Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Laura Kennedy | Author-Reader Match: SUDDENLY SINGAPORE
Author Guest / May 19, 2021

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match,” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Laura Kennedy! Writes: Young Adult/New Adult and Chick Lit, my latest release from Melange Publishing being Suddenly Singapore, the third YA in my Coral Cove series. About:  Author reluctant to admit her age seeking adventurous teens and twenty-somethings who love adventure, romance and intrigue in faraway places.  Join irrepressible seventeen-year-old Floridian Brooke Bentley who is forced to navigate the beautiful but repressive city/state Singapore when her father is transferred to Malaysia for a year.  Enrolled in tony Marlborough Academy, Brooke is immediately forced to contend with the infamous Chameleons (aka Cammies), the snottiest, wealthiest girls in her Senior Class. Brooke finds friendship in Mu and Tai (Toy), which helps her survive.  Giving her additional will to live is her tentative romance with Raffie Desai, the hottest, yan dao guy at Marlborough. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: .  Readers who identify with someone like Brooke who tries to do the right thing but sometimes finds herself making less…

Danielle Jackson Dresser | In Which I Re-Read All of Bridgerton
Author Guest / May 19, 2021

Dear Reader, Christmas Day of 2020 gave us all something to glom onto and obsess over: the Netflix adaptation of Julia Quinn’s beloved Bridgerton series, quite aptly titled BRIDGERTON. Diversely cast, boldly fashionable, unabashedly sexy, and just plain fun, BRIDGERTON is the romance series adaptation we’ve been waiting for… With Shonda Rhimes’ production company at the helm, would you expect anything else? This isn’t an article dissecting the show (it’s not perfect, but I was able to overlook some of its missteps—particularly those around race and what the diverse casting really meant and didn’t follow through on—and still enjoy it), or the merits of having Dame Julie Andrews as the witty and sharp voice of Lady Whistledown. Instead, this is an article about why, after I binged the series over a couple of days in January, I decided to embark on a re-read of the entire Bridgerton book series. I read the Bridgerton books back in 2008, when I had just started working in publishing and was fully ensconced in the romance genre. I believe I picked up ON THE WAY TO THE WEDDING, which, as it happens, is the last book in the series. Within a few chapters, I…

Julia Justiss | History ReFreshed: VIKING SPRING
Author Guest / May 19, 2021

The Viking invaders played a big part in the Conquest world of 1066 England whose stories were featured in last month’s column.  With May being spring in Norway—when we lived in Oslo for three years, our landlord declared the second week of May to be officially “spring” and allowed us to clear any remaining snow off our lawns then—this month we will explore more stories that illuminate the Viking world by interpreting the lives of historic and legendary Viking women.  As with the world of 1066, this era seems to attract writers who produce multi-volume sagas.  What greater delight to an avid reader than discovering a new series? We begin with THE NORSE QUEEN by Johanna Wittenberg, which reinterprets the life of the Viking queen Asa.  In the ninth century, Viking power is just developing, with the land still fragmented into thirty warring kingdoms that continually raid each other to pillage and capture wives and slaves.  Fifteen-year-old Asa, daughter of the King of Tromoy, is sought as a bride by Gudrod, king of a neighboring province.  Her refusal to wed him sparks a bitter reprisal, in which her family is killed, and to save her people, she must marry her…