Ann McMan

Librarian Syd Murphy flees the carnage of a failed marriage by accepting an eighteen-month position in Jericho, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Her plans to hide out and heal her wounds fall by the wayside as she gets drawn into the daily lives of the quirky locals. When Syd gets a flat tire and is rescued by the town physician, Maddie Stevenson, the two women form a fast friendship—but almost immediately begin struggling with a mutual attraction. And, if that’s not enough, Syd is straight and going through a divorce—and Maddie somehow forgets to mention her sexual orientation to her new best friend. Almost everyone who crosses their paths believes it’s only a matter of time until they figure it out, but sometimes, it takes a while to see the obvious. Together, Syd and Maddie learn that life and love can have as many twists and turns as a winding mountain road.

Jericho

Christine Williams

When it comes to finding dirt, Evan Reed is the best in the business. She’s a “dust-buster”—a paid operative hired by political campaigns to vet candidates for national office. She’s also a foul-mouthed and cranky ex-Catholic—attempting to raise a 14-year-old daughter on her own. When she is hired to investigate the background of a squeaky-clean and charismatic junior senator who might just be the next president—the last thing she expects to uncover is a murder. Evan’s life is further complicated when she meets the senator’s reclusive wife—who seems to be hiding a few secrets of her own. Bywater Books First Edition: May 2018 Dust was originally published in 2011 by Nuance Books, a division of Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company, Fairfield, California

Dust

Salem West

Jill Fryman (Friday to her friends) is a line supervisor at a truck manufacturing plant in a small southern Indiana town. Life on the assembly line is almost as predictable as her love life. When it comes to matters of the heart, Friday always seems to be making the wrong choices. Things go from bad to worse when El, a sultry labor organizer from the UAW, sweeps into town to unionize the plant right after it’s been bought out by a Japanese firm. Sparks fly on and off the line as Jill and El fight their growing attraction for each other against a backdrop of monster trucks, catfish dinners, Pork Day USA, and a bar called Hoosier Daddy.

Hoosier Daddy

Over the past eighteen months, Syd, Maddie, and little Henry have become a family, and things are going surprisingly well for most of Jericho’s residents —if you don’t count the devastating storm that whips over, around, and through town. In the weeks and months to come, Syd, Maddie, and all of Jericho are forced to pick up the pieces and rebuild their homes, their lives, and their town. The tasks are sometimes hard, sometimes emotional, and sometimes absurd, but always full of smart and sassy humor and an abundance of good food and wine.

Aftermath

"Backcast" is "Fried Green Tomatoes" meets "The Big Chill" by way of "A River Runs Through It."

Backcast

English professor and aspiring novelist, Grace Warner spends her days teaching four sections of "Beowulf for Cretins" to bored and disinterested students at one of New England's “hidden ivy” colleges. Not long after she is dumped by her longtime girlfriend, Grace meets the engaging and mysterious Abbie on a cross-country flight. Sparks fly on and off the plane as the two strangers give in to one night of reckless passion with no strings attached, and no contact information exchanged. Back home at St. Albans, the college rocks Grace's world when it announces the appointment of a new president, the first woman in its 165-year history. Cue Abbie—and cue Grace's collision course with a neurotic dog named Grendel, a fractious rival for tenure, and a woman called Ochre, in what very well might be Grace's last real shot at happiness. This full-length novel reimagines and expands on the short story, “Falling From Grace,” which was originally published in the award-winning story collection, Sidecar by Ann McMan.

A Love Story

Beowulf for Cretins

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Romance. English professor and aspiring novelist, Grace Warner spends her days teaching four sections of "Beowulf for Cretins" to bored and disinterested students at one of New England's "hidden ivy" colleges. Not long after she is dumped by her longtime girlfriend, Grace meets the engaging and mysterious Abbie on a cross-country flight. Sparks fly on and off the plane as the two strangers give in to one night of reckless passion with no strings attached, and no contact information exchanged. Back home at St. Albans, the college rocks Grace's world when it announces the appointment of a new president, the first woman in its 165-year history. Cue Abbie--and cue Grace's collision course with a neurotic dog named Grendel, a fractious rival for tenure, and a woman called Ochre, in what very well might be Grace's last real shot at happiness. This full-length novel reimagines and expands on the short story, "Falling From Grace," which was originally published in the award-winning story collection, Sidecar by Ann McMan. Beowulf for Cretins: A Love Story was awarded the 2019 Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Romance category.

Diz and Clarissa Are Back for the Holidays! It’s Christmas Eve in Baltimore, and you know what that means . . . snow. Lots of it. Join our dynamic duo as they battle the elements, quirky friends and family, and two marauding dogs in their annual ill-fated attempts to enjoy a quiet Christmas alone. Originally published in 2014, this Christmas collection features the short stories, Nevermore!, A Christmas Tree Grows in Baltimore, and Blended Families. But wait! There’s more! In the Bywater Books reissue of Three, you get a (plus one)! This updated edition of Ann McMan’s romantic comedy classic includes the fourth tale of Diz and Clarissa, ‘Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas. This trilogy (plus one) is a holiday omnibus not to be missed!

