BONUS: Zibby's Summer Reads Party: Live!
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens and you're listening to Totally Book to the Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up and spend my time curating the best books so you don't
[0:29]have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens.
[0:45]Today is a special bonus episode.
[0:47]I hosted the Summer Reeds party where I invited all the authors from the most anticipated
[0:53]Summer List, which I will link in the show notes below, and about 30 of them came to my
[0:58]apartment.
[0:59]We had such a nice time and while we were schmoozing and eating and getting to know each other,
[1:04]we all went into my living room and asked everyone to go around and introduce their books
[1:09]to the rest of us.
[1:10]Then I thought, wouldn't this be fun as an episode so all of you could be in the room
[1:14]where it happened and hear from all of the authors directly?
[1:19]This is literally with my tiny little microphone going around the room where everybody
[1:23]answered the question what's your book about and when is it coming out?
[1:26]I hope that this little preview makes the list come to life for you in the way it did
[1:30]for me.
[1:31]We will also link in the show notes pictures to the event so you can see just how fun
[1:37]it really was.
[1:38]I hope you enjoy.
[1:40]Let me know what sounds great.
[1:42]Hi, I am Kate Dergie and I have written Reimagining Brief, a new path to finding healing,
[1:49]strength, and joy after loss.
[1:52]This is the book that I wanted when I lost my father to heart failure, my mother in
[1:56]a car crash five days before Christmas and my beautiful daughter Penny at age 16.
[2:02]So I hope this book will reach all the people out there I know need it.
[2:07]So it's coming out June 16 and I'm so excited.
[2:10]Thank you.
[2:11]Thank you.
[2:14]And as far as my co-author.
[2:16]I'm Sarah Bliss, I am a writer and co-author of several books and this is my latest
[2:22]project with Kate and it's just been an incredibly inspiring.
[2:28]I used to do a lot of ghost writing for famous people and some books are known and I have
[2:34]a bunch of books that no one knows that I wrote.
[2:37]And recently I decided I wanted to actually when my son had cancer I decided I wanted
[2:42]to put my creative energy towards projects that I felt like really mattered.
[2:47]And then I met Kate and the book is coming out soon and I hope that we'll really inspire
[2:52]and help a lot of people.
[2:57]That is a tough act to follow.
[3:00]My book is also out June 16.
[3:02]Thank you.
[3:03]Hi Kate.
[3:04]Hi Kate.
[3:05]It's called Image and Waiting and it's a memoir of modern reproduction.
[3:10]I have the Braco 1 gene and this book is my experience as a carrier of the gene as told
[3:18]to an embryo I make not to pass on the gene and then discover is female and just like
[3:25]me and I debate whether or not to bring her into being given my experience.
[3:31]And if my parents had the choice I would want to be alive.
[3:34]So yes that is my story and I discover my capacity as a woman, wife and mother and return
[3:42]to my creative self.
[3:43]So thank you.
[3:47]Hi, I'm Beatrice Williams.
[3:50]My book is called When You Love Me and it's out June 23 which is I guess five weeks from
[3:58]almost today tomorrow and it's about young widow.
[4:02]She returns with her daughter to the New England island where she grew up in the wake
[4:06]of her father's death.
[4:08]She goes to settle his estate and discovers a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a pirate
[4:13]treasure and her long lost love who is now a disgraced former NFL star and he's also
[4:20]the last man to have seen her father alive.
[4:24]Hi, I'm Lisa Scott Alini and this changes everything is out July 14th.
[4:33]It's my 40th thriller.
[4:34]I think I've been writing I know I started writing before you were born because I really
[4:42]felt like we needed women in crime fiction to be the stars.
[4:48]And so in this one it's about a woman who has a very dear best friend and has a premonition
[4:53]of her best friend's grandmother's death and then the character starts to understand that
[4:59]her intuitive power, remember when we talk about female intuition, well it's actually
[5:03]real.
[5:04]I kind of think we all have it and she discovers that she has some powers she didn't
[5:07]know she had.
[5:08]Hi, I'm Jean Quack and first of all I want to thank Zibi for being such an incredible champion
[5:19]of all of us and of all of us.
[5:22]So my book is called Dominion, it is a romanticie and those of you who know me know I've
[5:30]always written literary fiction and suspense.
[5:34]But then I got divorced, I was like okay, we're doing something else.
