Main Street Reads

Book Signing: Diane C. McPhail with Follow the Stars Home
2024-10-01 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Over the moon excited to have Diane C. McPhail join us for a special signing of her gorgeous new release, Follow the Stars Home, (PLUS we’ll have copies of her other works, including The Abolitionist’s Daughter and The Seamstress of New Orleans available for purchase and signing!

Follow the Stars Home is captivating historical fiction, with a gorgeous cover to boot. This acclaimed author brings to life Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt’s defiant journey of 1811 in this evocative biographical novel for fans of Paula McLain, Gill Paul, Allison Pataki.

It’s a journey that most would call impossible. Yet on October 20th, 1811, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt–daughter of one of the architects of the United States Capitol–fearlessly boards the steamship New Orleans in Pittsburgh. Eight months pregnant and with a toddler in tow, Lydia is fiercely independent. Against her father’s wishes, she’s already married his much older business colleague, inventor Nicholas Roosevelt–builder of the New Orleans. But the stakes for this trip are much higher.

If Nicholas’s untried steamboat reaches New Orleans, it will serve as a profitable packet ship between that city and Natchez, proving the power of steam as it travels up and down the Mississippi. Success in this venture would revolutionize travel and trade, open the west to expansion, and secure the Roosevelts’ future.

Capable and adventurous, Lydia believes herself ready for all the dangers ahead–growing unrest among native people, disease, and the turbulent Falls of the Ohio, a sixty-foot drop long believed impassable in such a large boat.

Just imagine being a woman of that era, pregnant, enduring violent earthquakes and treacherous waters on the first steamboat voyage to conquer the Mississippi River and redefine America. To our delight, and enlightenment, the author has.

Diane C. McPhail is an artist, minister, and acclaimed author of Follow the Stars Home, The Abolitionist’s Daughter, and The Seamstress of New Orleans, which was a finalist for the Thomas Wolf Fiction Award and the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Award. A graduate of Ole Miss, Duke Writers, University of Iowa Distance, and the Yale Writers’ Conference, she is a member of NC Writers Network and the Historical Novel Society. She was born in Jackson, MS, raised on the Mississippi Delta only miles from the river, and now lives in Highlands, North Carolina with her husband and dog

Fantasy Book Launch: She Tames the Sea by E.M. Etheridge
2024-10-03 17:00 - 19:00
We’re thrilled to have lowcountry author E.M. Etheridge here on Thursday evening, October 3, with the launch of her dark fantasy novel, She Tames the Sea. We’re hosting this before Fab Fantasy book club begins so our fantasy readers can meet the author!

Men fear a woman on the sea. They say women bring about bad luck and anger from the gods who rule the waters. Estella Bohem fears being aboard Captain Eric Price’s ship, amongst the pirates who kidnapped her for her abilities. It was the Bohem family who used magic to tame the beast of the sea decades ago. They trapped it in an ancient spell to make the waters safe to travel, but it was the vagabonds of the sea who wanted to free it, tame it, and use it for their own ambitions.

All her life Estella never had control of her future. But as the notoriously brutal Captain Edward Laggatt hunts her down for the key to the beast’s cage, she has no choice but to trust the same men who stole her away from her socialite life in Charleston South Carolina.

She Tames The Sea is an adult dark fantasy novel that delves into the complications of familial relations, magic and mythology.

E.M. Etheridge was one of the original members of Main Street Writes. She has been writing since she was a teenager and dreaming since she was a child.

That love for the written word inspired her to get a masters in English and creative writing, and write all of the books she wanted to read. Emily aims to tie lore, magic, and her knowledge of classic literature into all of her stories to create engaging and inspiring books for her readers so they can find their own wonder in this world.

This is her first published novel. Big congrats to one of our own!

Third Thursday Book Signing! Girl From the Red Rose Motel
2024-10-17 17:30 - 19:30
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Come party with your neighbors in downtown Summerville on Third Thursday, and stop by Main Street Reads to get a personally signed copy of the award-winning Girl From the Red Rose Motel by Susan Beckham Zurenda!

Susan will be on hand that evening to meet fans and sign books and tell you more about her great work – don’t miss the fun!

Impoverished high school junior Hazel Smalls and privileged senior Sterling Lovell would never ordinarily meet. But when both are punished with in-school suspension, Sterling finds himself drawn to the gorgeous, studious girl seated nearby, and an unlikely relationship begins.

Set in 2012 South Carolina, the novel interlaces the stories of Hazel, living with her homeless family in the rundown Red Rose Motel; Sterling, yearning to break free from his wealthy parents’ expectations; and recently widowed Angela Wilmore, their stern but compassionate English teacher. Hazel hides her homelessness from Sterling until he discovers her cleaning the motel’s office when he goes with his slumlord father to unfreeze the motel’s pipes one morning. With her secret revealed, their relationship deepens.

Angela-who has her own struggles in a budding romance with the divorced principal-offers Hazel the support her family can’t provide. Navigating between privilege and poverty, vulnerability and strength, all three must confront what they need from themselves and each other as Hazel gains the courage to oppose boundaries and make a bold, life-changing decision at novel’s end.

Gripping and richly drawn, The Girl from the Red Rose Motel explores the complex bonds between adults and teenagers and the power of the families we both inherit and create. Inspired by the author’s experiences teaching in a South Carolina high school, the novel is also an unflinching, authentic look at the challenges faced by America’s public school teachers and the struggles of the thousands of homeless children in motels who live, precariously and almost invisibly, amid the nation’s most affluent communities.
