Jillian Medoff

Thurs., July 19th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25/person
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Acclaimed Atlanta author Jillian Medoff’s bitterly funny, shocking new novel, I Couldn’t Love You More (Grand Central Publishing, paperback, $13.99, on sale 5/5/12), has been called “devastating, hilarious, and painfully familiar” by New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult.

Which child would you save? A decision no parent can even fathom.

Eliot Gordon would do anything for her family. A 38-year-old working mother, she lives an ordinary but fulfilling life in suburban Atlanta with her partner, Grant Delaney, and their three daughters. The two older girls are actually Eliot’s stepdaughters, a distinction she is reluctant to make as she valiantly attempts to maintain a safe, happy household . . .

Then Finn Montgomery, Eliot’s long-lost first love, appears, triggering a shocking chain of events that culminates in a split-second decision that will haunt her beloved family forever. How Eliot survives-and what she loses in the process-is a story that will resonate with anyone who has ever loved a child. With hilarious honesty, wrenching depth, and a knockout twist, I COULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE illuminates the unbreakable bonds of family and reveals the lengths we’ll go to save each other, even as we can’t save ourselves.

About the author:
Jillian Medoff is the acclaimed author of Hunger Point and Good Girls Gone Bad. A huge seller in the US, Hunger Point was the basis for the original Lifetime movie starring Barbara Hershey and Christina Hendricks. Jillian’s books have been translated into many different languages, including French, Spanish, Hebrew, Turkish, Hungarian, Japanese (abridged), Polish, and German (forthcoming).

The eldest daughter of a traveling salesman, Jillian moved 17 times by age 17, ultimately ending up in Atlanta, where her new novel is set. She has a BA from Barnard and an MFA from NYU, and is grateful for having studied with such luminary writers as Mona Simpson, Jonathan Dee, Robert Coover, and Alice Walker. She also attended Master Classes with Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Grace Paley. These authors continue to influence her work in powerful and diverse ways. A former fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, VCCA and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, Jillian taught at NYU and the University of Georgia. She currently lives in New York with her family, and has no plans to move anytime soon.

Wendy Wax

Tues., July 10th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25/person
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Maddie, Avery, and Nikki return for another DIY fix-it-upper – this time televised – in Atlanta author Wendy Wax’s new novel, Ocean Beach (Berkley, paperback, $15.00, releases 6/26/12), the sequel to her previous book, Ten Beach Road.

Madeline, Avery, and Nicole, the unlikely friends from Ten Beach Road, have hit some speed bumps in their lives, but when they arrive in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood, they are all hoping for a do-over. Literally. They’ve been hired to bring a once-grand historic house back to its former glory on a new television show called Do-Over. A lot hinges on the success of the DIY program. For Nikki, it would mean getting back on her feet financially. For Avery, it’s a chance to restart her ruined career. And Maddie hopes it will give her a shot at keeping her family together.

At least, that’s the plan – until they realize that having their work broadcast is one thing, but having their personal lives play out on TV is another story entirely. Soon they’re struggling to hold themselves and the renovation together, even as a decades-old mystery – and the hurricane season – loom on the horizon, threatening not only the project but everything that’s brought them together.

About the author:
Wendy Wax was born in St. Petersburg, Florida and grew up on St. Pete Beach within spitting distance of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard to be a type-A personality when you grow up in such a laid-back environment, but she  managed. Convinced that you were expected to know how to read BEFORE you showed up for school, she forced a neighbor friend to teach her to read at the age of five. She’s been reading ever since.

After graduating from the University of South Florida, Wendy worked in radio, television, and film. She is the author of 8 books, including The Accidental Bestseller, which is a RITA ® Award Finalist in the mainstream category, Ten Beach Road, and its sequel, Ocean Beach.

Wendy lives in the Atlanta area; she is married and has two sons.

Rebecca Lang

Tues., June 26th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ Soby’s, $25 per person
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A contributing editor for Southern Living magazine, Rebecca Lang shows you how to prepare real Southern food–fast!–in her cookbook Quick-Fix Southern (Andrews McMeel, paperback, $16.99).

