About the Virtual (Zoom) Event

We are pleased to announce another fun Book Bingo (Make New Friends, But Keep The Old): A Virtual Adventure, this month in partnership with the Tulsa City-County (Oklahoma) Library! If you are already familiar with our popular Southern California series that features NovelNetwork® authors, you will understand why we receive so many requests to expand the program nationwide. Pivoting to virtual events has made this not only possible, but offers up fun opportunities for exciting partnerships, participation by more of our over 150 book club favorite authors, and space to accommodate many more readers!

They say that true friends are never apart, maybe in distance, but never in heart… Join us for some fun book bingo and a heartfelt discussion about what friendship truly means. This free event features presentations by book club favorite authors: Susan Meissner, Lian Dolan, Marie Bostwick, Robin Oliveira, Janie Chang, and Kristina McMorris, an interactive virtual game of bingo, and fun prizes. All you have to do is show up (and why not invite your book club friends and fellow readers to join in as well) to learn about these great new reads!

While this event is free, your purchase of a book(s) below (to be shipped to you within the U.S.) provides much-needed support to these authors.

Your Adventure includes a book discussion with all six authors, an interactive virtual game of Book Bingo, Q&A, prizes, and the opportunity to meet the authors via Zoom. Books may be ordered below for shipping within the U.S. and will include a signed bookplate. See below for registration information.

 

About the Authors

Susan Meissner is a USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction with more than three-quarters of a million books in print in eighteen languages. She is an author, speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism. Her novels include The Nature of Fragile Things, which earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly; The Last Year of the War, named to Real Simple magazine’s list of best books for 2019; As Bright as Heaven, which earned a starred review in Library Journal; Secrets of Charmed Life, a Goodreads finalist for Best Historical Fiction 2015; and A Fall of Marigolds, named to Booklist’s Top Ten Women’s Fiction titles for 2014.

In her novel, The Nature of Fragile Things, a massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed.

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin’s silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin’s odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn’t right.

Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved.

The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.

To schedule a book club visit with Susan or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

 

Lian Dolan is a writer and talker. She’s the author of three best-selling novels, The Sweeney Sisters, Helen of Pasadena, and Elizabeth the First Wife. Her  most  recent  book is  Lost and Found in Paris. She’s a regular humor columnist for Pasadena Magazine and has previously written monthly columns for O, The Oprah Magazine and Working Mother Magazine. She’s also written for TV, radio and websites.

Fast-paced and colorful, Lost And Found In Paris sparkles like the City of Light itself…. Joan Blakely had an unconventional childhood: the daughter of a globe-trotting supermodel and a world-famous artist. Her artist father died on 9/11, and Joan—an art historian by training—has spent more than a decade maintaining his legacy. Life in the art world is beginning to wear on her—and then one fateful afternoon her husband drops a bombshell: he’s fathered twins with another woman.

Furious but secretly pleased to have a reason to blow up her life, Joan impulsively decides to get out of town, booking a last-minute trip to Paris as an art courier: the person museums hire to fly valuable works of art to potential clients, discreetly stowed in their carry-on luggage. Sipping her champagne in business-class, she chats up her seatmate, Nate, a good-looking tech nerd who invites her to dinner in Paris. He doesn’t know she’s carrying drawings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But after a romantic dinner and an even more romantic night together, Joan wakes up next to her new lover to discover the drawings gone. Even more shocking is what’s been left in their place: a sketch from her father’s journals, which she thought had been lost when he died on 9/11, and a poem that reads like a treasure hunt.

With Nate as a sidekick, Joan will follow the clues all over Paris—from its grand cathedrals to the romantic bistros to the twisty side streets of Monmarte—hoping to recover the lost art, and her own sense of adventure. What she finds is even better than she’d expected.

To schedule a book club visit with Lian or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

 

Marie Bostwick is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of uplifting historical and women’s fiction, including the popular Cobbled Court Quilt and Too Much, Texas series of books. Her standalone books have also found a passionate following among lovers of women’s fiction. When not curled up with a good book, Marie can usually be found in her office, trying to write one.

The Restoration of Celia Fairchild is a wise, witty, and utterly compelling novel about a fired advice columnist who discovers lost and found family members in Charleston.

Celia Fairchild, known as advice columnist “Dear Calpurnia”, has insight into everybody’s problems – except her own. Still bruised by the end of a marriage she thought was her last chance to create a family, Celia receives an unexpected answer to a “Dear Birthmother” letter. Celia throws herself into proving she’s a perfect adoptive mother material – with a stable home and income – only to lose her job. Her one option: sell the Charleston house left to her by her recently departed, estranged Aunt Calpurnia.

Arriving in Charleston, Celia learns that Calpurnia had become a hoarder, the house is a wreck, and selling it will require a drastic, rapid makeover. The task of renovation seems overwhelming and risky. But with the help of new neighbors, old friends, and an unlikely sisterhood of strong, creative women who need her as much as she needs them, Celia knits together the truth about her estranged family – and about herself.

