Best Sellers Club August Authors: Karen Kingsbury and Janet Dailey

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New month means new highlighted authors from the Best Sellers Club! August’s authors are Karen Kingsbury for fiction and Janet Dailey for romance.

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Photograph © Dean Dixon
Photograph © Dean Dixon

Our August fiction author is Karen Kingsbury. She is a New York Times bestselling novelist with more than 25 million copies of her books in print. Many of her novels are in development as major motion pictures.  The Baxter family book series has been developed into a television series. In addition to being an author, she is an adjunct professor of writing at Liberty University.  She currently lives in Tennessee with her husband, where they are close to their children and grandchildren. Kingsbury writes inspirational fiction.

Kingsbury’s newest book is The Baxters: A Prequelpublished in April 2022. This is the prequel to the Baxter Family series.

Curious what this book is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher:

This warmhearted and moving prequel to the “heart-tugging and emotional” (RT Book Reviews) #1 New York Times bestselling Baxter Family Series follows the family members as they face rising tensions during a wedding and a colossal storm.

A terrible storm builds in the early morning sky over Bloomington, Indiana, as Elizabeth Baxter prepares to celebrate her daughter Kari’s wedding to Tim Jacobs. It’s supposed to be the happiest of days, but Elizabeth can’t shake a growing sense of dread. Is the storm a sign? Something bad is about to happen. Elizabeth knows it.

Indeed, there are dark currents of conflict and doubt coursing through the Baxter family. In the midst of them, Kari Baxter is starting to panic. Is marrying Tim a mistake? And what about her family? Her brother Luke is angry and resentful of their sister Ashley, who has recently returned from Paris, a single mom with a son she too often leaves with their parents. At the same time, Ashley and their sister Brooke have lost the faith that is the family’s glue. Against all this, Kari sees Ashley rejecting her longtime love, Landon Blake, who clearly cares for her, no matter what happened in Paris.

When the storm reaches a terrifying crescendo, a shocking moment of danger brings important truths to light. At the end of the long day, can the Baxters remain a family, tested but stronger?

From an author who “writes with seemingly effortless poetic elegance” (Booklist), The Baxters is an unforgettable testament to the power of love, family, and faith.

This book is also available in the following formats:

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Our August romance author is Janet Dailey. Dailey was born in Storm Lake, Iowa and knew that she wanted to be a writer from a very young age. Dailey worked with her husband in construction and land development before they decided to travel the United States. During this traveling, Dailey was inspired to write her Americana series of romances. In this series, Dailey set a novel in every state in the United States. She was also the first American author to write for Harlequin, starting her tenure with them in 1974. She has written 90 plus novels with 21 of them appearing on the New York Times bestseller list. As of today, there are over 324 million print copies of her novels all over the world in 98 countries and in 19 different languages. Janet Dailey died in December 2013 at the age of 69.

Dailey’s newest book is Quicksand, set to be published in August 2022. This is the third book in the Champions series.

Curious what this book is about? Below is a description provided by the publisher.

New York Times bestselling author Janet Dailey’s latest Champions novel tells the rugged, romantic story of an Arizona family ranch in trouble, as the Champion sisters fight to keep their legacy bull-rearing operation strong, going head-to-head —and heart to heart—with some of the toughest men on the rodeo circuit.

Tess Champion knows better than to trust Brock Tolman, the rancher who once swindled her late father in a land deal. But with the Alamo Canyon Ranch in foreclosure, Tess is forced to accept Brock’s offer of a partnership. Brock claims he only wants to breed the Champion bloodline into his own herd. In exchange, he offers Tess one of his own young bulls. Soon enough, Quicksand is the rising star of the rodeo circuit, which only proves Tess is better at picking bulls than she is men. Because she’s way too tempted to surrender to her attraction to Brock, despite her certainty he’s only out to steal her family ranch . . .

It’s not until the tycoon’s private plane crashes in the wilderness, stranding him with Tess, that the truth of their relationship will come out. The Champion family’s future is on the line, but it’s Tess’s heart that will take the hit if she’s fallen for the wrong man . . .

This book is also available in the following format:

The Eighty-Dollar Champion by Elizabeth Letts

November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Into the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition comes the most unlikely of horses-a drab white former plow horse named Snowman-and his rider, Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all longshots – and their win was the stuff of legend. The Eighty-Dollar Champion by Elizabeth Letts tells their extraordinary story.

Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a bleak winter afternoon between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the slaughterhouse. He recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up horse and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harry’s modest farm on Long Island, the horse thrived. But the recent Dutch immigrant and his growing family needed money, and Harry was always on the lookout for the perfect thoroughbred to train for the show-jumping circuit-so he reluctantly sold Snowman to a farm a few miles down the road.   But Snowman had other ideas about what Harry needed. When he turned up back at Harry’s barn, dragging an old tire and a broken fence board, Harry knew that he had misjudged the horse. And so he set about teaching this shaggy, easygoing horse how to fly.

One show at a time, against extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive, the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping.   Here is the dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo, based on the insight and recollections of “the Flying Dutchman” himself. Their story captured the heart of Cold War–era America-a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. Elizabeth Letts’s message is simple: Never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us. (provided by publisher)