Rebecca Lang

Tues., June 26th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ Soby’s, $25 per person
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A contributing editor for Southern Living magazine, Rebecca Lang shows you how to prepare real Southern food–fast!–in her cookbook Quick-Fix Southern (Andrews McMeel, paperback, $16.99).

In Quick-Fix Southern, Rebecca Lang, cookbook author and contributing editor for Southern Living magazine, promises homemade hospitality–Southern style–in 30 minutes or less. Lang dishes up 115 recipes grouped in 10 themes ranging from Rise and Shine breakfasts to Sipping on the Screened Porch beverages, Girls’ Night In party pleasers, and Southern Sweets desserts. In addition to photography, the book features cooking and preparation time for the effortless recipes.

The ultimate goal of Quick-Fix Southern is to present novice and experienced cooks with authentic homemade dishes reflective of New South cuisine that are delicious, fast, and easy to prepare. From Three Cheese Grits, Peach Yogurt Parfait, and Spiked Lemonade and Lime Mint Juleps to Fried Green Tomatoes and Roasted Tomatoes and Parmesan Grits, Benne Seed Sugar Cookies, and Lazy Girl Berry Cobbler, the delectable flavor combinations offered up inside Quick-Fix Southern transition to any setting. So, whether you’re cooking up a side for a church potluck or preparing a main course for Sunday dinner or a Sunday spent at a sporting tailgate, Quick-Fix Southern promises to be your go-to guide for every occasion.

About the author:
Rebecca Lang is the author of Quick-Fix Southern, Southern Entertaining for a New Generation (Cumberland House, 2004), and Mary Mac’s Tea Room (Looking Glass Books, 2005). As a Contributing Editor for Southern Living, Rebecca is featured in cooking segments on the nationally syndicated show Daytime. She is a Contributing Editor for myrecipes.com and is the author of the popular column, “Girls’ Night In,” on the site.

Her food writing has appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Flavors Magazine, Edible Atlanta, Legacy Magazine, and Athens Magazine. She has also written for several other newspapers throughout the South, including the Fernandina Beach News Leader and the Athens Banner-Herald. Her blog has been featured on the James Beard Foundation’s blog as well as the Food News Journal.

Having taught hundreds of classes, Rebecca is an accomplished cooking instructor. She teaches at various locations in Atlanta, including Central Market, The Cook’s Warehouse, and Whole Foods’ Salud! Cooking School. She also travels the country teaching classes to groups as large as 1,200 students.

In addition to her work on Daytime, Rebecca’s television appearances include Home Plate and many local and regional appearances, including Good Day Atlanta, Better Mornings Atlanta, and Fox 42 in Omaha, Nebraska. She also appeared numerous times on the nationally televised show Every Day with Marcus and Lisa. Rebecca has been a guest on Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food on Sirius and XM Radio.

After completing an apprenticeship with Nathalie Dupree, Rebecca was formally trained in culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University. Prior to graduating, she served as the personal chef to the president of the university.

Rebecca began her editorial career as an assistant food editor for Oxmoor House. She edited eight cookbooks and directed food photography on assigned projects. She also served as a hand model for technique photographs.

Rebecca also worked as a freelance project manager and text designer for a small publisher in Atlanta, Looking Glass Books. She handled most aspects of production for 15 books.

Rebecca has been a food stylist and hand model for various print and television commercials. She has worked with Black & Decker, Krystal, Longhorn Steakhouse, Mrs. Smith’s, Shoney’s, and Good Eats.

Rebecca was an assistant food stylist for Home Plate Cooking and was the editor and indexer for Atlanta Cooks at Home. She has also developed recipes for Weight Watchers Annual Recipes for Success 2004 and the next book in the series in 2005. Her recipes are included in Christmas with Southern Living 2004 and 2009.

Rebecca is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Johnson and Wales University. She has served on the board for the Atlanta Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, and is a member of The International Association of Culinary Professionals, The Southern Foodways Alliance, and Georgia Organics.

