Main Street Reads

Special Interactive Mixology Event: Which Fork Do I Use with my Bourbon?
2020-07-14 17:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us for this wonderful Reader Meet Writer interactive mixology event now on July 14th at 5 p.m. – HAPPY HOUR!
During their travels in bourbon country and beyond to conduct tastings and seminars, entertainment experts Peggy Noe Stevens and Susan Reigler often heard the question, “How do I do this in my home?” This book is their definitive answer. Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon? offers a step-by-step guide to hosting a successful bourbon-tasting party—complete with recipes, photos, and tips for beginners and experienced aficionados alike.
From decorations to glassware, this one-stop resource will guide readers from the day they mail invitations to the moment they welcome guests through the door. Alongside their favorite snack, entrée, dessert, and cocktail recipes, Stevens and Reigler offer advice on how to set up a bar, arrange tables, and pair recipes. Once readers are ready, Stevens and Reigler move on to advanced pairings for the bourbon foodie and present two innovative examples of tasting parties—a bourbon cocktail soiree and, of course, the traditional Kentucky Derby party. Inspired by the hosting traditions of five Kentucky distilleries, this book promises to motivate bourbon lovers to start their own bourbon-tasting traditions and to expand the expertise of longtime bourbon enthusiasts.
Peggy Noe Stevens is founder of the Bourbon Women Association and a master bourbon taster. A lifestyle expert, she is also a professional speaker. As a Bourbon Hall of Fame inductee, she has planned hundreds of events globally over the last thirty years, often working with distilleries and master distillers.
Susan Reigler is a former restaurant critic for the Louisville Courier-Journal and a current correspondent for Bourbon+ and American Whiskey magazines. She has also authored or coauthored six books on bourbon, including Kentucky Bourbon Country: The Essential Travel Guide and The Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail Book.
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Reader Meet Writer: NYT Bestselling Author Silas House! (Virtual Event)
2020-07-09 19:00 - 20:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
We invite you to join us July 9th at 7 p.m. for a special chat with NYT bestselling author Silas House! You must email us at mainstreetreads@gmail.com to confirm participation. PLUS: Those attending this virtual event will receive a book buck to redeem on any of Silas’ titles in the store. Be sure to call us to reserve yours, or visit the links below to order from our online shop and visit us for your book buck!
Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, one book of creative nonfiction, and three plays. His writing has appeared frequently in the New York Times and has been published in Time, Newsday, Garden & Gun, the Oxford American, and many other places. House is the winner of an E.B. White Award, the Nautilus Award, the Intellectual Freedom Prize from the National Council of Teachers of English, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, and many other honors, as well as being longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. He teaches at Berea College and in the Spalding University School of Writing.
Clay’s Quilt
In his New York Times best-selling novel Silas House introduced himself as an important voice for Appalachia and, indeed, for the entire rural South. In Clay’s Quilt, now a touchstone for his many fans, House takes us to Free Creek, KY, where a motherless young man forges his path to adulthood surrounded by ancient mountains and his blood relatives and adopted kin: his Aunt Easter tied to her faith and foreboding nature; his Uncle Paul, the quilter; the wild girls Evangeline and Alma; and a fiddler whose music calls to Clay’s heart. As he struggles to stitch up the void created by his mother’s death, Clay pieces together his own life’s quilt, all masterfully wrought by House.
Blair brings this novel into a beautiful new paperback edition, along with two other Silas House novels, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo. The three novels, which share a common setting and some characters are companion novels. They may be read individually, in any order, but collectively, they form a rich tableau of life in rural mountain Kentucky in the last century.
A Parchment of Leaves
In this nationally best-selling novel, A Parchment of Leaves, Silas House produced an iconic story of 1900s rural mountain Kentucky that remains a favorite of his many fans.
On his way to find work in the Redbud Camp, Saul Sullivan encounters a Cherokee girl who is said to possess a beauty that brings death to the men who see her. Saul, however, is irrevocably drawn to Vine the moment he lays eye on her and believes they are meant to be married, over the objections of her mother and his. Despite her misgivings, Saul’s mother, Esme, and his brother, Aaron, take to Vine from the moment she comes to God’s Creek. In fact, Vine realizes from the start that Aaron’s interest in her is far more than brotherly. When Saul must leave Vine behind for a year of work, troubling and violent events follow his departure, and Vine’s spirit and her love are put to the ultimate test.
This novel was the winner of the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize.
The Coal Tattoo
The Coal Tattoo takes place in World War II-era rural Kentucky, where twenty-two-year-old Easter and Anneth, her teenaged sister, lose their parents young and now must raise each other. Easter finds her life in the Pentecostal Holiness church and its music, while Anneth dances and drinks in less-than-holy honky-tonks. Will the differences in their young lives and in their very natures tear them apart, or will the bond of the sisters prevail? In lucid prose with an ear for the voice of the sisters’ time and place, Silas House brings readers a rich and moving story of coal country.
This novel was named the Appalachian Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize.

Reader Meet Writer: Virtual Event with Marian Keyes and Grown Ups
2020-07-07 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us Tuesday, July 7th at 3 p.m. for a Reader Meet Writer online chat with famed author Marian Keyes! She’s one of the most successful Irish novelists of all time. Though she had no intention of ever writing a novel (“It would take too long”) she sent her short stories to a publisher, with a letter saying she’d started work on a novel. The publishers replied, asking to see the novel, and once her panic had subsided, she began to write what subsequently became her first book Watermelon, published in 1995.
To date, the woman who said she’d never write a novel has published 13 of them. All have been bestsellers around the world, with a total of over 30 million of her books sold to date in 33 languages. Anybody Out There won the British Book Awards award for popular fiction and the inaugural Melissa Nathan Prize for Comedy Romance. This Charming Man won the Irish Book Award for popular fiction. Marian’s latest book Grown Ups published in hardback and eBook in February 2020. As well as novels she has written short stories, and articles for various magazines and other publications.
Keyes was born in Limerick in 1963, and brought up in Cavan, Cork, Galway and Dublin; she spent her twenties in London, but is now living in Dún Laoghaire with her husband Tony. She includes among her hobbies reading, movies, shoes, handbags and feminism.
Grown Ups: Doubleday Canada | June 30, 2020 | 9780385695886

They’re a glamorous family, the Caseys. Johnny Casey, his two brothers Ed and Liam, their beautiful, talented wives and all their kids spend a lot of time together—birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, weekends away. And they’re a happy family. Johnny’s wife, Jessie—who has the most money—insists on it.
Under the surface, though, conditions are murkier. While some people clash, other people like each other far too much…
Still, everything manages to stay under control—that is, until Ed’s wife, Cara, gets a concussion and can’t keep her thoughts or opinions to herself. One careless remark at Johnny’s birthday party, with the entire family present, and Cara starts spilling all their secrets.
As everything unravels, each of the adults finds themselves wondering if it’s—finally—the time to grow up.

