You ask. Watch them answer.

Now you can ask questions directly of your favorite Simon & Schuster authors, and
WATCH them respond. All you have to do is type in your question
(you don’t need to upload any video yourself) and check back in
and watch their response.

What books do authors like to read? Where do they like to write?
How do they get their hair so perfect?

See what our authors have to say… you never know what you might find out!

Authors available for valuable face-time include:


Chris Cleave, author of Little Bee and Incendiary
Brad Thor, author of The Athena Project
Lisa McMann, author of Cryer’s Cross
Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice and Left Neglected
Sarah Pekkanen, author of Skipping a Beat
Teresa Medeiros, author of Goodnight Tweetheart
Jenna Black, Dark Descendant
L.A. Bank, author of  Surrender the Dark
Pete Cerqua, author of The 90-Second Fitness Solution
and Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Eating the Dinosaur

Click here to learn more!

You’re invited to a Twitter Chat with Chris Cleave today!

 Spice up your lunch hour (and mid-afternoon snack hour) by joing in a Twitter chat with Chris Cleave, author of LITTLE BEE  (Simon & Schuster,  9781416589648) and INCENDIARY (Simon & Schuster, 9781451618495). If you need some inspiration, read Chris Cleave’s letter to readers for the recent re-publication of INCENDIARY by clicking here. Here is my favorite part:

 

How great is his hand-writing?
Brush up on some reading group questions, by clicking herefor the INCENDIARY reading group guide and here for the LITTLE BEE reading group guide.

And to recap (because I love a good recap)…

WHAT:

Tweet about LITTLE BEE and INCENDIARY, using the hashtag #bookclub, and encourage others to join in the conversation.
Chris Cleave will be tweeting and answering your questions live!

WHEN:

TODAY!
12:00 – 6:00 PM EST

WHO:

Chris Cleave
Twitter: @chriscleave

Yours truly at S&S
Twitter: @simonschuster
and @simonbooks

I am thrilled to announce the official launch of the new, Simon & Schuster Reading Group Resources site!

You can access the new site at ReadingGroups.SimonandSchuster.com.

This one-stop shop for all reading group needs enables you to:

• Discover great new book group picks and old favorites you might have missed
• Sample featured reading group discussion questions
• Learn the inside story about how your favorite books came to be
• Watch exclusive trailers and videos
• Get tips on starting your own group
• Sign up for the monthly Book Club Update Newsletter
• Join the S&S book club community through our message boards

The Reading Group Resources page also features the Simon & Schuster Twitter feed. Using the #bookclub, S&S Twitter will host Book Group Wednesdays every week, which will include specific questions designed to facilitate a tweeting book group discussion.

Book Group Wednesdays will kick off with Jeannette Walls’s Half Broke Horses on January 26th and follow-up with a live Twitter chat with Chris Cleave, author of Incendiary and Little Bee, on February 16th!

The S&S offices had a very special visitor yesterday afternoon: Chris Cleave, author of Little Bee (Simon & Shuster, 9781416589648  and the new, re-packaged, Book Club Readers Edition of Incendiary (Simon & Schuster, 9781451618495).

There was much applause and champagne-toasting for this great author and his wonderful success.

In Incendiary, Cleave once again takes a devastating situation—the story itself is a letter written to Osama bin Laden from a woman who has lost her four-year-old son and husband in a massive suicide bomb attack at a soccer match in London—and adds life, humor, and tangible authenticity. For all of you Little Bee lovers out there, read Incendiary.

If I’m not persuasive enough, click here for a personal letter written to you from Chris Cleave himself. In his hand-written letter to all booksellers, Cleave writes:

“I write stories about ordinary people who get caught up in the extraordinary events of the world we live in today. I write about people whos sens of humor is equal to the horror they endure. And I write in the first perosn to creat a presence that remains with the reader after the book is finished. I hope Incendiary is all tese tihngs. I wrote it before I’d learned what you weren’t allowed to do in novels, and it shows.”

Chris Cleave also wrote a letter directly to readers, which you can read here.

To read an excerpt of Incendiary, click here. Watch a great, new video of Chris Cleave discussing Incendiary, here. Any of course, get the Incendiary reading group guide here.

Also, if you are in the Massachusetts area, be sure to catch Chris Cleave at the  BARNES & NOBLE–FRAMINGHAM (1 Worcester Road, Framingham, MA) at 7:00 PM.

Cara Hoffman’s startlingly original debut, So Much Pretty (Simon & Schuster, 9781451616750), is due to publish in March 2011. Taking place in a rural community in upstate New York and shifting between court case documents, personal narratives, and interviews, this story is a beautiful and chilling exploration of violence, vengeance, and a loss of innocence that drives someone to commit an unthinkable crime.

Read what Chris Cleave, author of Little Bee (Simon & Schuster, 9781416589648) and Incendiary (Simon & Schuster, 9781439157176), has to say about this new novel:

“This beautiful, stealthy novel creeps up on the mesmerized reader, subtly drawing new strands into itself until what begins as the suspenseful story of a rural American murder grows into a dark, disquieting and urgently fascinating examination of the violence and concealment practiced by a whole society. By choosing a small town canvas on which to paint her big picture, Hoffman achieves a focused intensity which she holds on the very edge of anger, without once giving in to it. She never surrenders the compassion, insightfulness and humor that make her a masterful navigator of the human heart. This is an impassioned, intelligent and important work of art, and with it Hoffman takes her place in that select group of American novelists including Philipp Meyer and Adam Haslett who, eschewing nihilism and hauteur, write with urgency and passion about what is really going on out there.”

If you’d like an advance reader’s copy of So Much Pretty, email Wendy.Sheanin@simonandschuster.com.