Dear Reader

Dear Reader Column 05-15-09

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Dear Reader,

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. Blaize Clement, an author and good friend of Suzanne's, is filling in for her again today.

A lemon tree grows in front of my kitchen window, and I watch it the way seamen watch the sky. Sailors look for weather forecasts in the sky, I look for signs that nature is working the way it's supposed to. Two years ago, a lot of bees in the area died--either from some bee disease or because of over-zealous insect spraying--so there were no bees to pollinate the lemon blossoms, and therefore no lemons.

Last year, the bees came back, and every time I stood at my kitchen sink I got a big goofy grin on my face because bees were happily buzzing around the tree. But on one awful day I returned from shopping and looked out the window, and gasped in horror. The men who took care of my yard had come in my absence and had mutilated the little lemon tree. Half its branches had been pruned away and my tree seemed to cower in shock. I hired new people to take care of my yard, and I made it very clear that they were not to touch a twig on the lemon tree. I was so fierce about it that I think I scared them, but they left the tree alone and just before Christmas the little tree offered up a meager crop of six lemons. I thanked the tree and apologized again for the human interference that had caused it to lose most of its lemons. It seemed to forgive me.

For the last few days, I've noticed tiny bumps of color on the tree, little rosy nubs peeking out on the branches, and I know that in another few days those little nubs will burst into lemon blossoms. If the tree has recovered from the trauma of being over-pruned, it will be covered in lemon flowers. And if the bees in the area are alive and healthy, they will come buzz around the tree and pollinate the blossoms. Then I'll watch teensy lemons form and gradually grow larger, and around Christmas I'll have fresh lemons from my little tree. Fresh lemons last for ages in the refrigerator. You can even freeze them whole if they're dry, and they'll be good for months. But it isn't for the lemons that I care so much for the little lemon tree, it's because it's a reminder that all living things, including me, are connected to one another by what we need to get and what we have to give. When nature works the way it's supposed to, it means that life itself is progressing the way it's supposed to.

Blaize Clement

* Blaize is the author of the Dixie Hemingway mystery series. The latest book, Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof, was a December mystery book club feature. You can email her at: Blaize@BlaizeClement.com

* This month's Penguin Classics book is The House Behind The Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt. To comment on the book and enter the Penguin Classics Drawing, go to: http://tinyurl.com/MayClassics

Dear Reader Column 05-14-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Be sure to check out AuthorBuzz (below the column) for a chance to win free books and a Starbucks gift card.

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. Blaize Clement, an author and good friend of Suzanne's, is filling in for her today.

My son called Sunday morning while I was working the NY Times crossword puzzle. When I told him I was going to write some guest columns for Suzanne, he said, "Why don't you write about being a crossword puzzle addict?" I said the word "addict" was a little extreme, and he laughed one of those laughs that only people with grown children have heard. You know, the kind that says you're in denial about something and they think it's funny.

It is true that I am a teensy bit hooked on crossword puzzles. I can't even pass up the ones in my daily paper that a chimpanzee could do. My greatest pleasure though, is the NY Times Sunday crossword. I have braved hard rain and hurricane force winds to get the Sunday Times from my driveway. Not because I'm a news junkie, but because I want the Sunday puzzle. Sometimes I go straight to it and leave the news part of the paper for later. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I've actually written fan mail to Will Shortz, the Times crossword editor. I guess that makes me a Shortz groupie.

I justify the time I spend on puzzles by saying it's a way to keep my brain active, but it's really because I love filling in those little squares with precise letters. It has to be done in exactly the right way, too. The Times Sunday puzzle has to be the original on shiny paper, not a week-old reprint on ordinary newsprint, and the pen--never, never a pencil--has to have an extra fine point and black ink. I have to finish it too. No matter how long it takes, I never give up on it. Even if I have to go to the internet to get answers, the idea of tossing a puzzle away with some of those little squares unfilled is unthinkable.

Come to think of it, I guess that's why my son laughed so smugly when I said I wasn't a crossword puzzle addict.