Reader Meet Writer: TJ Klune's The Extraordinaries! (Virtual Event)
2020-06-11 16:00 - 17:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us on June 11th, the last Reader Meet Writer Virtual Event before a two-week summer break for an engaging chat with TJ KLUNE, a Lambda Literary Award-winning author. His novels include the Green Creek series, The House on the Cerulean Sea and The Exraordinaries. Being queer himself, TJ believes it’s important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive, queer representation in stories.
NOTE: You must email us at mainstreetreads@gmail.com by 9 a.m. on the day of the event to receive the event link and password to attend.
The Extraordinaries
Tor Teen | July 14, 2020 | 9781250203656
Some people are extraordinary. Some are just extra. TJ Klune’s YA debut, The Extraordinaries, is a queer coming-of-age story about a fanboy with ADHD and the heroes he loves. Nick Bell? Not extraordinary. But being the most popular fanfiction writer in the Extraordinaries fandom is a superpower, right? After a chance encounter with Shadow Star, Nova City’s mightiest hero (and Nick’s biggest crush), Nick sets out to make himself extraordinary. And he’ll do it with or without the reluctant help of Seth Gray, Nick’s best friend (and maybe the love of his life). Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl meets Marissa Meyer’s Renegades in TJ Klune’s YA debut.
The House in the Cerulean Sea
Tor Books | March 17, 2020 | 9781250217288
Linus Baker is a by-the-book caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He’s tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light.
The House in the Cerulean Sea is an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.

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Special Reader Meet MURDER Virtual Event: Meet Author Beverly Bell!
2020-06-09 15:00 - 16:00
SPECIAL READER MEET MURDER EVENT!
The Murder of Marion Miley by Beverly Bell
NOTE: You must email us at mainstreetreads@gmail.com by 9 a.m. on the day of the event to receive the event link and password to attend. The event takes place at 3 pm EST, June 9th
Author Beverly Bell explains How Not to Get Away with Murder in the 1940s as she traces the path the killers took: how they got in, how they got out and how they made their escape.
Today, the name Marion Miley is largely unrecognizable, but in the fall of 1941, she was an internationally renowned golf champion, winning every leading women’s tournament except the elusive national title. This unassuming twenty-seven-year-old girl was beloved by all she met, including celebrities like jazz crooner Bing Crosby. With ambitions to become a doctor, it seemed Marion Miley was headed for greatness.
But on September 28, six gunshots broke through the early morning stillness of the Lexington Country Club. Marion had been brutally murdered. News of her death spread quickly, headlining major papers such as the New York Times. Support flooded in, spurring police in the hunt for her killers. However, the bombing of Pearl Harbor less than two months later would redirect public attention and sweep Marion’s story to a forgotten corner of time—until now.
The Murder of Marion Miley recounts the ensuing manhunt and trial, exploring the impact of class, family, and opportunity in a world where steely determination is juxtaposed with callous murderous intent. As the narrative voice oscillates between Marion’s father, her best friend, and one of her killers, an ever-present specter of what could have been—not just for Marion, but for all those affected by her tragic death—is conjured. By blending intensive research with the true crime genre, Beverly Bell succeeds in producing a passionate homage to one of the greatest golfers of the early twentieth century.
Beverly Bell is an award-winning magazine and crime writer whose work has appeared in Arizona Highways, Indianapolis Monthly, Keeneland Magazine, and Kentucky Monthly. Bell is also a featured consultant in Kentucky Education Television’s recent documentary Forgotten Fame: The Marion Miley Story.

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Reader Meet Writer: Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life by Ruby McConnell (Virtual Event)
2020-06-02 17:00 - 18:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us Tuesday, June 2nd at 5 p.m to learn about Ruby McConnell’s newest book Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life, released by Overcup Press in April 2020. McConnell is a registered geologist and outdoor adventurer who writes about nature, art, and culture with a particular emphasis on the intersection of the environment and human experience.
A recipient of numerous honors, including the Literary Arts Oregon Literary Fellowship, McConnell has written extensively about the Pacific Northwest and the environment in scientific and literary journals. She is the author of two previous titles, A Girl’s Guide to the Wild and A Woman’s Guide to the Wild, and lives in Oregon with her husband, Paul.
Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life
Overcup Press | May 5, 2020 | 9781250256928
Ruby McConnell morphs natural history and memoir to portray the forces and landscapes that have helped shape a region and the people who live in it. Challenging the notions of the region, McConnell explores the Northwest and the decades-long struggle over resources since the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May 1980.
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Reader Meet Writer: The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate (Virtual Event)
2020-05-28 19:00 - 20:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us on Thursday, May 28th at 7 p.m. for a special evening with Lisa Wingate, author of The Book of Lost Friends. SPECIAL LOST & FOUND EVENT! Join Lisa Wingate and special guest Diane Plauche, of the Historic New Orleans Collection, in conversation with author Kristy Woodson Harvey about a fascinating and little-known facet of American life.
Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now-destitute plantation; Juneau Jane, her illegitimate free-born Creole half-sister; and Hannie, Lavinia’s former slave. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following dangerous roads rife with ruthless vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and eight siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage westward reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the seemingly limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope.
Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt—until she lands in Augustine, Louisiana. The tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town seems suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can hardly comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and rundown plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.
Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, an inspirational speaker, and the author of numerous novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Before We Were Yours, which has sold more than 2.2 million copies. The co-author, with Judy Christie, of the nonfiction book, Before and After, Wingate is a two-time ACFW Carol Award winner, a Christy Award nominee, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist, and a Southern Book Prize winner. She lives with her husband in North Texas.
Diane Plauche is a volunteer with the Historic New Orleans Collection museum. In 2015, she began assisting the museum in creating a database of historical Lost Friends advertisements, through which formerly enslaved people desperately tried to find their lost families in the decades following emancipation. After reading Lisa Wingate’s 2017 novel, Before We Were Yours, Diane wrote to Lisa about the Lost Friends ads, saying, “There is a story in each one of the ads.” To date, Diane has entered over 2500 unique ads, and tens of thousands of names in the museum’s database, preserving the histories of thousands of families. Diane’s work, and the stories of the real-life Lost Friends inspired Lisa’s newest novel, The Book Of Lost Friends.
Kristy Woodson Harvey is the bestselling author and the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing. Her novel Lies and Other Acts of Love was a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. Her work has been optioned for film and her books have received numerous accolades. Read more about Kristy

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Reader Meet Writer: Pale by Edward Farmer (Virtual Event)
2020-05-27 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us on Wednesday, May 27th at 3 p.m. for an engaging discussion with Edward Farmer, author of the new novel, Pale. Farmer is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, where he journaled and cultivated stories his entire childhood. He is a graduate of Amherst College with a degree in English and psychology, and recipient of the MacArthur-Leithauser Travel Award for creative writing. He currently lives and writes in Pasadena, California.
PALE: The summer of 1966 burned hot across America, but nowhere hotter than the cotton fields of Mississippi. Finding herself in a precarious position, a black woman accepts her brother’s invitation to join him as a servant for a white family where she enters a web of hostility and deception. With a dazzling new voice of emotional tension, Pale explores how quickly humanity can fade and return us to our primal ways.

