s watching with despair as the crisis unfolds in Ukraine, and she urges you to contribute to humanitarian aid if you can. A few places to donate to, if you’re able to help: World Central Kitchen (serving hot, nourishing meals at border crossings and accommodation centers in Poland and Romania), UNICEF (distributing safe water to affected areas, providing children with psychosocial care, and helping kids separated from their families) and Catholic Relief Services (providing shelter, food, hygiene supplies, fuel, transportation to safe areas, and counseling support).
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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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Debut Spotlight
The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers has been called “a story of courage, of women willing to take a stand in the face of corporate greed, and most definitely a tale for our times" by New York Times bestselling author and F&F favorite Fiona Davis. Just out this week from William Morrow, The Tobacco Wives tells the story of burgeoning seamstress Maddie Sykes in 1946 North Carolina.
When Maddie arrives in the prosperous tobacco capital of the South after years of war rations and shortages, she’s dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female workers at her aunt’s thriving sewing factory, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt's glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn't quite the carefree paradise that it seems. A trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems, and Maddie inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests this is no coincidence. In a town where everyone depends on Big Tobacco, Maddie fears that exposing the truth may destroy the lives of the proud, strong women with whom she has forged strong bonds.
Shedding light on the hidden history of women's activism during the post-war period, at its heart, The Tobacco Wives is a deeply human, emotionally satisfying, and dramatic debut novel about the power of female connection and the importance of seeking truth.
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Listen to the F&F Podcast!
Coming soon! Out this Friday, March 4th—Ron & Kristy chat with Craig Conover of BravoTV’s Southern Charm. The co-founder of Sewing Down South tells all about his new book, Pillow Talk.
Out Now! WB_S2E8—Ron talks to YA author Jennifer E. Smith (The Unsinkable Greta James) and Dianna Rostad who wrote the USA Today bestseller You Belong Here Now, about the orphan trains in 1920s Montana ranch land. LISTEN NOW!
Out Now! WB_S2E7—Ron & Patti interview Robin Whitten, the editor and founder of Audiofile magazine, as well as Fiona Hardingham who narrated the audiobook of Patti’s Once Upon a Wardrobe. 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!
We had the best time discussing The Wedding Date with Jasmine Guillory. If you missed it, catch the replay HERE.
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 V.E. Schwab and G.R. Macallister? 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 February 23rd 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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