Blaize Clement

* Blaize is the author of the Dixie Hemingway mystery series. The latest book, Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof, was a December mystery book club feature. You can email her at: Blaize@BlaizeClement.com

AUTHORBUZZ: New authors, old favorites--all wonderful books you can win: Shane Briant, Worst Nightmares; Susan Mallery, Under Her Skin; C.W. Gortner, The Last Queen; Karen Bridson, Stunned: The New Generation of Women Having Babies, Getting Angry and Creating a Mother's Movement; and C.M. Mayo, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

* This month's Penguin Classics book is The House Behind The Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt. To comment on the book and enter the Penguin Classics Drawing, go to: http://tinyurl.com/MayClassics

Dear Reader Column 05-13-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. Marshall Cook, an author and good friend of Suzanne's, is filling in for her today.

Dear FFOS (Fellow Friend of Suzanne)

"Keep the day job."

If you're a writer, musician, actor, or any other sort of artist, folks seem compelled to deliver this sage advice early and often.

Fact is, most of us do have to have a day job. Supporting yourself writing novels or painting abstract nudes is just a real iffy proposition.

My primary day job has been teaching writing, which is fairly typical for a writer. I've done other things, too, briefly--construction worker (that convinced me to stay in college!), playground 'recreation director' (the one who turns the jump rope), beer tester. I didn't actually get to drink the beer, mind you; I just poured samples and got peoples' reactions.

Other writers have done much more exotic things. John Treadwell Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield, was a blues singer in New York, a dishwasher in Connecticut, and a firefighter in Arizona. Doesn't that look great on the dust jacket!

Jack London prospected for gold. Louis L'Amour was an animal skinner. Charles Bukowski did a little bit of everything, including working in a dog biscuit factory.

Eric Hoffer decided early on that he'd work at whatever he could get--just long enough to save enough money to quit. Then he'd go to the library and read and write until he ran out of money and had to go to work again. He, too, was a dishwasher, a factory worker, a farm hand, and finally, a longshoreman in San Francisco, where he became known as the longshoreman philosopher.

His books are still in print decades later, by the way, and awfully good.

Now that I'm nearing retirement, I sometimes wonder if I could have been a better writer or at least more prolific if I hadn't had to read all that student work--much of it not very good and some of it not even in recognizable English. (You can only see 'it's' mistaken for 'its' so many times before you forget which way it's supposed to be.) I've had to grade people on their short stories, which is a lot like grading people on how they make love. (Are you supposed to factor in degree of difficulty? Form?) Teaching takes time, and good teaching takes a LOT of time.

On the other calloused, arthritic hand (from all that typing), I've been able to talk about my great passion in life, writing fiction, with like-minded spirits, and "creative writing teacher" sounds a lot better than "unknown novelist" when you're introduced at a party.

And of course the paycheck and health care have been more than helpful.

No regrets. I've been so lucky. I've loved my teaching jobs and treasure all the writers I've met over the years and the incredible colleagues I've been blessed to work with. If anything, I'm sure they've made me a better writer and, if not that, surely a better human being.

* Write to me at mcook@dcs.wisc.edu. I'll be picking two emails at random and sending copies of my new novel, Walking Wounded: A Wartime Love Story.

Marshall Cook

* This month's Penguin Classics book is The House Behind the Cedars  by Charles W. Chesnutt. To comment on the book and enter the Penguin Classics Drawing, go to: http://tinyurl.com/MayClassics

Dear Reader Column 05-12-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Suzanne is recovering nicely and is expected to return next week. She thanks you for all the cards and good wishes. She prepared this column prior to her medical procedure.

