I first read True Grit at the home of one of my best friends from graduate school, Elwood Reid, who is the author of four fine books and a writer for TV and the source of many excellent reading recommendations. My husband picked it up first, read it fast, and then pressed it on me, and I, too, read it before the visit was over, in time for a late-night, post-drinks argument with Elwood about which was Charles Portis’ best book. My husband and I voted for True Grit.

The other novels by Charles Portis—Masters of Atlantis, The Dog of the South, Norwood, and Gringos—are all hilarious, psychologically acute, and brilliantly written. I’ve never forgotten the description in Dog of the South of the narrator’s romantic rival, who boasts “that he had no head for figures and couldn’t do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.” But as much as I enjoy and admire these books, True Grit is the one I love, so much that in my most recent book, I had my characters name their daughter after its narrator.

The first sentence of True Grit is: “People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.” Maybe I shouldn’t have to say anything else to convince people to read this book, but I’ll go on about it a little longer anyway. What that first sentence captures, for me, are the two primary pleasures of the novel. First, I love the voice of its narrator, Mattie Ross, a girl-turned-old-woman whose determination and forthrightness are at once admirable, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Second, I stand in awe of the focus and intensity of its plot, which demonstrates how compelling, satisfying, and downright gorgeous a hard-driving, single-minded story can be. This story is an arrow, it’s a bullet train. Mattie does indeed set out to catch the man who murdered her father, and she bargains and bullies adult men into helping her, most notably Rooster Cogburn, a U.S. Marshal, who has, she has heard, “true grit.”

From there the story becomes one of pursuit, of gunfights and near misses with death, and of Mattie and Rooster’s mutual admiration, because of course Mattie has true grit to equal the tough, one-eyed lawman’s. She is a brilliant, vividly alive creation—a person I feel I know—and her story will keep you riveted.

I’m certain enough of this to give away a copy. Leave a comment here and/or on my Facebook page, and I’ll enter you to win.

Susanna and Chandra were kind enough to answer my questions about publishing first novels and what they like to read, and also to give away one signed copy each. To enter, leave a comment on this post. To find out more about these authors and their terrific books, visit www.susannadaniel.com and www.chandrahoffman.com.

When you think about the process of writing your book, from conception to publication, what sticks out in your mind?

Susanna Daniel: It always surprises me that parts of a novel—certain chapters, say, or certain scenes—are enormously difficult to write, while others appear on the page as if they’ve been written already. For me, the end of Stiltsville, when the narrator’s life as she knows it comes to an end in a very sad but inevitable way, came very freely, so I wrote it long before I wrote (and rewrote) the early chapters, which took a lot more hand-wringing on my part. I think this is mostly the result of self-sabotage (lack of confidence and imagination when it comes to certain topics).

Several people have asked me if I know how to write a second novel now that I’ve finished my first. The answer is no. I think maybe one starts to understand the process after four or five books—but four or five books might make an entire career. Once you know what you’re doing, you’re done.

Chandra Hoffman: Chosen was written over the course of the last five years, during which my youngest two children were born, so a lot of what comes to mind are “motherhood” markers. The night I found out I was pregnant with our second son, Max, I got out of bed and everything that had been rattling around with me since my oldest was born, thoughts on parenthood, and my time before kids in the adoption world, just came out in one huge purge; the outline for this novel. I still have those first twelve pages of scribbles that I did in the middle of the night at my Dad’s place in West Bay, Grand Cayman.

It was my mother-in-law who first believed in me as an artist—she was a single mother/classical musician when she was raising my husband, so her gifts to me over the next two years were gifts of time to write. She’d pay a babysitter so I could work, or send the MerryMaids to our house, or take me with her to her rehearsals in New York, where I would write serenaded by flute and piano and harp. But I knew if I was going to finish this book, I needed the structure of graduate school. I reapplied to the program I had left for the siren song of Spain nine years earlier. The day I was accepted, I found out I was pregnant again and I almost backed out, daunted by the idea of commuting between Philadelphia and Los Angeles with a newborn and two little kids. My mom and my sister stepped up to the plate, and I went to grad school with this huge, loving, ridiculous, nursing, needy, tantrum-prone entourage.

But I did it—and my MFA thesis was what became Chosen. I remember my daughter threw up on me right before my final reading, and it felt totally appropriate to do it in front of a hundred people covered in baby barf, because this was an accurate representation of the process. Afterwards, instead of going to graduation, I took my kids to Disneyland.

How has publishing your first novel been what you expected? How has it been different?

SD: I think I pretty much knew what to expect in terms of reviews and sales and readings, but something I hadn’t counted on was the fan mail! It’s wonderful. People write me every week to say that they weren’t able to put the book down once they started reading—this is tremendously happy news. Really, it’s been like a magic carpet through the process for me—I’m so grateful. And now I’m inspired to send fan mail of my own!

