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Competition for a bridal magazine cover unleashes mayhem, forcing a mastermind maid of honor to stop being a people pleaser and start figuring out what she wants out of life. Don't miss this hilarious, smart coming-of-age story.

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We’re a women-led company on a mission to treat authors and readers like rock stars.

Created by Zibby Owens (author, podcaster, publisher, bookstore owner, and mother of four) and team, the Zibby-verse offers countless ways (okay, fine, we can count them) for the bookish to convene and connect.

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Exposure

Coming September 10, 2024

 

Exposure forces readers to reckon with both sides of a story that’s not easily reduced to right or wrong. 

 

 

 

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One night, two people, four sides of a story.

 

In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and, after a chance meeting, go home together. 

 

Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend Annie is back in LA for the first time in more than a decade. As teenagers, Juliette and Annie shared an enviable bond, memorialized by Juliette’s mother, Margot, a renowned photographer. When Annie returns to the Topanga Canyon home where they spent their idyllic adolescence, she makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build. 

 

Spanning decades, from LA to Chicago, and told through Annie, Juliette, Noah, and Jesse’s perspectives, this powerful, provocative debut novel delves into one life-changing night and the complex lives and relationships of those affected by it, exploring how race, artistic ambition, and grief expose different versions of the same story.

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Exposure

The Goodbye Process

Coming July 30, 2024

 

What happens when you are forced to let go of the things you love the most? What are you left with?

 

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In her stunning debut short story collection, The Goodbye Process, Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye.

 

The stories—which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny—will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside the house; a preteen girl caught shoplifting finds herself in grave danger; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife’s funeral is a success. Again and again, Jones’s characters find themselves facing the ends of things: relationships, health, and innocence.


Arresting, original, and beautifully rendered, this story collection packs a punch, just the way grief does―knocking us off our feet.

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The Goodbye Process

Wedding Issues

Coming April 2, 2024 



Competition for a bridal magazine cover unleashes mayhem, forcing a mastermind maid of honor to stop being a people pleaser and start figuring out what she wants out of life. A hilarious, smart coming-of-age story.

 

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Olivia “Liv” Fitzgerald’s life is on ambition autopilot. The soon-to-be-lawyer has her life plan set and can talk anyone into anything. Well, almost anything. When her scheming aunt throws her cousin, Kali, into a competition for Southern Charm’s cover alongside Liv’s best friend, Leighton, all hell breaks loose. To save the day, Liv only has to:



a) Secure the Southern Charm cover for Leighton
b) Keep Aunt Charlotte happy—and keep Kali’s wedding running smoothly
c) Finish her final year of law school and nab a coveted NYC big law job
d) Win over the guy of her dreams



Easy, right? From engagement parties to rehearsal dinners, readers will root for Liv as she balances her schemes, dreams, and double maid-of-honor duties.

 

Read the first chapter!

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Wedding Issues

Pearce Oysters

Coming June 25, 2024



A divided family. A devastated community. And the disaster that brings them all together.

 

 

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Pearce Oysters, a family drama set on the Louisiana coastline during the historic 2010 oil spill, follows the Pearces, local oyster farmers whose business, family, and livelihood are on the brink of collapse.



This is eye-opening, eco-fiction at its best—a story that highlights the grit and beauty of lives lived in an overlooked corner of the American South. Diving deep into the bonds of family, culture, class, and industry, the novel elevates the voices of deeply sympathetic characters: Jordan, the reluctant head of his family’s storied oyster company; May, his distressed, widowed mother; and Benny, his beatnik musician brother, who returns from New Orleans in their time of crisis.

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Pearce Oysters

I Want You More

Coming May 21, 2024

 

 

A ghostwriting gig in the Hamptons becomes far more than a job in this sexy, atmospheric, and deliciously tense story. 

 

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Reeling from the death of her father, Zara Pines accepts a ghostwriting gig for celebrity chef Jane Bailey. Jane, star of the wildly popular cooking show 30 Bucks Tops, invites Zara to live in her East Hampton home for the summer. Zara doesn’t want to go, but Jane insists.