[5:41]It was my divorce was a surprise to me although not to everybody involved and so I just
[5:47]wanted to do something that I loved and that I always kind of read for solace and hope
[5:53]and I really hope that I could bring that to people with my own book Dominion is an Asian
[5:59]inspired cross between hunger games and forthwing about a ribbon dancer with amnesia and
[6:07]little magic who gets thrown into a deadly tiger bonding child by a fierce warrior.
[6:13]Yes, it is very hot.
[6:15]Thank you guys so much.
[6:20]And it's out July 14th.
[6:25]Hi, I'm Anna Johnston and my book is When Lemons Give You Life.
[6:30]I describe it as a cross between a man called Uva and the Disney film Rata Tui.
[6:36]So it's about a retired Michelin star chef now living in a nursing home who is grumpy,
[6:42]depressed and ready to take his own life determined that his last meal will not be the
[6:48]beige slop that they serve at the nursing home.
[6:51]He breaks into the nursing home kitchen to cook himself one last lemon tart and the act
[6:56]of cooking stirs a long dormant joy soon he begins sneaking in after dark and cooking
[7:02]for other people and bringing joy and finding his way back into the world one played at
[7:08]a time.
[7:09]It is our August 4th.
[7:11]Hey everybody, I'm Diana Bravner.
[7:17]My book is Roxy in color.
[7:19]It's out June 2nd.
[7:21]It is a middle grade novel.
[7:23]I think I might be the only children's book here, but it's my debut novel.
[7:28]It's about a girl whose parents are both blind and she's starting 7th grade in a new
[7:33]town and she just doesn't want to be known as the girl with blind parents anymore.
[7:37]So she decides to try to keep their blindness a secret until the other kids get a chance
[7:42]to get to know her.
[7:44]One of the chapters are told by her mother's guide dog.
[7:46]So there's a dog element in the book and it was based on an article that I wrote for
[7:50]parents magazine back in 2019 and I have a co-author Stacey Servanca who's one of the blind
[7:56]parents who I interviewed for the article and it's been a great experience working together
[8:01]and it's coming out from Camp DeWick press.
[8:03]Hi, I'm Kimberly McCrate.
[8:09]This is my ninth literary thriller which now sounds like nothing, as Lisa went first.
[8:17]It is, yes, the title is someone else's husband.
[8:20]It comes out on June 16th.
[8:23]I think the title is a little bit self-explanatory, but it does involve a love triangle.
[8:28]It involves a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, a climb I have done myself among other climbs.
[8:34]So a young artist named Frankie meets a married man on this climb, but it's really
[8:41]more than anything is the story of the two women, a wife, married's part of it and
[8:46]the quote unquote other woman and it's really meant to humanize and to show the layers
[8:50]and complications in that kind of situation where I think so often one or the other is
[8:55]villainized or made to look stupid or silly and I didn't want that to be true.
[9:01]So I hope you enjoyed it.
[9:04]Hi, I'm Sabrina Rudin and my book Healthy with a Side of Happy came out.
[9:13]On April 28th, it's a cookbook, it has two missions, one is to remind people that if you
[9:21]want to change how you feel, change the way you eat and the second is how to cook vegetables
[9:27]and that vegetables are actually really vital to health and I just want to thank you all and
[9:32]especially Zippy for having me here.
[9:34]I'll say the one thing I want to do more than anything in my life is an author and this event
[9:39]in this room with all of you, even though I've done some cool things for this book, this makes me
[9:43]feel it more than anything so thank you very happy to be here.
[9:50]Hi, I'm Lisa Rowe and my book is called Big and Lily.
[9:53]It's coming out August 11th.
[9:55]I call it Happiness for Beginners Meets Wild and it's a story of
[10:00]out two sisters who take a Alaskan survival trip
[10:04]that they have no business being on.
[10:06]And they almost don't make it out of the wilderness.
[10:09]But in the meantime, they learn to get over
[10:13]their sibling rivalry and their grief and their guilt.
[10:17]And they learn to have a new perspective on life
[10:20]in the woods.
[10:22]All right, hello.
[10:27]My book is Worse Than Strangers, and I am Kylie Lettie.
[10:30]It comes out June 23rd.
[10:32]My very quick pitch is always Gilmour girls,
[10:35]Meats Jane Austen, Anantucket.