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Reader Meet Writer: The Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson (Virtual Event)
2020-05-26 17:00 - 18:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us Tuesday, May 26th at 5 p.m. for a special talk with Genevieve Hudson, author of the newly released Boys of Alabama.
O, The Oprah Magazine • “31 LGBTQ Books That’ll Change the Literary Landscape in 2020” | Lit Hub • “Most Anticipated Books by LGBTQ Authors For the First Half of 2020”
“A gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs.” ―Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir
In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets.
Max already expects some of the raucous behavior of his new, American friends―like their insatiable hunger for the fried and cheesy, and their locker room talk about girls. But he doesn’t expect the comradery―or how quickly he would be welcomed into their world of basement beer drinking. In his new canvas pants and thickening muscles, Max feels like he’s “playing dress-up.” That is until he meets Pan, the school “witch,” in Physics class: “Pan in his all black. Pan with his goth choker and the gel that made his hair go straight up.” Suddenly, Max feels seen, and the pair embarks on a consuming relationship: Max tells Pan about his supernatural powers, and Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of the local church. The boys, however, aren’t sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening―their true selves, or staying true in Alabama.
Writing in verdant and visceral prose that builds to a shocking conclusion, Genevieve Hudson “brilliantly reinvents the Southern Gothic, mapping queer love in a land where God, guns, and football are king” (Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks ). Boys of Alabama becomes a nuanced portrait of masculinity, religion, immigration, and the adolescent pressures that require total conformity.
Genevieve Hudson is the author of the novel Boys of Alabama: a novel (2020), which O, the Oprah Magazine, Ms Magazine and Lit Hub selected as a recommended book to read in 2020. Other books include the critical memoir A Little in Love with Everyone (2018), and Pretend We Live Here: Stories ( 2018), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist and named a Best Book of 2018 by Entropy.
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Reader Meet Writer: Yaffa S. Santos with A Taste of Sage (Virtual Event)
2020-05-21 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us via Zoom on Thursday, May 21st at 3 p.m. when Yaffa S. Santos will discuss her acclaimed new novel, A Taste of Sage.
A Taste of Sage Harper Paperbacks | May 19, 2020 | To read a free preview chapter, CLICK HERE!
From talented new writer, Yaffa S. Santos, comes A Taste of Sage, an unforgettable, heartwarming, and hilarious rom-com about chefs, love, and self-discovery that is the perfect cross between The Hating Game and Sweetbitter.
Lumi Santana is a passionate chef with the gift of synesthesia—she can perceive a person’s emotions just by tasting their cooking. Inspired by a mix of Dominican cuisines, Lumi opens Caraluna, a nontraditional fusion restaurant in Inwood, NY, only to succumb to financial struggles shortly after. Julien Dax, a celebrated chef known for his acid tongue and brilliant smile, is dedicated to the faultless preparation of classic French cuisine, offering no room for personal flair at his successful, midtown Manhattan restaurant, DAX.
When both restauranteurs meet at a catering gig, Lumi is struck by Julien’s ravishing looks while Julien is excited by her firecracker tongue. Lumi is quickly turned off by Julien’s critiques of her passion-filled dishes but feels she is left with no other choice but to take a position as a sous chef at his staid, traditional French restaurant when the opportunity presents itself.
Irritated by his smug attitude, Lumi silently vows to never taste Julien’s cooking. However, as time passes, Lumi finds herself yearning for the mouthwatering dishes created by Julien’s strong hands, each dish more tempting than the last. The overwhelming aromas and gorgeous presentations entice Lumi to sneak a bite, but she isn’t prepared for the feelings that will follow, complicating her love life and her professional plans.
Yaffa S. Santos was born and raised in New Jersey. A solo trip to Dominican Republic in her teenage years changed her relationship to her Dominican heritage and sparked a passion for cooking and its singular ability to bring people together. Yaffa is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied writing and visual art. She is a member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA). She has lived in New York, Philadelphia, Santo Domingo, and now lives in Florida with her family.

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Reader Meet Writer: Carter Sickels Discusses The Prettiest Star (Virtual Event)
2020-05-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us Wednesday, 3 p.m. to meet Carter Sickels, author of the novel The Evening Hour. He is the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award, and has been awarded scholarships to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, VCCA, and the MacDowell Colony. His essays and fiction have appeared in various publications, including Guernica, Bellevue Literary Review, and BuzzFeed. Carter is Assistant Professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University, where he teaches in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Residency MFA program.
The Prettiest Star Publisher: Hub City Press | May 19, 2020 | 9781938235627
Small-town Appalachia doesn’t have a lot going for it, but it’s where Brian is from, where his family is, and where he’s chosen to return to die.
Set in 1986, a year after Rock Hudson’s death brought the news of AIDS into living rooms and kitchens across America, Lambda Literary award-winning author Carter Sickels’s second novel shines light on an overlooked part of the epidemic, those men who returned to the rural communities and families who’d rejected them.
Six short years after Brian Jackson moved to New York City in search of freedom and acceptance, AIDS has claimed his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape.
The Prettiest Star is told in a chorus of voices: Brian’s mother Sharon; his fourteen-year-old sister, Jess, as she grapples with her brother’s mysterious return; and the video diaries Brian makes to document his final summer.
Carter Sickels’s stunning novel is an urgent story about the politics and fragility of the body, of sex and shame. Above all, The Prettiest Star explores the bounds of family and redemption. It is written at the far reaches of love and understanding, centering on the moments where those two forces stretch toward each other and sometimes touch.

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Reader Meet Writer: Mary Alice Monroe with On Ocean Boulevard (Virtual Event)
2020-05-19 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us Tuesday, May 18th on 3 pm for a lowcountry favorite! Mary Alice Monroe is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the Beach House series: The Beach House, Beach House Memories, Swimming Lessons, Beach House for Rent, and Beach House Reunion. She is a 2018 Inductee into the South Carolina Academy of Authors’ Hall of Fame, and her books have received numerous awards, including the 2008 South Carolina Center for the Book Award for Writing, the 2014 South Carolina Award for Literary Excellence, the 2015 SW Florida Author of Distinction Award, the RT Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Book Award for Green Fiction, and the 2017 Southern Book Prize for Fiction. Her bestselling novel The Beach House is also a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. An active conservationist, she lives in the lowcountry of South Carolina. Visit her at MaryAliceMonroe.com and at Facebook.com/MaryAliceMonroe.
On Ocean Boulevard Gallery Books | May 19, 2020 | 9781982146948
The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Guests returns at long last to her beloved Beach House series in this breathtaking novel about one family’s summer of forging new beginnings against the enduring beauty and resilience of the natural world.
It’s been sixteen years since Caretta “Cara” Rutledge has returned home to the beautiful shores of Charleston, South Carolina. Over those years, she has weathered the tides of deaths and births, struggles and joys. And now, as Cara prepares for her second wedding, her life is about to change yet again.
Meanwhile, the rest of the storied Rutledge family is also in flux. Cara’s niece Linnea returns to Sullivan’s Island to begin a new career and an unexpected relationship. Linnea’s parents, having survived bankruptcy, pin their hopes and futures on the construction of a new home on Ocean Boulevard. But as excitement over the house and wedding builds, a devastating illness strikes the family and brings plans to a screeching halt. It is under these trying circumstances that the Rutledge family must come together yet again to discover the enduring strength in love, tradition, and legacy from mother to daughter to granddaughter.
Like the sea turtles that come ashore annually on these windswept islands, three generations of the Rutledge family experience a season of return, rebirth, and growth. “Authentic, generous, and heartfelt” (Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author), On Ocean Boulevard is Mary Alice Monroe at her very best.