Tues., May 22nd, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25/person

Western North Carolina native Wiley Cash writes about his homeland in his debut novel, A Land More Kind than Home (William Morrow, hardcover, $24.99, releases 4/17/12), a story about a child who witnesses the unthinkable during a church healing service, forcing him to question his ideas about family and faith.

Religion is supposed to shield children from the horrors of the world, but one Sunday, nine-year-old Jess Hall watches as his autistic brother is called into a little church in the mountains of North Carolina. What happens next forces Jess to question everything he once believed about his family and his faith. Clem Barefield, the local sheriff, arrives to find a group of charismatic believers who are unwilling to utter a word about the things Jess has seen. At the center of the mystery is Carson Chambliss, a snake-handling ex-convict-turned-preacher whose past is just as mysterious as the power he claims to possess.

The first person Sheriff Barefield turns to is Adelaide Lyle, the church matriarch, a woman whose good-sense brand of religion straddles the divide between blind faith and cold fact. Her understanding of both the spiritual and the natural world makes her predictions of a violent reckoning just as viable as they are unavoidable. Jess is the lynchpin for this violence, and he tries to navigate an adult world where the truth is something hidden from children, even if they know things about it that adults do not.

A Land More Kind than Home is a literary thriller, thick with stories and characters connected by faith, infidelity, addiction, and a sense of hope that is as tragic as it is unforgettable. Readers of Ron Rash and John Hart will fall in love with novelist Wiley Cash.

About the author:
Wiley Cash is from Western North Carolina, a region that figures prominently in his fiction. His stories have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Roanoke Review, and The Carolina Quarterly. A Land More Kind than Home is his first novel.

Wiley holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of North Carolina – Asheville, an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina – Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana – Lafayette. He has received grants and fellowships from the Asheville Area Arts Council, the Thomas Wolfe Society, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo.

He and his wife currently live in West Virginia where he teaches fiction writing and American literature at Bethany College. He also teaches in the Low-Residency M.F.A. Program in Fiction and Nonfiction Writing at Southern New Hampshire University.

Ann B. Ross

Wed., April 18th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ Soby’s, $55 per person*
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Ann B. Ross, beloved author of the Miss Julia series, is returning to Greenville for another Book Your Lunch event with us. In Miss Julia to the Rescue (Penguin, hardcover, $25.95, on sale 4/3/12), the 13th book in the series, Ann Ross’s feisty Southern heroine tries to rescue Hazel Marie’s new husband J.D. before he lands in jail and investigates a possible cult–all while maintaining proper appearances.

*Please note that the ticket price for this event includes one hardcover copy of Miss Julia to the Rescue (the book can be picked up from Fiction Addiction when the book releases on April 3rd, or we can bring it to the event for you).

Can Miss Julia spring J.D. Pickens from a sheriff’s clutches and investigate a cult–plus keep up appearances as a proper Southern lady?

Miss Julia simply can’t abide sitting idle. With young Lloyd moving out and husband Sam off to the Holy Land for two weeks, Miss Julia’s feeling restless already. Maybe it’s time for that overdue home makeover.

But before she can even pick a color scheme, Miss Julia must race to the rescue of Hazel Marie’s new husband. J.D. has gone missing while on his latest private investigation job. And police in West Virginia have detained an injured man fitting his description. Now it’s up to Miss Julia and Etta Mae to free him before he cusses himself into a jail cell.

Back in Abbotsville, wealthy, eccentric Agnes Whitman has returned to town with a following of misfits. Could they be a religious cult set on converting the locals? And will Miss Julia get back in time to stop them? One thing’s for sure: she won’t waste time watching paint dry–no matter which shade of beige is the latest rage.

About the author:
Ann B. Ross holds a doctorate in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and has taught literature at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. She is the author of twelve previous novels featuring the popular Southern heroine Miss Julia. She has three children and six grandchildren and lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Michel Stone

Mon., March 26th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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Spartanburg author Michel Stone’s debut novel, The Iguana Tree (Hub City, hardcover, $24.95, on sale 3/12/12), gives readers a glimpse at illegal immigration from a viewpoint not seen in the news.

