The Authors
Val Emmich is a writer, singer-songwriter, and actor. He’s had roles on Vinyl (HBO), 30 Rock (NBC), and Ugly Betty (ABC) and been featured in a bunch of commercials, although he doesn’t do much acting anymore.
His previous book, Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel, is a New York Times bestseller based on the hit Broadway show. His debut novel, The Reminders, was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers selection. A third novel, Maybe We’re Electric, published in September 2021. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. Learn more at valemmich.com.
Jeff Garvin is an award-winning writer of contemporary fiction. His debut novel, Symptoms of Being Human, is an ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, won the 2021 Nutmeg Award, and garnered starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. His sophomore book, The Lightness of Hands, is a Junior Library Guild selection, a Bank Street College Best Book of the year, and received a starred review from School Library Journal.
Jeff also produces and cohosts The Hero’s Journey podcast, examining books and films through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth paradigm. Before becoming a writer, Jeff acted on TV and toured as the lead singer of a rock band. He has a BFA in Film from Chapman University. When he’s not writing, Jeff performs in an 80s cover band, plays Dungeons & Dragons, and spends time with his family and pets in Southern California.. Learn more at jeffgarvinbooks.com.
A.S. King has been called “One of the best Y.A. writers working today” by the New York Times Book Review. King is the author of YA and middle grade novels including the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award-winning Dig, 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Ask the Passengers, and 2011 Printz Honor Book Please Ignore Vera Dietz among others.
Her most recent release is Switch (2021) which has been called a “surrealist masterpiece” by Kirkus Reviews and “a work of literary genius” by Booklist. She is an MFA faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts and spends many months of the year traveling the country speaking to high school students about trauma, emotions, and red velvet cake. Learn more at www.as-king.com.
Lissa Price is the internationally bestselling author of the YA futuristic thriller Starters published by Random House in the US and in twenty-eight countries, with praise from Harlan Ellison, Kami Garcia, and the LA Times. Dean Koontz calls it “a smart, swift, inventive, altogether gripping story.” Kirkus said the sequel, Enders, also a bestseller, was “delightfully disturbing.” Lissa’s publishers toured her in North America, Europe and the Middle and Far East.
Her short story will open the anthology The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie coming in 2023 by Blackstone Publishing. Lissa’s latest project is a thriller for adults.
Lissa graduated from the Faber Academy in London. In addition to living in the UK, she has also resided in Japan and India, and once spent two years circling the globe, going from east to west. As an Asian woman, she supports and encourages diversity in publishing. Her home is in the hills of Los Angeles where she can watch the setting sun from her writing desk. Learn more at lissaprice.com.
Authors’ Books
Maybe We’re Electric by Val Emmich
Tegan Everly is quiet. Known around school simply as the girl with the hand, she’s usually only her most outspoken self with her friend Neel, and right now they’re not exactly talking. When Tegan is ambushed by her mom with a truth she can’t face, she flees home in a snowstorm, finding refuge at a forgotten local attraction—the tiny Thomas Edison museum.
She’s not alone for long. In walks Mac Durant. Striking, magnetic, a gifted athlete, Mac Durant is the classmate adored by all. Tegan can’t stand him. Even his name sounds fake. Except the Mac Durant she thinks she knows isn’t the one before her now—this Mac is rattled and asking her for help.
Over one unforgettable night spent consuming antique records and corner-shop provisions, Tegan and Mac cast aside their public personas and family pressures long enough to forge an unexpectedly charged bond and—in the very spot in New Jersey that inspired Edison’s boldest creations—totally reinvent themselves. But could Tegan’s most shameful secret destroy what they’ve built?
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The Lightness of Hands by Jeff Garvin
Sixteen-year-old Ellie Dante is desperate for something in her life to finally go right. Her father was a famous stage magician until he attempted an epic illusion on live TV—and failed. Now Ellie lives with her dad in a beat-up RV, attending high school online and performing with him at birthday parties and bars across the Midwest to make ends meet.
But when the gigs dry up, their insurance lapses, leaving Dad’s heart condition unchecked and forcing Ellie to battle her bipolar II disorder without medication.
Then Ellie receives a call from a famous magic duo, who offer fifteen thousand dollars and a shot at redemption: they want her father to perform the illusion that wrecked his career—on their live TV special, which shoots in Los Angeles in ten days.
Ellie knows her dad will refuse—but she takes the deal anyway, then lies to persuade him to head west. With the help of her online-only best friend and an unusual guy she teams up with along the way, Ellie makes a plan to stage his comeback. But when her lie is exposed, she’ll have to confront her illness and her choices head-on to save her father—and herself.
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Switch by A.S. King
Time has stopped. It’s been June 23, 2020 for nearly a year as far as anyone can tell. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the worldwide crisis. Not everyone is on board though. Javelin-throwing prodigy Truda Becker is pretty sure her “Solution Time” class won’t solve the world’s problems, but she does have a few ideas what might.
Truda lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father protects every day by nailing it into hundreds of progressively larger boxes. But Truda’s got a crow bar, and one way or another, she’s going to see what happens when she flips the switch.
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Starters by Lissa Price
Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie.
Callie’s only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man. He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders—seniors who want to be young again. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. But the neurochip they place in Callie’s head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter.
Callie soon discovers that her renter intends to do more than party—and that Prime Destinations’ plans are more evil than she could ever have imagined. . . .
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Your Hosts
Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of the award-winning psychological suspense novel The Marsh King’s Daughter, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the US and in 26 other languages. Her follow up novel, The Wicked Sister (August 2020, G.P. Putnam’s Sons), is also an international bestseller and was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of their Best Books of 2020.
The Marsh King’s Daughter was also chosen as one of the best books of 2017 by iBooks, Hudson Booksellers, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Irish Independent, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness and many other booksellers and reviewers, and is soon to be a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn.
Both The Wicked Sister and The Marsh King’s Daughter were selected by the Library of Michigan as Michigan Notable Books, and The Marsh King’s Daughter took home the Barry and the Crimson Scribe Awards for Best Novel. Visit Karen at www.karen-dionne.com
Karen’s newest novel is The Wicked Sister. “Dionne paints a haunting portrait of a family hurtling toward the tragic destiny they can foresee but are powerless to stop.”–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Purchase The Wicked Sister at an independent bookstore near you.
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Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today bestselling author of thirteen novels of suspense. She has won five Agathas, four Anthonys, two Macavitys, the Daphne, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark award. National reviews have called her a “master at crafting suspenseful mysteries” and “a superb and gifted storyteller.” Her 2019 book The Murder List won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the year. Her 2020 book is The First to Lie, of which the Publishers Weekly starred review said, “Stellar. Ryan could win a sixth Agatha with this one.” It is now a nominee for the Anthony Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award.
Hank is also an award-winning investigative reporter at Boston’s WHDH-TV. In addition to 37 EMMYs and 14 Edward R. Murrow awards, Hank’s won dozens of other honors for her ground-breaking journalism. Hank is the co-host of First Chapter Fun, hosts the online mystery interview program for the acclaimed A Mighty Blaze, is a founding teacher at Mystery Writers of America University and served as past president of national Sisters in Crime. Learn more at www.HankPhillippiRyan.com.
Hank’s newest novel, Her Perfect Life, published September 14, 2021 with starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. “Superlative…this is a fast-paced, surprise-packed treat.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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