Reader Meet Writer: Kristen Arnett with Mostly Dead Things (Virtual Event)
2020-05-15 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us on Friday, May 15th at 3:00 pm for a great discussion with Kristen Arnett, a queer fiction and essay writer. She won the 2017 Coil Book Award for her debut short fiction collection, Felt in the Jaw, and was awarded Ninth Letter’s 2015 Literary Award in Fiction. Her debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, is now available in paperback from Tin House. She lives in Florida. Follow her on Twitter @Kristen_Arnett.
Mostly Dead Things: Tin House Books | April 21, 2020 | 9781947793835
The celebrated New York Times Bestseller – A 2019 Best Book of the Year: New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, TIME, Washington Post, Oprahmag.com, Thrillist, Shelf Awareness, Good Housekeeping and more.
What does it take to come back to life? For Jessa-Lynn Morton, the question is not an abstract one. In the wake of her father’s suicide, Jessa has stepped up to manage his failing taxidermy business while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the taxidermy shop to make provocative animal art, while her brother, Milo, withdraws. And Brynn, Milo’s wife—and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. It’s not until the Mortons reach a tipping point that a string of unexpected incidents begins to open up surprising possibilities and second chances. But will they be enough to salvage this family, to help them find their way back to one another? Kristen Arnett’s breakout bestseller is a darkly funny family portrait; a peculiar, bighearted look at love and loss and the ways we live through them together.

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Reader Meet Writer: Susan Beckham Zurenda with Bells for Eli (Virtual Event)
2020-05-14 16:00 - 17:00
Join us on Thursday, May 14th at 4 p.m. for a wonderful discussion with Susan Beckham Zurenda. Susan was meant to join us in person May 16th, so we’re disappointed she can’t be with us live but look so forward to her virtual talk. She’s providing signed bookplates for those who grab their copy of her new novel at Main Street Reads!
After teaching literature, composition, and creative writing to thousands of high school and college students for 33 years, Susan turned her attention to putting a novel in her heart on paper, the genesis of which started with a short story that won a fiction prize some years ago. She was delighted to present her debut novel, Bells for Eli, to readers on March 2, 2020. During her years of teaching at Spartanburg Community College and then as an AP English teacher at Spartanburg High School, Susan published short stories and won numerous regional awards such as the South Carolina Fiction Prize (twice), the Porter Fleming Competition, The Southern Writers Symposium Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, The Hub City Hardegree Contest in Fiction, Alabama Conclave First Novel Chapter Contest, and The Jubilee Writing Competition (twice). Since 2018, she has published six stories in literary magazines.
Bells for Eli: Mercer University Press | March 2, 2020 | 9780881467376
“A stunning debut, Bells for Eli establishes Susan Beckham Zurenda as one of the most exciting new voices in Southern fiction,” says Cassandra King Conroy, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of five novels and the memoir Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy.
In this tender, beautifully-rendered novel, the powerful connection between cousins Delia and Eli takes them on a journey fraught with longing, desire, and heartbreak. Through loss, Delia comes to understand that the bonds of love can never truly be broken.” First cousins Ellison (Eli) Winfield and Adeline (Delia) Green are meant to grow up happily and innocently across the street from one another amid the supposed wholesome values of small-town Green Branch, South Carolina, in the 1960s and 70s. But Eli’s tragic accident changes the trajectory of their lives and of those connected to them. Shunned and even tortured by his peers for his disfigurement and frailty, Eli struggles for acceptance in childhood as Delia passionately devotes herself to defending him.
Delia’s vivid and compassionate narrative voice presents Eli as a confident young man in adolescence—the visible damage to his body gone—but underneath hide indelible wounds harboring pain and insecurity, scars that rule his impulses. And while Eli cherishes Delia more than anyone and attempts to protect her from her own troubles, he cares not for protecting himself. It is Delia who has that responsibility, growing more challenging each year. Bells for Eli is a lyrical and tender exploration of the relationship between cousins drawn together through tragedy in a love forbidden by social constraints and a family whose secrets must stay hidden.
Susan Beckham Zurenda masterfully transports readers into a small Southern town where quiet, ordinary life becomes extraordinary. In this compelling coming of age story, culture, family, friends, bullies, and lovers propel two young people to unite to guard each other in a world where love, hope, and connectedness ultimately triumph.