[10:38]But it's really telling a beachy retelling
[10:41]a persuasion by Jane Austen, and at the core,
[10:43]it's mother daughter's story.
[10:44]And both their past loves come back
[10:47]and have very different outcomes.
[10:49]So that is the mysterious pitch.
[10:51]But thank you so much for having us.
[10:53]It's wonderful, ladies and gentlemen.
[10:56]Hi, everyone.
[10:57]I'm Sunil Barnes.
[10:58]Thank you again, Zivi.
[10:59]This is such a great party.
[11:01]And I'll tell you why it's so exciting to be here for me.
[11:03]But I'm Sunil.
[11:04]I am a travel writer and memoirist.
[11:06]And I was actually on assignment for travel in leisure
[11:10]when I had a brain aneurysm rupture.
[11:13]And I was also in the middle of writing
[11:15]the book within this book, which was the travel memoir part.
[11:19]And now it's kind of like this palaces where it
[11:22]with like old and new come together
[11:24]and make something completely different.
[11:27]So you get the story of me traveling home
[11:29]and traveling around the world, traveling home
[11:30]to my birth country of the Philippines
[11:32]for the first time in 20 years.
[11:34]And then making my way home to myself after memory loss
[11:38]and cognitive decline and not knowing who my husband was.
[11:43]And he ended up being actually my handsome feet
[11:46]to finish this book.
[11:47]I dictated I still have trouble looking at screens
[11:50]and sometimes typing.
[11:51]I am very heavily medicated to talk to you right now.
[11:56]But he and my daughter helped me type
[12:00]the rest of the book so that I could complete it
[12:02]and celebrate it with you today.
[12:04]Thank you.
[12:05]Thank you.
[12:07]Thank you, nine.
[12:11]Thank you so much.
[12:12]You're having me.
[12:12]I'm so excited to be here.
[12:14]I'm Lucia Kowski.
[12:15]This is my book.
[12:16]It's called Don't Buy What I'm Selling.
[12:18]I'm breaking up with advertising
[12:19]and finally learning to love my whole fat self.
[12:22]It's the longest title my editor Vivian Lee,
[12:24]who is also your editor, has ever published.
[12:27]I'm proud of being very wordy.
[12:28]They told me that in advertising, I always had a lot of words.
[12:31]It's basically about my career in advertising
[12:33]and how it almost killed me.
[12:34]I worked at places like MTV Comedy Central.
[12:37]My last job was at Facebook in 2018
[12:40]as the Cambridge Analytica scandal was breaking.
[12:42]And I also suffered health consequences.
[12:45]And I've worked the last seven years to figure out
[12:47]how to tell my story and to not be a brand or product,
[12:50]but myself.
[12:51]And so it's a memoir and investigation of that.
[12:54]Thank you all.
[12:57]I'm Annabelle Monahan.
[12:59]This is Dolly All the Time.
[13:01]It's out on May 26th.
[13:03]And it is a story about Dolly Brick,
[13:06]who is a single mom with a full-time job
[13:09]and three-side hustles.
[13:11]And she's everybody's emergency contact.
[13:14]And she has to go back to her hometown
[13:16]of Whitfield Road Island to care for her father
[13:18]and her disabled brother and finds herself
[13:21]in a fake dating situation with Stuart Whitfield himself,
[13:26]who also has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
[13:29]So it's a love story between two people
[13:31]who basically have the exact same issue to work out,
[13:33]who is pretty interesting to write from that perspective.
[13:37]But it's a story for anybody who needs to be reminded
[13:40]to put themselves back on their own to-do list.
[13:47]Hi, everyone.
[13:48]I'm Jackie Friedland.
[13:50]And this is my first time ever speaking
[13:52]into a little microphone like this.
[13:53]So I hope I do.
[13:54]This is my sixth book,
[13:56]which I thought was a lot and was totally wrong.
[13:58]It's called Breeding Underwater.
[14:00]And it's about two women at very different stages
[14:04]of their life, a division one college athlete
[14:07]who has been framed for something she didn't do
[14:10]and is at risk of losing her scholarship
[14:11]and her livelihood, basically.
[14:14]And a middle-aged mom who is staring down
[14:17]in impending empty nest and struggling with that transition.
[14:21]And an autistic teenager who helps both of these women
[14:24]get through their issues and becomes the hero of the book.
