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CONTACT:
Jill Hendrix
Fiction Addiction
864-675-0540
info@fiction-addiction.com
http://www.fiction-addiction.com
Book Your Lunch with Southern Authors Cassandra King & Janis Owens
 Greenville, SC, October 10, 2012 - Book Your Lunch with bestselling Southern author Cassandra King and her longtime friend, award-winning Southern author Janis Owens, on Wednesday, November 7th, from 12-2 pm at Thornblade Club in Greer. Tickets are $25 each and must be purchased in advance at http://www.bookyourlunch.com or by calling Fiction Addiction at 864-675-0540.
Cassandra King, bestselling Southern author of The Same Sweet Girls (Hyperion, paperback, $6.99), and her longtime friend and fellow writer, Janis Owens, award-winning Southern author of American Ghost (Scribner, hardcover, $25.00), will be discussing the theme of friendship in their books.
In Cassandra King's Same Sweet Girls, none of the Same Sweet Girls are really girls anymore and none of them have actually ever been sweet. But this spirited group of Southern women, who have been holding biannual reunions ever since they were together in college, are nothing short of compelling.
There's Julia Stovall, the First Lady of Alabama, who despite her public veneer, is a down-to-earth gal who only wants to know who her husband is sneaking out with late at night. There's Lanier Sanders, whose husband won custody of their children after he found out about her fling with a colleague. Then there's Astor Deveaux, a former Broadway showgirl who simply can't keep her flirtations in check. And Corrine Cooper, whose incredible story comes to light as the novel unfolds. (Note: One of the Same Sweet Girls lives in Greenville and will be attending the event!)
 In Janis Owens' American Ghost, Jolie Hoyt is a good Southern girl living in Hendrix, a small Florida Panhandle town. The daughter of a Pentecostal preacher who sells insurance on the side, and the best friend of a lively beauty who moves to the big city to pursue a career in interior design, Jolie is all too aware of her family's closet full of secrets and long-held distrust of outsiders. Nevertheless, she throws caution to the wind when she meets Sam Lense, a Jewish anthropology student from Miami, who is in town to study the ethnic makeup of the region.
Jolie and Sam fall recklessly in love and dream of beginning a life together, far away from Jolie's buried past. But their affair ends abruptly when Sam is discovered to have pried too deeply into Hendrix's dark racial history and he becomes the latest victim in a long tradition of small-town violence.
Twelve years later, when a black businessman from Memphis returns to Hendrix to do right by his father's memory, Jolie and Sam are brought together again. They are forced to revisit the unresolved issues of their young love and finally shed light on the ugly history of Jolie's hometown.
.jpg) Cassandra King's first novel, Making Waves in Zion, was published in 1995 by River City Press and reissued in 2004 by Hyperion. Her second novel, The Sunday Wife (2002), was a Booksense Pick, a People Magazine Page-Turner of the Week, a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month selection, a Books-a-Million President's Pick, a South Carolina State Readers' Circle selection, and a Salt Lake Library Readers' Choice Award nominee. In paperback, the novel was chosen by the Nestle Corporation in its campaign to promote reading groups.
Released in 2005, King's third novel, The Same Sweet Girls, became a #1 Booksense Selection and Booksense bestseller, a Southeastern Bookseller Association bestseller, a New York Post Required Reading selection, and a Literary Guild Book-of-the-Month Club selection. King's latest novel, Queen of Broken Hearts, has been hailed as "wonderful," "uplifting," "absolutely fabulous," and "filled with irresistible characters" by fellow Southern writers Sandra Brown, Fannie Flagg, and Dorothea Benton Frank. The theme of friendship shows up prominently in all of her novels.
King's short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Alabama Bound: The Stories of a State, Belles' Letters: Contemporary Fiction by Alabama Women, Stories from Where We Live, and Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe. Outside her time working on her fiction, she has taught writing on the college level, conducted corporate writing seminars, worked as a human-interest reporter for a Pelham, Alabama, weekly paper, and published an article on her second-favorite pastime, cooking, in Cooking Light magazine.
A native of L.A. (Lower Alabama), King currently lives in the Low Country of South Carolina with her husband, novelist Pat Conroy, whom she met when he wrote a blurb for Making Waves.
.jpg) Janis Owens is a novelist, memoirist, folklorist, and storyteller. She is a native of old Florida, born in Marianna in 1960. She attended public school and the University of Florida, where she was a student of Harry Crews' Creative Writing Workshop and earned a degree in English with a minor in Southern history.
She is active in Florida conservation, oral history, historic preservation, and dedicated to the celebration and preservation of small town Florida life. She is by trade a writer, and the award-winning author of My Brother Michael, winner of the Chautauqua South Fiction Award for Best Novel, Myra Sims, The Schooling of Claybird Catts, and the cookbook memoir The Cracker Kitchen. She lives in Newberry, Florida.
If you cannot make the event, you can reserve a personalized copy of any of Ms. King's or Ms. Owens' books by contacting Fiction Addiction in advance at 864-675-0540 or at info@fiction-addiction.com.
ABOUT FICTION ADDICTION
Fiction Addiction is a local, woman-owned, independent bookstore established in 2001. The store carries a mixture of new and used fiction and nofiction, including children's books, as well as gift items. We have recently moved to a new location at 1175 Woods Crossing Road (in the shopping center with Five Guys and Fried Green Tomatoes). For more information, visit our website at http://www.fiction-addiction.com or call us at 864-675-0540.
 ABOUT BOOK YOUR LUNCH
The Book Your Lunch author event program was launched in September 2009, and is a new way to bring authors and readers together -- right here in Greenville. This luncheon series provides the ultimate food for thought with a wide range of authors -- from mystery writers, to award-winning regional novelists to nonfiction and cookbook authors. Jill Hendrix, the owner of Fiction Addiction, founded the event program and is responsible for booking the authors. For more information about Book Your Lunch, please visit our website at http://www.bookyourlunch.com.
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