Reader Meet Writer: Katy Simpson Smith with The Everlasting (Virtual Event)
2020-05-13 16:00 - 17:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us on Wednesday, May 13th at 4 p.m. for this special virtual event with Katy Simpson Smith talking about her new novel, The Everlasting. (Awesome cover, right?!)
Katy was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835, and the novels The Story of Land and Sea and Free Men. Her novel The Everlasting was published in March, 2020. She lives in New Orleans, and currently serves as the Eudora Welty Chair for Southern Literature at Millsaps College.
The Everlasting: Publisher: Harper | March 24, 2020 | 9780062873644
Spanning two thousand years in and around Rome, Katy Simpson Smith’s The Everlasting is a novel of intersecting love stories, lifted by grand gestures and subversive power, faith and mortal love. Smith joins the stories of four characters: an early Christian child martyr, a twelve-year-old girl, ignored, picked on, desperate for a big, loud voice; a gay, medieval monk at work in the putridarium, who buries his queerness beneath his religious devotion; a Medici princess of African descent and dubious legitimacy who wields her identity like a weapon; and a contemporary field biologist, whose research illuminates the beauty and fragility of the natural world and who is conducting an illicit affair. Through it all Satan travels with them, narrating their struggles with, by turns, bitter and biting commentary, offering counsel no one hears.
Smith sought to write a grand novel about a grand city, to show how history’s enormity can swallow the second century and spit out the twenty-first, all in a blink. She recreates Rome again and again in vivid detail, charting the illustrious growth of a city whose every stone is a moment in Western history, though, as Satan observes, “This is the city for hustle, for building permanent tokens on human transience, and then building on top of those. No one is remembered except the pulsing city itself, which—sack after sack—refuses to perish.”
But it is the small stories that feel most urgent in Smith’s pages. In the Distance author Hernán Díaz writes, “In a rare display of lyrical erudition, Katy Simpson Smith’s gorgeous novel lets us feel the depth and density of history by showing us how every life is both an echo of the past and a relic of the future.” It is a truth as deep and layered as Rome itself.
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Reader Meet Writer: Mary Kay Andrews with Hello Summer! (Virtual Event)
2020-05-12 17:00 - 18:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us May 12, 5 p.m. for a special chat with Mary Kay Andrews, the New York Times bestselling author of 24 novels including THE WEEKENDERS, BEACH TOWN, LADIES’ NIGHT, SUMMER RENTAL, SUNSET BEACH, DEEP DISH and HISSY FIT.
A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, Mary Kay received a B.A. in journalism from The University of Georgia and was a newspaper reporter for 14 years. The last ten years of her career were spent as a features reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. After a 14-year career working as a reporter at newspapers including The Savannah Morning News, The Marietta Journal and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she left journalism in 1991 to write fiction. Her first novel, EVERY CROOKED NANNY, was published in 1992 by HarperCollins. She went on to write ten critically acclaimed mysteries under her real name. In 2002, she assumed the pen name Mary Kay Andrews with the publication of SAVANNAH BLUES. In 2006, HISSY FIT became her first New York Times bestseller, followed by eleven more New York Times, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly bestsellers.

Hello, Summer: St. Martin’s Press | May 5, 2020 | 9781250256928
It’s a new season…
Conley Hawkins left her family’s small town newspaper, The Silver Bay Beacon, in the rearview mirror years ago. Now a star reporter for a big-city paper, Conley is exactly where she wants to be and is about to take a fancy new position in Washington, D.C. Or so she thinks.
For small town scandals…
When the new job goes up in smoke, Conley finds herself right back where she started, working for her sister, who is trying to keep The Silver Bay Beacon afloat—and she doesn’t exactly have warm feelings for Conley. Soon she is given the unenviable task of overseeing the local gossip column, “Hello, Summer.”
And big-time secrets.
Then Conley witnesses an accident that ends in the death of a local congressman—a beloved war hero with a shady past. The more she digs into the story, the more dangerous it gets. As an old heartbreaker causes trouble and a new flame ignites, it soon looks like their sleepy beach town is the most scandalous hotspot of the summer.

