Here are a few items of interest to avid book readers:

1)  Ellen Cooney, author of the Publerati novel Thanksgiving, has a wonderful new novel coming on August 5th titled The Mountaintop School for Dogs, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  Ask for it when you are browsing your neighborhood bookstore.  And please read Thanksgiving if you haven’t already, available in all ebook formats and as an on-demand paperback  from the Espresso Book Machine (locations worldwide).

2) Jane Smiley has a new novel called Some Luck, which I plan to read soon, although I am deep into our slush pile and behind on my own reading and editing at the moment following a bout with Lyme Disease.

3)  The Publerati novel Normal Family by Don Trowden was brilliantly excerpted in a recent Ohio newspaper review. It is always great when a reviewer takes the time to share some of the better language found in a novel. One we especially like is when the drunk grandfather, who has just been pulled from the river after submerging the rest of the family on a perilous fishing outing going nowhere, refuses Coast Guard help and marches off in his soaked woolens. He is 6’8″ and a Falstaffian character who was once a famous author and explorer. The young protagonist sees this as: “Grandpa swerved up the lawn like Frankenstein in search of unsuspecting villagers.” This novel contains many similar examples of original and amusing language.

— Caleb