CH: When my manuscript was done, I knew I had a well-crafted, timely story. I was really pleased with the ease at which it found its way into the right hands, but then I haven’t really known the nuts and bolts of publishing. I have a great agent and editor, and I feel like they have taken excellent care of me, but they’ve also really let me learn as I go. There was never a meeting where we sat down they said, “We’ll do x, then y, then z, by these dates,” which is a little hard for me as a Virgo. I feel like they’re the parents, and I’m the toddler, and they’re watching me figure it all out on my own with benevolent distance, like, “Oh, look, she’s going to ask about press kits now. She did! Cute! She just asked about press kits!” Or I would say something to my editor after what I thought was the final read-through like, “Whew, I’m glad I won’t have to look at THAT manuscript ever again until it’s published!” and she would just sort of chuckle softly, and a few weeks later, the galleys would arrive for me to review.

On the whole I’ve been really blessed. It’s a gift to do what you love and finally have the validation of turning it into a career.

What book do you wish you had written? Whose career would you like to have?

SD: On a not infrequent basis, I wish that I were either Ian McEwan or Marilynne Robinson. But the truth is that I’m really not similar to either of these writers, in terms of style or personality. I just love their work so much that I want to inhabit it, and also it seems from a distance like they’ve achieved a nice balance of success and work ethic, so that their sales are not driving their work. I don’t expect to have consistently successful books (either in terms of sales or reviews), but I would like to look back and be able to say that I was a working writer, producing books on a regular or semi-regular basis.

CH: No particular book I can think of, but when I was in grad school and they asked this question about whose career I wanted, I said, “Jodi Picoult, but one rung up on the literary ladder; domestic drama with a little less formula” and everyone looked at me like they’d never heard of her. And I just thought, isn’t this a low-residency program, which means presumably some of you took airplanes to get here? Did any of you look around in the airport bookstore? Those six books in the front? That’s Jodi Picoult. But this was a serious MFA program and the attitude was that there’s something suspect and embarrassing about aspiring to write mainstream fiction for smart readers.

Seriously, though, that’s what I want. I want to tackle complicated social situations, the kind you bump up against every day, and shine a light on them through the voices of multiple, realistic, believable and hopefully sympathetic characters. I like to use cities that I have lived in and loved as the backdrop—Chosen was Portland, OR, the next one is set in Boulder—and then of course, because it’s fiction and it’s my world, I make it just a little larger than life.

For whose lifestyle I want, I’d have to say Barbara Kingsolver—I loved Small Wonder, and I’m into environmental awareness and organic gardening and mindful parenting and goats—I harass my husband daily about chickens too. But I want less political angst; I don’t want to carry the worries of the world so close to the surface the way she does. I need to be able to shut it off a little, so that I don’t stress about the jet fuel for plane tickets to visit my sister in the Caribbean or trek around Honduras with the kids, creating a life rich with experience.

What do you yourself want from a reading experience?

SD: I tend to read at the sentence level, which means that character, dialogue, and language are much, much more vital to me than plot. I love to be bowled over by a beautiful sentence or a stunning line of dialogue. However, if you give me lovely sentences, characters who have emotional weight and interesting conversations, and a few plot teasers, I’m in heaven. To much plot on the page, and I start to feel the author puppeteering—I’d rather the characters do the work.

CH: I want to be so absorbed in the story that I cannot put it down—this actually happens pretty easily—but then I want the characters to be so realized, real, that they hang around me for a few days and I wonder about them, worry how they’re doing. I want it to mean something to my personal life too. With your book Husband and Wife it was haunting the way this story could have been any of us. My husband and I fell in love at twenty-one and are in our mid-thirties now, so we’re at that place in life where some of our friends’ marriages are starting to hit rough spots—we’re living what you wrote about so eloquently. After I finished the book in the middle of the night, I rattled around the house for an hour touching my kids and listening to my husband of a decade breathing in his sleep, thinking how beautiful that sound is, how precious and fragile out family is, worth protecting. I want stories to affect me. That’s the kind of fiction I like.

What do you hope a reader will take from your book?

SD: I’ve been so complimented by readers who have told me that Stiltsville is their story—that they’ve seen their experiences mirrored in this story of Frances and Dennis and their long marriage and tight-knit community of family and friends. What I hoped to illuminate in the novel is the magical in the ordinary. I hope that some of that magic will rub off on my readers.

CH: When I was in grad school, one professor suggested that Chosen was a social novel, an exposé of the adoption world. I don’t think of it that way. I think it is informed by my work in domestic adoption and that’s definitely the backdrop of the story. But there’s this juicy extortion plot, born of my lifelong fear of abduction. That scene in the hospital, the abduction Francie and Eva talk about, is something that happened in a neighboring town when I was five and it haunted me. This was back in the days when my mom left all five of us in the station wagon while she went grocery shopping and I used to just flatten myself against the floor, praying nobody would come for me.

But what I think Chosen is really about is new parenthood, and what happens when there is a disparity between what you imagine it will be like, and the reality. How do you bridge that gap? For us, our first son was born with huge medical hurdles and a lot of unknowns. It took almost losing him on the operating table to sandblast my ambivalence away, to identify him as mine. Early parenthood is hard, it’s wonderful but it’s hard, no matter how the baby comes to you. I wanted to touch on this theme, and I hope that readers will identify with the arc in the characters as they struggle to answer the question “What happens when you get what you thought you wanted?”

