Spotlight of A Shoe Story by Jane L. Rosen

PHOTO SOURCE:
TYPORAMA
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A SHOE STORY

JANE L. ROSEN

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF TINA JOELL |PUBLICIST | BERKLEY | PEGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

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For those who loved shows like Sex and the City and Girls, the story is a quintessential NYC story about second chances. 

 

Readers will fall head over (high) heels in love for this beach read (if there is anything more perennial than the beach, it's a great pair of shoes).

 

A SHOE STORY is a perfect beach read (if there is anything more perennial than the beach, it's a great pair of shoes), but Rosen is a master at weaving subtle yet poignant themes into her funny and heartfelt novels. 

 

In Rosen’s signature style, this book addresses grief and loss in a way that is vibrant and warm, and the story is a journey of personal discovery with a delicious love story in the mix. Fans of Jennifer Weiner, Linda Holmes, and Kristan Higgins will devour this story.

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Publicity Contacts:  

 

Danielle Keir (dkeir@prh.com) • Tina Joell (tjoell@prh.com)

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PRAISE FOR A SHOE STORY:

In Rosen's latest, Esme Nash hopes she can figure it out, one gorgeous pair of shoes at a time... Balancing complicated
love interests all while finding herself proves to be difficult—but doesn’t hurt too badly in the right pair of shoes... A Shoe Story is about finding yourself after loss, which will resonate with readers.”—Booklist

“It is a smart, sensitive and incredibly satisfying romantic comedy, studded with fun insider tidbits about New York City. Count me as Jane L. Rosen’s biggest fan—and make your summer sweeter by reading A Shoe Story.”—Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of 28 Summers

“Read A Shoe Story and fall in love—with its heroine Esme Nash, with its big-hearted cast of characters and with NewYork City, whether for the first time or all over again.”—Katie Couric

“Beach Read meets The Notebook in this utterly absorbing Greenwich Village tale of first loves and second chances.”—Jo Piazza, New York Times bestselling author of We are Not Like Them

 

“This is Jane L. Rosen’s best book yet... Her sense of humor, excellent character depictions, fabulous dialogue and strong sense of place make this story extra sole-ful (can’t help myself).”—Zibby Owens, author of Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids

 

“Readers will identify with A Shoe Story’s heroine Esme Nash as she grapples with figuring out if what she once desired is still the life for her in this charming, clever and irresistible tale. Trust me, you’ll want to walk a mile or more in Esme’s shoes.”—Elyssa Friedland, author of Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

 

“Perfect for fans of Rosen’s Nine Women, One Dress, A Shoe Story shows us the power of the right shoe to change our mood, or even our lives.”
—Brenda Janowitz, author of The Liz Taylor Ring 

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ABOUT A SHOE STORY:

A young woman has a closet full of shoes and one month to discover the future she thought she'd lost in this captivating new novel from the author of Eliza Starts a Rumor and Nine Women, One Dress.

Esme Nash is eager to leave her small town and begin her carefully planned post-grad life: a move to New York City, an apartment with her loving college boyfriend, and a fancy job at an art gallery. But when tragedy strikes, instead of heading to Manhattan, she returns home to care for her ailing father, leaving every bit of her dream behind.
 
Seven trying years later, Esme is offered a dog-sitting job in Greenwich Village by a mysterious stranger, giving her access to all of her long-buried hopes and dreams—as well as to an epic collection of designer shoes. Esme jumps at a second chance to step into the future she's sure was meant to be hers.
 
As she retraces her steps, one pair of borrowed shoes at a time, making new friends and reconnecting with her old love, Esme tries on versions of herself she didn’t know existed. But the hazy August days and warm summer nights pass too quickly, and Esme must decide how much of the life she imagined still fits, and what—and who—is on the road ahead of her.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

PHOTO CREDIT:  LORI BERKOWITZ

Jane L. Rosen is an author and screenwriter whose critically acclaimed first novel, Nine Women, One Dress, has been translated into ten languages. She lives in New York City and on Fire Island with her husband and three daughters. Follow Rosen on social media:

Facebook: JaneLRosenAuthor

Instagram: @JLRosen

Twitter: @JaneLRosen1

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This Week At Silver's Reviews

Looks like a great first week of July!!

Spotlight of Out Of Her Depth by Lizzy Barber

OUT OF HER DEPTH

LIZZY BARBER

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF  JUSTINE SHA | SENIOR PUBLICIST | PARK ROW BOOKS, HANOVER SQUARE PRESS, MIRA BOOKS, GRAYDON HOUSE, INKYARD PRESS, HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS, HARLEQUIN, HARLEQUIN TRADE PUBLISHING.

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For fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley, an atmospheric summer thriller set in the sun-drenched Tuscan countryside as a college student becomes embroiled in a group of privileged and manipulative young sophisticates.

Out of Her Depth is an atmospheric summer thriller featuring privileged elite, love rivalries, back-stabbing, bed-hopping, and murder.