[14:27]It's out, August 4th.
[14:29]And after Dara, I want to hand it to Anne.
[14:34]And you can talk about Anne this book.
[14:36]How about that?
[14:36]Start at the-
[14:37]Yeah.
[14:38]Definitely not.
[14:39]I was going to have Kathleen talk about 40 love.
[14:41]Yeah.
[14:42]But she could do both.
[14:44]If you'd rather, you want Kathleen to do both?
[14:45]OK, Kathleen, I'll do both.
[14:47]My name's Dara Levan.
[14:49]My novel is out June 23rd.
[14:50]We have a lot of book birthdays at the same time,
[14:52]which is fun.
[14:53]It's called Shaken to the Core.
[14:55]And it's about a photographer named Joy,
[14:58]who she and her husband Andre go to the mountains of Vermont
[15:01]to escape the glitz and glam of Miami.
[15:04]But she's thrown first when her mother dies suddenly.
[15:07]And then when her husband receives devastating news that's
[15:10]altering the very carefully curated lives they've always had,
[15:14]they always thought they wouldn't have children.
[15:16]She suddenly earns for it.
[15:17]And I won't ruin the rest of it.
[15:21]One of the big themes that explores
[15:22]is how motherhood and mothering transcend biology
[15:26]and how we can hold hope, healing, and heartbreak all at once.
[15:30]So it's ultimately an uplifting story, lots of tears,
[15:33]and very much inspired by my mother-in-law,
[15:36]who died suddenly right before my wedding.
[15:40]So thank you.
[15:41]Thank you.
[15:44]Thank you.
[15:46]Hello.
[15:48]OK.
[15:48]Hi, I'm Brenda Janowitz.
[15:49]I have typically written women's fiction,
[15:52]but this is my debut young adult novel.
[15:54]And it's coming out this August.
[15:55]It's called The Introvert's Guide to Kissing in Europe.
[15:58]And it's the story of a teen who impulsively
[16:00]takes a gap year throughout Western Europe.
[16:03]It's a coming-of-age story.
[16:04]And it's loosely inspired by my own time studying abroad.
[16:11]Hi, I'm Amy Chosek.
[16:13]This is my debut novel with Friends Like You.
[16:15]It's Out July 21st.
[16:17]I think it's hard.
[16:18]It's a thriller about female friendship.
[16:20]It's about a new mom in New York who's
[16:22]lost and lonely and depressed.
[16:23]And she decides that the answer to her happiness
[16:26]is finding her former best friend who disappeared
[16:28]15 years earlier and became a sex worker
[16:31]and is now a high-end escort.
[16:32]So when she has a new baby, she sort of dives
[16:34]into this world of sex work to find her friend.
[16:38]Previous to this, I was a journalist for many years.
[16:40]So this story started when I was three weeks
[16:43]postpartum and a brand new baby.
[16:44]And Anna Wintour wanted me to profile Stormy Daniels for Vogue.
[16:48]So I literally left my baby to go to strip clubs in Milwaukee.
[16:51]And I was interviewing sex workers.
[16:53]And I just thought, what do these two worlds colliding
[16:56]is just to kind of stayed with me and it came this novel?
[17:00]And thank you so much, Sivi.
[17:03]Because Mady Marilyn, and I'm Lois Kay Hall.
[17:05]And it comes out age 26, the week before the centennial
[17:08]of Marilyn Monroe's birth.
[17:10]So we're inundated with Marilyn Monroe books,
[17:13]but nothing like this one fits a novel.
[17:15]So would it on the night of Marilyn Monroe's death?
[17:20]She didn't die.
[17:21]During the five hours that no one called the police,
[17:25]she got away.
[17:27]And she was issued a new identity by, I don't know,
[17:30]someone in the lighthouse.
[17:32]And she decided to have the role of a lifetime
[17:35]each reggae mother to a child.
[17:37]That's all she ever wanted was sexual.
[17:39]And she ends up in a place called Peacock, Massachusetts.
[17:42]Ooh, and the role of a lifetime is to work in a diner
[17:46]while meeting when a gallery will have you.
[17:48]Fast forward to 2019 to reporters, young kids
[17:53]in the day of social media and all the insanity of the world
[17:56]get a tip that she's alive.
[17:58]One from a dying coroner who says,
[18:01]I was there that night.