In Quick-Fix Southern, Rebecca Lang, cookbook author and contributing editor for Southern Living magazine, promises homemade hospitality–Southern style–in 30 minutes or less. Lang dishes up 115 recipes grouped in 10 themes ranging from Rise and Shine breakfasts to Sipping on the Screened Porch beverages, Girls’ Night In party pleasers, and Southern Sweets desserts. In addition to photography, the book features cooking and preparation time for the effortless recipes.

The ultimate goal of Quick-Fix Southern is to present novice and experienced cooks with authentic homemade dishes reflective of New South cuisine that are delicious, fast, and easy to prepare. From Three Cheese Grits, Peach Yogurt Parfait, and Spiked Lemonade and Lime Mint Juleps to Fried Green Tomatoes and Roasted Tomatoes and Parmesan Grits, Benne Seed Sugar Cookies, and Lazy Girl Berry Cobbler, the delectable flavor combinations offered up inside Quick-Fix Southern transition to any setting. So, whether you’re cooking up a side for a church potluck or preparing a main course for Sunday dinner or a Sunday spent at a sporting tailgate, Quick-Fix Southern promises to be your go-to guide for every occasion.

About the author:
Rebecca Lang is the author of Quick-Fix Southern, Southern Entertaining for a New Generation (Cumberland House, 2004), and Mary Mac’s Tea Room (Looking Glass Books, 2005). As a Contributing Editor for Southern Living, Rebecca is featured in cooking segments on the nationally syndicated show Daytime. She is a Contributing Editor for myrecipes.com and is the author of the popular column, “Girls’ Night In,” on the site.

Her food writing has appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Flavors Magazine, Edible Atlanta, Legacy Magazine, and Athens Magazine. She has also written for several other newspapers throughout the South, including the Fernandina Beach News Leader and the Athens Banner-Herald. Her blog has been featured on the James Beard Foundation’s blog as well as the Food News Journal.

Having taught hundreds of classes, Rebecca is an accomplished cooking instructor. She teaches at various locations in Atlanta, including Central Market, The Cook’s Warehouse, and Whole Foods’ Salud! Cooking School. She also travels the country teaching classes to groups as large as 1,200 students.

In addition to her work on Daytime, Rebecca’s television appearances include Home Plate and many local and regional appearances, including Good Day Atlanta, Better Mornings Atlanta, and Fox 42 in Omaha, Nebraska. She also appeared numerous times on the nationally televised show Every Day with Marcus and Lisa. Rebecca has been a guest on Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food on Sirius and XM Radio.

After completing an apprenticeship with Nathalie Dupree, Rebecca was formally trained in culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University. Prior to graduating, she served as the personal chef to the president of the university.

Rebecca began her editorial career as an assistant food editor for Oxmoor House. She edited eight cookbooks and directed food photography on assigned projects. She also served as a hand model for technique photographs.

Rebecca also worked as a freelance project manager and text designer for a small publisher in Atlanta, Looking Glass Books. She handled most aspects of production for 15 books.

Rebecca has been a food stylist and hand model for various print and television commercials. She has worked with Black & Decker, Krystal, Longhorn Steakhouse, Mrs. Smith’s, Shoney’s, and Good Eats.

Rebecca was an assistant food stylist for Home Plate Cooking and was the editor and indexer for Atlanta Cooks at Home. She has also developed recipes for Weight Watchers Annual Recipes for Success 2004 and the next book in the series in 2005. Her recipes are included in Christmas with Southern Living 2004 and 2009.

Rebecca is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Johnson and Wales University. She has served on the board for the Atlanta Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, and is a member of The International Association of Culinary Professionals, The Southern Foodways Alliance, and Georgia Organics.

Dorothea Benton Frank

Thurs., June 14th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ Thornblade Club, $55 per person*
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Bestselling South Carolina author Dorothea Benton Frank is back with her latest Lowcountry novel, Porch Lights (William Morrow, hardcover, $25.99, releases 6/12/12).

*Please note that the ticket price for this event includes one copy of Porch Lights (the book can be picked up from Fiction Addiction when the book releases on June 12th, or we can bring it to the event for you).