Set amid the perils of illegal border crossings, The Iguana Tree is the suspenseful saga of Lilia and Hector, who separately make their way from Mexico into the United States, seeking work in the Carolinas and a home for their infant daughter.

This harrowing novel meticulously examines the obstacles each faces in pursuing a new life: manipulation, rape, and murder in the perilous commerce of border crossings; betrayal by family and friends; exploitation by corrupt officials and rapacious landowners on the U.S. side; and, finally, the inexorable workings of the U.S. justice system.

Hector and Lilia meet Americans willing to help them with legal assistance and offers of responsible employment, but their illegal entry seems certain to prove their undoing. The consequences of their decisions are devastating. In the end, The Iguana Tree is a universal story of loss, grief, and human dignity.

About the author:
Michel Stone has published over a dozen stories and essays, including the title story in Expecting Goodness and Other Stories, edited by C. Michael Curtis, the runner-up in the Independent Publishers IPPY Awards for the top collection of short fiction in North America, 2009. Her work has appeared numerous times in the Raleigh News and Observer‘s emerging Southern writers series. Michel is a winner of SC Magazine‘s Very Short Fiction Contest, as well as the Hub City Fiction Prize. Her short story, “Bobby Knight’s Nu-Way of Thinking,” was included in Hub City’s publication When Stars Fell on Spartanburg. For the past five years, her short story “Relative” has been used by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction for its English I Public School Testing booklet. Her essay “Danny Ford: The Man, the God” was included in the Novello Festival anthology Sports in the Carolinas. Michel was the editor of Outdoor Adventures in the Upcountry, a collection of essays about outdoor pursuits. She is a 2011 recipient of the South Carolina Fiction Project Award, given by the S.C. Arts Commission, and her flash fiction was a finalist in Undefined Magazine‘s 2011 Creative Writing Contest. The Iguana Tree is her first novel.

Michel is an alumna of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A 10th generation South Carolina Lowcountry native, Michel now lives in Spartanburg with her husband and their three children. She is at work on her second novel.

Rose Senehi

Thurs., March 8th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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South Carolina author Rose Senehi brings us the third “standalone” novel in her Blue Ridge moutain series, Render Unto the Valley (KIM Publishing, paperback, $15.95, on sale 3/1/12). The novel tells the story of Karen Godwell, a curator for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, who must make peace with her past when her family’s Blue Ridge farm is threatened.

Rose Senehi’s latest romantic thriller, Render Unto the Valley, is a contemporary novel cloaked in the rich history of the southern Blue Ridge Mountains, and tells of a woman’s struggle to bridge the divide between the staunchly independent mountain culture she comes from and the sophisticated world she has become a part of—all while concealing the ugly secret that drove her away.  

Karen Godwell reinvents herself at college and doesn’t look back till her clan’s historic farm is threatened. The gutsy curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum returns to the mountains only to come face to face with who she was and what she did.

Descendants of the early settlers still have a grip on the farmlands deep in the folds of the southern Blue Ridge Mountains, but the ground is shifting beneath their feet. Cousin Bruce, the town historian, sees life through the family’s colorful two-hundred-year past; Tom Gibbons, a local conservationist, keeps one eye on the mountains and the other on Karen; and Karen’s nine-year-old daughter, Hali, is in the throes of the mission her dying father sent her on.

Render Unto the Valley is the third “stand alone” novel in Senehi’s Blue Ridge series, and takes place in the mountain farming community of Fairview, North Carolina, just outside Asheville. Senehi, who is noted for weaving environmental issues into her historically accurate thrillers, has successfully imbued the characters in her story with the independent nature and indelible sense of place that the early settlers of this mountain valley passed on to the generations that followed them.

