Tag: Book news

Texas Book Festival announces dates for this year’s festival

2019 Texas Book Festival
This year’s Texas Book Festival is set for November 7 and 8. Photo: Texas Book Festival, used with permission.

After a successful 2019 connecting authors, readers and book lovers, the Texas Book Festival is excited to announce that this year’s festival will be held on Saturday November 7 and Sunday November 8, 2020. The 25​th​ year of the Texas Book Festival, one of the largest and most prestigious book festivals in the country, will once again be held throughout the grounds of the Texas State Capitol and along Congress Avenue in downtown Austin. (Texas Book Festival, 2019)

This year, everything fans know and love about the Festival will return. There will be acclaimed and emerging authors, book signings, cooking demonstrations, author panels, live music, a Saturday night Lit Crawl and more yet-to-be announced events and programming for the Festival’s 25​th anniversary. Submissions to participate in the 2020 festival will be opening soon.

The Texas Book Festival connects authors and readers through experiences that celebrate the culture of literacy, ideas and imagination. Founded in 1995 by former First Lady Laura Bush, Mary Margaret Farabee and a group of volunteers, the nonprofit Texas Book Festival promotes the joys of reading and writing through its annual Festival Weekend, the Texas Teen Book Festival, the Reading Rock Stars Title I elementary school program, the Real Reads Title I middle and high school program, grants to Texas libraries and year-round literary programming. The Festival is held on the grounds of the Texas Capitol each fall and features more than 300 renowned authors, panels, book signings, cooking demonstrations and children’s activities.

New release: ‘Scars in Time: A Novel’ by Ryan Gutierrez

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‘Scars in Time: A Novel’ is the new novel by Ryan Gutierrez. Photo: Google

Ryan Gutierrez is an American author born and raised in Texas who currently resides in the small South Texas town of Los Fresnos. He graduated from The University of Texas – Brownsville with a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice and worked as a Child Abuse Investigator with the state of Texas for five years. His debut novel, “Scars in Time: A Novel” is about Brennan Ramirez, a man determined to change his wife’s traumatic past by going back in time. The true question is no longer “What if you could go back to the past?” but rather “What are you willing to sacrifice to change the past?”

According to Amazon, “Scars in Time: A Novel” revolves around family man Brennan Ramirez. What if you could go back and change your life, remove the pain from the past? For Brennan, that question is no longer rhetorical. Brennan wants a break. After quitting his job as a Child Abuse Investigator because of his anxiety and panic disorder, he is feeling useless. What he wants more than anything is to give his loving wife Deidre and his little girl a good life. Brennan is determined that the best and most definitive way to fix their life for the best is to go back and prevent the traumatic abuse his wife suffered as a child at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend. As Brennan test drives The Machine, he begins to experience true power, true control, or so he thinks. With every trip, every choice, Brennan realizes that his newfound control may be an illusion.

‘Wanderer: The Ultimate Hippy Trail Journey’ by F.T. Burke with Steve Reifman

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Photo: google.com

F.T. Burke is a lifelong resident of the state of Michigan, where he now lives with his wife, Lorie. He previously enjoyed a prior career in the high-tech sector, serving as a systems engineer and project manager. His debut novel “The Bohemian Adventure” traces the main character’s self-enlightenment journey while traveling with devoted deadheads who followed the psychedelic rock group, the Grateful Dead. In this latest novel “Wanderer: The Ultimate Hippy Trail Journey” he fictionalizes and is inspired by true adventures in the life of Steve Reifman, co-author. (Ascot Media Group, 2019)

Steven W. Reifman is a practicing lawyer and businessman. He took a journey similar in time and place to that of Wanderer’s main character, Woodstock. Steve was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and has three children, two grandchildren and an enduring, love-filled marriage of over 40 years.

In “Wanderer: The Ultimate Hippy Trail Journey,” during the chaotic latter days of the Vietnam War and after the protest march on Washington, D.C., many American youth asserted their rebellious freedom by doing drugs, having sex, sleeping outside and backpacking through Europe, North Africa and Asia. Still living at home was Steve, a young man coming of age, just out of college, with no clear future and unable to pay rent. Envious of the free-spirited revelers, Steve, who adopted the nickname “Woodstock” after attending the music festival in New York, joined the throngs of intrepid youth to wander the world and search for his soul.

This enchanting novel follows Woodstock’s year-long journey to scratch his nomadic itch. Upon beating the draft, Woodstock crosses the Atlantic to the Old World, without any particular itinerary, no set time to return home and not much money. He finds God everywhere no matter how hard he tries to hide and look away. His spontaneous, free-wheeling adventures of raucous, hilarious incidents all weigh heavy against the need to come home and grow up.

Wanderer will appeal to the wanderlust in the souls of hippies young and old. A fast read with a lot of laughs, the story was inspired by the true adventures of the co-author. Come along for this unforgettable adventure of a lifetime.

“Wanderer:  The Ultimate Hippy Trail Journey” by F.T. Burke and Steve Reifman
Purple Whale Publishing
ISBN: 9781733624640 (softcover)
ISBN: 9781733624657 (EPUB)
Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online book retailers