This month's Penguin Classic is The House Behind the Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt. To start reading, go to: http://tinyurl.com/MayClassics

Share the Classics with a friend and give them a great summer recipe, too. I've designed some fun flyers (5x7 they print two on a page) that tell people how to sign up and read with us at the Classics Book Club, and it includes one of my favorite recipes, Skunk Beans. Whenever I take Skunk Beans to a potluck or picnic I bring the casserole dish home empty, and everyone wants a copy of the recipe. So mix up some Skunk Beans, share them with friends and hand them a flyer. Or take a bunch of flyers into work, church, the hairdresser, dentist, or doctor. You get the idea. Thanks for sharing the Classics Club and as a thank you for sharing I have some Penguin Book Bags for readers.

To enter this month's drawing, simply print out some flyers, distribute them, then send me an email and your name is in the drawing for your own Penguin Book Bag.

You'll find the link to print the flyers at: http://tinyurl.com/dnepnp

Thanks again. I sure to appreciate your help.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
http://www.DearReader.com

 

Dear Reader Column 05-11-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. Marshall Cook, an author and good friend of Suzanne's, is filling in for her today.

As I write this, it's a beautiful day in Madison, Wisconsin. The sun is shining, the air is clear and crisp (and of course cold), and the birds are singing.

Something I read in the paper prompts a laugh, stays with me. "Before you can climb the mountain of wisdom, you have to slog through the valley of stupidity" (or words to that effect). Ah, there is hope for a poor slogger.

Yesterday was beautiful, too, only yesterday my little spirit was roadkill. Today it's an eagle! (Well, an eagle with very poor sense of direction and arthritic wings, but an eagle nonetheless.)

The birds started singing with the first light of false dawn, even before my wife and I made the short walk to our local church for early Mass. They're "communicating," we say--wooing or warning or maybe complaining about how cold it is for April and how so many of the trees haven't even started budding yet.

But maybe they just sing because they have a song and singing is what they do.

How long has it been since you spontaneously broke into song?

It's like that dear little trash compactor, "Wall-E," in the movie. (You must see it if you haven't.) He and his cricket friend are apparently the only things still 'alive' on earth (and Wall-E's a machine, so does that even count?) But Wall-E faithfully goes about his business every day, compacting trash and stacking it neatly, because that's what Wall-E was made to do.

He reminds me of another great protagonist from literature, Horton the elephant, faithfully egg-sitting for that lazy bird Mayzie, who has flown the coop and gone off to Florida. "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant," he asserts through storm and raging waters. "An elephant's faithful, 100 percent."

In both cases, faithfulness is rewarded (although we know it isn't always so). Horton gets his very own elephant bird to love and cherish, and Wall-E finds the love of his life, a droid named Eva, who is sent from the mother ship to see if life has returned to earth.

Trash-compacting is what Wall-E does, and he does it very well, so when he wants to impress Eva and show her who he is, he scoops in a load of trash and produces a perfectly formed wad of garbage with a proud flourish and a little "Ta-da!"

Today when I see the first brave crocus pushing up through the still-hard earth, I can almost hear its tiny "Ta-da!"

Oh, that I might have the song of the birds, the stout heart of Horton, the steadfastness of Wall-E as I continue my slog through the valley of stupidity, my eye ever on the peak of wisdom.

* Write to me at mcook@dcs.wisc.edu. I'll be picking two emails at random and sending copies of my new novel, Walking Wounded: A Wartime Love Story.

Marshall Cook

AUTHORBUZZ: New authors, old favorites--all wonderful books you can win: Shane Briant, Worst Nightmares; Susan Mallery, Under Her Skin; C.W. Gortner, The Last Queen; Karen Bridson, Stunned: The New Generation of Women Having Babies, Getting Angry and Creating a Mother's Movement; and C.M. Mayo, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

Dear Reader Column 05-08-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

For a guaranteed smile, check out the ten winning Knock-Knock jokes from last week's book giveaway of Nutty Knock-Knock Jokes for Kids. Go to: http://www.emailbookclub.com/photo/knockwinners.html

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. Bill Duncan, a writer and good friend of Suzanne's, is filling in for her today.