[18:02]I'm 95 years old, though, my death
[18:04]that I'm telling a story now.
[18:06]She didn't die.
[18:07]We switched a body from the Moore drawer,
[18:09]put a platinum wig on her, and help her out on my own.
[18:13]The other reporter gets a tip from a dying mobster.
[18:15]He said, I worked for Jimmy Coppoff.
[18:18]I was sent to kill her, re-letter belt.
[18:21]So whether the reporter's fine Maryland Monroe
[18:24]or not in 2019, she's divided by the vote, remains to be seen.
[18:29]But what they do find is her very alive,
[18:33]24-year-old, Nandar.
[18:40]You should say, it's a book about survival.
[18:43]It's ended being a victim.
[18:45]It's a book for women for sex issues.
[18:48]So I think this is the Maryland New Year
[18:50]Prefer in the San Diego.
[18:58]This is novel by sophomore novel of Heather,
[19:01]many Caitlin Mullins, June 9th.
[19:04]Not to be confused with the Winona River
[19:05]or cult-class movie, Heather Scott,
[19:07]make a mail so now.
[19:09]So Heather is in 22 timelines, 1990, and 2023.
[19:14]I had centered on a pair of twins
[19:16]in the 1990 timeline, twin sister,
[19:18]she grew up quite a bit of neglect.
[19:21]And they disappeared at a 19, I do one.
[19:24]And then in the present day timeline,
[19:26]a young woman who's returned to her hometown
[19:28]and find there in New Jersey,
[19:30]uncovers this cold case,
[19:31]and starts excavating what actually happened to me.
[19:34]And then what she finds will be undermined
[19:37]everything she wants to know.
[19:39]Ooh, hi, hi, well been me.
[19:45]He missed my second novel.
[19:47]It's called Crashing to Me.
[19:48]It will be in stores on the Y7s.
[19:52]It's a story of Cecilia Chen
[19:54]who is a Jamaican Chinese bi-artist
[19:57]living a pair to their husband and to kids.
[20:00]He would raise in the state that led to Paris from the US.
[20:04]And her husband, the French filmmaker,
[20:06]he gets a huge deal shooting a trilogy in Los Angeles,
[20:09]and they pick up and move to the very well
[20:12]they autoplayed on the West side of LA after she's
[20:15]been in Kuwait for 20 years.
[20:17]I feel very much like a reverse culture shock.
[20:19]And very early on in the story, he
[20:22]runs into someone upper-pass, holy, mixed in it.
[20:25]And they give up his very intense and complex
[20:28]relationship that threatens to enter entire life.
[20:31]And it's another one.
[20:32]And so it's story about identity, sexuality, desire,
[20:36]power, and yourself.
[20:39]The ladies.
[20:40]Oh, thank you.
[20:44]Hi, I'm Elizabeth Genousi.
[20:46]My debut memoir comes out July 21st.
[20:50]At age 38, I was living in the suburbs of New Jersey,
[20:54]raising three young children when my life voted.
[20:58]Specifically, my husband discovered
[20:59]I had a one-night affair with that discovery
[21:03]I admitted to my alcoholism.
[21:05]I've been drinking vodka pretty much all day, every day.
[21:10]But I was really good at hiding it.
[21:11]So this led to me entering recovery,
[21:15]going to my first AA meeting for the women told me,
[21:18]you never have to feel this way again.
[21:20]It is a recovery story, but it's also a love story,
[21:24]because my husband and I were able to be using the 12 steps
[21:28]off on our way back to each other.
[21:30]So this is the book I wish I had when I first entered the meetings.
[21:35]It'll resonate with anyone in recovery,
[21:38]anyone who has a loved one, struggling with addiction,
[21:43]anyone whose life imploded and needs to believe in safety.
[21:48]And what I'm going to do is I run on KELOLAND.
[21:55]My next book is called The O'Parets Out.
[21:57]It is my 41st nap.
[22:05]It's called The O'Parets.
[22:07]There's a couple of you know what it's about, detail.
[22:11]I've been genuinely used to inspire by it so many
[22:14]prescriptions of books here.
[22:15]They're not different ones.
[22:17]What's the opt-in-a-move-in-inspired?
[22:19]That's a piss.
[22:23]That's like fun.
[22:25]It's kind of what you're going to bring it back.
[22:33]I've worked a little bit.