About the author:
Rose Senehi is originally from Michigan, but landed in Syracuse, New York, after attending Syracuse University. She worked as a reporter for several years before becoming the corporate marketing director of The Pyramid Companies for whom she opened shopping malls
throughout the Northeast. She drew from this highly charged environment to write her 2nd novel, WINDFALL.

The whole time she was racing from town to town opening malls, she lived on a hundred-acre farm outside the small village of Cazenovia, NY, where she raised her two children, Jessica and David. She tried to inject the unique and wonderful flavor of the people of this small farming community into the characters in SHADOWS IN THE GRASS, her first novel.

One cold, hard winter’s day in 1996, a headhunter called Rose. It was ten degrees in Upstate, NY, and she was overspent on her mall snow removal budget and it was only January. She glanced at the USA Today map and saw it was seventy degrees in Myrtle Beach and jumped at the offer to manage the Myrtle Beach Factory Stores. Her third novel, Pelican Watch, reflects her warm feelings for the South and the wonderful people she’s come to know in Pawleys Island and Murrells Inlet. She is a very active real estate agent specializing in oceanfront condominiums and homes, which is a profession that goes well with writing. She wakes every morning at four and writes until eight when she heads for the office.

Rose has owned a place in the mountains since 2004 and has centered my fourth, fifth and sixth
novels: IN THE SHADOWS OF CHIMNEY ROCK, THE WIND IN THE WOODS and RENDER UNTO THE VALLEY around Western North Carolina’s Hickory Nut Gorge and the Southern Blue Ridge
Mountains. They are the first in her Blue Ridge Series. She has tried to write with empathy about the universal desire to hold onto one’s land and heritage against the forces that are changing the places we love. It is her hope that this series will not only entertain people and create a fascinating mosaic of the history of  the area, but paint a broad picture of the pressures on the Southern Blue Ridge and those who are working to preserve it.

Cynthia Graubart & Nathalie Dupree

Sat., February 25th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ Soby’s, $25 per person
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Renowned Southern cooking show personalities and authors Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart share how to make the perfect Southern Biscuits (Gibbs Smith, hardcover, $21.99) in their latest cookbook.

Layered, fluffy, feathery, silky, soft, and velvety biscuits all come together in Southern Biscuits, a book of recipes and baking secrets for every biscuit imaginable. Southern Biscuits features easy biscuits that are hassle-free and undemanding to make, as well as embellished biscuits laced with silky goat butter, crunchy pecans, or tangy pimento cheese, and everything in between.

The biscuits in this book encompass a number of types, from the beaten biscuits of the Old South and England, to biscuits reminiscent of Sunday Supper, to modern trends and ingredient combinations. Try Angel Biscuits–a yeast biscuit sturdy enough to split and fill but light enough to melt in the mouth; Carolina Biscuits–flaky little bites made with cream cheese; or Chocolate Soldiers–mixed with cocoa powder and sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar. You will find biscuits for every occasion, from hearty breakfasts to delicate party hors d’oeuvres.

Filled with beautiful photography, including dozens of how-to photos showing how to mix, stir, fold, roll, and knead, Southern Biscuits is the definitive biscuit baking book.

About the authors:
Nathalie Dupree has written or coauthored many cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-winners Nathalie Dupree’s Southern Memories and Nathalie Dupree’s Comfortable Entertaining, as well as New Southern Cooking, which contains recipes for every dish she cooked on her television show of the same name. Her latest book before Southern Biscuits is Shrimp and Grits. She has hosted more than 300 television shows and specials, which have shown nationally on PBS, The Learning Channel, and The Food Network. Dupree holds and Advanced Certificate from the Cordon Bleu and has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

Cynthia Stevens Graubart is an author and former television producer who began her culinary television production career with “New Southern Cooking with Nathalie Dupree.” She is also the author of The One-Armed Cook: Quick and Easy Recipes, Smart Meal Plans, and Savvy Advice for New (and Not-So-New) Moms, which was a finalist for USABookNews’ Book of the Year, and which has been called the culinary version of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Graubart lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Eleanor Brown

Sat., February 18th, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $45 per person*
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Eleanor Brown explores the subjects of sisterhood, books, and home in her New York Times bestselling debut novel, The Weird Sisters (Berkley, paperback, $15.00, on sale 2/7/12).