I read Eva Moves the Furniture not long after 9/11. Like most us, I was still adapting to a new vision of the world, in which everything felt uncertain and askew. In my own life, there was enough to make me feel unsettled and melancholy. I was living away from my house and my soon-to-be-husband, teaching a visiting year at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. I was so anxious about this, my first teaching job since graduate school, that I would sometimes blank on how to spell a simple word, like temperature, while standing with my chalk poised at the board. Once, in class, I couldn’t remember the author or the title of Kafka’s  “The Metamorphosis,” and before a student saved me by mentioning the story I very nearly called it “The Cockroach” by Gregor. If I’d been a more experienced teacher I could have laughed off such mistakes, or near-mistakes, but as it was I lived in terror of exposing myself as an incompetent fraud. Meanwhile, the editor who had published my first novel had once again told me that she found the latest revision of my under-contract manuscript unacceptable.

I was, for all these reasons, in need of the kind of escape fiction can provide. But escape was hard to come by. After the cataclysmic events of that fall, anything without the weight of grief seemed trivial. I had trouble concentrating on what I read. Even thinking about my own problems—my stupid manuscript that I’d probably never get right and really wanted to burn in the yard—seemed petty and self-indulgent. My roommate and I developed a habit of spending our evenings splitting a bottle of wine in front of the television.

This was the mood I was in when I picked up Eva Moves the Furniture. I knew Margot Livesey from my time on staff at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where she often teaches, and I had read her earlier books. So I was looking forward to this one. I took it out on the little balcony of my apartment and cracked it open. And then I read and read and read. It’s a slender book, possible to read in a day, and in my memory I sat out on the balcony and read it from start to finish without moving from my chair. It was one of those times when a book catches you up entirely, so that if someone speaks to you they seem only half-real. The experience of reading it was so transporting, so cathartic, that even now I find it difficult to articulate clearly why I love the book as much as I do. But I’ll try.

The story is deceptively simple: A little girl named Eva is born in small-town Scotland in 1920, and her mother, Barbara, dies soon after. The book traces Eva’s upbringing. Raised by her sweet, haunted father and her practical aunt, she goes to school, makes friends or doesn’t, has romances, becomes a nurse, and tends to soldiers wounded in World War II. Margot beautifully sketches all of the lovely, melancholy details of this life. But what makes the book so special—what made it the perfect book for me to read when I did—are the story’s mysterious qualities, which are at once unsettling and moving. From girlhood Eva is visited by a woman and a little girl who sometimes help and sometimes hinder her. Are they real? Is Eva crazy? Are their intentions good or bad? These questions propel the book, and shape Eva’s life.

Haunted by her mother’s death and her two companions, Eva is always at an angle to the world around her, unable to fully participate in the daily life she so vividly observes. She despairs at this, but there is, also, a magic in her life, one that comes from loss and difference. When, ultimately, Eva embraces the haunted parts of her life as much as the everyday ones, she forges a connection between past and present, between what remains and what is gone. In this compressed and lovely novel, Margot Livesey conveys that there is a kind of beauty in sadness, and that what is lost is never entirely lost.

Q&A with Margot Livesey

1. Looking back on the ten years you spent writing this book, what do you most remember about the process?

I should say that during those ten years I did not work exclusively on Eva.  While wrestling with various drafts, I also wrote three novels: Homework, Criminals, and The Missing World.  What I most remember was the persistent feeling that made me return to Eva again and again: namely that there was something I ardently wanted to capture on the page but that I didn’t yet know how to give it voice.

2. Was the experience of writing (or perhaps just finishing) the book cathartic?

I wrote the last chapter almost in a single sitting and with the exhilarating sense that this was what I had been aiming for all along.  Usually I am very open to comments and suggestions about my work but when I finished those pages I had the strong feeling that – whatever anyone said – I didn’t want to change them.  That was cathartic.

3. To what degree do you imagine the reader’s experience of your books? If you do, what were you hoping the reader would understand and/or feel by the end?

This is not exactly what you’re asking but Eva was finally published on the day that turned out to be 9/11.  I was sitting at my desk that morning when a friend phoned from London to ask if I was all right.  So for several weeks the book I had worked so hard to write was the furthest thing from my mind.  When gradually things began to return to something like normal and I began to give readings. I realised that the novel I had begun out of my own unvoiced grief about losing my mother could speak to the losses that everyone above a certain age shares.  Not everyone has lost their mother but almost everyone, sadly, loses someone by distance or estrangement or illness or death.

4. Do you have a favorite (or favorite) scenes from the book? If so, which, and why?

I have several favourite scenes – the one where the companions help Eva during the Blitz, the one where we see Samuel at work, the one where Eva meets Anne, the one where Eva realises the companions are trying to look after Ruth.  I think what they have in common are a certain intensity about the ordinary, and about the way in which the ordinary can become extraordinary, or vice versa.