 

As the two women create Jane’s book, their attachment grows stronger. Zara, who’s lost and in search of an identity, finds one in the shadow of Jane. She wears Jane’s clothes, adopts Jane’s mannerisms, and speaks like Jane. Eventually, the line between them blurs and Zara starts to see the side Jane keeps hidden from the cameras.

 

This dark and twisty novel about fame, lies, and obsession will make even the most open-hearted reader question how safe it is to trust the people they love.

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I Want You More

Here After: A Memoir

Published March 5, 2024

  • A USA TODAY Bestseller
  • Starred reviews from Kirkus ReviewsBooklist, and Library Journal
  • A March Book of the Month Selection
  • An Apple Books “Best Book of March”
  • SheReads and ELLE Most Anticipated Book of 2024

 

Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a stunning, taut memoir from debut author Amy Lin so finely etched and powerful that it will alter readers' hearts.

 

 

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“When he dies, I fall out of time.”



Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. But on a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It is the last time she sees her husband alive.



Ten days after this seismic loss, Amy is in the hospital, navigating her own shocking medical crisis and making life-or-death decisions about her treatment.



What follows is a rich and unflinchingly honest accounting of her life with Kurtis, the vortex created by his death, and the ongoing struggle Amy faces as she attempts to understand her own experience in the context of commonly held “truths” about what the grieving process looks like. 



Here After is a love story and a meditation on the ways in which Kurtis’ death shatters any set ideas Amy ever held about grief, strength, and memory. Its power will last with you long after the final page.

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Here After: A Memoir

Burst

Published April 04, 2023 

 

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize


Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards, Silver Medal - Literary Fiction

 

Featured on PBS NewsHour 


Named by Good Morning America, New York Post, and Los Angeles Daily News as one of the Best Books of Spring 2023

 

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A deeply moving debut novel from the award-winning author of Yes, Yes, Cherries (“Funny, brave, and amazing”—Lorrie Moore) that explores the relationship complexities between mothers and daughters, the desire to escape, and the longing to connect. Viva has always found ways to manage her mother’s impulsive, eccentric and addictive personality. She’s had to—for her entire life, it has always been Viva and Charlotte against the world. After accidentally discovering an innate ability for dance, Viva chases her new passion with the same fervor with which her mother chases the bottle.



Over the years, Viva’s talent becomes a ticket to a life of her own, and as she moves further away from home to pursue her dream, Charlotte struggles to make peace with her own past as a failed artist and the effects of her addiction. When tragedy strikes, Viva begins a downward spiral and must decide whether she will repeat her mother’s mistakes or finally take control of her life. Told from interwoven perspectives with lyrical prose as deft as a choreographed dance.

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Burst

End Credits: How I Broke Up With Hollywood

Published August 29, 2023

 

 

A candid and revealing look at life in television, Hollywood, and work in the writer's room, from an insider who wrote for some of the most popular television shows in history: Friends, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad.

 

 

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Ever since Patty Lin retired from television writing at the ripe age of thirty-eight, people have asked her: “Why would you quit such a cool career?” Especially when they find out she worked on some of the most successful shows in television history. But what if achieving your professional dreams comes at too high a personal cost? That’s what Patty Lin started to ask herself after years in the cutthroat TV industry. One minute she was a tourist, begging her way into the audience of Late Night with David Letterman. Just a few years later, she was an insider who—through relentless hard work and sacrifice—had earned a seat in the writers’ rooms of the hottest TV shows of all time. While writing for FriendsFreaks and GeeksDesperate Housewives and Breaking Bad, Patty steeled herself against the indignities of a chaotic, abusive, male-dominated work culture, not just as one of the few women in the room, but as the only Asian person.

Funny, eye-opening, and sobering, this inside-Hollywood story will resonate with anyone who has struggled with their work and on their life journey. And it will inspire others to listen to their inner voices and know when it’s time to get out.