*Please note that the ticket price for this event includes one paperback copy of The Weird Sisters (the book can be picked up from Fiction Addiction when the book releases on February 7th, or we can bring it to the event for you).

The Andreas sisters were raised on books – their family motto might as well be, ‘There’s no problem a library card can’t solve.’

Their father, a renowned, eccentric professor of Shakespearean studies, named them after three of the Bard’s most famous characters: Rose (Rosalind – As You Like It), Bean (Bianca – The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia – King Lear), but they have inherited those characters’ failures along with their strengths.

Now the sisters have returned home to the small college town where they grew up – partly because their mother is ill, but mostly because their lives are falling apart and they don’t know where to go next.

Rose, a staid mathematics professor, has the chance to break away from her quiet life and join her devoted fiance in England, if she could only summon up the courage to do more than she’s thought she could. Bean left home as soon as she could, running to the glamour of New York City, only to come back ashamed of the person she has become. And Cordy, who has been wandering the country for years, has been brought back to earth with a resounding thud, realizing it’s finally time for her to grow up.

The sisters never thought they would find the answers to their problems in each other, but over the course of one long summer, they find that everything they’ve been running from – each other, their histories, and their small hometown – might offer more than they ever expected.

About the author:
Eleanor Brown is the New York Times and national-bestselling author of The Weird Sisters, hailed by People magazine as “a delightful debut” and “creative and original” by Library Journal.

Eleanor’s writing has appeared in anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers. The Weird Sisters, her first novel, hit the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and national Indie best seller lists, and is available now from Amy Einhorn Books in the US, and from multiple international publishers.

Born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Eleanor has lived in St. Paul, San Francisco, Philadelphia, South Florida, and Oxford, London, and Brighton, England.  She lives in Colorado with her partner, writer and transmedia superstar, J.C. Hutchins.

Taylor M. Polites

Sat., Feb. 11, 2012 from 12-2pm
@ The Lazy Goat, $25 per person
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Dive into the antebellum South in Taylor Polites’ debut novel, The Rebel Wife (Simon & Schuster, hardcover, $25.00, on sale 2/7/12), about a young widow trying to survive in the deep South of the Reconstruction era.

Augusta Branson was born into antebellum Southern nobility during a time of wealth and prosperity, but now all that is gone, and she is left standing in the ashes of a broken civilization. When her scalawag husband dies suddenly of a mysterious blood plague, she must fend for herself and her young son. Slowly she begins to wake to the reality of her new life: her social standing is stained by her marriage; she is alone and unprotected in a community that is being destroyed by racial prejudice and violence; the fortune she thought she would inherit does not exist; and the deadly blood fever is spreading fast. Nothing is as she believed, everyone she knows is hiding something, and Augusta needs someone to trust. Somehow she must find the truth amid her own illusions about the past and the courage to cross the boundaries of hate, so strong, dangerous, and very close to home. Using the Southern Gothic tradition to explode literary archetypes like the chivalrous Southern gentleman, the good mammy, and the defenseless Southern belle, The Rebel Wife shatters the myths that still cling to the antebellum South and creates an unforgettable heroine for our time.

About the author:
Taylor M. Polites is a novelist living in Providence, Rhode Island, with his small chihuahua, Clovis. He graduated in June 2010 with his MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. He has lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, New York City, St. Louis, and the Deep South. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in History and French and spent a year studying in Caen, France. He has covered arts and news for a variety of local newspapers and magazines, including the Cape Codder, InNewsWeekly, Bird’s Eye View (the in-flight magazine of CapeAir), artscope Magazine, and Provincetown Arts Magazine. The Rebel Wife is his first novel.