Book Festival of the MJCCA: Meredith Lavender, Kendall Shores, & Jenna Blum

The 35th Edition of the Book Festival of the MJCCA Presents Meredith Lavender, Kendall Shores, & Jenna Blum

Author Talk, Q & A & Book Signing

MEREDITH LAVENDER & KENDALL SHORES, Perfect Life: A Novel

Following a shocking murder, a young woman must face the secrets from her past—and a husband she thought she knew—in this twisty, sizzling novel from the bestselling authors of Happy Wife, a Read With Jenna Book Club pick!

Set once again amid the glittering lakefront estates and country club crowd of Winter Park, Florida, Perfect Life by Atlanta’s own Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores follows Este Walker, who fled California five years ago to reinvent herself among Florida’s elite. A retired-at-thirty-five former tech executive, Este has it all: a mansion in glamorous Winter Park, a picture-perfect marriage, and more money than she could ever spend. She’s golden—as long as no one looks too closely at how she got that money.

But when a dead body surfaces in her pool, Este’s carefully curated world fractures, and the secret life she thought she’d buried resurfaces with a vengeance. Thrust into a high-stakes murder investigation, she must untangle a web of lies to answer the question: what really happened in California—and has it followed her home?

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Meredith Lavender has spent more than two decades working as a television writer. She served as Showrunner/Executive Producer on Max’s The Flight Attendant as well as an Executive Producer on Nashville (ABC), among other shows. Currently, she’s in development on multiple TV projects and adaptations.

Kendall Shores spent years leading corporate communications for tech companies and nonprofit organizations, including Mailchimp and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Now, she prefers writing the kinds of stories she used to daydream about between deadlines. 

Kendall and Meredith both live in Atlanta with their respective families.

JENNA BLUM, Murder Your Darlings: A Novel

For every woman who’s ever fallen for a bad man comes a hilarious and eviscerating tale of love, loss, and deadlines from New York Times bestselling author Jenna Blum.

Known for such brilliant historical novels as Those Who Save Us and The Lost Family, A Mighty Blaze co-founder and New York Times bestselling author Jenna Blum brings us a contemporary, suspenseful novel about love, loss, and revenge in the world of books.

Simone “Sam” Vetiver is a mid-career novelist finishing a lukewarm publicity tour while facing a deadline for a new book on which she’s totally blocked. Recently divorced, Sam is worrying where her life is going when she receives glowing fan mail from stratospherically successful author William Corwyn, renowned for his female-centric novels. When William and Sam meet and his literary sympathy is as intense as their chemistry, both writers think they’ve found The One.

But as in their own novels, things between Sam and William are not what they seem. William has multiple stalkers, including a scarily persistent one named The Rabbit. He lives on a remote Maine island, where his writer life resembles The Shining. And when writers turn up dead, including from The Darlings support group William runs, Sam has to ask: Is it The Rabbit—William’s #1 Stalker? Another woman scorned? Can William be everything he seems?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jenna Blum is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of the novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family. She is the CEO and cofounder of the online author interview platform A Mighty Blaze and one of Oprah.com readers’ Top 30 Women Writers. Jenna earned her MA in creative writing at Boston University and has taught workshops for BU, Grub Street Writers, A Mighty Blaze, and numerous other institutions for more than twenty-five years. She interviewed Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and is a professional public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally to speak about her work. Jenna is based in Boston.

Books will be available for purchase on the day of the event from our partner bookseller, A Cappella Books!

All sales are final. Tickets and books are non-refundable.