May 2010 On Sale: May 4, 2010 368 pages ISBN: 0451229215 EAN: 9780451229212 Paperback $15.00 Add to Wish List Women’s Fiction Buy at Amazon.com On Folly Beach by Karen White The latest Southern novel from the acclaimed bestselling and award- winning author of The Memory of Water. To most people, Folly Beach, South Carolina, is simply the last barrier island before the Atlantic. To some, it’s a sanctuary, which is why Janie Hamilton’s mother encourages her to buy the local book store, Folly’s Finds, hoping it will distract Janie from the loss of her husband in Afghanistan. Janie is at first resistant, but intrigued after finding love letters and an image of a beautiful bottle tree in a box of used books from Folly’s Finds, and decides to take the plunge. The store’s seller insists on one condition: Janie must allow Lulu, the late owner’s elderly sister, to continue selling her bottle trees from its back yard. Historically, bottle trees were brought by African slaves to the American South, and Janie had grown up with one in her backyard, and it has always been a symbol of refuge to her. Janie generally ignores Lulu as she sifts through the love…

Right now I’m visiting my parents at their home in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m on my way to the Southern Kentucky Book Festival and my dad suggested that since Nashville is between my home in Atlanta and the Festival in Bowling Green, I might want to stop and stay a day or two. I’ve just emerged from their basement with three suitcases stuffed with about five decades of photographs that will find their way to my car trunk before I leave. Now I know why he wanted me to stop by and “visit.” I’m a self-proclaimed “scrapbooker.” I love pouring over old photographs, peering at the younger faces of my grandparents, parents and siblings, recognizing a favorite sweater or toy, plate, a piece of furniture, and even expressions on those faces. These photographs are like a piece of history I can hold in my hand, and can even relish the hours and hours it will take to sort through them, organize them, put them into albums. Hours I don’t really have right now (ack-two book deadlines this year plus the release of two other books!), but hours I look forward to. My maternal grandmother died this past February at the age…

I’m known for writing ‘grit lit’—Southern women’s fiction. My books are recognized not only by their Southern setting and characters, but also by their emotional intensity. So when I proposed the idea for THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET to my agent, she was a little leery at first—especially after I told her that I planned to make this into a long-running series.In this book I’ve blended my favorite elements of ‘grit-lit’ but threw in my passion for old houses, the City of Charleston, an historical mystery, and ghosts. The main characters are multi-layered with a lot of emotional baggage (ala Karen White books), but their dialogue is lighter, and snarkier, than my readers are probably used to. And, yes, my protagonist, Melanie Middleton, sees dead people. So, how did I sell this idea as a marketable proposal to not only myself but to my agent and editor? After all, isn’t the publishing industry married to the ‘tried and true’ despite their insistence that they want something ‘fresh and new’? I made a deal with the devil (figuratively, of course). I promised my editor that I could still do a ‘grit lit’ novel every year—if I could just be allowed to…

When people ask me what I write, I tell them that I write ‘Southern women’s fiction’. To clarify, I usually follow that with the (hopefully) more clear ‘grit lit.’ Although that frequently elicits a grin or two, it rarely seems to explain what it is that I try and create on the pages of my novels. I stick with the adage to ‘write what I know’ and I know the South. My father’s family has lived in the South since before the American Revolution and both of my parents were born and raised in Mississippi–my father on the Gulf coast and my mother in the Delta. I have relatives still living there that most people from other parts of the country would need a translator to understand. But when I hear them speak, I simply feel as if I have found home. Yeah, sure, I’ve created more than my share of hunky Southern men who drawl and even use the word ‘darlin’. But writing Southern women’s fiction is so much more than the accent. It’s primarily a sense of place, and stocked with those inherently wacky yet familiarly beloved Southern characters (remember Aunt Pittypat?)–most of whom I’ve met or find…