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Reba White Williams Author Event

04/26/2013 by Leave a Comment

RestrikeOn Tuesday, July 23rd at 7:00 p.m., Byrd’s Books will be hosting an author event with Reba White Williams, author of the new book Restrike: Coleman and Dinah Greene Mystery No. 1. The book has been getting excellent reviews, and we at Byrd’s Books are thrilled to have her here for a discussion and signing of the title!

About the book:

Money and murder go hand in glove in the rarified art world of Reba White Williams’s exciting first novel, Restrike. Cousins Coleman and Dinah Greene moved from North Carolina to New York after college to make their mark on the art world: Coleman is the editor of an influential arts magazine and Dinah is the owner of a print gallery in Greenwich Village. But their challenges are mounting as one of Coleman’s writers is discovered selling story ideas to a competitor and The Greene Gallery is in the red because sales are down.

When billionaire Heyward Bain arrives with a glamorous assistant, announcing plans to fund a fine print museum, Coleman is intrigued and plans to get to know Bain and publish an article about him. Dinah hopes to sell him enough prints to save her gallery. At the same time, swindlers, attracted by Bain’s lavish spending, invade the print world to grab some of his money. When a print dealer dies in peculiar circumstances, Coleman is suspicious, but she can’t persuade the NYPD crime investigator of a connection between the dealer’s death and Bain’s buying spree. After one of Coleman’s editors is killed and Coleman is attacked, the police must acknowledge the connection, and Coleman becomes even more determined to discover the truth about Bain. In an unforgettable final scene, Coleman risks her life to expose the last deception threatening her, her friends, and the formerly tranquil print world.

About the author:

Reba White Williams, Ph.D. Art History, has written articles for American Artist, Art and Auction, Print Quarterly, and Journal of the Print World. She has also served on the print committees of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Whitney Museum. Restrike is her first novel in the Coleman and Dinah Greene mystery series, and she is currently at work on her second, Fatal Impressions. Williams divides her time between Connecticut, New York City, and California.

Filed Under: Author Events, CT Authors Tagged With:

The Good House

01/25/2013 by Leave a Comment

The Good HouseBy Connecticut author Ann Leary

How can you prove you’re not an alcoholic?

You can’t.

It’s like trying to prove you’re not a witch.

Hildy Good is a townie. A lifelong resident of an historic community on the rocky coast of Boston’s North Shore, she knows pretty much everything about everyone. Hildy is a descendant of one of the witches hung in nearby Salem, and is believed, by some, to have inherited psychic gifts. Not true, of course; she’s just good at reading people. Hildy is good at lots of things. A successful real-estate broker, mother and grandmother, her days are full. But her nights have become lonely ever since her daughters, convinced their mother was drinking too much, staged an intervention and sent her off to rehab. Now she’s in recovery – more or less.

Alone and feeling unjustly persecuted, Hildy needs a friend. She finds one in Rebecca McCallister, a beautiful young mother and one of the town’s wealthy newcomers. Rebecca feels out-of-step in her new surroundings and is grateful for the friendship. And Hildy feels like a person of the world again, as she and Rebecca escape their worries with some harmless gossip, and a bottle of wine by the fire – just one of their secrets.

But not everyone takes to Rebecca, who is herself the subject of town gossip. When Frank Getchell, an eccentric local who shares a complicated history with Hildy, tries to warn her away from Rebecca, Hildy attempts to protect her friend from a potential scandal. Soon, however, Hildy is busy trying to cover her own tracks and protect her reputation. When a cluster of secrets become dangerously entwined, the reckless behavior of one threatens to expose the other, and this darkly comic novel takes a chilling turn.

The Good House by Ann Leary is funny, poignant, and terrifying. A classic New England tale that lays bare the secrets of one little town, this spirited novel will stay with you long after the story has ended.