5. How would you describe this book in relationship to your others, and to your overall sensibility?

Eva is the most biographical of my novels – I put in almost everything I knew or could find out about my mother – and yet the one that also required the fullest act of imagination.  I don’t (yet, as far as I know) have imaginary companions.  I also wanted the novel to appear simple – someone is telling you her life story – and, as I painfully discovered, that simplicity leaves fewer hiding places than a more complicated plot like that of, say, Criminals or The Missing World.

6. When you hear from readers about Eva, what kinds of things do they mention?

Readers often mention their own relationships with their mothers and daughters.  And quite a number of people have told me about their experiences of communicating with the dead, sometimes in rather ordinary ways – my grandmother told me to make scones – sometimes in profound and intimate ways.  When my husband read the novel – it was already published – he said when he reached the end he finally understood.  The question wasn’t whether the companions exist; the question was whether we have a relationship with the dead and we do, even if at times it feels one sided.

You can find out more about Margot and her novels on her website, www.margotlivesey.com. Leave a comment here about this book or one of your favorites and be entered to win a copy of Eva.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a woman who had read my book, Spin. She wanted to tell me how much she liked it, which was super sweet. I can’t imagine ever not enjoying getting that type of email. But what intrigued me was that the email also contained two other pieces of information. The first was a copy of an email that she had sent to a friend recommending my book – she wanted me to know that she was telling others to buy it. The second was a book recommendation. She had recently read, and loved, Sarah Pekkanen’s book, The Opposite of Me, and thought I might like it too.

Now, neither of these pieces of information is remarkable in the grand scheme of things. But I was intrigued, mostly because of a project that I’m running on Facebook called “I bet we can make these books bestsellers.” I started this project because I wanted to bring some attention to books that I love but weren’t getting the readership I thought they deserved (the current selections are two excellent books by Shawn Klomparens – Jessica Z. and Two Years, No Rain). So I guess I’m doing exactly what this reader was doing – recommending books to strangers just because I like them.

All this to say that I’m both sensitive to, and curious about, how people decide to purchase the books they do these days. I’ll admit that part of this curiosity is self-interested. I think most authors want to know what gets their book from the bookshelf to the shopping bag. Is it the cover design? Is it store placement? Is it the blurbs (or lack thereof) on the back? And more recently – is it Facebook, or Goodreads, or Twitter?

Another anecdote. Soon after my book came out, I was contacted by someone through Twitter. She had heard about my book somehow – following some thread of retweets or #Litchats – she couldn’t remember. She clicked through to my website, read the first few chapters of my book and decided to buy it. As she was in the States and my book is only available in Canada (for now, hopefully), she wanted some help with purchasing it. I directed her to Amazon.ca, thanked her, and never expected to hear from her again. A week later she emailed me to tell me that she had in fact purchased the book, received it, and had read it in a day. And then she told me something that blew my mind. Although she was in her mid-thirties, my book was the first that she’d read since high school, and the first that she’d purchased. Ever.

Now, I like my book just fine. In fact, sometimes I even crack myself up when reading certain passages. But honestly. If you haven’t read a book in twenty years, I’m pretty sure I can recommend some better titles than my own. In fact, I started thinking of a list right then and there of books that I was going to recommend she read, then stopped myself. Just bask in the glow, I thought. You don’t have to make this a lesson.

But now I kind of regret it. I mean, I love books. I always have. And it was partly my enthusiasm for other people’s books that led me to start the whole Facebook thing. That, and I was sick, sick, sick, of talking about myself and my own book. It’s the dirty little secret no one tells you when you set out to become a published author. If you succeed, you will end up hating yourself a little bit because these days, promoting your book means promoting yourself, just like celebrities have to do. Not that I’m complaining!

So, where am I going with this anyway? Oh, right. Book recommendations. I am all about book recommendations these days. And what I’m learning is that there are recommendations and there are recommendations. I will likely read Sarah’s book because if someone who liked my book thought I would like hers, it’s worth a go. And if I’d made a list for the woman who found me on Twitter, she might just have picked some of them up. But what about you, dear readers of Leah’s blog? What makes you pick up a book and pay some of your hard earned money for it? Is it hearing about a book repeatedly? Is it getting an enthusiastic recommendation from a friend? Do the recommendations of “strangers” – i.e. people you “meet” in the digital world – influence you?

Well, on the off chance they do, here are the best books I’ve read in the last year (with apologies to Leah – her book is in my to-read pile, a tall towering thing):

Open, Andre Agassi

Two Years, No Rain, Shawn Klomparens

Jessica Z., Shawn Klomparens

The Day the Falls Stood Still, Cathy Marie Buchanan

Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld

Oh, and one last thing. The Facebook group is giving away a Kindle on August 16^th. If you join the group and purchase Jessica Z. and/or Two Years, No Rain and email me your proof of purchase (a photo of you with book, a scanned receipt, your online order) at cemckenzie@hotmail.com you will be entered to win. Good luck, and thanks for listening.

And finally, a big thank you to Leah for letting me muse in her space.

