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New month means new highlighted authors from Simply Held. April’s authors are Louise Erdrich for fiction and Jasmine Guillory for romance.

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Our April fiction author is Louise Erdrich. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. She is the daughter of a Chippewa Indian mother and a German-American father. Her works examine Native-American themes with both sides of her heritage represented through major characters in her writings. Erdrich focuses her subjects usually to the Ojibwa Indians in the northern Midwest, but shifted away from Native American themes to explore German, Polish, and Scandinavian citizens in the early 2000s. Don’t worry! She shifted back to her Native American storylines after that title. Erdrich has written novels, poetry, children’s books, and a memoir about early motherhood. Erdrich currently lives in Minnesota with her daughters (and the ghost that lives in her creaky old house). She is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. She writes primarily literary fiction, children’s fiction, and science fiction.

Erdrich’s newest book is The Sentence, which was published in 2021.

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

In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading “with murderous attention,” must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

This title is also available in the following formats:

• CD Audiobook
• Large Print
• OverDrive eAudiobook
• OverDrive eBook

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Our April romance author is Jasmine Guillory. Guillory is a New York Times  bestselling author known for her Wedding Date series, one of which was a Reese’s Book Club selection (The Proposal). In addition to the Wedding Date series, she has two stand-alone novels and has contributed to the Meant to Be series which she is writing with authors Julie Murphy and Zoraida Cordova.  In addition to her novels, her work has appeared in number journals and magazines,  such as The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appetit, and Time. Guillory is also a frequent book contributor on The Today Show.  She is a Bay Area native who currently lives in Oakland, California amongst the towering stacks of books in her living room. Guillory writes romance!

Guillory’s newest book is Drunk on Love, which was published in 2022.

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

An intoxicating and sparkling new romance by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory.

Margot Noble needs some relief from the stress of running the family winery with her brother. Enter Luke: sexy, charming, and best of all in the too-small world of Napa, a stranger. The chemistry between them is undeniable, and Margot is delighted that she lucked into the perfect one-night stand she’ll never have to see again. That is, until the winery’s newest hire, Luke, walks in the next morning. Margot is determined to keep things purely professional, but when their every interaction reminds her of the attraction still bubbling between them, it proves to be much more challenging than she expects.

Luke Williams had it all, but when he quits his high-salary tech job in Silicon Valley in a blaze of burnout and moves back to Napa to help a friend, he realizes he doesn’t want to tell the world—or his mom—why he’s now working at a winery. His mom loves bragging about her successful son—how can he admit that the job she’s so proud of broke him? Luke has no idea what is next for him, but one thing is certain: he wants more from the incredibly smart and sexy woman he hooked up with—even after he learns she’s his new boss. But even if they can find a way to be together that wouldn’t be an ethical nightmare, would such a successful woman really want a tech-world dropout?

Set against a lush backdrop of Napa Valley wine country, nothing goes to your head as fast as a taste of love—even if it means changing all your plans.

This title is also available in the following formats:

• Large Print
• OverDrive eBook