 

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End Credits: How I Broke Up With Hollywood

End of the Hour

Published November 14, 2023

 

 

What happens when a trauma therapist is traumatized by loss?

 

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Esteemed trauma therapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis knew how to help her patients process grief. For nearly twenty years, Meghan expected that this clinical training would inoculate her against the effects of personal trauma. But when her father died after a year-long battle with cancer, followed by her mother’s unexpected passing while on their family vacation, she came undone.

 

Thrown into a maelstrom of grief, with long-buried childhood tragedy rising to the surface, Meghan knew what she had to do―check herself into the same trauma facility to which she often sent her clients. In treatment, trading the therapist’s chair for the patient’s couch, Meghan took her first steps toward healing. 

 

A brave story of confronting life’s hardest moments with emotional honesty, End of the Hour is for anyone who has experienced the unpredictable, lasting power of grief―and wondered how they’d ever get through it.

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End of the Hour

Everyone But Myself

Published January 9, 2024

 

A USA TODAY Bestseller

 

Funny, honest, and inspiring for readers feeling overwhelmed by life, Everyone But Myself is like a best friend’s story of how she returned to solid ground while embracing chaos along the way.

 

Featured in The Washington Post, She Reads Most Anticipated, and The New York Post

 

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For Julie, an elementary school librarian and mother of two boys, there was no time for debilitating anxiety. Yet the terrifying aftershocks of her first panic attack left her grappling with questions about the causes of her mental health crisis and where it would lead next.

What follows is a hopeful, honest account of love and loss, a husband who can’t read minds, disastrous family outings, and finding a path (with help from loved ones and a few key new friends) to the joy of a well-lived life.

Sure to resonate with mothers spread thin by the demands of modern family life, Everyone But Myself offers an intimate portrait of how one woman found her way back to herself.

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Everyone But Myself

Hedge

Published June 06, 2023

 

 

A summer away. One troubled marriage. Two daughters. And the love interest that threatens to ruin it all.

 

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Maud is a talented garden historian and devoted mother to daughters Ella and Louise. Motivated to reinvigorate her career and escape her troubled marriage, she accepts a summer job restoring the garden of a lush, 19th-century Hudson Valley estate.

 

While waiting for her daughters to join her at the end of their school year, Maud meets coworker, archeologist Gabriel Crews, whose passion for landscape history matches her own. When their immediate and intense friendship ignites, it sets in motion a seismic shock that will profoundly change Maud's life, as well as the lives of everyone she cares about. Hedge is a deeply moving portrait of a woman’s longing to be a good mother while still answering the call of her soul and mind.

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Hedge

Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways

Published October 3, 2023

 

 

An ode to the power of the human spirit and the written word to combat the most harrowing of childhood memories.  

 

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Brittany Means’s childhood was a blur of highways and traumas that collapsed any effort to track time. Riding shotgun as her mother struggled to escape abusive relationships, Brittany didn’t care where they were going—to a roadside midwestern motel, a shelter, or The Barn in Indiana, the cluttered mansion her Pentecostal grandparents called home—as long as they were together. But every so often, her mom would surprise her—and leave.

As Brittany grew older and questioned her own complicated relationships and the poverty, abuse, and instability that enveloped her, she began to recognize that hell wasn’t only the place she read about in the Bible; it was the cycle of violence that entrapped her family. Through footholds such as horror movies, neuropsychology, and strong bonds, Brittany makes sense of this cycle and finds a way to leave it.

While untangling the web of her most painful memories, Brittany crafts a tale of self-preservation, resilience, and hope with a unique narrative style—a sparkling example of the human ability to withstand the most horrific experiences and still thrive.

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Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways

My What If Year

Published February 07, 2023

 

 

An exuberant, hilarious memoir about a woman who pauses her successful career for a year and explores the “What If” jobs of her dreams.

 

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On the cusp of turning forty, Alisha Fernandez Miranda has climbed to the peak of personal and professional success, but at a price; she’s overworked and exhausted.