Here is the link for the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113149048727107

My website is www.catherinemckenzie.com

Shawn’s is www.shawnklomparens.com

Husband and Wife, by Leah Stewart
@leahcstewart, http://www.leahstewart.com/

The House on Fortune Street, by Margot Livesey
http://www.margotlivesey.com/

The One That I Want, by Allison Winn Scotch
@aswinn, http://www.allisonwinn.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Allison-Winn-Scotch/49841196684?ref=ts

I See You Everywhere, by Julia Glass

Love in Mid Air, by Kim Wright
@kimwright, http://www.loveinmidair.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/LOVE-IN-MID-AIR-by-Kim-Wright/359234790765?ref=ts

Diamond Ruby, by Joseph Wallace
@joe_wallace, http://www.josephwallace.com/index.html

Belong to Me, by Marisa de los Santos
http://www.marisadelossantos.com/
http://www.facebook.com/marisa.delossantos?ref=ts

Pictures of You, by Caroline Leavitt
@leavittnovelist, http://www.carolineleavitt.com/, http://carolineleavitt.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/carolineleavitt?ref=ts

Good Things I Wish You, by A. Manette Ansay
@amanetteansay, http://www.amanetteansay.com/

The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, by Erin McGraw
http://www.erinmcgraw.com/

Girl Trouble, by Holly Goddard Jones
http://www.hollygoddardjones.com/, http://hollygoddardjones.blogspot.com/

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, by Kevin Wilson
http://www.wilsonkevin.com/, http://wilsonkevin.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4712089&ref=ts

Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun
http://milesfromnowherethenovel.wordpress.com/bio/

The Nobodies Album, by Carolyn Parkhurst
@CParkhurst1, http://www.carolynparkhurst.com/, http://www.octaviafrost.com/

Red Hook Road, by Ayelet Waldman
@ayeletwaldman, http://www.ayeletwaldman.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ayeletwaldman?ref=ts

Disaster Preparedness, by Heather Havrilesky
@hhavrilesky, http://www.rabbitblog.com/, http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/heather_havrilesky/index.html
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Heather-Havrilesky/134199349937433

Stiltsville, by Susanna Daniel
@susannadaniel, http://www.susannadaniel.com/

My American Unhappiness, by Dean Bakopoulos
http://www.deanbakopoulos.com/index.html
http://www.facebook.com/dean.bakopoulos?ref=ts

Sea Escape, by Lynne Griffin
@lynne_griffin, http://www.Family-Life-Stories.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LynneGriffin?ref=ts

Real Life & Liars, by Kristina Riggle
@krisriggle, http://www.kristinariggle.net/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Novels-of-Kristina-Riggle/250614105762?ref=search&sid=540474396.407354928..1

The First Husband, by Laura Dave
@lauradave, http://www.lauradave.com/

The Local News, by Miriam Gershow
@miriamgershow, http://www.miriamgershow.com/
http://artist.to/miriamgershow

Good Enough to Eat, by Stacey Ballis
http://www.thepolymathchronicles.blogspot.com/

How to Sleep Alone in a King-Sized Bed, by Theo Nestor
@howtosleepalone, http://www.theopaulinenestor.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/How-to-Sleep-Alone-in-a-King-Size-Bed/226636320553?ref=ts

The Truth About Delilah Blue, by Tish Cohen
@tishcohen
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tish-Cohen/118720878150252

A Maze of Grace, by Trish Ryan
@trishryan, http://www.trishryanonline.com/

The Love Goddess’s Cooking School, by Melissa Senate
@melissasenate, http://www.melissasenate.com/
http://www.facebook.com/MelissaSenate

The Embers, by Hyatt Bass
@hyattbass, http://www.hyattbass.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hyatt-Bass/121019377925649?ref=ts

The Last Will of Moira Leahy, by Therese Walsh
@theresewalsh, http://theresewalsh.com/, http://writerunboxed.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Therese-Walsh/135862286426942

Life After Yes, by Aidan Donnelley Rowley
@ADonnRowley, http://ivyleagueinsecurities.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000061574617

Not Ready for Mom Jeans, by Maureen Lipinski
@maureenlipinski, http://www.maureenlipinski.com/

After You, by Julie Buxbaum
@juliebux, http://www.juliebuxbaum.com/blog/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julie-Buxbaum/119804978055852

The Lost Girls, by Amanda Pressner, Holly Corbett, & Jennifer Baggett
@lostgirlsworld, http://www.lostgirlsworld.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lost-Girls/155815108248?ref=ts

Refresh, Refresh, by Benjamin Percy
http://www.benjaminpercy.com/

The Seven Year Switch, by Claire Cook
@ClaireCookbooks, http://www.ClaireCook.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claire-Cook/24954647610?ref=ts

Stay, by Allie Larkin
@AlliesAnswers, http://www.AllieLarkinWrites.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Allie-Larkin-Writes/116227021725680?ref=ts

Pieces of Happily Ever After, by Irene Zutell
@irenezutell, http://www.irenezutell.com/
http://www.facebook.com/irene.zutell?ref=ts