Filed Under: Best Sellers, CT Authors

Suck It Up and Die

09/01/2012 by Leave a Comment

By Brian Meehl, Redding author

Nearly two years after Suck It Up, all Morning McCobb wants is to complete his training at the NY Fire Academy and to stay head over heels in love with Portia for as long as the chronology-crossed lovers can, given that she’s now eighteen and he’s stalled at sixteen.

It’s nearly the first anniversary of American Out Day, the historic day on which the Leaguer vampires of America began going mainstream without going bloodstream on their fellow mortal citizens.

The tension between Morning’s wish for a simple, out of the spotlight life, and Portia’s cinematic obsession with historic events escalates to the breaking point when a super-sinister vampire rises from the grave with a powerful thirst for revenge.

Filed Under: CT Authors Tagged With:

You Don’t Know About Me

07/10/2012 by Leave a Comment

By Connecticut author Brian Meehl

New in paperback!

Sixteen-year-old Billy Allbright is about to bust out of his sheltered cocoon and go on a gonzo road trip. He just doesn’t know it yet. His ticket to freedom? A mysterious Bible containing two resurrection stories. The second is about a man Billy’s never met, and who is supposedly dead: his father.

But the road to a risen-from-the-grave dad, and the unusual inheritance he promises, is far from straight. Billy zigzags across the American West in a geocaching treasure hunt. When his journey includes a runaway baseball star, nudists who perform sun dances, a girl with neon green body parts, and con artists who blackmail him into their “anti-action movie,” Billy soon realizes that the path to self-discovery is mega off-road.

Filed Under: Children 9-12, CT Authors Tagged With: , ,

Doodlebug: A Novel in Doodles

05/19/2012 by Leave a Comment

Moving is tough. Being the new kid in school is even tougher. But the hardest thing of all about the move that Doreen “Dodo” Bussey’s family is making is that she suspects it might be because of her. She got into trouble at her last school.

On the drive to their new home, her mother gives Dodo a blank notebook, which she uses to chronicle the move, the first days in a new city, and the ups and downs of starting a new school and making new friends. In the process, she reinvents herself as the Doodlebug. Her little sister seems to adjust to everything so easily—why is it so hard for Dodo?

by Karen Romano Young

Filed Under: Bethel Authors, Children 4-8, Children's Books, CT Authors, CT Illustrators, Featured

Heather Hansen O’Neill Author Event

04/12/2012 by Leave a Comment

On Tuesday, July 24th at 7:00 p.m., local author Heather Hansen O’Neill will be hosting an author event signing and discussing her new book, Find Your Fire at Forty.

Find Your Fire at Forty is an innovative combination of creative non-fiction and how-to. The story of Find Your Fire at Forty is a poignant look at five flawed characters lives. They end up trapped together in a coffee shop with an unlikely life coach who takes them through the process of self discovery. They each walk away with a powerful lesson of transformation that will enable them to find their passion and live more successful, joyful lives.

The bonus how-to section of Find Your Fire at Forty provides a breakdown of the five step process upon which the story is based.

Step 1 shows you how to release your fear and take control of your life.

Step 2 helps you understand your strengths and find your unique talent.

Step 3 provides compassionate practices that help you improve your relationships as you navigate your transition.

Step 4 presents a simple, sensible process to achieve your goals by taking action.

And Step 5 uses your newfound passion, talent, and skills to contribute to others.

Find Your Fire at Forty demonstrates and inspires people to take their lives to the next level and love the life they live.

Registration is recommended for this author event. To register and guarantee a seat, please call Byrd’s Books at (203) 730-2973 or e-mail events@ByrdsBooks.com.

Filed Under: CT Authors Tagged With: ,

A History of Connecticut Wine

03/12/2012 by Leave a Comment

A History of Connecticut Wine: Vineyard in Your Backyard

By Eric D. Lehman & Amy Nawrocki

Wine has been meticulously crafted in Connecticut ever since colonists discovered wild grapes growing on their land. At first glance the New England climate appears inhospitable for this fastidious fruit but a number of varieties thrive here, including pinot gris, chardonnay, cabernet franc, cayuga white and st. croix. These carefully cultivated grapes have produced wines of unique characteristics and surprising quality. Join local wine enthusiasts Eric D. Lehman and Amy Nawrocki as they explore the intricacies of the region’s local blends, the vintners that craft them, and the people who taste them. With vineyards and wineries in every corner of the state, you’re likely to find one that suits your palate in your backyard!