 

Bravely, Miranda decides to give herself a break, temporarily pausing her stressful career as the CEO of her own consulting firm. With the tentative blessing of her husband and eight-year-old twins, she leaves her home in London to spend one year exploring the dream jobs of her youth, seeking answers to the question, “What If?”

 

What follows is a spirited and hilarious journey for Alisha - and the reader. Alisha’s “What If” year reveals that she can achieve success on her own terms by embodying the spirit of the intern: never stop learning, be flexible, and understand that failure is a prerequisite for growth.

 

For anyone who’s ever felt stuck in a rut, My What If Year proves that it’s never too late to say yes to second chances and explore the roads untraveled throughout your life.

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My What If Year

Super Bloom

Published May 02, 2023

 

 

Massage therapist Joan Johnston may work at an iconic Vermont spa, but her life feels anything but serene. She’s deep in debt, burnt out, and still grieving the death of her boyfriend.          

 

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Enter spa guest Carmen Bronze, a hotheaded bestselling romance author, who offers Joan a chance to get back in her boss’s good graces. All Joan needs to do is slip Carmen spa secrets for her next book, but what if she wants to write it herself?

A heartfelt, hope-filled debut, Super Bloom will have readers rooting for Joan on every page—and laughing out loud at her one-of-a-kind wit.

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Super Bloom

The House Of Plain Truth

Published January 30, 2024



 

 "Hemans’ thoughtful family tale is a balm for readers." Kirkus Reviews 

 

A lyrical, lush, evocative story about a fractured Jamaican family and a daughter determined to reclaim her home.

 

 

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With news of her father’s passing, Pearline abruptly leaves her daughter and grandchildren behind in Brooklyn to return to her childhood home in Jamaica. But Pearline isn’t prepared for her father’s puzzling deathbed wish that she find her siblings—whom she hasn’t seen in 60 years—and discover the secret that tore her family apart. 

 

Moving through time and place, from Cuba to Montego Bay and from Brooklyn to Havana, The House of Plain Truth traces Pearline’s reconciliation of what she thought she knew about her family and the truth of their origin.

 

Inspired by the author's own family story, this delicate, incisive novel explores the divided loyalties within a family, the true meaning of home, and what one woman must sacrifice to finally get what she wants.



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The House Of Plain Truth

The Last Love Note

Published November 28, 2023


A December Indie Next Pick
The Target December Book Club Pick

A Book of the Month Selection
A Washington Post Noteworthy Book

 

You may never stop loving the one you lost. But you can still find love again. 

 

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Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she’s grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university fundraising job, always dropping the balls—and yet clinging to her sense of humor.

 

Lurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she also navigates an overbearing mom and a Tinder-obsessed best friend who's determined to matchmake Kate with her hot new neighbor.

 

When an in-flight problem leaves Kate and her boss, Hugh, stranded for a weekend on the east coast of Australia, she finally has a chance, away from her son, to really process her grief and see what’s right in front of her. Can she let go of the love of her life and risk her heart a second time?

 

When it becomes clear that Hugh is hiding a secret, Kate turns to the trail of scribbled notes she once used to hold her life together. The first note captured her heart. Will the last note set it free?

 

The Last Love Note will make readers laugh, cry, and renew their faith in the resilience of the human heart—and in love itself.

 

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The Last Love Note

Wednesdays At One

Published July 11, 2023 

 

If you don't confront your past . . . It might confront you first. 



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Dr. Gregory Weber appears to have an enviable life. He's a renowned clinical psychologist residing in an elegant home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Liv, and their two kids. But Gregory feels increasingly disconnected. His marriage is strained, his children are distant, and he can’t stop fixating on an unforgivable mistake he made when he was seventeen. Something no one else knows about.

 

So when an unscheduled client named Mira starts to appear in his office each week with knowledge about his past, Gregory quickly grows obsessed with her. Is she a new patient? A secret referral from a colleague? Someone connected to his teenage transgression? 