Pug Hill, by Alison Pace
@alisonpace, http://www.alisonpace.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alison-Pace/110942295604233?ref=mf

The Opposite of Me, Sarah Pekkanen
@sarahpekkanen, http://www.sarahpekkanen.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarah-Pekkanen/215202723761?ref=mf

Exley, by Brock Clarke
http://arsonistsguide.com/author-blog

The Transformation of Things, by Jillian Cantor
@jilliancantor, http://www.jilliancantor.com/

Out of the Shadows, by Joanne Rendell
@joannerendell, http://www.joannerendell.com/

Love Stories in This Town, by Amanda Eyre Ward
@amandaeyreward, http://www.amandaward.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amanda-Eyre-Ward/69247505328?ref=ts

Trophy, by Michael Griffith

Tethered, by Amy MacKinnon
@amymackinnon, http://www.amymackinnon.com/
http://www.facebook.com/amy.mackinnon1?ref=ts

The Language of Light, by Meg Waite Clayton
@megwaiteclayton, http://www.megwaiteclayton.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Meg-Waite-Clayton-Author/112212312160522?created

Miss Me When I’m Gone, by Philip Stephens
http://www.philipstephensauthor.com/

If you’ve already read H&W and liked it, send me a link to your review on Amazon, Goodreads, or B&N, and I’ll enter you into a drawing to win 10 more copies for your book club or to give as gifts.

You can find a similar giveaway on Claire Cook’s page: http://www.clairecook.com/author/GIVEAWAY.html.

Again, thank you so much for participating in the contest, and please do check out the books from our fabulous authors. Many are willing to arrange for book club call-ins, even if yours was not the winning group.

Mini-prizes (one copy each)

teresasreading wins How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed, by Theo Nestor

Katie Tokarz wins The Alchemy of Loss, by Abigail Carter

Jennifer Wolccak wins The September Sisters, by Jillian Cantor

Donna Myers wins The Life of Glass, by Jillian Cantor

Denise Diaz Fulford wins The Widower’s Tale (ARC), by Julia Glass

Christy Case Keirn wins The Local News, by Miriam Gershow

Sarah Kenney wins Simply from Scratch, by Alicia Bessette

Georgie Lewis wins Orange Mint and Honey, by Carleen Brice

Shawna Crossman wins Love in Mid Air (Aus. ed.) by Kim Wright

Jane Stickle Maritz wins Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives, by Josie Brown

Susan Johnston wins Baseball: 365 Days, by Joseph Wallace

Theresa Peters wins A Theory of All Things, by Peggy Leon

WriterCrys wins The Murderer’s Daughter, by Randy Susan Meyers

Emily Heinlen wins The Wildwater Walking Club (plus shoelaces), by Claire Cook

Grand prizes (10 copies each, plus author call-ins)

Bobbi Hahn wins:

Husband and Wife, by Leah Stewart

The House on Fortune Street, by Margot Livesey

The One That I Want, by Allison Winn Scotch

Love in Mid Air, by Kim Wright

Diamond Ruby, by Joseph Wallace

Belong to Me, by Marisa de los Santos

Pictures of You, by Caroline Leavitt

Pieces of Happily Ever After, by Irene Zutell

Girl Trouble, by Holly Goddard Jones

Disaster Preparedness, by Heather Havrilesky

After You, by Julie Buxbaum

The Fury, by Jason Pinter

Ruth Helfinstein wins:

Miles from Nowhere, by Nami Mun

The Nobodies Album, by Carolyn Parkhurst

Stiltsville, by Susanna Daniel

My American Unhappiness, by Dean Bakopoulos

Real Life & Liars, by Kristina Riggle

The First Husband, by Laura Dave

The Local News, by Miriam Gershow

Good Enough to Eat, by Stacey Ballis

Refresh, Refresh, by Benjamin Percy

How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed, by Theo Nestor

The Opposite of Me, by Sarah Pekkanen

Not Ready for Mom Jeans, by Maureen Lipinski

Faith Mauro wins:

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, by Kevin Wilson

The Truth About Delilah Blue, by Tish Cohen

A Maze of Grace, by Trish Ryan

The Love Goddess’s Cooking School, by Melissa Senate

The Embers, by Hyatt Bass

The Last Will of Moira Leahy, by Therese Walsh

Life After Yes, by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

The Lost Girls, by Amanda Pressner, Holly Corbett, & Jennifer Baggett

Exley, by Brock Clarke

Pug Hill, by Alison Pace

Sea Escape, by Lynne Griffin

Good Things I Wish You, by A. Manette Ansay

AuntKristin wins:

The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, by Erin McGraw

Red Hook Road, by Ayelet Waldman

The Seven Year Switch, by Claire Cook

Stay, by Allie Larkin

I See You Everywhere, by Julia Glass

The Transformation of Things, by Jillian Cantor

Out of the Shadows, by Joanne Rendell

Love Stories in This Town, by Amanda Eyre Ward

Trophy, by Michael Griffith

Tethered, by Amy MacKinnon

The Language of Light, by Meg Waite Clayton

Miss Me When I’m Gone, by Philip Stephens

Congrats, winners! Happy reading.