The Restoration of Celia Fairchild is an unforgettable novel of secrets revealed, laughter released, creativity rediscovered, and waves of wisdom.

To schedule a book club visit with Marie or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

 

Robin Oliveira grew up just outside Albany, New York in the town of Loudonville. She holds a B.A. in Russian from the University of Montana, and studied at the Pushkin Language Institute in Moscow, Russia. She worked for many years as a Registered Nurse, specializing in Critical Care and Bone Marrow Transplant. In 2006 she received an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives outside of Seattle, Washington, with her husband, Andrew Oliveira. She has two children, Noelle Oliveira and Miles Oliveira. All three are the loves of her life.

In her novel, Winter Sisters, it’s New York, 1879, and an epic blizzard descends on Albany, devastating the city.

When the snow finally settles, two newly orphaned girls are missing. Determined not to give up hope, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, searches for the two sisters. When what happened to them is finally revealed, Dr. Sutter must fight the most powerful of Albany’s citizens, risking personal and public danger as she seeks to protect the fragile, putting at risk loves and lives in her quest to right unimaginable wrongs.

As contemporary as it is historic, Winter Sisters is part gripping thriller, part family saga, and ultimately a story of trauma and resilience that explores the tremendous good and unspeakable evil of which humans are capable.

To schedule a book club visit with Robin or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

 

Janie Chang writes historical fiction with a personal connection, drawing from a family history with 36 generations of recorded genealogy. She grew up listening to stories about life in a small Chinese town in the years before the Second World War and tales of ancestors who encountered dragons, ghosts, and immortals. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. She was the founder and main organizer of Authors for Indies. Her first novel, Three Souls, was a finalist for the 2014 BC Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Based on true events, rich in Chinese history and lore, The Library of Legends is both an illuminating exploration of China’s recent past and an evocative tale of love, sacrifice, and the extraordinary power of storytelling.

China, 1937: When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, nineteen-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than a hundred students, faculty, and staff must walk a thousand miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the student refugees who are at risk: Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.

Her family’s past has made Lian wary of forming attachments, but the students’ common duty to safeguard the Library of Legends forms unexpected bonds. Lian finds friendship and a cautious romance with the handsome and wealthy Liu Shaoming. But after one classmate is murdered and another arrested, Lian realizes she must escape from the convoy before a family secret puts her in danger. Accompanied by Shao and the enigmatic maidservant Sparrow, Lian makes her way to Shanghai, hoping to reunite with her mother.

On the journey, Lian learns of the connection between her two companions and a tale from the Library of Legends, The Willow Star and the Prince. Learning Shao and Sparrow’s true identities compels Lian to confront her feelings for Shao. But there are broader consequences too, for as the ancient books travel across China, they awaken immortals and guardian spirits to embark on an exodus of their own, one that changes the country’s fate forever.

To schedule a book club visit with Janie or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

 

Kristina McMorris is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author published by Sourcebooks Landmark, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Kensington Books. Her novels have garnered more than two dozen prestigious awards and nominations, including the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, RWA’s RITA® Award, and a Goodreads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction.

Inspired by an actual newspaper photograph that stunned the nation, Sold on a Monday is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and the unexpected paths that bring us home.

The sign is a last resort. It sits on a farmhouse porch in 1931, but could be found anywhere in an era of breadlines, bank runs and broken dreams. It could have been written by any mother facing impossible choices.

For struggling reporter Ellis Reed, the gut-wrenching scene evokes memories of his family’s dark past. He snaps a photograph of the children, not meant for publication. But when it leads to his big break, the consequences are more devastating than he ever imagined.

Kristina McMorris’s poignant historical novel will capture fans of Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate and The Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, and inspire any book club.

To schedule a book club visit with Kristina or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

 

About the Tulsa City-County

With more than 6 million items in its collections and a variety of programs, the Tulsa City-County Library has something for everyone.

 

For Book Clubs or Author Live Chats

Are you in a book club, library reading group, or is your group of friends, colleagues, family members seeking fabulous authors who are excited and available to meet with you? Then you will be delighted to know that Susan Meissner, Lian Dolan, Marie Bostwick, Robin Oliveira, Janie Chang, and Kristina McMorris are all members of our wonderful community of over 150 NovelNetwork authors available to meet with small groups via video chat.

NovelNetwork is the nation’s first and only match(dot)com for authors and book clubs to find each other, so check it out today. Book clubs join for free and gain access to our database of dozens of authors, from NYT and international bestsellers to debut authors, cookbook authors, mystery and non-fiction authors, and representing various regions of the United States, and even Alaska and Hawaii, all of whom want to meet with you!

To schedule a visit with Susan Meissner, Lian Dolan, Marie Bostwick, Robin Oliveira, Janie Chang, and Kristina McMorris,
or any of our authors, join FOR FREE  here.