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ABOUT OF OUT OF HER DEPTH:

 

Rachel lands her dream summer job at a luxurious Tuscan villa. 

She’s quickly drawn into a new group of rich and beautiful sophisticates and their world of partying, toxic relationships, and even more toxic substances.

They’ve never faced consequences, are used to getting everything. But then someone goes too far. Someone dies. And nothing will ever be the same.

Lizzy Barber’s debut A Girl Named Anna won the Daily Mail First Novel Competition.

 

In her newest and even more unputdownable work, she weaves a clever and deadly web of manipulation and desire.

 

A summer thriller rife with back-stabbing, bed-hopping, and murder, Out of Her Depth is a perfect escapist read for fans of Euphoria, J.T. Ellison’s Her Dark Lies, or Rachel Hawkins’s Reckless Girls.

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EXCERPT OF OUT HER DEPTH:

Before you judge me, remember this: a girl died, but it wasn’t my fault.

I know that seems like a pathetic confessional. Even more pathetic because the confession itself has, until this point, never been uttered.

I’ve wanted to. Believe me, I’ve wanted to.

The words have formed themselves on the precipice of my tongue, palpitating with their ugly need to be heard, to make me part of the narrative. To declare to the A-level students when I see it coming up on their news feeds, languorously debating it, now, once more, as it has risen into public consciousness twenty-one years after the fact: I was there.

When they stumble in late to my lesson, less eager to talk of the trapassato prossimo than about who fucked whom at last night’s social, and whether crimped hair really is making a comeback.

I was there.

When they blink at me from faces still etched with yesterday’s makeup, reeking of the top-shelf vodka and menthol cigarettes that their house mistresses will studiously ignore.

I was there.

When they declare they “really struggled with this week’s essay” so they only have notes, and they say, “About that C on the mock exam… Did you know my parents funded the library?” and they don’t even bother to wait for the response as they pull out their laptops and glance at their watches, and they think to themselves, Boring bitch has never lived.

I was there.

I imagine each letter incubating in the saliva that pools in the side of my gums. I picture myself standing, drawing the blinds. An illicit eyebrow raise that will make them pause, look up at me anew, place their laptops on the floor as I edge toward them.

Screw Dante. Let me tell you a real story about Florence.

..….

Now

I am just leaving for dinner when I hear.

People talk of remembering exactly where they were when great events happened: Princess Di, the Twin Towers, Trump. I know this isn’t quite on the same scale, but I’ll remember exactly where I was, all the same.

I’ve had back-to-back lessons all day, but now, at last, I have an hour to myself, the only person left in the languages office. I spend it working on my paper “Pirandello and the Search for Truth” for the Modern Language Review, barely coming up for air. This is the part of academia I enjoy the most: the research, the pulling together of an idea, the rearranging of words and thoughts on the page until they start to take on a life of their own, form arguments, cohesion. I’m hoping that this will be the one they’ll finally agree to publish.

I am the only French and Italian teacher at Graybridge Hall, 

have been for the last ten years. When they decided to introduce Italian for the younger years, as well as the older students, I did suggest that perhaps now it would be time to look at hiring someone else. But Ms. Graybridge, the eponymous head—and third of that name to have held the position—reminded me that the school’s ethos was “personal and continuous care for every girl.” Which didn’t really make sense as a rebuttal, but which I knew was shorthand for no, and which she knew—because of certain circumstances under which I assumed my position in the first place—I wouldn’t argue with.

Not that I don’t enjoy teaching. Sometimes. “shaping young minds” and all that seems like it should be a worthy cause. When I was younger, much younger, I imagined maybe I would do a PhD, become a professor. I also thought about diplomatic service, traveling the world as a translator, journalism, maybe, why not? Instead I sit through mock orals on topics as ground-breaking as Food and Eating Out, Cinema and TV, and My Family.

My rumbling stomach is the first signal I have that evening is approaching, and when I tear myself away from my laptop screen to look at the darkening sky, I decide to ditch my planned root around in the fridge, and be sociable instead. Wednesday is quiz night at the pub near school. A group of teachers go every week, the little thrill they get as their cerebral cortexes light up with a correct answer just about making up for a day spent asking the girls to kindly not look at their Apple Watches until break, and maybe not take their makeup out of their Marc Jacobs backpacks until class is over just this once.

I close down my laptop and do a brisk tidy of the room before slipping on my coat and scarf, and am just about to slide my phone into my rucksack when an alert catches my eye—specifically, a name, bouncing out of the BBC News push notification, one I have avoided all thought of for a long while, as much out of circumstance as necessity.

Sebastian Hale.

I freeze in the doorway—phone clutched in my hand as preciously as though it were the Rosetta stone—and look again, not quite believing I saw it right, presuming perhaps it was just wishful thinking, a long hour of screen-staring playing tricks on my eyes, that could have conjured his name before me.

But there it is. That name. Those five syllables. The six vowels and seven consonants that have held more significance for me than any word or sentence written in my entire attempted academic career.

And next to them, three words that throw my whole world off kilter, that see me reaching for the door handle and wrenching it shut, all thoughts of dinner gone from my mind:

Sebastian Hale Appeal Proceeds Tonight.

I sit at my desk, lights off, face illuminated by the white glow of my phone screen, and read someone else’s report of the story I know so well. The story I have lived. I place the phone facedown on the desk, snuffing out its light, and press my palms into the woodwork. The feel of my flesh rubbing against the desk’s smooth surface grounds me, helps me process the report—think.

I knew there had been requests for appeals over the years, all denied by the Corte d’Assise d’Appello. A change of lawyer, probably hoping that new eyes on the case could find something that was missed. But they’ve all come to nothing. How did I miss this?

If he is retried, if there is any possibility that he might be released…everything would change.

After the initial trial, after my part was done and I could finally go home and resume the life I had worked so hard to live. I tried—I really, truly tried—to put it behind me.

That was what she did, after all, and I wanted to follow her lead. I have always wanted to follow her lead. But that time has never truly left me. Sometimes, it will take the smallest thing—the light filtering through a window just so, a particular kind of humid heat, walking past a patisserie and being hit with a waft of baked vanilla sweetness—and it all comes back to me with cut-glass clarity. The sound of our laughter ricocheting off ocher-colored walls. The clink of glasses and the taste of hot weather, raw red wine. The touch of sweat-dewed skin. The scent of pine. The giddy, delightful feeling of being young and happy and having the rest of our lives spooling out in front of us.

These are the good things—the things I want to remember.

The bad things…those I have no choice but to remember.

And now, at the sight of his name alone, I am instantly transported: flying on the wings of a deep déjà vu, away from the cold late-autumn day and the dusty corners of my tired office and back, back, back to that time—that summer.

To those gold-tinged days and months that crescendoed so spectacularly into those final, onyx hours.

To the start.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

PHOTO CREDIT:  JOHN CAREY

Lizzy Barber studied English at Cambridge University.

 

Having previously dabbled in acting and film development, she has spent the last ten years as head of marketing for a restaurant group.

 

Her first novel, A Girl Named Anna, won the Daily Mail and Random House First Novel Prize. 

She lives in London with her family.

 

Buy Links:

 

BookShop.org

Harlequin 

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Books-A-Million

Powell’s

Social Links:

 

Author Website

Twitter: @ByLizzyBarber

Facebook: @ByLizzyBarber

Instagram: @ByLizzyBarber

Goodreads

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The German Wife by Kelly Rimmer

 

1933 - we meet Lizzie and Henry in the United States and Sofie and Jurgen in Germany.

Lizzie and Henry are children and work on their family’s almost bankrupt farm. Their farm failed, Lizzie married, and Henry was sent to fight in the war.  Lizzie really didn’t want to get married, and Henry ended up with PTSD from the war. 

Jugren and Sofie are well off until Jurgen is forced out of his job at the university because he wouldn’t comply with the German thinking and as a result had to work for the Germans on the rocket program or be without work and/or in jail.

Jurgen didn’t want to be part of it because he knew the rocket program wasn’t really going to be for rockets but for explosives, but Jurgen had no choice.

1950 - we meet the characters again in the United States.

Lizzie and her husband’s home is in Huntsville, Alabama, and Henry lives with them.  Both are not fond of the Germans who are here. The entire town has a difficult time accepting the Germans and their families.

Jurgen has been here for five years working on Operation Paperclip without his family.  When his family arrives, the town is to welcome his family and the other German families, but it is a difficult get together - especially for Lizzie and Sofia.

Sofie tried to explain what they really went through and that they didn’t agree but had to.  Lizzie and others didn’t want to hear it.

Ms. Rimmer did an amazing job of research.  I had never heard of Operation Paperclip/Rocket Program.

THE GERMAN WIFE is simply marvelous...well researched and has a terrific story line.

You will feel all the emotions each character is feeling in both time periods through Ms. Rimmer’s marvelous writing style and learn the difficult times for those who lived in Germany and resisted or spoke out and learn about the Americans who lived here during the depression and through the dust bowl.

Historical fiction fans will not want to miss THE GERMAN WIFE, but be aware readers will also learn of more horrors during WWII and the lingering effects it had on American servicemen. 5/5

This book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Before I Let You Go, The Things We Cannot Say, and Truths I Never Told You. 

 

She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. 

 

Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. 

 

Please visit her at https://www.kellyrimmer.com/

SOCIAL LINKS:

Author website: https://www.kellyrimmer.com/

Facebook: @Kellymrimmer

Twitter: @KelRimmerWrites

Instagram: @kelrimmerwrites

BUY LINKS:

Bookshop.org

IndieBound

Barnes & Noble  

Amazon

Indigo