Let’s start with Allison Winn Scotch, my contest-creating muse. Allison not only has the enviable job of celebrity interviewer, she is the NYT bestselling author of TIME OF MY LIFE and DEPARTMENT OF LOST AND FOUND. She is contributing her new novel, THE ONE THAT I WANT, which explores whether one woman’s life is really as perfect as she believes. Publishers Weekly said about the book: “An aching, honest look into the death and rebirth of relationships. Scotch answers hard questions about the nature of personal identity and overwhelming loss with a wise, absorbing narrative.”

Opening lines: “Imagine, if you can, that you are sixteen again. That first kisses are still a possibility, that the giddy anticipation at life’s open roads is still fiery in your belly, that a perfect satin dress and a rose corsage can still make you feel more beautiful than you ever could have hoped for. Sit back and imagine all of these things: taste them, revel in them, and then understand that this – even at thirty-two, even happily married and desperate for a baby – this is why I love prom.”

Follow Allison on Twitter @aswinn.

Sarah Pekkanen‘s debut novel THE OPPOSITE OF ME is a tale of 29-year-old twin sisters. Jennifer Weiner called the book “fresh and funny and satisfying. A terrific book about sisters that actually made me laugh out loud.” People magazine gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, and it was a Redbook magazine pick.

First line: “As I pulled open the heavy glass door of Richards, Dunne & Krantz and walked down the long hallway toward the executive offices, I noticed a light was on up ahead.”

Follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahpekkanen.

With one of our books I can quote from a blurb I actually wrote: “This book made me want to ignore my work and neglect my children. THE LAST WILL OF MOIRA LEAHY offers an irresistible combination of mystery, romance, psychological complexity, and lovely writing. I devoured it.” The debut novel from Therese Walsh was also called “a richly conceived tale that weaves mystery, romance, adventure and self-discovery into one beautiful package” by Cindy Hudson, and Library Journal said, “This tender tale of sisterhood, self-discovery, and forgiveness will captivate fans of contemporary women’s fiction.”

First line: “I lost my twin to a harsh November nine years ago.”

Follow Therese on Twitter @ThereseWalsh.

Bestselling author and ballet enthusiast Marisa de los Santos is offering copies of her second novel, BELONG TO ME. About the book: This is the story of how the lives of a transplanted urbanite named Cornelia, a queen bee, a dying best friend, a secretive waitress, a boyfriend, a goofy brother, a brainy girlfriend, several husbands (ex- and otherwise), a thirteen-year old whiz kid, a thirteen-year old brown-eyed girl, a teenaged entrepreneur, a ballet dancer with OCD, numerous small children, and a couple of babies touch, collide, or entangle with sometimes devastating, sometimes beautiful (sometimes devastating and beautiful) results.

First line: “My fall from suburban grace, or, more accurately, my failure to achieve the merest molehill of suburban grace from which to fall, began with a dinner party and a perfectly innocent, modestly clever, and only faintly quirky remark about Armand Assante.”

Check out Marisa’s website at http://www.marisadelossantos.com.

Meg Waite Clayton Author of the bestselling novel THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS and the upcoming THE FOUR MS. BRADWELLS, is giving away copies of her first novel, THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT, soon to be rereleased. The book is set in the old-moneyed horse country of Maryland and follows a young mother moving into the future by uncovering the past. James Bready of the Baltimore Sun said: ”The Language of Light shines on, a wonderfully knowing action photograph that has emerged from the darkroom as words.” And Meg says: “The truth is getting started as a writer takes hard work, persistence, and a bit of luck.”

First line: “I lay awake, studying the moonlight spilling over the foot of the bed I slept in as a girl.”

Follow Meg on Twitter @megwaiteclayton, or check out her blog, where writers tell stories of how they got started.

Benjamin Percy is a novelist and short story writer and recipient of numerous prizes and honors (Whiting Award, Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize). He is also the possesor of an astonishingly deep voice. (Don’t believe me? Check out the link below.) He’s offering his collection REFRESH, REFRESH, about which Publishers Weekly said: Percy’s second collection (following last year’s The Language of Elk) traces lives led in rural Oregon’s fractured, mostly poor communities. The title story (selected for The Best American Short Stories 2006), presents Josh, a young man from small-town Tumalo who watches as men who signed up as Marine reservists for beer pay leave to fight in the Iraq War, including Josh’s father. As Josh’s unreliable first person details a deer hunt, the escapades of the town recruitment officer and the less-and-less frequent e-mails from his father, tension slowly builds. Set during a blackout, The Caves in Oregon follows geology teacher Becca and her husband, Kevin, as they explore a network of caves beneath their home, grappling to understand each other in the wake of a miscarriage. Meltdown imagines a nuclear disaster in November 2009, while the menacing Whisper opens with the accidental late-life death of Jacob, leaving his brother, Gerald, to care for Jacob’s stroke-impaired wife. Percy’s talent for putting surprising characters in difficult contemporary settings makes this a memorable collection.