[22:35]Hi.
[22:36]Thank you, Zippy.
[22:37]So Zippy and I run into each other in this very
[22:40]unglamorous place.
[22:41]It's like the Walberry parking lot.
[22:42]And we're just kind of look away.
[22:43]So it's nice.
[22:44]I said hello.
[22:45]We did.
[22:47]You were looking away.
[22:49]And I was like, hi, guys.
[22:52]We used to have a thing.
[22:53]So I visited the book senator and excited
[22:55]that it were cosmic for you.
[22:55]We used to have a tip and cosmo that was you want to treat
[22:58]your how we met store.
[23:00]You just, in other words, in Paris, yeah.
[23:03]We met in the Walberry and Sartula.
[23:04]In Paris, my book is single girls that you're
[23:10]pulled up.
[23:10]It's not a phthalis, but the very peak cover
[23:13]looks very excuse and not meant.
[23:14]So I usually write character driven suspense.
[23:18]But I always wanted to write about cosmo
[23:21]because 20 years ago I moved to the city,
[23:24]had no money, waiting tables, I got
[23:26]a horrible rejection son and novel.
[23:28]And I heard about a job of winning in the book's
[23:31]department of pop senate.
[23:32]And I went on the interview, and a friend of mine
[23:34]said, I said, I guess I need to resume.
[23:36]So if you're a writer, write is not that resume.
[23:38]So when the very glamorous book set of girls
[23:40]said, well, where's your resume?
[23:41]I said, well, writer, we don't have that.
[23:44]She hired, yeah, she felt sorry for me.
[23:47]So that was under Helen, really Brown.
[23:49]And I'm excited.
[23:50]I don't know, though.
[23:51]I mean, so it is.
[23:52]I'm not hired.
[23:52]Yes.
[23:53]She has the next check out how to do.
[23:55]So Helen and I she hired me.
[23:57]And we we stay friends for many, many years.
[24:01]And I used to go to her office and see her.
[24:03]She said, we need to snout the hurricane paper.
[24:04]And I always said someday I'm going to write an apple,
[24:07]but no one could quit that.
[24:08]So she was the book aesthetic editor, her memory.
[24:12]But it's about cosmo in the 1960s when Helen takes over
[24:16]the magazine and hires the team of women
[24:18]to transform it into the best song
[24:20]of women's back time of all time.
[24:21]And it's very fun.
[24:23]I usually write these dark creepy suspense novels.
[24:25]And then I go on book tour.
[24:26]And these women come up and see.
[24:28]So right and sunny, she's afraid to read your books.
[24:31]They're really creepy.
[24:32]So now I feel like to happen with them.
[24:34]It's a very pink book.
[24:35]And I see so many familiar faces of people
[24:37]like Annabelle Huyv's book I talked about in the today show
[24:40]was Lisa or different people over the years
[24:42]I've done in the magazine.
[24:44]And so it's nice to be with all of you.
[24:46]Beautifully dressed as a gift.
[24:48]Thank you.
[24:53]All right.
[24:54]I want to say thank you.
[24:56]You really are extraordinary.
[24:58]And you landed in my neighborhood with a giant pop.
[25:01]I live in Santa Monica.
[25:03]And Zippy Stewart is completely fabulous and cozy.
[25:07]And it's just a wonder that's all I can say and so are you.
[25:11]It's all, this is all really hard work.
[25:14]And people don't realize that it actually is really hard work.
[25:18]Some of it's really fun.
[25:19]And some of it is not so fun.
[25:22]That's all I can say.
[25:23]I have a new book called Unseasonably Cold.
[25:26]It published last week.
[25:28]It's set in 1939.
[25:30]And Eris in New York City, who writes a column
[25:33]for the delineator disappears.
[25:36]And when Jane disappears, you had been with her best friend.
[25:40]And the story starts to be told by her best friend,
[25:43]although it's told by a number of other people, too.
[25:46]There are secrets, there are betrayals,
[25:48]there's lack of trust, there's suspects.
[25:53]It's a love story, it's historical fiction,
[25:56]it's a mystery.
[25:58]And I hope you like it.
[25:59]That's all I can say.
[26:01]Thank you so much.
[26:03]Thank you so much.