 

As his attraction for Mira grows more intense with each session, so does her probing scrutiny of him. Soon Gregory’s professional boundaries begin to dissolve, and he becomes the patient, desperate to uncover his connection to this mysterious woman and find out what she wants from him.

 

In searching for the answers, Gregory risks losing everything that matters: his career, his family, and his mind.

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Wednesdays At One

Wine People

Published August 01, 2023

 

 

An intoxicating escape into the cutthroat world of wine and the complicated terrain of women’s friendship.

 

 

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What happens when two ambitious young women, opposite in every way, join forces in a competitive male-dominated industry?

Wren and Thessaly collide when they land coveted jobs at a glamorous New York City boutique wine importer. Hardworking, by-the-book Wren comes from a modest background and has everything to prove while Thessaly hails from a family of prestigious California growers—but she is plagued by self-doubt. Thrown together at work, where they're expected to have exquisite palates, endless tolerance for alcohol and socializing, and the ability to sell, sell, sell, they regard each other with suspicion.

It’s only on an important European business trip—with everything on the line for both of them—that they unexpectedly forge an alliance that will change the course of their careers and personal lives.

With mouth-watering descriptions of food and wine, Wine People takes readers from France, Germany, and Italy to the Midwest and Sonoma. An utterly entertaining page-turner that explores how close friends can both misjudge and uplift each other.

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Wine People

Women Are The Fiercest Creatures

Published March 07, 2023

 

 

In this wildly addictive novel, three overlooked women take on the charming, manipulative tech CEO who wrote them out of his startup’s history.

 

 

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A Look Inside

 

Anna Sarnoff is still reeling from her quickie divorce from tech wunderkind Jake Sarnoff. Forced out of the company that she helped Jake build, Anna is trying to pick up the pieces of her life, navigating the waters of solo parenting their two teenage boys and adapting to her new role of ex-wife. To make things more complicated, Jake seems to want her back…and his persuasiveness tempts her to say yes.


Across town, the brilliant and striking Samanta Flores-Walsh, Jake’s college girlfriend, is busy raising her teenage daughter and running her thriving yoga studio. Although their relationship ended years ago, unanswered questions from their time together gnaw at her, and when she learns that Jake is planning to take his billion-dollar company public, she starts to wonder if perhaps it isn’t too late for justice.


Finally, there’s Jake’s much younger new wife, Jessica, who’s struggling to stay afloat as a new mom while her high-profile husband grows increasingly distant.
Set in the wealthy enclaves of Seattle’s tech elite, the lives of these three women grow entangled as long-held secrets are forced to the surface, threatening to destroy their families. Written with razor-sharp intelligence and heart, Women Are the Fiercest Creatures is a searing look at the complexities of family and the obstacles women navigate in every aspect of their existence.

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Women Are The Fiercest Creatures
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Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books

Zibby's podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books, is an award-winning, daily, 30-minute author interview podcast. (Zibby has that thing where people tell her things they don't tell anyone else.) You'll get craft advice, the inside scoop on today's hottest titles, and insight into books you might never have discovered.

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Visit the Bookstore

Zibby's Bookshop

Come by our independent bookstore at 1113 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, CA. With frequent author events and a twice-monthly book club, Zibby's Bookshop is "the new hub for the literati," says the Santa Monica Mirror.

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Travel Together

Our Readers Retreats

Our book lovers' retreats literally bring book lovers together in fabulous locations across the country. We feature several authors throughout the weekends, visit local bookstores, learn, laugh, and have fun.

Next up: Asheville!

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Join Zibby’s Book Club

A Monthly Meet-Up

You’re invited! Our virtual club meets monthly on Zoom through the Bookclubs.com app with 30 minutes of discussion, followed by 30 minutes of live author Q&A. Join the club for discounted book club reads in our shop!

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The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu

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Take a Class. Join a Writing Group.

Learn directly from amazing authors in our online and in-person classes led by Darcey Gohring, including her weekly writing community group.

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Head to her website for more information about her novel BLANK and all past books, articles, and more!

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