January 5, 2021 | Issue #75 |
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Five Facts From Our Friend, Sally Hepworth!
The one thing you’ve learned you can’t live without during the pandemic:
Alcohol
Your perfect day:
Alone in bed with a book during a thunderstorm (and alcohol)
Your favorite independent bookstore:
The last book you raved about:
Your next book in ten words or less:
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Five Facts From Our Friend, Kelly Rimmer!
The one thing you’ve learned you can’t live without during the pandemic:
30 Rock re-runs. Some people took up meditating or jogging to manage stress during the pandemic. I took up re-watching my favourite sitcoms on an endless loop.
Your perfect day:
After a long sleep-in, my coffee is delivered to me in bed so I can stretch out and read for as long as I want!!
Your favorite independent bookstore:
The last book you raved about:
THE YOUNGER WIFE (obviously). Sally paid me to say that but more fool her because I would have said it anyway.
Your next book in ten words or less:
1950. Alabama. Who were the Germans who came to town?
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Spotlight on Diane Chamberlain!
We are so excited to welcome Diane Chamberlain back to F&F! Diane first joined us a year ago in January 2021 to discuss BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN. Watch that episode HERE, or listen to it on the podcast HERE. Diane Chamberlain is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-eight novels published in over fifteen languages. Her books include THE STOLEN MARRIAGE, NECESSARY LIES, and THE DREAM DAUGHTER. She lives in North Carolina with her partner, photographer John Pagliuca, and her sheltie, Cole. In Diane’s latest novel, THE LAST HOUSE ON THE STREET (coming January 11th from St. Martin’s Press), a community’s past sins rise to the surface when two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an
unsolved, decades-old mystery. Stick around for the Jan 5th aftershow to hear from Diane!
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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 $18 million for indie bookstores! Find recent books by tonight’s guests, Sally Hepworth, Kelly Rimmer & Diane Chamberlain —and by the Fab Four—on our Friends & Fiction 2022 Guests list!
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Latest News From "The Fab Four"
KRISTY WOODSON HARVEY is getting her ducks in a row since today is the first day of school. (Backpack? Lunchbox? Where did we leave those in December?) She is also getting SO excited for THE WEDDING VEIL launch and will be releasing tour dates any minute. Speaking of, she’s so thrilled that SheReads included THE WEDDING VEIL in its list of the “Best Literary Historical Fiction Coming in 2022.” What a great start to a new year!
PATTI CALLAHAN is coming out of the post-holiday fog and so excited about the new Friends & Fiction schedule. Did you see that Once Upon a Wardrobe won the Audiofile Award? And she loved talking to Harbor Lights Magazine. It’s been both a rough and beautiful year, and 2022 here we come!
What Patti is Reading: Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpot (out this spring)
MARY KAY ANDREWS is fortified with all the good luck New Year’s Day foods she could find–collard greens, black-eyed peas, pork, and her family’s favorite grits and greens casserole from The Beach House Cookbook. Now she has her nose to the grindstone again, working on the copy edits for The Homewreckers, which will be out May 3.
KRISTIN HARMEL closed out 2021 with oysters and champagne on her back patio (with Noah playing with Hot Wheels nearby – at one point, he declared, “I’m just here for the food and the toys”), and she kicked off the first work week of 2022 with a great meeting and luncheon in Naples, Florida. She’s looking forward to two paperback releases this year: The Forest of Vanishing Stars in paperback in early May and the 10th anniversary reissue of The Sweetness of Forgetting (complete with a new introduction and author’s note and new recipes!) in early October. And she’s finally on the home stretch of the first draft of her March 2023 novel, set in both WW2-era Paris and 1960 New York. She can’t wait to welcome Kelly Rimmer and Sally Hepworth to the show tonight!
What Kristin is reading: The Good Sister by one of tonight’s guests, Sally Hepworth (listening on audiobook in the car!)
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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 soon! Out this Friday, January 7th—Ron interviews Indian-American journalist, critic and novelist Thrity Umrigar about her latest novel, The Secrets Between Us, recently released in paperback—and just announced as the next pick in Reese's Book Club!
Out Now! WB_S1E31—The Beaufort Special! Ron Block interviews F&F Managing Director Meg Walker all about F&F, the founders, her role, and what the future holds and follows it with an interview with attendees live from the June 2021 F&F Live event in Beaufort, NC. LISTEN NOW!
Out Now! WB_S1E30—Rockin’ Around the Podcast Tree! Ron gathers with the Fab Four and F&F’s Managing Director Meg Walker to talk holiday faves, memories, and traditions. LISTEN NOW!
Out Now! WB_S1E29—A special surprise bonus episode of the F&F podcast featuring Mary Kay Andrews reading her original 1997 Callahan Garrity short story Fatal Fruitcake, only available online as a digital e-book download. 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
Happy New Year! We have a lot of fun events coming up! Take a look at our book club schedule coming up through the early part of 2022 and be sure to save the dates! All events begin at 7pm Eastern unless otherwise noted.
Grab these books and start reading now!
If you missed our Dec 20th Christmas in Peachtree Bluff book club discussion with Kristy Woodson Harvey, catch it HERE.
If you missed our Dec 6th book club discussion with Mary Kay Andrews about The Santa Suit, catch it HERE!
If you missed our Happy Hour with Ron Block on Friday Dec 3rd, you can watch it 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 Sarah MacLean? 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 December 29th 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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