In September of 1968 this nation was deeply embroiled in the Vietnam War. A young Navy doctor, Dr. D. Douglas Henning, was serving in Vietnam with the Marines where part of his duties was to provide health care to the Vietnamese villagers. A Vietnamese soldier brought a frail, sickly 17-month-old child to his medical tent and Dr. Henning was surprised since she weighed only 16 pounds and looked no older than five months.

With the cold steel tip of his stethoscope on her chest he could barely hear a heart beat and knew instinctively she was suffering from a congenital heart defect, Tetralogy of Fallot, commonly known as the blue baby syndrome.

As was his nightly habit, he dictated into a tape recorder a letter to his wife, Linda, a registered nurse at Children's Hospital in Orange, Calif. telling her about the child. Linda shared Doug's letter with Dr. Joseph David, a pediatric surgeon, who immediately concurred with Dr. Henning's diagnosis of Nguyen Thi Thangh Phuong. Without surgery the child was doomed. Unraveling red tape from both the military, the United States and South Vietnam, the child and her mother were eventually flown to the United States where the life saving surgery was performed. This is where I come in. I co-authored a book with Verda McKay about the youngest child to undergo open-heart surgery.

The nurses at the hospital couldn't pronounce her Vietnamese name, so they called her Suzie, the name we chose for the title of the book published in 1970. The world moved on and I lost track of all those involved in this book project, although I have wondered what happened to Suzie after the collapse of South Vietnam in April 1975. I have often taken the book from my bookshelf and stared at the dust cover featuring the haunting eyes of Suzie lying in a hospital crib with the surgical scar down her chest.

But for the most part, I put Suzie out of my mind and I have gone on to other writing projects.

That is until Karen Tolley, owner of Lost and Bound Books in Roseburg, Oregon found my book listed on e-bay. What intrigued her, other than the fact I was the author, was that the book was inscribed to President Richard Nixon.

She ordered a copy of Suzie for $25. It originally sold in hardcover for $4.95. To be honest with you I don't remember even signing the book and the inscription is in Verda McKay's handwriting. However, the signature is definitely mine. The book was in such good condition, one wonders if Nixon actually read it. And who put it on e-bay for sale? I don't want to open a new Watergate investigation, so I will just assume it came from Nixon's estate.

Bill Duncan

(Bill Duncan can be reached at semperfi@douglasfast.net or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)

SEARCHING FOR YOUR NEXT BIG THRILL? Read the "Between the Lines" feature interview with Steve Martini then read about great thrillers from: Kathy-Diane Leveille, Dennis Tafoya, Rebecca Cantrell, Seth Harwood, Dianna Love & Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jon Land, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Go to: http://www.thrillerwriters.org

Dear Reader Column 05-07-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. Bill Duncan, a writer and good friend of Suzanne's, is filling in for her today.

Edwin Newman wrote a book in 1974 called Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English. It was such a great book that I made it required reading for the newspaper editorial staff where I was editor.

Newman now has another concern. It may not be Americans but the English themselves who cause the death of the mother tongue. Officials in Birmingham, England have been taking a hammer to grammar for years and have now created a catastrophe over the apostrophe.

For some years, officials have been dropping apostrophes from street signs. It was such a problem that when the King's English purists would put the apostrophe back on the sign for St. Paul's Square with an indelible black pen, they were considered vandals. Recently the town council made it official and banned the punctuation mark on signs.

Martin Mullaney, of the city's transportation committee, said he hopes to stop the campaign to restore the apostrophe. He obviously doesn't understand grammarians. Already they are sharpening their quills for open warfare on those who would besmirch the King's, or is it the Queen's, English.

Marie Clair of the Plain English Society calls the apostrophe "such a sweet looking thing that plays a crucial role in the English language." Marie and I agree fully and I'd like to send Councilor Mullaney a copy of my language bible, a simple little book that sums up the language so clearly that even our cousins could learn a few things from its pages. I have sung its praises for all the sixty plus years I have been formally writing in the English language. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. It was later revised by his student, E.B. White. For the record, this is what professor Strunk said about that sweet looking thing called the apostrophe: "Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant."