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Reader Meet Writer: A Good Marriage with Kimberly McCreight (Virtual Event)
2020-05-08 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us for a chat with Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, when she’ll be talking to us about her new novel, A Good Marriage. (Harper | 9780062367686 | May 5, 2020). Remember to email us at mainstreetreads@gmail.com to reserve your spot; we’ll send you the confirming link and password on the morning of the event!
Big Little Lies meets Presumed Innocent in this riveting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, in which a woman’s brutal murder reveals the perilous compromises some couples make—and the secrets they keep—in order to stay together.
Lizzie Kitsakis is working late when she gets the call. Grueling hours are standard at elite law firms like Young & Crane, but they’d be easier to swallow if Lizzie was there voluntarily. Until recently, she’d been a happily underpaid federal prosecutor. That job and her brilliant, devoted husband Sam—she had everything she’d ever wanted. And then, suddenly, it all fell apart.
No. That’s a lie. It wasn’t sudden, was it? Long ago the cracks in Lizzie’s marriage had started to show. She was just good at averting her eyes.
The last thing Lizzie needs right now is a call from an inmate at Rikers asking for help—even if Zach Grayson is an old friend. But Zach is desperate: his wife, Amanda, has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their Brooklyn brownstone. And Zach’s the primary suspect.
As Lizzie is drawn into the dark heart of idyllic Park Slope, she learns that Zach and Amanda weren’t what they seemed—and that their friends, a close-knit group of fellow parents at the exclusive Brooklyn Country Day school, might be protecting troubling secrets of their own. In the end, she’s left wondering not only whether her own marriage can be saved, but what it means to have a good marriage in the first place.
Kimberly McCreight is the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, which was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Alex Awards; Where They Found Her; and The Outliers young adult trilogy. She attended Vassar College and graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
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Reader Meet Writer: Kaitlin B. Curtice Discusses NATIVE (Virtual Event)
2020-05-07 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us May 7th at 3 p.m.for a fascinating talk with Kaitlin B. Curtice about Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God (Publisher: Brazos Press | May 5, 2020 | 9781587434310) DON’T FORGET: You must email us at mainstreetreads@gmail.com for your confirming link and password!
Native is about identity, soul-searching, and the never-ending journey of finding ourselves and finding God. As both a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and a Christian, Kaitlin Curtice offers a unique perspective on these topics. In this book, she shows how reconnecting with her Potawatomi identity both informs and challenges her faith.
Curtice draws on her personal journey, poetry, imagery, and stories of the Potawatomi people to address themes at the forefront of today’s discussions of faith and culture in a positive and constructive way. She encourages us to embrace our own origins and to share and listen to each other’s stories so we can build a more inclusive and diverse future. Each of our stories matters for the church to be truly whole. As Curtice shares what it means to experience her faith through the lens of her Indigenous heritage, she reveals that a vibrant spirituality has its origins in identity, belonging, and a sense of place.
Kaitlin B. Curtice is a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation as well as a Christian, public speaker, and poet. She travels around the country speaking on faith and justice within the church as it relates to Indigenous peoples and has been a featured speaker at Why Christian, Evolving Faith, Wild Goose Festival, The Festival of Faith & Writing, The Revolutionary Love Conference, and more. Curtice is a monthly columnist for Sojourners, has contributed to On Being and Religion News Service, and has been featured on CBS and in USA Today and the New Yorker for her work on having difficult conversations within the church about colonization. She is the author of Glory Happening: Finding the Divine in Everyday Places and writes on her blog at www.kaitlincurtice.com.
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Reader Meet Writer: The Lincoln Conspiracy with Brad Meltzer! (Virtual Event)
2020-05-06 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join Us to Talk About The Lincoln Conspiracy! In 2019, #1 bestselling author Brad Meltzer, with Josh Mensch, wrote THE FIRST CONSPIRACY: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, a national bestseller that was widely praised by critics, historians, and two U.S. Presidents for its meticulous research and propulsive narrative. Meltzer and Mensch return to uncover another fascinating episode previously lost to history in THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President—and Why It Failed (Flatiron Books; May 5, 2020).
In our current climate of uncertainty and fear, the book is a reminder of the capacity for American greatness in the form of one of its most lauded and inspirational heroes, Abraham Lincoln. “THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY is a story few people know, one that’s set in a time of deep political division in America,” Meltzer says. “It shows us what good leaders can do in times of strife – perfectly on point for where our country is today.”
Written in the same page-turning style as Meltzer’s other bestsellers, THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY offers a fascinating new look at one of the most important figures in American history.
The story opens in 1861 on a train traveling from Philadelphia to Washington DC in the dark of night, days before Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration. Having just won the presidency by a slim margin, Lincoln is headed to the White House deeply hated by the slaveholding Southern states, who began to secede only weeks after he was elected. Now a group of pro-slavery, white supremacist conspirators want to go further than delegitimizing Lincoln’s presidency. They want him dead.
The assassins don’t know it, but someone is on to them. America’s most famous private detective, Allan Pinkerton, just discovered their plot and is trying to defeat it. He’s assembled a team that includes the first known female detective in the U.S., Kate Warne. In the middle of the night, Lincoln boards a train disguised as an invalid, wearing a shawl and a low-brimmed hat.
The goal? Get to Washington, D.C. undetected – and save the new President’s life. President Lincoln would go on to lead the United States during one of the most tumultuous times in its history. Thanks to Meltzer and Mensch, we learn how dangerously close the killers came to changing everything.
Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation Gala Writer’s Luncheon at the home of Terri and Jon Havens
Brad Meltzer is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Escape Artist and many other bestselling thrillers, as well as the “Ordinary People Change the World” series. He is also the host of the History Channel TV shows Brad Meltzer’s Decoded and Brad Meltzer’s Lost History, which he used to help find the missing 9/11 flag that the firefighters raised at Ground Zero. He lives in South Florida with his family. Josh Mensch is a New York Times bestselling author and documentary television producer with a focus on American history and culture. He is co-author with Brad Meltzer of The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington. For television, he has written, directed, and been a showrunner on nonfiction series for the History Channel, PBS, National Geographic, and many other networks. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and children.
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Reader Meet Writer: Caroline B. Cooney's Before She Was Helen (Virtual Event)
2020-05-05 15:00 - 16:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us through Main Street Reads for the special virtual event on May 5th and get your pre-orders in now! Email us at mainstreetreads@gmail.com to get your link and password. Want to read a FREE sample chapter? CLICK HERE
Before She Was Helen
From the international bestselling author of The Face on the Milk Carton Caroline B. Cooney comes Before She Was Helen, an absorbing mystery that brings decades-old secrets to life and explores what happens when the lie you’ve been living falls apart and you’re forced to confront the truth.
Her life didn’t turn out the way she expected—so she made herself a new one…
When Clemmie goes next door to check on her difficult and unlikeable neighbor Dom, he isn’t there. But something else is. Something stunning, beautiful and inexplicable. Clemmie photographs the wondrous object on her cell phone and makes the irrevocable error of forwarding it. As the picture swirls over the internet, Clemmie tries desperately to keep a grip on her own personal network of secrets. Can fifty years of careful hiding under names not her own be ruined by one careless picture?
And although what Clemmie finds is a work of art, what the police find is a body. . . in a place where Clemmie wasn’t supposed to be, and where she left her fingerprints. Suddenly, the bland, quiet life Clemmie has built for herself in her sleepy South Carolina retirement community comes crashing down as her dark past surges into the present.
Caroline B. Cooney is the author of more than 90 suspense, mystery, and romance novels for teenagers, which have sold over 15,000,000 copies and are published in several languages. The Face on the Milk Carton has sold over 3,000,000 copies and was made into a television movie. Her books have won many state library awards and are on many booklists, such as the New York Public Library’s annual teen picks. Caroline grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and spent most of her life on the shoreline of that state but is now in South Carolina near her family. She has three children and four grandchildren. She was a church organist for many years, accompanied the choirs at her children’s schools, and now plays keyboard for musicals.
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Reader Meet Writer: A Leader's Guide to Giving a Memorable Speech (Virtual Event)
2020-04-30 16:00 - 17:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us for this great talk with Donald J. Palmisano on Thursday, April 30th at 4 pm – Email mainstreetreads@gmail.com for your link and password to attend.
A good leader must be intelligent, charismatic, strong, and inspiring. A good leader must stir passion and instill knowledge in the minds of followers, whether in the field of business, medicine, politics, sports, or entertainment. A memorable speech is a powerful tool for demonstrating leadership and inspiring listeners for years to come. You can give a stirring, memorable speech, and be seen as a real leader, and Donald J. Palmisano can help you.
Here Palmisano shares proven tips on delivering an inspiring and motivating speech. Drawing from his popular seminar at Tulane University School of Medicine and over 1,000 speeches and interviews, Dr. Palmisano teaches readers how to:

Use rhetorical devices effectively
Stay on message
Practice delivery
Glean lessons from great speeches of powerful leaders from the past, such as Cicero, Winston Churchill, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan
Organize speeches to emphasize the message
Weave in stories that are unforgettable
And more!

If you are a professor or teacher, if you are a CEO or manager, if you are thinking of running for office or trying to raise money, then A Leader’s Guide to Giving a Memorable Speech belongs on your bookshelf. It’s a great gift for anyone with aspirations of teaching, leading, or managing.

Donald J. Palmisano, M.D., J.D., FACS, a New Orleans native, retired surgeon, and USAF veteran, is the principal of Donald J Palmisano Consulting (Intrepid Resources). This book derived from Dr. Palmisano’s popular Tulane University School of Medicine seminar “How to Give a Memorable Speech” that he teaches to medical students and faculty using lessons learned from his extensive experience of over 1000 speeches and interviews worldwide. He is a frequent keynote conference speaker and trains executives on leadership and effective speech delivery.
Dr. Palmisano served as American Medical Association (AMA) President in 2003-2004 and President of the Louisiana State Medical Society from 1984-1985, where he was inducted into its Hall of Fame. Prior to his latest book, Dr. Palmisano published On Leadership and The Little Red Book of Leadership Lessons

Reader Meet Writer: The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict
2020-04-29 17:00 - 18:00
Join us on April 29th at 5 pm for a chat with Marie Benedict, author of The Other Einstein. The first author in the #SaveIndieBookstores series is Marie Benedict. Marie Benedict is the author of The Other Einstein, Carnegie’s Maid, The Only Woman in the Room, and Lady Clementine. She is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a litigator at two of the country’s premier law firms and for Fortune 500 companies. Visit her online at authormariebenedict.com.

The Other Einstein is one of a limited number of titles that simply by purchasing, you are supporting indie bookstores, and if you’d like to do more, visit SaveIndieBookstores.com. Marie will be talking with us about her book The Other Einstein and answering your questions. Join us and let’s raise some money for indie bookstores.