Dorothea Benton Frank spins a tale that brims with the warmth, charm, heart, and humor that has become her trademark. Porch Lights is a stirring, emotionally rich multigenerational story — a poignant tale of life, love, and transformation — as a nurse, returning to Sullivans Island from the Iraq war, finds her life has been irrevocably altered by tragedy and now must rediscover love and purpose with the help of her son and aging mother. An evocative visit to enchanting Sullivans Island with its unique pluff mud beaches, palmettos, and colorful local lore — a novel filled with unforgettable characters and enlivened by tales of the notorious Blackbeard and his bloodthirsty pirate crew and eerie Edgar Allen Poe stories – Porch Lights stands tall among the very best works of not only Dottie Frank, but of Anne Rivers Siddons, Rebecca Wells, Pat Conroy, and other masters of the modern Southern novel.

About the author:
Dorothea Benton Frank is the New York Times bestselling author of Folly Beach, Lowcountry Summer, Return to Sullivans Island, Bulls Island, The Land of Mango Sunsets, The Christmas Pearl, Full of Grace, Pawleys Island, Shem Creek, Isle of Palms, Plantation, and Sullivan’s Island.

Ms. Frank has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, Parker Ladd’s Book Talk, and many local network affiliated television stations. She is a frequent speaker on creative writing and the creative process for students of all ages and in private venues such as the National Arts Club, the Junior League of New York, Friends of the Library organizations, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. She has also been a guest speaker at the South Carolina Book Festival, Novello, North Carolina’s Festival of Books, and the Book and Author annual event in Charleston, SC, sponsored by the Post & Courier.

Before she began her writing career, Ms. Frank was involved extensively in the arts and education, and in raising awareness and funding for various non-profits in New Jersey and New York. At the present time, she serves on the Board of the South Carolina Historical Society.

She has served as a trustee of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, NY, Music Theater Group NY, and on the Board of Trustees of the Drumthwacket Foundation. Past board service includes The New Jersey Chamber Music Society, Whole Theater, Dance NJ, American Stage Company, and Senior Care of Montclair. As a volunteer fundraiser, she has planned events for Bloomfield College, The Montclair Kimberley Academy, Unity Concerts, and The National Governor’s Association. She has held appointments to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the New Jersey Cultural Trust.

The author, who was born and raised on Sullivans Island in South Carolina and has been married “forever” to Peter Frank, currently divides her time between New Jersey and the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

Tues., June 12th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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Reader favorite Karen White returns for another Book Your Lunch event with us. She’s a funny and fabulous speaker as well as an award-winning Southern author. Her new book, Sea Change (NAL, paperback, $15.00) releases on June 5th.

Mary Kay Andrews

Sat., June 9th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ Thornblade Club, $55 per person*
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Spring Fever (St. Martin’s Griffin, hardcover, $25.99, on sale 6/5/12) is the newest Southern novel from New York Times bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews. Find out what happens when small towns, old flames, and deep secrets come together for Annajane Hudgens.

*Please note that the ticket price for this event includes one hardcover copy of Spring Fever (the book can be picked up at Fiction Addiction when it releases on June 5th, or we can bring it to the event for you)

Annajane Hudgens truly believes she is over her ex-husband, Mason Bayless.  They’ve been divorced for four years, she’s engaged to a new, terrific guy, and she’s ready to leave the small town where she and Mason had so much history.  She is so over Mason that she has absolutely no problem attending his wedding to the beautiful, intelligent, delightful Celia.  But when fate intervenes and the wedding is called to a halt as the bride is literally walking down the aisle, Annajane begins to realize that maybe she’s been given a second chance.  Maybe everything happens for a reason.  And maybe, just maybe, she wants Mason back.  But there are secrets afoot in this small southern town.  On the peaceful surface of Hideaway Lake, Annajane discovers that the past is never really gone.  Even if there are people determined to keep Annajane from getting what she wants, happiness might be hers for the taking, and the life she once had with Mason in this sleepy lake town might be in her future.

About the author:
Mary Kay Andrews is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Fixer Upper, Savannah Breeze, and Blue Christmas, as well as Deep Dish, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Savannah Blues.

She also wrote ten critically acclaimed mysteries, including the Callahan Garrity mystery series, under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck. Her mysteries have been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Awards.