Strunk noted what every editor has had to pound into reporters. "A common error is to write it's for its, or vice versa. The first is a contraction, meaning it is. The second is a possessive."

Let's face it, whether you are speaking English English or American English, it is a complicated language, but it is the most expressive language on earth, beautiful in sound and tone. It is also the most mangled.

I savor the well-turned phrase and the metaphor, but as Richard Lederer writes in his Revenge of Anguished English, we sometimes become tongue-tied especially when we mix modifiers like the ones he cites:

"I saw the dead dog driving down the highway." Or "She handed out brownies to the children wrapped in Tupperware."

Those English council members should be reminded, we grouchy grammarians are downright possessive about the sweet looking thing called the apostrophe.

Bill Duncan

(Bill Duncan can be reached at semperfi@douglasfast.net or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)

AUTHORBUZZ: With so many new books out every week, we promise these are five that deserve your attention: Andrew Klavan, The Last Thing I Remember; Maria Geraci, Bunco Babes Tell All; Nicole Baart, The Moment Between; Nancy Bachrach, The Center of the Universe: A Memoir; John Marco, Starfinder. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader

Dear Reader Column 05-06-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. MJ Rose, an author and good friend of Suzanne's, is filling in for her today.

A newsletter called Shelf-Awareness.com, which is about the publishing industry and bookselling business, arrived in my mailbox at 8:18 one morning in January. I opened it, started reading, got to the bottom and found an article about a new book called, The Miracles of Prato.

According to the article the book was getting a lot of buzz but I hadn't heard about it. With more than 10,000 novels published a year, most of us still don't hear about most of them--which is a marketing problem that has yet to be solved.

But the book was totally my kind of read--art and suspense.

I was about to leave the house for the train station. I didn't have time to drive to my favorite independent bookstore and buy a copy but I did just get a Kindle for Christmas. So I clicked over to Amazon, hit the trusty little one click and before I got up to get my bag ready for my train ride, the book was delivered electronically.

According to the receipt in my mailbox, it took less than one minute to arrive.

At 8:40 with some time to spare I started reading The Miracles of Prato and then read it on the train going to my meeting and then on the train coming home and kept reading it for the next few days. (It's a terrific book, by the way.)

So this is how the world works now. While part of it scares me--I love books and bookstores and the people who work in them and I don't want any of that to change--for someone who lives, eats and breathes storytelling, this is one heck of an exciting time to be a reader and a writer.

What do you think? Have you tried an ebook? Do you have a Kindle or Sony Reader? Do you read books on your cell phone? Do you want to?

Write me at MJRnewsletter@aol.com, I'd love to hear from you. And I'll be giving two people who answer a copy of my last novel, The Memorist.

Thanks for Reading!
M.J. Rose http://www.mjrose.com

*Congratulations to our Library Stimulus Winners. Thanks to everyone who took the time to email us about why their library is special.

Diana Doty (Brownsburg Public Library)
Heather Turner (Lawrenceburg Public Library)
Penny Vick (Mystic & Noank Library)
Ann Seitz-Brown (Glatfelter Library)
Rose Lawrence (Kanawha County Public Library)
Jane Dwyer (Park Forest Library)
Yvette Fontenot (St.Tammany Parish Library)
Monica L. Sutcliffe (Westerly Library)

Dear Reader Column 05-05-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. MJ Rose an author and good friend of Suzanne's is filling in for her today.

Every once in a while we're lucky enough to have an 'aha' moment--when something reminds us why we love what we love. People...places...pets...passions...

Two weeks ago a package came for me in the mail that contained a book that gave me one of those moments.

I'm not a reviewer so I don't get an endless supply of books but between authors and publishers who I know personally, or authors who want blurb, or random publicists who read my blog, I get at least three books a week.

Most of the time I haven't heard of the book or the author but I do look at everything and read the flap copy or the back copy and try a few pages. Sadly, rarely is the book something I'm interested in because it doesn't appeal to my specific tastes.