“Beautifully written…a finely drawn portrait of a woman in love with the wrong man.” – Jillian Cantor, author of Margot and The Hours Count

Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Time: 5:00 p.m.
RSVP: mainstreetreads@gmail.com
Attendance is limited. If you elect to attend, we will email you on Wednesday morning with the link and password to attend this virtual event. To grab your copy of The Other Einstein, call us at 843-875-5171 or CLICK HERE to order from our Bookshop page!
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Reader Meet Writer: Kristy Woodson Harvey Discusses Feels Like Falling (Virtual Event)
2020-04-28 15:00 - 16:00
Let us deliver authors to your living room. The next author in the Okra Pick series is Kristy Woodson Harvey, the bestselling author of DEAR CAROLINA, LIES AND OTHER ACTS OF LOVE, SLIGHTLY SOUTH OF SIMPLE, THE SECRET TO SOUTHERN CHARM and THE SOUTHERN SIDE OF PARADISE.
Kristy is the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing, a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. Her work has been optioned for film and her books have received numerous accolades. Harvey’s writing has appeared in numerous publications and websites, including Southern Living, Traditional Home, Parade, USA Today, Domino, Our State and O. Henry.
She has been seen in Today.com, Women’s Health, The Washington Post, US News and World Report, The Huffington Post, Marie Claire’s The Fix, Woman’s World, Readers’ Digest, Bustle, New York Live and North Carolina Bookwatch, among others.
Feels Like Falling, Gallery Books | April 28, 2020 | 9781982117702 From “the next major voice in Southern fiction” (Elin Hilderbrand) and the bestselling author of the Peachtree Bluff series comes an odd-couple tale of friendship that asks just how much our past choices define our happiness.
It’s summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin’ is easy. Unless, that is, you’ve just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant. Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger, Diana Harrington, fired from her job at the local pharmacy.
Diana Harrington’s summer isn’t off to the greatest start either: Hours before losing her job, she broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of their shared house with only a worn-out Impala for a bed. Lucky for her, Gray has an empty guest house and a very guilty conscience. With Gray’s kindness, Diana’s tide begins to turn.
But when her first love returns, every secret from her past seems to resurface all at once. And, as Gray begins to blaze a new trail, she discovers, with Diana’s help, that what she envisioned as her perfect life may not be what she wants at all. In her warmest, wisest novel yet, Kristy Woodson Harvey delivers a discerning portrait of modern womanhood through two vastly different lenses. Feels Like Falling is a beach bag essential for Harvey fans—and for a new generation of readers.

Here are the details you need:
Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 Time: 3:00 p.m. RSVP: mainstreetreads@gmail.com Attendance is limited. If you elect to attend, we will email you on Tuesday morning with the link and password to attend this virtual event, plus the link to purchase books.
For a free sneak peek chapter, CLICK HERE!
To view/shop all Kristy’s books, including the new release, CLICK HERE.

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Reader Meet Writer Southern Series: Ruthie Lindsey's There I Am (Virtual Event)
2020-04-22 17:00 - 18:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us for this special event on April 22 at 5:00 p.m.
“Ruthie is a gifted storyteller with the unique ability to make you feel her emotions as if they’re your own. Her book is somehow both bold and tender and utterly, truthfully, authentically her. She doesn’t hide from heartbreak or fail to experience the fullness of all the beauty life can hold.” —Rachel Hollis, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing
Brain on Fire meets Carry On, Warrior. There I Am is an arresting inspirational memoir about one woman’s journey from chronic pain and hopelessness to finding joy, redemption, and healing.
At seventeen years old, Ruthie Lindsey is hit by an ambulance near her home in rural Louisiana. She’s given a five percent chance of survival and one percent chance of walking again. One month later after a spinal fusion surgery, Ruthie defies the odds, leaving the hospital on her own two feet.
Just a few years later, newly married and living in Nashville, Ruthie begins to experience debilitating pain. Her case confounds doctors and after numerous rounds of testing, imaging, and treatment, they prescribe narcotic painkillers—lots of them. Ruthie has become bedridden, dependent on painkillers, and hopeless, when an X-ray reveals that the wire used to fuse her spine is piercing her brain stem. Without another staggeringly expensive experimental surgery, she could well become paralyzed, but in many ways, she already is.
Ruthie goes into the hospital in chronic pain, dependent on prescription painkillers, and leaves that way. She can still walk, but has no idea where she’s going. As her life unravels, Ruthie returns home to Louisiana and sets out on a journey to learn joy again. She trades fentanyl for sunsets and morphine for wildflowers, weaning herself off of the drugs and beginning the process of healing—of coming home to her body.
Raw and redemptive, There I Am isn’t just about the magic of optimism, but the work of it. Ruthie’s extraordinary memoir urges us to unlearn the stories of brokenness that we tell ourselves and embrace the wholeness, joy, and healing that lives inside all of us.
“Ruthie Lindsey’s voice speaks directly to the heart. There I Am is a testament to the things that break us, heal us, and make us who we are.” —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller Love Warrior and founder of Together Rising
“This book is an incredible gift. One of the most moving life stories I’ve ever read. Or heard of. It has reframed how I see pain, death, and the whole experience of life. I immediately put it up there with the great memoirs, The Glass Castle, Wild, and Educated.” —Jedidiah Jenkins, New York Times bestselling author of To Shake the Sleeping Self
“Consistently readable and inspirational, Lindsey keeps readers in suspense about whether she will be able to fully enjoy her life. At the end, the author addresses readers directly and asks them to focus on healing what is broken in their own lives. Illness memoirs from noncelebrities often get lost in the stacks. This one deserves greater attention.” —Kirkus Reviews
ORDER HERE: There I Am: The Journey From Hopelessness to Healing

Reader Meet Writer: Lee Smith Blue Marlin (Virtual Event)
2020-04-21 16:00 - 17:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join our special Reader Meet Writer virtual event on Tuesday, April 21st at 4:00 p.m.
Born in the small coal-mining town of Grundy, Virginia, Lee Smith began writing stories at the age of nine and selling them for a nickel apiece. Since then, she has written seventeen works of fiction, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and, most recently, Guests on Earth. She has received many awards, including the North Carolina Award for Literature and an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times bestseller as well as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, the writer Hal Crowther.
Now comes this gem of a novella, which Smith names one of her favorite works of her illustrious career.
Lee Smith’s masterful storytelling manifests in this jewel of a novella that follows Jenny, an adventurous thirteen-year-old, down to Key West for a patched-up family vacation following the discovery of her father’s affair. Jenny confronts the frailty of family life while vying for the attention of dreamy actor Tony Curtis and even a role in his latest movie.
Available for the first time as a stand-alone novella, this book centers on the Blue Marlin Motel, where Jenny, her beautiful socialite mother, and chastened father share their sunny days with movie stars who are in town to film the 1959 classic, Operation Petticoat. Blue Marlin showcases this iconic writer at her best: sharp characterizations, perfect pitch, generous humor, and a quietly profound understanding of human nature.

