127: Two novels, Tender Graces and Sweetie, by KATHRYN MAGENDIE

ITEMS: Two novels, Tender Graces and Sweetie, by Kathryn Magendie.

DETAILS: Tender Graces is an Appalachian Family Saga about Virginia Kate, daughter of a beautiful mountain wild child nad a slick, Shakespeare-quoting door-to-door salesman, who returns home to the West Virginia holler to confront her mother’s death and to relive her tuburlent childhood and pain of her mother’s betrayal. Haunted by ghosts and buried family secrets, Virginia Kate struggles to reconcile three generations of her family’s lost innocence. This is the first book in the Graces trilogy.

Sweetie is a wild girl, rough, almost feral, yet brave and endlessly honest. When Melissa, a shy, stuttering town girl, befriends her, the two enrich each other’s lonely lives. But there are some in the Appalachian community who regard Sweetie and her peculiar heritage as suspect. For shy, stuttering Melissa, the wild mountain girl named Sweetie is a symbol of pride and strength. But to many in the Smoky Mountain town, Sweetie is an outcast, a sinister force, or worse.

BIO: Kathryn Magendie is the author of Tender Graces, Secret Graces, and Sweetie. She is Publishing Editor of Rose & Thorn Journal. Her novella Petey will be released in the anthology Firefly Dance with writers Sarah Addison Allen and Augusta Trobaugh in June, and the final Graces book in the Virginia Kate trilogy will be released this fall 2011.

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