(Plus One)

Three

Tim Donovan is a Catholic priest with a guilty conscience—though not in the way you’d guess. And Katherine Donne is a Parisian socialite who long ago kicked her self-respect to the curb—for good and for ill. And much closer, we have a group of men whose fortunes, graying temples and positions in life are distinguished and enviable. But their morals? Anything but. And that’s where Evan Reed comes in. Evan (short for Evangeline) is a highly principled political operative with an imperfect past, tasked with uncovering compromising material on a rotten judge up for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court before he can be rushed through confirmation. Evan knows it won't be simple to find damaging information against the judge because he's been vetted many times before. When Evan pulls the string after an interview with a cryptic madman, she finds herself struggling to solve a puzzle that gets more complex by the hour. And where crime, money, conscience, and greed come together, danger is sure to lurk. In this sequel to Dust, Ann McMan takes the reader on an intense journey into a world that lies just beneath the thin veneer of civilization—a world teeming with power struggles and warped desires, and a subculture of promises made, kept, and broken. As Evan pushes further into peril, her personal life sparks into flame with the increasing presence of the ravishing Julia Donne, a book publisher with a progressive bent and troubling questions about her late father. McMan’s specialty of intertwining a hot romance into heart-pounding suspense just keeps getting better and better.

Galileo

Barrett

"More silly fun than a barrel of schnauzers." - Fay Jacobs "I was appalled by the way my good name was abused to write this laugh-out-loud, fabulously entertaining book." - Ellen Hart When iconic media sensation June Magee, R.N. and her trusty boi photographer Roi Rodgers ride into Rehoboth Beach, Women's FEST will never be the same! In non-stop hilarity and mayhem, the dynamic duo battle trains, drag shows, a death-defying car ride-and their unexpected attraction to each other. And, just when they thought things couldn't possibly get more complicated, a mysterious medical malady crops up and threatens to ruin the success of Women's FEST. Join June, Roi, Fay Jacobs, The Poodle Beach Girls, a go-go boy named Pico de Gallo, and a cast of zanies as they take CAMP Rehoboth by storm in the rollicking first June Magee, R.N. adventure, Festival Nurse.

June Magee, R.N. Festival Nurse

A fast, funny, and wholly satisfying compilation of short stories filled with the same rich detail, witty humor, jagged verbal jousting, and joyous intellectual tête-à-tête that are Ann McMan's calling cards. This award winning collection features the novella, "Bottle Rocket", along with the short stories, "V1: A Valentine's Day Odyssey", "Falling From Grace", and "Nevermore!"

Sidecar

Bottle Rocket

A Christmas Tree Grows in Baltimore

Bywater Books

Two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author Ann McMan introduces readers to a spinster postal investigator for the Winston-Salem Dead Letter Office who finds herself enmeshed in the mystery of solving who is sending undeliverable love letters to the town's 18th-century hortus medicus. The year is 1960, and Gunsmoke is the most popular show on TV. Elvis Presley tops the Billboard charts, and a charismatic young senator named John F. Kennedy is running for president. And, in North Carolina, four young Black men sit down at a Woolworth's lunch counter and demand service. Enter Esther Jane (EJ) Cloud, a forty-something spinster who manages the Dead Letter Office at the Winston-Salem post office. EJ leads a quiet life in her Old Salem ancestral home and spends her free time volunteering in the town's 18th century medicinal garden. One sunny Spring morning, EJ's simple life is turned upside down when the town's master gardener unceremoniously hands her a stack of handwritten letters that have all been addressed to a nonexistent person at the garden. This simple act sets in motion a chain of events that will lead EJ on a life-altering quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious letter writer--and into a surprising head-on confrontation with the harsh realities of the racial injustice that is as deeply rooted in the life of her community as the ancient herbs cultivated in the Moravian garden. When EJ is forced to read the letters to look for clues about the anonymous sender, what she discovers are lyrical tales of a forbidden passion that threaten to unravel the simple contours of her unexamined life. EJ's official quest soon morphs into a journey of self-discovery as she becomes more deeply enmeshed in the fate of the mysterious letter writer, Dorothea. Her surprising accomplice in solving the mystery of the letters becomes one, Harrie Hart: a savvy, street smart ten-year-old, wielding an eye patch and a limitless supply of aphorisms. Together, Harrie and EJ make seminal pilgrimages to the tiny town of Paradise to try and uncover the identity of the mercurial sender and, ultimately, learn a better way to navigate the changing world around them.

Dead Letters from Paradise

Welcome back to Jericho, a small town tightly tucked into the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where life and love have as many twists and turns as a winding mountain road. Join Syd, Maddie, David, Michael, Henry, Celine, and the irrepressible Roma Jean Freemantle as they band together to navigate the minefields of their ever-changing world in this newest Jericho novel.

Goldenrod

"Welcome to the National Recovery Bureau, where your assets are as sacred as God's holy word." Vera "Nick" Nicholson is an overtaxed and underpaid attorney wasting away on the bottom rung of the gilded ladder at Turner, Witherspoon, Anders, and Tyler, PA in Winston-Salem, NC. When a high-priced luxury car belonging to one of the firm's top clients goes missing, Nick gets saddled with the unenviable job of recovering the vehicle--and its mysterious contents--without involving the cops. Enter Fast Eddie and his quirky band of misfits at The National Recovery Bureau, a repo agency located in a sleepy town called K-Vegas. When Nick is unceremoniously furloughed from TWAT, she throws caution to the wind and signs on to become the newest agent of the NRB, teaming up with moonlighting third-grade schoolteacher, Frances "Frankie" Stohler. Frankie's mortician father and beautician mother are stalwarts of the Winston-Salem community--so it's no surprise that everyone across three counties has some connection to her family. What is surprising, however, is the Slim Jim Frankie carries in her purse and her preternatural talent for jacking cars. Nick and Frankie's stumbling entrée into the surreal world of asset recovery takes them on a hilarious, fast-paced and mind-bending journey across the back roads and byways of the Tar Heel state, setting into motion a chain of misadventures that lead them both toward financial independence, cataclysmic legal jeopardy, and the discovery that true love can sometimes lurk in the most unlikely places.

Ann McMan

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