Blue Bicycle Books

Join us Mon., July 6, 12 pm for a Blue Bicycle Books Author’s Luncheon featuring New York Times bestseller Patti Callahan Henry. The talk and lunch will be at Hall’s Chophouse, 434 King Street. Tickets are $30 for lunch only, or $58 for lunch and a signed copy of The Idea of Love (St. Martins Press, hb., 256 pp., $26).

About the book: Harper, a screenwriter, has had two flops in succession. He needs a hit and he needs it badly. Empty of any new ideas and crippled with writer’s block, he decides that he will “steal” a love story. He can’t do that in Hollywood, so he heads to a small South Carolina town for a change of scenery and that good love story he needs. Taking on a fake identity as a historian interested in local folklore, he interviews townsfolk under the guise of getting to know their family stories.

He meets Ella, a beautiful young woman who has lost her true love in a sailing accident. Harper believes he has finally found his story: a love big enough to sacrifice your life for. But the thing is, Ella isn’t telling the truth. Her husband left her, she has a job selling shoes, and she lost her best friend in the divorce. In desperate need of a love story herself, Ella tells Harper the story of the life she wishes she had, and in the process, starts acting like the woman she wishes she’d always been. Soon they are both too deep into the lies to get out. Add dysfunctional families, small town chaos, eccentric neighbors and exes on both sides, and the knot of lies looks too tight to undo.

Can two people come together for all the wrong reasons and still make it right?

PATTI CALLAHAN HENRY is a full-time writer, wife, and mother. She is a New York Times bestselling author whose novels include And Then I Found You, Between the Tides, and Driftwood Summer. Patti lives with her husband and three children in Mountain Brook, Ala., where she is working on her next novel.

Join us  Tues., June 23, 5 – 7 pm, as the Southeast Summer Book Bash tour makes a stop in Charleston. Lynne Matson (Nil & Nil Unlocked), Lindsay Cummings (The Death Code), Anne Blankman (Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke) and Robin Constantine (The Secrets of Attraction) will sign copies of  their Young Adult novels.

About Nil Unlocked: On the island of Nil, the rules are set. You have exactly 365 days to escape–or you die. Rives is now the undisputed Leader of Nil City, but keeping the City united is tougher than ever. Raiders have grown bolder, supplies are dwindling, and non-human inhabitants have taken a turn toward the deadly. New arrivals cause rifts within the City, putting the Search system at risk, and calling everything Rives knows into question. Desperate for answers, he teams up with the only other person searching for them: Skye, a new arrival with a mysterious past of her own. Soon the duo find themselves locked in a desperate race to save all the residents of Nil–and possibly destroy the island forever. But at what cost? And who will pay the price?

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LYNNE MATSON grew up in Georgia in a house full of books and a backyard full of gnarly pines. She attended the University of Florida, where she met and married her husband, the cutest boy she’s ever seen. Now, Lynne is mother to four amazing boys. After a career as an attorney, Lynne is thrilled to be making her debut in YA fiction.

About The Death Code: With short, fast-paced, alternating point-of-view chapters, The Death Code starts several weeks after The Murder Complex ends. Zephyr keeps the secret about Meadow close—that if she dies, The Murder Complex will be destroyed, too. Meadow, desperate to find her brother, father, and little sister, is determined to fight fearlessly to the end, even if it means sacrificing herself and her friends, new and old. The Death Code introduces a memorable cast of secondary characters and delivers a vivid and scary thrill ride read. For fans of La Femme Nikita, Legend, and Hanna.

Lindsay Cummings is the 23-year-old author of THE MURDER COMPLEX duology and BALANCE KEEPERS trilogy at HarperCollins. She lives in Celina, TX, with her Grumpy Husband Josh, a German Shepherd, a German Shephusky, a real Wolf Cub, a draft horse named Dan the Man, a hedgehog named Hedwig, a cat named Crookshanks, and 5 silly, egg-laying chickens. She’s still trying to convice her husband to let her get a teacup pig and name it Pigwidgeon. She is convinced her Hogwarts letter was just lost in the mail.

About Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke: In 1930s Oxford, the days are long and pleasant, the people simple and straight forward. Except for one. The girl known as Gretchen Whitestone has a secret: she used to be part of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle. More than a year after she made an enemy of her old family friend and fled Munich, she lives with a kindly English family, posing as an ordinary German immigrant, and is preparing to graduate from high school. Her love, Daniel Cohen, is a reporter in town. For the first time in her life, Gretchen is content. But then, Daniel gets a telegram that sends him back to Germany, and Gretchen’s world turns upside down. When she receives word that Daniel is wanted for murder, she has to face the danger she thought she’d escaped—and return to her homeland.

Anne Blankman may have been meant to be a writer because her parents named her for Anne of Green Gables. She grew up in an old house with gables (gray, unfortunately) in upstate New York. When she wasn’t writing or reading, she was rowing on the crew team, taking ballet lessons, fencing and swimming. She graduated from Union College with degrees in English and history, which comes in handy when she writes historical fiction.

About The Secrets of Attraction: Madison Pryce thinks she’s got everything figured out—she’s working on a portfolio for a summer art program, trying to keep up her grades, and hanging with her friends. Plus she has her hot boyfriend, Zach. They’re casual by choice—getting serious with a guy only complicates things. But then a visit from a family friend turns Maddie’s life upside down and throws all her beliefs into question.

Robin Constantine is a born and bred Jersey girl who moved down South so she could wear flip-flops year round. She spends her days dreaming up stories where love conquers all, well, eventually but not without a lot of peril, angst and the occasional kissing scene.

Join us, Fri., June 12, 5 – 7  pm for a signing with Will Moredock. he will sign copies of his new book, Living in Fear. 

Will Moredock is a native son of South Carolina, with degrees in journalism from the University of Georgia and the University of South Carolina. His journalism career includes a stint as staff writer at The State. He was founder, publisher and editor of Point newsweekly, in Columbia and news editor at Creative Loafing in Charlotte. Most recently, he wrote a weekly column about South Carolina politics and culture for ten years for Charleston City Paper.

Join us, Sun., May 24, 4  pm as Mary Alice Monroe, signs copies of the last installment of her Lowcountry Summer series, The Summer’s End. (Gallery Books, hb., 384 pp., $28). 

In the powerful and heartwarming conclusion to her bestselling Lowcountry Summer trilogy, New York Times author Mary Alice Monroe brings her readers back to the charm and sultry beauty of Sullivan’s Island, to reveal how the pull of family bonds and true love is as strong and steady as the tides.

It is summer’s end and Sea Breeze, the family’s beloved estate on Sullivan’s Island, must be sold. It is an emotional time of transition as Mamaw and the three sisters each must face loss and find a new place in the world.

Mary Alice Monroe is the author of nearly two dozen novels, several non-fiction titles, and children’s books. Her body of work reflects her commitment to the natural world through literature.  Monroe has served on the faculty of numerous writer’s conferences and retreats.  She is a featured speaker at events, both literary and conservation.  Known for her intimate portrayals of women’s lives, Mary Alice Monroe’s writing gained added purpose and depth with her books set in the Lowcountry.  An active environmentalist, Monroe draws themes for her novels from nature and the parallels with human nature, thus drawing attention to various endangered species and the human connection to the natural world.

Join us Wed., May 27, 5 pm  for a special reception and book signing with John Lane. Lane will be signing copies of his new novel, Fate Moreland’s Widow, (USC Press, hb., 184 pp., $20). 

The son of mill workers in Carlton, South Carolina, Crocker is caught between competing loyalties to his family and future. Crocker wanted more than a rough-hewn life on a factory floor, so he studied accounting at the local textile institute and was hired as bookkeeper to the owner, George McCane, a man as burdened by his familial ties as Crocker and even less prepared for the authority of his mantle. McCane’s decision to renovate the Carlton Mill and lay off families connected to the Uprising of ’34, one of the largest labor strikes in U.S. history, puts Crocker in the ill-fitting position as his boss’s enforcer. Days after the evictions, the surprise indictment lands McCane in a North Carolina mountain jail and sinks Crocker even deeper into the escalating tensions between mill workers and the owners.

John Lane is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including My Paddle to the Sea; Begin with Rock, End with Water; and most recently Abandoned Quarry: New and Selected Poems, winner of the 2012 Southeastern Independent Booksellers Alliance Book Award for Poetry.  Lane is a 2014 inductee into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.