Delicious ARC Giveaway!

Delicious cover

The venerable Romantic Times has named Delicious a Featured Top Pick for August 2008 and raves that it is "delicious, delectable, and a mouth-watering blend of Cinderella, Top Chef, and Like Water for Chocolate, not to mention Chocolat." But that's not all. To get the word out, the good folks at RT are giving away five advance reading copies of Delicious. To enter your name for the drawing, click here. But hurry, the contest ends July 14, 2008.

Delicious is in stores July 29, 2008. To read an excerpt, click here. To order your copy, click here.

Book Signing

If you plan to attend RWA 2008 National Conference in San Francisco, or if you live in SF and surrounding areas, I will be signing Delicious at the conference's "Readers for Life" charity book signing, an event open to the public.

San Francisco Marriott
Wednesday July 30, 2008
5:30-7:30 p.m.

A Bit of News

Do you love audio books? I do. For me, the only thing better than a good book is a good book well narrated. I adore listening to audio books when I cook. And when I have a great story playing, my house is cleaner because I don't get so bored scrubbing down the kitchen! So it is with great pleasure that I learned that Recorded Books will release both Private Arrangements and Delicious as audio titles. I would love to hear my books read with a posh British accent. Wonder if Hugh Laurie is free--a girl can dream, no? :-)

And if you've never tried audio books, may I recommend Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, all richly enjoyable experiences.

I will keep you posted on when my audio books become available.

Book Recommendations

It's been happy reading for me of late and these are the titles that particularly impressed me. Allow me to share them with you.

A Countess Below Stairs cover

A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson. A sweet, lovely romance set in England, after WWI. A young, plucky Russian countess deprived of her wealth and privileges goes to work at an English country house and falls in love not only with the handsome young master, but with the entire community--and they with her.

I picked up this book after reading a great review for it by my friend Janine at DearAuthor.com. And it did not disappoint.

Garden Spells cover

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen. At once airy-light and down-to-earth, this book is magical realism at its best. I'm usually more attracted to big city settings in my contemporary reading, but this book had me relishing a small southern town where a family of women with unusual powers--affecting the moods of others through food, predicting what people will need long before they knew they needed it--must learn to live with one another and with the townsfolk. An irresistible confection.

City of Shadows cover

City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin. Germany between the two World Wars, does that setting give you pause? It gave me pause. Silly me. City of Shadows would turn out to be one of the best books I've ever read.

Esther Solomonova is a Russian Jew refugee living in Berlin, working as a secretary. Her boss, a mercurial impresario, decides to pass a woman he found in an insane asylum as the Grand Duchess Anastasia. And thus begins a book that folds the tragedy of imperial Russia, the slow disintegration of Berlin, and the rise of Nazi Germany into the intensely personal story of Esther, one of the most remarkable female protagonists I've ever come across, and the man she loved, a man of such goodness and decency that it makes me weep to think of his heartbreak at what his country was turning into. I was riveted from beginning to end and I can't recommend this book enough.


May your shelves always overflow with great books to read.

Best,
Sherry
SherryThomas.com

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