A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, Trocheck earned a B.A. in journalism from the University of Georgia in 1976. She started her professional journalism career in Savannah, Georgia, where she covered the real-life murder trials which were the basis of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. She left journalism after a ten-year stint as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

She is a frequent lecturer and writing teacher at workshops including Emory University, The University of Georgia’s Harriette Austin Writer’s Workshop, the Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Workshop, and the Antioch Writer’s Workshop.

As a lifelong “junker,” the author claims to know the location of every promising thrift store, flea market, and junkpile in the southeastern United States, plus many parts of Ohio.

Married to her high school sweetheart, she is the mother of two grown children and a proud grandmother. After a brief hiatus in Raleigh, NC, she and her husband moved back to their old neighborhood in Atlanta, where they live in a restored 1926 Craftsman bungalow. She divides her time between Atlanta and her restored beach cottage on Tybee Island, GA.

Ron Rash

Thurs., May 24th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $55 per person*
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Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling Southern author of Serena, returns to Appalachia at the height of World War I with his new novel, The Cove (Ecco, hardcover, $26.99, on sale 4/10/12), the story of a blazing but doomed love affair caught in the turmoil of a nation at war.

*Please note that the ticket price for this event includes one hardcover copy of The Cove (the book can be picked up from Fiction Addiction when the book releases on April 10th, or we can bring it to the event for you).

Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander, and even the light fears to travel. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe–just as they know that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin.

Then it happens–a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. Laurel finds him in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, and nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel’s heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known.

But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything–and danger is closer than they know. Though the war in Europe is near its end, patriotic fervor flourishes thanks to the likes of Chauncey Feith, an ambitious young army recruiter who stokes fear and outrage throughout the county. In a time of uncertainty, when fear and ignorance reign, Laurel and Walter will discover that love may not be enough to protect them.

About the author:
Ron Rash is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Serena, which was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award and is going to be made into a movie (projected release date is in 2014), as well as three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and three collections of stories, including Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Burning Bright, which won the prestigious Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2010. Twice a recipient of the O. Henry Prize, Rash teaches at Western Carolina University.

Tues., May 22nd, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25/person

Western North Carolina native Wiley Cash writes about his homeland in his debut novel, A Land More Kind than Home (William Morrow, hardcover, $24.99, releases 4/17/12), a story about a child who witnesses the unthinkable during a church healing service, forcing him to question his ideas about family and faith.  Mr. Cash will be donating a portion of his proceeds from this event to the Greenville Literacy Association.

Religion is supposed to shield children from the horrors of the world, but one Sunday, nine-year-old Jess Hall watches as his autistic brother is called into a little church in the mountains of North Carolina. What happens next forces Jess to question everything he once believed about his family and his faith. Clem Barefield, the local sheriff, arrives to find a group of charismatic believers who are unwilling to utter a word about the things Jess has seen. At the center of the mystery is Carson Chambliss, a snake-handling ex-convict-turned-preacher whose past is just as mysterious as the power he claims to possess.

The first person Sheriff Barefield turns to is Adelaide Lyle, the church matriarch, a woman whose good-sense brand of religion straddles the divide between blind faith and cold fact. Her understanding of both the spiritual and the natural world makes her predictions of a violent reckoning just as viable as they are unavoidable. Jess is the lynchpin for this violence, and he tries to navigate an adult world where the truth is something hidden from children, even if they know things about it that adults do not.

A Land More Kind than Home is a literary thriller, thick with stories and characters connected by faith, infidelity, addiction, and a sense of hope that is as tragic as it is unforgettable. Readers of Ron Rash and John Hart will fall in love with novelist Wiley Cash.

About the author:
Wiley Cash is from Western North Carolina, a region that figures prominently in his fiction. His stories have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Roanoke Review, and The Carolina Quarterly. A Land More Kind than Home is his first novel.

Wiley holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of North Carolina – Asheville, an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina – Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana – Lafayette. He has received grants and fellowships from the Asheville Area Arts Council, the Thomas Wolfe Society, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo.

He and his wife currently live in West Virginia where he teaches fiction writing and American literature at Bethany College. He also teaches in the Low-Residency M.F.A. Program in Fiction and Nonfiction Writing at Southern New Hampshire University.