Byrd’s Books will be hosting a special author event and wine tasting on Saturday, July 21st. Click here for details!

Filed Under: CT Authors Tagged With: , , ,

Grandpa Green

02/25/2012 by Leave a Comment

Grandpa Green coverBy Lane Smith

Grandpa Green wasn’t always a gardener. He was a farmboy and a kid with chickenpox and a soldier and, most of all, an artist. In this captivating new picture book, readers follow Grandpa Green’s great-grandson into a garden he created, a fantastic world where memories are handed down in the fanciful shapes of topiary trees and imagination recreates things forgotten.

Grandpa Green is a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Picture Books title for 2011 and one of School Library Journals Best Picture Books of 2011.
Filed Under: Children 4-8, Children's Books, CT Authors, CT Authors, Poets & Illustrators, Nature Tagged With: , , ,

The Fo’c'sle: Henry Beston’s “Outermost House”

02/12/2012 by Leave a Comment

Written & Illustrated by Connecticut author Nan Parson Rossiter

Most adults know, and many have read, Henry Beston’s beloved account of the year he spent in a shack high on a dune overlooking the thundering surf of the Atlantic. Here, on the outer forearm of Cape Cod, looking un interrupted due east to Portugal, he made a life in a 16 x 20′ shack, simply furnished with a kitchen, a bed, a chest of drawers, a writing table, and a few chairs. He lived there, alone, through the changing seasons, the migration of birds, the howling of the winter storms, the occasional visits of surfmen from nearby Nauset Station, and the turning of the stars in the night sky. During the days, he would wander along the beach, take notes, and think. At dusk he would come home to write by lanternlight. The result was his immortal record of that year on the Nauset dunes, The Outermost House. The house was known as “The Fo’c'sle.”

Now we have a record of that year for younger readers, brilliantly retold and illustrated by Nan Parson Rossiter. Her artwork glows with the same inner light and simplicity that animated Beston’s prose and amplified the natural world. And although his memorable prose is incorporated throughout the book, it is Rossiter’s skill, as both an artist and an interpreter, that makes him, his year, and the little shack he so loved come convincingly, and poignantly, to life.

Byrd’s Books will be hosting a special author event with Nan Rossiter on Sunday, June 3rd! Visit the event page for details.

Filed Under: CT Authors, CT Authors, Poets & Illustrators Tagged With: , ,

Words Get in the Way

02/03/2012 by Leave a Comment

By Nan Rossiter

From the author of The Gin & Chowder Club comes an exquisitely heartfelt and uplifting novel that explores the infinite reach of a mother’s love—and the gift of second chances…

The modest ranch house where Callie Wyeth grew up looks just as she remembers it—right down to the well-worn sheets in the linen closet. But in the years since Callie lived here, almost everything else has changed. Her father, once indomitable, is in poor health. And Callie is a single mother with a beautiful little boy, Henry, who has just been diagnosed with autism.

Returning to this quiet New Hampshire community seems the best thing to do, for both her father and her son’s sake. Even if it means facing Linden Finch, the one she loved and left for reasons she’s sure he’ll never forgive. Linden is stunned that Callie is back—and that she has a son. Yet in the warm, funny relationship that develops between Henry and Linden’s menagerie of rescued farm animals, Callie begins to find hope. Not just that her son might break through the wall of silence separating him from the world, but that she too can make a new start amid the places and people that have never left her heart…

Byrd’s Books will be hosting a special author event with Nan Rossiter on Sunday, June 3rd! Visit the event page for details.

Filed Under: CT Authors Tagged With: , , ,

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