First lines: “When school let out, the two of us went to my backyard to fight. We were trying to make each other tougher.”

Most of our writers are women, but we do have a few men in the mix. Joseph Wallace‘s new novel DIAMOND RUBY was inspired by the true story of Jackie Mitchell, the teenage girl who struck out Babe Ruth and was forthwith banned from baseball (along with all women). More about the book: Diamond Ruby is a rousing page-turner about a girl forced to use all her wits–and her powerful throwing arm–to survive in Roaring Twenties New York City. Howard Frank Mosher of the Washington Post said: “Wallace’s lively and entertaining first novel is filled with all sorts of colorful characters and fascinating social history…. At its heart, Diamond Ruby is the story of an unassuming, courageous young woman who uses the national pastime to become a pioneering heroine in a man’s world.”

First line: “Ruby Thomas had never seen anything as beautiful as Ebbets Field, with its brick exterior and half-moon windows that reminded her of slices of jelly candy.”

Follow Joe on Twitter @joe_wallace

Some of our contest writers are about to publish their very first book. One of them is Susanna Daniel, whose lovely STILTSVILLE happens to be the book I’m reading right now. About the book: Set against a vivid and lush South Florida background during the years of Miami’s coming-of-age, Susanna Daniel’s STILTSVILLE offers a gripping, bittersweet portrait of a marriage—and romance—that deepens over the course of three decades. It was called “an elegantly crafted work of art and a great read” by Curtis Sittenfeld and an “exquisite debut” with a “moving resolution” by Publishers Weekly; Booklist called STILTSVILLE “lushly descriptive and complex,” written with “great delicacy and discretion.” STILTSVILLE was called a “perfect beach and book club read” by the head librarian at the New York Public Library. But be careful, many readers report being unable to get through the ending without a box of tissues nearby.

First line: “On a Sunday morning in late July, at the end of my first-ever visit to Miami, I took a cab from my hotel to Snapper Creek marina to join a woman named Marse Heiger, whom I’d met the day before. ”

Follow Susanna on Twitter @susannadaniel.

Julia Glass, National Book Award winner for THREE JUNES, is giving away copies of her novel I SEE YOU EVERYWHERE. About the book, Julia says: “I See You Everywhere is about the intense, thorny relationship between two grown sisters over twenty-five years, and it’s the most autobiographical work of fiction I’ve written. The story is told in the alternating voices of Louisa and Clement Jardine; it starts off with Louisa, the older, stuffier, more insecure sister—and the toughest character I’ve ever brought to life, since she shares (and hence exposes to the world) all my most egregious flaws. At times, I found myself siding entirely with Clem, doppelgänger for the sister I lost when we were in our early thirties. I sometimes laugh to think that if she were around to read the book, she’d be able to say “I told you so” about many things, and I would have to agree.”

First lines: “I avoid reunions. I’m not a rebel, a recluse, or a sociopath, and I’m too young to qualify as a crank, even if it’s true that I just spent the evening of my twenty-fifth birthday not carousing with friends or drinking champagne at a candlelit table for two but resolutely alone and working, glazing a large ovoid porcelain bowl while listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing songs by the Gershwin brothers.”

Heather Havrilesky is the hilarious, insightful TV critic for Salon.com. She’s contributing her upcoming memoir, DISASTER PREPAREDNESS. About the book: Growing up the youngest member of an offbeat family in Durham, North Carolina, Heather Havrilesky chronicles her efforts to cope with her parents’ crumbling marriage and make sense of the hazing rituals that passed for love in her household. From the paranoia incited by fear-mongering elementary school teachers to the enforced hysteria of cheerleading camp, from her panicked realization that God might not exist to her masochistic indulgence in unrequited love, Havrilesky recounts the transformative humiliations, traumas, and absurdities of her youth, burrowing to the heart of each memory with an interest in reexaming her own assumptions and beliefs.

First sentence: “When I was a kid, my brother and sister and I made up an alternative version of Clue that we called ‘Cousins.’”

Follow Heather on Twitter @hhavrilesky.

Ayelet Waldman, novelist and essayist, is contributing copies of her new book, Red Hook Road, which comes out in July. About the book Pat Conroy said, “Red Hook Road is a terrific novel, and might even be a great one. The structure of the book seems perfect to me; the first sentence sets up and readies us for the immense powers of the last one. It tells the stories of two families as different as the Montagues and the Capulets, but with the same tragic and irreversible destines playing out around them.”

The first sentence: “The flower girl had lost her basket of rose petals and could not bear to have the photograph taken without it.”

Find Ayelet on Twitter at @ayeletwaldman and at her website http://www.ayeletwaldman.com.

The opening lines: “I plunge my thumb between the folds of the incision, then hook my forefinger deep into her neck. Unlike most of the bloodlines, which offer perfunctory resistance, the carotid artery doesn’t surrender itself willingly.”

Find Amy on Twitter at @amymackinnon, and at her website: http://www.amymackinnon.com.