And so I've gotten pretty blase about opening the packages. Depressed even when I think about the sheer volume of books that this tiny sampling represents as well as the money being spent sending these advanced reading copies and finished books to people who might not be interested in them.

But two weeks ago I opened one of those plain mustard yellow envelopes and had an authentic moment of total delight and excitement when I looked at the cover and saw the authoress' name...

A new book by an author I love.

One of the ten best feelings I know.

The promise of hours of reading bliss.

I wrote to the publicist who put me on the list for the advanced copy--thanking her for a moment that really made me remember what the very best part of all of this is--a great storyteller with a new story to tell and a hungry reader who can't wait.

What was the last 'aha' moment you had with a book?

Write me at MJRnewsletter@aol.com, I'd love to hear from you. And I'll be giving two people who answer a copy of my last novel, The Memorist and maybe I'll even include an advanced reading copy or two that I've received recently.

Thanks for Reading!
M.J. Rose http://www.mjrose.com

SEARCHING FOR YOUR NEXT BIG THRILL? Read the "Between the Lines" feature interview with Steve Martini then read about great thrillers from: Kathy-Diane Leveille, Dennis Tafoya, Rebecca Cantrell, Seth Harwood, Dianna Love & Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jon Land, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Go to: http://www.thrillerwriters.org

Dear Reader Column 05-04-09

Join my email book club. Over 350,000 people read 5-minutes a day. To see what books I'm featuring this week, go to: http://www.dearreader.com/

Dear Reader,

Suzanne is resting up from minor surgery. Blaize Clement, an author and good friend of Suzanne's is filling in for her again today.

Ever since Suzanne asked me to fill in for a few days, I've been remembering how we first met because of catnip. I sent Suzanne a copy of Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, the first Dixie Hemingway mystery, with one of my catnip bookmarks inside it--they're regular bookmarks with little bags of catnip attached. Suzanne gets tons of books in the mail every day, so she added my unopened package to the day's stack. In no time, her three indoor cats pounced on the pile and began pawing at the box. Suzanne opened it to see what they were after, and laughed when she saw the catnip. She read enough of the book to know she wanted to feature it in her column, and called to ask if I could provide bookmarks for books to be given away in a contest. Needless to say, I was delighted and quickly put together a bag of bookmarks for her. The next day, she called and in an embarrassed voice asked if I could give her more. Seemed that her cats had found them and left tooth marks all over them.

And so a friendship began because of catnip. But Suzanne doesn't like me half as much as her cat Rudy does. Rudy LOVES me. When Rudy looks at me, he blinks his eyes very slowly to tell me that his heart yearns for me. If he were allowed outside without a leash, I'm quite sure Rudy would keep me supplied with choice mice and lizards. It's not my scintillating personality that attracts him, it's the faint odor of catnip that clings to me. I am Rudy's catnip supplier, and he knows it.

Until recently, her other cats have mostly ignored the catnip and Rudy has claimed it all for himself. But something must have caused the others to get envious, because Suzanne told me that all five cats--Rudy, Billee and Abigal inside, Mama and Papa outside--sort of blissed out en masse on the last catnip delivery. I don't know how Rudy feels about sharing his stash. I may have to offer him something extra to keep his adoration.

Blaize Clement

* I'm gathering people's favorite pet stories for a special section on my blog. If you have a favorite pet anecdote you'd like to share with the world, I'd love to hear from you. Send your pet story--or just your hello--to Blaize@BlaizeClement.com. I'll send two people who email a copy of my latest Dixie Hemingway mystery, Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof, along with catnip bookmarks. (Please include a mailing address.)

AUTHORBUZZ: With so many new books out every week, we promise these are five that deserve your attention: Andrew Klavan, The Last Thing I Remember; Maria Geraci, Bunco Babes Tell All; Nicole Baart, The Moment Between; Nancy Bachrach, The Center of the Universe: A Memoir; John Marco, Starfinder. Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader