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Page 158 Books is thrilled to welcome author Anika Scott in conversation with Amy Willoughby Burle. Anika Scott is the author of Sinners of Starlight City, out now. Amy Willoughby Burle is the author of Even If Nothing Else Is Certain, out now. Sinners of Starlight City:
From the author of the international bestseller The German Heiress, a gripping historical drama about a woman determined to avenge the crimes against her family, set at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Vengeance is in the family, and the family is a bond like no other… It’s the worst year of the Great Depression, and America needs all the hope it can get. The Chicago World’s Fair, a glittery city-within-a-city, becomes a symbol of the good that’s yet to come. But every utopia has a seedy side—and that’s Rosa Mancuso’s world. As the mysterious Madame Mystique she mixes magic with a dose of bare skin burlesque, bringing customers to the home of the Fair’s carnival rides and spectacles. Rosa doesn’t perform for fame, though. She has come from Mussolini’s Italy to America, where she’s plotting her revenge for the murders of her family. The perpetrator will soon arrive at the World’s Fair via a celebrated Italian air fleet, and Rosa is determined to be prepared. But when her estranged cousin, Mina, comes to her desperate for help, with a dangerous mobster close on her heels, Rosa agrees to protect Mina and her new baby, born across the color line. With the clock ticking, Rosa decides the only way to survive is to make vengeance a family affair and prompt everyone to, at last, confront the sins from their pasts. A gripping story of retribution, belonging, and survival, Sinners of Starlight City boldly explores the complexity of identities straddling ethnic lines and asks, who gets to decide who we are and where we belong?
Anika Scott was a journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune before moving to Germany, where she currently lives in Essen with her husband and two daughters. She has worked in radio, taught journalism seminars at an eastern German university, and written articles for European and American publications. Originally from Michigan, she grew up in a car industry family. Scott is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The German Heiress.
Even If Nothing Else Is Certain:
Dreaming of the future…
Ruby Foster loves her job as a Pack Horse librarian, but secretly she dreams of being a nurse. Since there are no schools for nursing in the hills of rural Kentucky in 1937, Ruby contents herself with harvesting medicinal plants, delivering her beloved library books, and dreaming. Dreaming mostly of a life that doesn’t leave her living in the past. Until one day she discovers that “past” camped out by the Hell for Certain creek. Could it really be Cole, the one who left her heartbroken so many years ago? Just when she starts to believe in her dreams and hope for love again, Cole reveals his true colors. Or is the truth she sees only another illusion?
Outrunning the past….
Cole Cooper didn’t mean to disappear into the night back when he and Ruby were kids, but when your father’s a con artist disappearing happens. Now, haunted by his mistakes and desperate for forgiveness and love, Cole’s back in Certain to right the town’s most egregious wrong. He dreams of being welcomed back home, but he flubs his plan for redemption from the start. Now he’s covered in lies and regrets again and things just keep going from bad to worse. Everything that was within his grasp, including Ruby’s love, is slipping away fast. He wants to be a good man, but tricks and lies are all he’s ever been taught. Will he have the courage it takes to tell the truth and face the consequences?
When nothing else seems certain…
When nothing else in the world seems certain, can the bonds of friendship bring one searching heart and one lost soul together again. Can they find true love? Maybe, if they can see beyond the lies and discover the real truth. If they can see all the way back to the best truth of all…love.
Amy Willoughby-Burle lives in Asheville, NC with her husband and four children. She teaches creative writing and works as a freelance editor when not working on her own fiction. She is also the director of Wildacres Writers Workshop.She is the author of the novels The Lemonade Year and The Year of Thorns and Honey. Her award-winning short fiction has been published in numerous journals and in her collection, Out Across the Nowhere.
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