Tuesday, July 19, 2016

DON'T YOU CRY, by author, MARY KUBICA

In downtown Chicago, a young woman named Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to My Dearest is found among her possessions, leaving her friend and roommate Quinn Collins to wonder where Esther is and whether or not she's the person Quinn thought she knew.

Meanwhile, in a small Michigan harbor town an hour outside Chicago, a mysterious woman appears in the quiet coffee shop where eighteen-year-old Alex Gallo works as a dishwasher. He is immediately drawn to her charm and beauty, but what starts as an innocent crush quickly spirals into something far more dark and sinister than he ever expected.

As Quinn searches for answers about Esther, and Alex is drawn further under the stranger's spell, master of suspense Mary Kubica takes readers on a taut and twisted thrill ride that builds to a stunning conclusion and shows that no matter how fast and far we run, the past always catches up with us in the end.

If you haven’t read Mary Kubica yet, you need to start right this minute, with DON’T YOU CRY. This riveting psychological thriller had me turning the pages at warp-speed and kept me rooting for its heroine, the completely relatable Quinn Collins, who sets out to uncover the truth about her seemingly-perfect female roommate after the roommate mysteriously vanishes. The plot twists and turns more than Single White Female on steroids, and both women characters are crafted with emotional intelligence and extraordinary talent. Mary Kubica is a must-read for me, and she will be for you, too. ~ Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author of Every Fifteen Minutes

Don’t You Cry, an artfully crafted, wickedly smart page-turner about the razor thin line between suspicion and obsession, will keep you glued to its pages–and guessing wrong about who to trust–until its breathless ending. ~ Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, and Where They Found Her

Some Q & A with Mary:

1.    Tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you started writing.
I’m a mother of two and a former high school history teacher.  I’ve been writing since I was a little girl and have a secret stash of incomplete manuscripts hidden away in my basement, none of which will ever see the light of day.  I began working on my first novel, The Good Girl, in 2005 after I left my teaching career to start a family.

2.    What are some things you enjoy when not writing?
I volunteer at a local animal shelter, which – aside from my family and writing – is a passion of mine.  I photograph all incoming animals for our shelter’s website, and foster cats and kitten in my home.  I also enjoy reading (of course!), running and spending time with my family. 

3.    Do you have a ‘day job’ as well?
I don’t.  I made the decision to be a stay-at-home mom when my oldest was born and am fortunate enough to now have a writing career that I can do from home.

4.    Where do you get your ideas?
Generally they stem from my imagination and begin as a small concept that I shape and mold over time.  My forth novel, which will release in 2017, was the first that came from a news headline I read about how a toddler’s dreams helped solve the mystery of her father’s death.  My interest was piqued; I knew there was a novel there.

5.    Is there a particular author or book that influenced or inspired your writing or decision to write?
There really isn’t one in particular, but as a writer of psychological suspense, one of my favorites is S.J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep.  He truly sets the bar high for the genre.  I often mention Anita Shreve’s The Last Time They Met as well.  Though it isn’t a suspense novel, it has one of those killer endings that makes you question everything you’ve just read.  I haven’t read the book in many, many years, but I still think about the ending and how much it affected me, and hope to emulate that feeling in my readers with surprise twists. 

6.    Can you tell us about your challenges in getting your first book published?
Yes!  After I wrote The Good Girl I submitted it to at least a hundred agents, all of whom passed on it.  I was sure the book would never be published, until two years later when one of the agents reached back out to me to see if the book was still available.  As it turned out, she had been recently promoted and actively seeking out authors and books, and she remembered The Good Girl for all that time.  It was a dream come true. 

7.    If you had to go back and do it all over, is there any aspect of your novel or getting it published that you’d change?
No, I honestly am thrilled with the way everything has turned out.  I feel very fortunate for the success of my novels and to be working with such a phenomenal publishing team.

8.    How do you market your work?
For the most part, I rely on the wonderful publicity team at Harlequin Books for that, but I love to connect with my readers on social media, and to attend book clubs in person or via Skype.  I think that personal contact is so important with readers and makes me something other than just a name on a book.

9.    What are you working on now?
I’ve just finished my forth novel which will release in the summer of 2017.  It’s about a man who is killed in a car crash with his four-year-old daughter in the backseat, unharmed.  The crash is ruled an accident until the coming days when the little girl begins having nightmares about a car following and pushing them from the road, and the man’s widow sets off to find his killer. 

10. Is anything in your book based on real life experiences?
No, completely fictional!

11. Do you have a favorite chapter or scene?
Generally my first and last chapters are my favorites to write.  The first I love because it’s a fresh start, and the last I enjoy because it feels like such a huge accomplishment – all the time and energy spent on the manuscript has come down to this one scene.

12. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Be patient and be persistent!  It can take hundreds of rejections and many years to find an agent or publisher.  Don’t give up.  You only have to find one agent to love your work, so keep going until you find that one.

13. What are the downfalls of your writing career? The best parts?
Travel can be tricky at times.  It’s hard to be away from my family – logistically and personally.  I don’t want to miss out any moments in their lives, and finding childcare can prove difficult at times.  But I love connecting with readers, I love creating characters and watching them morph into something new on the page.  I love that my greatest passion is now my career.  It almost feels too good to be true. 

14. Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers and fans?
Just a huge thank you for all the support for my novels over the last few years!  It’s readers who determine the success of a book, and mine wouldn’t be what they are without terrific fans.  Thank you, thank you!

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

THE TWO-FAMILY HOUSE, by author, LYNDA COHEN LOIGMAN


Brooklyn, 1947: in the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born, minutes apart. The mothers are sisters by marriage with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night. When the storm passes, everyone seems to have gotten what they wanted, but the truth is not that simple. The consequences of that night, of one misguided choice, shape the course of the families – friendships unravel, marriages change and even the sacred bonds between mothers and children are tested. No one knows why, and no one can stop it, but everyone’s lives have been shaped by that evening.

From debut novelist Lynda Cohen Loigman comes The Two-Family House, a moving family saga filled with heart, longing, love, and mystery.


“It’s hard to believe The Two-Family House is Lynda Cohen Loigman’s debut novel. A richly textured, complex, yet entirely believable story, it draws us inexorably into the lives of two brothers and their families in 1950s Brooklyn, New York…. As compelling as the story line are the characters that Loigman has drawn here. None is wholly likable nor entirely worthy of scorn. All are achingly human, tragically flawed and immediately recognizable. We watch them change and grow as the novel spans more than 20 years….engrossing from beginning to end.”

―The Associated Press (As seen on ABCNews.com, The Washington Post, San Diego Union Tribune, Daily Mail, The Daily Journal)

Q & A with Lynda:

Is anything in your book based on real life experiences?

I have been asked this question more times than I can count, and I think it’s because The Two-Family House is truly a family story. The characters are people many readers seem to recognize from their own families. Whenever anyone tells me that they have a relative who is exactly like Abe or Mort, it always makes me smile.

The truth is, the people in the novel are not based on anyone from my actual family. My mom did grow up in a two-family house in Brooklyn with cousins living downstairs, but in that house, all six children were girls. Helen is not my grandmother and Rose is not my great-aunt. The men are not based on men I have known in real life. But still, certain anecdotes and even objects from my own life have made their way into the pages of the story.

In the novel, Helen talks with her brother Sol about weekly childhood visits with their grandmother. Their grandmother came once a week to babysit, and when she came, she always brought a small chocolate cake with a candied cherry on top. In real life, my grandmother really did visit every Saturday afternoon with a small chocolate cake for my brother and me. Every week, my brother and I fought over that cherry, and every week, my grandmother insisted that my brother should have it.

When I was young, my grandmother spoke openly about how much she adored my brother. He was the first grandchild, after all, and a boy. Hers was a preference that stemmed from both cultural influences and the fact that she had three daughters and no sons. My grandmother’s feelings were part of the inspiration for The Two-Family House, and because of that, it felt right to include the anecdote about the cake in the story.  

In terms of real life objects that I mention in the novel, the most significant one is Rose’s recipe box. In one of the early chapters of the book, Rose is sitting at her table with a recipe box, trying to figure out what to make for dinner. Because Mort is spending the night away on business, Rose is free to stray from the family’s weekly menu schedule that Mort has insisted on since the beginning of their marriage. The recipe box belonged to Rose’s mother and she describes it as her mother’s “touchstone.” Rose talks to the recipe box as if her mother was inside it, “like a genie in a bottle.”

When my own mother passed away nine years ago, I took her recipe box home with me in my suitcase. To this day, it is one of my most treasured possessions because, for me, it represents the true essence of my mother. It is precious to me in a way that I could never fully explain, and I suppose that is part of why I included it in my novel – I could describe Rose’s feelings for her mother’s recipe box much more easily than I could ever describe my own.

I believe that all writers draw from their own lives in their work, even when the stories they write are not based on real life experiences. For me, this is certainly true. The fact that I have chosen to include pieces of my real life in my novel has made me feel slightly more vulnerable about sharing it with the world, but it has also made the process of sharing it more meaningful.

Some info about Lynda:

Lynda Cohen Loigman grew up in Longmeadow, MA. She received a B.A. in English and American Literature from Harvard College and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. She is now a student of the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, and lives with her husband and two children in New York.


My website is located here: http://lyndacohenloigman.com/
My twitter is here: https://twitter.com/lyndacloigman
My instagram is here: https://www.instagram.com/lloigman/