
Authors in conversation - Annie Hartnett and Sara Shukla, August 5 at 6 PM
Authors in conversation - Annie Hartnett and Sara Shukla, August 5 at 6 PM
Meet and mingle with the authors and find your next great read!
Join Ink Fish Books for the ultimate road trip you don’t want to miss! On Tuesday, August 5 at 6 PM, Ink Fish Books will host an author conversation with Annie Hartnett (THE ROAD TO TENDER HEARTS), and Sara Shukla (PINK WHALES). Both authors have an incredible sense of humor, with laugh out loud moments, and each book is a heartfelt mix of people just trying to make it in the world and when the world gets in the way they deal with it as best they can…together.
Tickets are $5 and include light refreshments, an author meet and greet, and book signing. Books will be for sale at the event, in store, or online.
About the books
The Road to Tender Hearts - NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A darkly comic and warm-hearted novel about an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush—bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death—by the beloved author of Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals
At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already.
But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.
Before PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also thinks he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter who’s adrift in her twenties, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.
This could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for—a fresh shot at love and parenting—but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.
“A miraculous novel—an actual and spiritual road trip you won’t forget.”—John Irving
Pink Whales- Charlie is already feeling adrift when she relocates to an exclusive town in coastal New England with her mysteriously distant husband, Dev, and their young twins in tow. She hopes the move will recharge her stalled marriage, and she wants her kids to feel like they belong, even if she’s clearly a fish out of water herself. In a strange new world where summer is a verb and both the harbor and the partygoers are awash in a dizzying constellation of pinks and pastels, she’s never felt so confounded or alone. She’ll need more than a preppy handbook to find her way.
Then a trio of power moms―imposing, beautiful, and monogrammed―comes to the rescue, and Charlie clings to their attention like a life raft. As Dev pulls further away, Charlie dives into her newfound friends’ circle of yacht clubs, rivalries, and bizarre theme parties, hoping to find her sea legs. She even dares to cozy up to a hot, barefoot, and aggressively flirty local. But if she’s running from her problems at home, where exactly is she escaping to? Charlie is beginning to wonder. This ridiculous new normal―and her desire to be part of it―might just eat her alive.
“Pink Whales is a delicious, hilarious, voicey romp of a novel about Charlie, a wife and mother who doesn’t feel she belongs in her new home in preppy New England. Sara Shukla has an absolutely killer sense of humor, and the voice is pitch perfect. I adored it.”
―Annie Hartnett, author of Unlikely Animals and Rabbit Cake
About the authors
Annie Hartnett Annie Hartnett is the author of Unlikely Animals, which won the Julia Ward Howe Prize for fiction and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is also the author of Rabbit Cake, a finalist for the New England Book Award and a Kirkus Reviews best book of the year. Hartnett has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. Along with writer Tessa Fontaine, she co-runs the Accountability Workshops for writers, helping them commit to routines and embrace the long, slow, joyful, terrible process of doing the work. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and dog.
THE ROAD TO TENDER HEARTS is Annie’s newest novel, a national bestseller, and it received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist.
Sara Shukla is an editor for WBUR’s Cognoscenti. You can find her writing at WBUR as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeneys, and elsewhere. An alum of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator and the University of Virginia, she lives in Massachusetts with her family. Pink Whales is her debut novel.