The Coyotes of Carthage (Virtual Event)
2020-04-16 17:00 - 18:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
We’re delivering authors to your living room! The next author in the Okra Pick series is Steven Wright. He will be talking with us about his debut novel The Coyotes of Carthage and answering your questions. Steven is one of many authors we’ll be bringing into your living room.
“Steven Wright’s The Coyotes of Carthage is a novel steeped in atmosphere and laced with menace. It’s a political potboiler masking as a buddy drama, a treatise on race and class packaged as a fish-out-of-water tale. Wright’s novel is what so few novels are: a page-turner with a conscience, a burner of a read with something to say. If House of Cards and True Detective made a novel, it would be Coyotes of Carthage. It’s a great novel and one hell of a debut.” – Wiley Cash, 2020 Conroy Legacy Award Recipient
Here are the details you need:
Date: April 16
Time: 5 PM EDT
RSVP: mainstreetreads@gmail.com
Attendance is limited.
When you elect to attend, we will email you on Thursday morning with the link to this virtual event and the password, plus the link to purchase books if you so choose! Happy Reading! You can order The Coyotes of Carthage ONLINE or call us with your order – we can ship direct to you or bring it to you curbside.
Meet Steven Wright
Steven Wright is a clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, where he codirects the Wisconsin Innocence Project. From 2007 to 2012 he served as a trial attorney in the Voting Section of the United States Department of Justice. He has written numerous essays about race, criminal justice, and election law for the New York Review of Books.
The Coyotes of Carthage: Ecco | April 14, 2020 | 9780062951663
Read a FREE Sample Chapter HERE
“With this splendid debut, Steven Wright announces his arrival as a major new voice in the world of political thrillers. I enjoyed it immensely.” —John Grisham
A blistering and thrilling debut—a biting exploration of American politics, set in a small South Carolina town, about a political operative running a dark money campaign for his corporate clients
Dre Ross has one more shot. Despite being a successful political consultant, his aggressive tactics have put him on thin ice with his boss, Mrs. Fitz, who plucked him from juvenile incarceration and mentored his career. She exiles him to the backwoods of South Carolina with $250,000 of dark money to introduce a ballot initiative on behalf of a mining company. The goal: to manipulate the locals into voting to sell their pristine public land to the highest bidder.
Dre arrives in God-fearing, flag-waving Carthage County, with only Mrs. Fitz’s well-meaning yet naïve grandson Brendan as his team. Dre, an African-American outsider, can’t be the one to collect the signatures needed to get on the ballot. So he hires a blue-collar couple, Tyler Lee and his pious wife, Chalene, to act as the initiative’s public face.
Under Dre’s cynical direction, a land grab is disguised as a righteous fight for faith and liberty. As lines are crossed and lives ruined, Dre’s increasingly cutthroat campaign threatens the very soul of Carthage County and perhaps the last remnants of his own humanity.
A piercing portrait of our fragile democracy and one man’s unraveling, The Coyotes of Carthage paints a disturbingly real portrait of the American experiment in action.

Booksigning: Marie Crow with Abigail and Her Pet Zombie
2020-03-21 10:00 - 13:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
So excited to announce that author Marie Crow will join us March 21st at Main Street Reads…

Marie Crow weaves her stories around the human element of the horror versus the “monsters” themselves. She believes that the real horror of life does not come from the expected, but from the unexpected responses of the human nature and what depths of trauma a person has to survive in certain situations.

She began writing The Risen series when feeling that the popular genre was slipping too deep into the realm of pure “slasher” and forgetting what the horror of zombies can mean for a story.
Now with her children’s series launched, Marie hopes to use her favorite “monster” as a teaching tool to inspire children to understand that not everything that looks scary, is scary. With Abigail and Her Pet Zombie series, Marie hopes to further spread her love for all things “that go bump in the night” with small children, showing them that it’s okay to be different and to embrace those same differences in those around them.

Poetry Reading and Booksigning
2020-03-14 13:00 - 15:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Join us for a fun afternoon of poetry readings by some uber-cool cool local poets! The reading takes place at 1 p.m. followed by book signing.
Derek Berry is the author of the poetry chapbooks GLITTER HUSK and BUGGERY, recipient of the BOOM Chapbook Prize from Bateau Press, as well as the novel HEATHENS AND LIARS OF LICKSKILLET COUNTY. They are the recipient of the Emrys Poetry Prize, KAKALAK Poetry Award, and Broad River Prize for Prose, as well as other honors. Their work has appeared in Gigantic Sequins, Beloit Poetry Journal, Raleigh Review, ANMLY, Taco Bell Quarterly, & elsewhere. They work with Contribute Your Verse as a creative consultant. They live in Aiken, South Carolina, where they work a day job at a Cold War Historic Curation Facility.
Also reading will be:
Raven McKevlin is a writer, filmmaker, creative educator, and queer Christian. A native of Charleston, SC, Raven McKevlin developed a passion for creativity and storytelling as she grew up alongside the songs of the ocean, the footprints of many faced with injustice, and the bridges stretching across diverse communities. Her debut poetry book, A Raven’s Light, shares stories of heartache, spiritual trauma, healing love, and finding the light within oneself. This collection of poems carries the reader through the painful, beautiful, and brave journey Raven takes as she learns to embrace her own voice.
Yvette R. Murray received her B.A. in English from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has been published in Fall Lines, The Petigru Review, Catfish Stew, Genesis Science Fiction magazine and on www.agatheringtogether, www.akashicbooks.com, and www.charlestonpoets.com. Yvette R. Murray has also performed in inter-disciplinary projects at Morris Brown AME Church, the City Gallery and Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Presently, she is working on her first book of poetry and a children’s book collection.
AF Winter (we call him Adam) is a regular at Main Street Writes and a Summerville published author (recently featured in Summerville Journal Scene!) He has written novels, books of poetry and short stories, plays, and books on acting. He has written over three dozen plays, winning the S.C. Playwright’s Festival. His inventive work has been seen in the US and Europe. A.F. Winter has been acting, teaching, and directing, for over 30 years. He created a theatre which worked with at-risk youth giving them positive alternatives in their lives.

"SCARY SATURDAY" Booksigning: Afterlife Series author and podcaster Nicholas A. McGirr
2020-03-07 10:00 - 13:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Author and podcaster Nicholas A. McGirr will be gracing Main Street Reads during February’s 3rd Thursday festivities that include, as always, free refreshments and lively discussion!
Nick can also get you discount tix to downtown Charleston’s GHOST HUNTING TOUR!

Bookstore Birthday Bash!
2020-03-01 15:00 - 19:00 | Main Street Reads, 115 S. Main St., Summerville, SC, 29483, United States
Come help us celebrate turning one year old on Sunday, March 1st, our official one year anniversary! It’s going to be a superhero Sunday at Main Street Reads, with an open house, complete with cake, music, door prizes, and even masks to channel your inner superhero!
The shindig begins at 3 p.m. and goes ’til 7 p.m. We’ll be drawing door prizes every fifteen minutes that include Main Street Reads gift cards.
Come join the celebration as we thank you all for your patronage and encouragement through our first year!
