1–What is the title of your latest release? THE GIRLS IN NAVY BLUE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? THE GIRLS IN NAVY BLUE is a dual timeline novel, moving between the WWI-era lives of three women who join the Navy as “yeomanettes” and 1968 when a young divorcee begins to uncover the secrets they kept for fifty years. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? Norfolk VA was the perfect setting for this book; not only was it a center of naval activities during WWI with over 1000 yeomanettes stationed there, but it’s an area and a landscape I know well having grown up on the Chesapeake Bay. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Probably not. My characters live far more interesting lives than I do. I’d probably be too boring for the likes of them. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Viv is determined, loyal, and, in the end, courageous. 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? Everything I learned about the yeomanettes and their service was new to me. I had never heard of these women before which is tragic considering the amazing contributions they made…

As weather turns toward spring, thoughts turn toward love…and those of us who adore lushly romantic period drama sigh and miss “Downton Abbey” anew. What to do, but search for Downtonesque-books to fill that yearning? We begin in the Victorian era with Meredith Allard’s WHEN IT RAINED AT HEMBRY CASTLE. Wealthy American Daphne accompanies her father Frederick to England to visit his dying father, the 8th Earl of Staton. Discovering after their arrival that her cousin Richard, the earl’s heir, has no interest in either the title or the estate he is to inherit, Daphne’s father feels compelled to remain after his father’s death and run the estate for the unreliable new earl. Daphne is drawn into the aristocratic life by her grandmother, the dowager countess, who wants to turn her into an English lady and wed her to a titled husband. Although Daphne finds Edward Ellis, an enterprising young journalist—and grandson of Hembry Castle’s butler—far more fascinating that the aristocrats her grandmother recommends, Edward doesn’t travel in the same society as the residents of Hembry Castle—and is supposed to marry another girl. Love, duty and destiny clash as Daphne tried to untangle the complex web of conflicting interests and…

It’s a new year and I don’t know about you but I’ve had to increase my book budget to handle all the cool releases coming out this year. Even with grad school I have a goal to read at least three books a month that are non-school related. For me, with my day job as a TV and Film critic, books are my last escape. And I noticed last year that I was lucky if I read a book a month. That’s crazy. We have some great releases from some of my pals this month so let’s get going… Writing THE PERFECT DISH was an exercise in rebellion for author Kristen Painter, who is one of my favorite people in the world. “At the time, the older heroine, younger man scenario just wasn’t being done,” Painter says. “In fact, I was told not to write it that way because it wasn’t marketable, but I’m stubborn and telling me not to do something rarely works. I also felt like a heroine of forty-four wasn’t in any way old – I know a lot of women who are forty and older that are amazing in every way. Why don’t those women deserve…