[26:04]Well, I'd call for one of the things, which
[26:07]is what happened that was very odd to me
[26:10]is the background of 1939 suddenly became much more
[26:14]like today, where we all have a kind of comic
[26:17]exterior that underneath it, there's
[26:19]a kind of turmoil of wondering what's going on today,
[26:23]particularly once again.
[26:26]And I think the same thing is true of the plot of the novel,
[26:30]because everyone's holding on to a kind of grief
[26:33]that they're putting out a class of extraordinary.
[26:35]I didn't quite do it on purpose.
[26:37]The book ends the day before London was bombed.
[26:41]Thank you.
[26:46]By the way, Amy and Brenda, I contributed to my anthology
[26:50]I'm being Jewish now, which is same.
[26:56]Everyone, so I'll talk about two of our recent books.
[27:00]For you, love is actually coming up tomorrow.
[27:03]Thank you, Kim.
[27:04]Thank you, Chris.
[27:06]But this is what's are.
[27:07]It's by Jane Pilsello, who is the best
[27:09]selling author in the UK, absolutely right now.
[27:12]It's about jewels, who is facing an empty nest.
[27:16]She's recently widowed.
[27:18]Her daughter's going on a gap here before going to college.
[27:22]She doesn't love her jobs.
[27:23]So she's facing this big question, like, what is next for me?
[27:27]So she gazes out her window and looks
[27:29]at the local tennis club next door,
[27:31]that she's lived next door to her entire life.
[27:34]Her friends at the jolt her, come on.
[27:36]Just come out in the court.
[27:37]She has a one to do it.
[27:38]Finally, she breathes and her life transforms.
[27:41]She meets this wonderful group of friends,
[27:44]but even more important, she runs into her old crush
[27:46]stamp.
[27:47]It's got a wicked forehand.
[27:49]And what Jules does every day as she wins matches,
[27:55]she moves matches, she just starts to find herself again.
[27:58]And she really discovers what's next for her.
[28:01]So this is a story of a woman in mid-life,
[28:04]trying to decide the next big questions,
[28:06]who she meant to be, what's next for her life is not over,
[28:09]and she just wants to have some fun.
[28:11]So it's a really great story.
[28:13]You love it so much.
[28:15]Thank you.
[28:19]And start of the end by Emma Gray.
[28:21]This came out last month.
[28:23]This is our third book, published by Emma.
[28:25]She also wrote the last love, no interest of you.
[28:28]And Emma's known for her signature, emotional, sweeping
[28:32]romances, and this one's no different.
[28:35]It's about Audrey and Frazier, who has epic love.
[28:40]They fall madly for each other.
[28:42]Their lives are seemingly endless to be together
[28:46]and then tragedy strikes.
[28:47]And their world completely implodes.
[28:51]And what happens next, I can't really share,
[28:53]because it's a bit of a spoiler.
[28:55]But let's just say they both go down past an unimagined,
[28:59]but end up finding themselves at the center of it all over again.
[29:04]It's about creativity and ambition.
[29:07]And a lot of people are saying here
[29:09]about coming back and finding yourself.
[29:12]After all those years, it's a beautiful story.
[29:14]Yay.
[29:20]You will see that I have some things I like.
[29:23]A lot of these themes pervade some of these books.
[29:26]I also have my own book coming out in September.
[29:28]They're really fun.
[29:32]So that is my seventh book since 2021.
[29:36]Thanks to all of you, because without the podcast,
[29:39]I couldn't sell anything.
[29:41]And it's a collection of essays about a decade
[29:45]of my life of extreme change from the moment
[29:47]when I told my girlfriends that I was getting a divorce
[29:50]all the way up until now.
[29:51]And it includes moments of loss.
[29:53]A lot of funny stories of all the mistakes
[29:55]I made with my kids.
[29:57]It's about female friendship, loss, divorce pay.
[30:00]in finding love again, reinvention,
[30:03]and making the most of the time that we have.
[30:06]But it's hopefully funny, and it's really quick read.
[30:08]And I hope that people will read it
[30:09]in between all of your amazing books.
[30:11]Thank you all so much for coming today,
[30:13]and I hope you will have some lunch
[30:15]and get to know each other and congratulations
[30:18]on all your great ideas.
[30:19]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[30:24]formerly momstone have time to read books.
[30:26]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[30:29]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[30:32]and spread the word.
[30:34]Thanks so much.
[30:35]Oh, and bye the books.