Lottie Sparks and her grandson, Teddy, are also in town. Eight-year old Teddy lives with Lottie, his only living relative.  Teddy loves his grandmother and for Christmas, he desperately wants to buy her the old Victorian clock she adores in the window of Tremont’s Antiques—a clock that vividly reminds her of her childhood. But the memory is soon to fade along with all the rest as her Alzheimer’s advances.

Summer turns to fall and Lottie worsens. With winter approaching, will a Christmas miracle be enough to bring the people of Dreyerville hope, love, and redemption?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Currently living in Missoula, Montana, Kat is the bestselling author of over forty Historical and Contemporary Romance novels.  Before she started writing in 1985, Kat was a real estate broker.  During that time, she met her husband, Larry Jay Martin, also an author.  Kat is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she majored in Anthropology and History.

“I’ve always loved books.  I was an avid reader, with any number of my own stories rolling around in my head.  Writing them down seemed a logical step.”

“I love anything old,” Kat says.  “I love to travel and especially like to visit the places where my books are set.  My husband and I often stay in out-of-the-way inns and houses built in times past.  It’s fun and it gives a wonderful sense of a by-gone era.”

Kat began with historical romance then started writing romantic suspense.

Winners will be announced within the giveaway post comments, in the weekly Sunday re-cap newsletter, and on our new page in Facebook. Indiviual emails will NO LONGER go out for mailing addresses so PLEASE pay attention to one or all of the above mentioned. All unclaimed books will go back into future giveaways.

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In trademark smart aleck style, this is history according to mental_floss, an insightfully accurate and incisively humorous exploration of little-known truths and widely believed falsehoods, which simultaneously exposes some of America’s oddest moments, strangest citizens, most egregious frauds, and much, much more.

Ten meaty chapters, peppered with fun trivia, entertainingly cover the essential timeline of the social, political, and cultural happenings of American history and mythbust all the lies teachers told us along the way. Was Abraham Lincoln really a heroic defender of liberty and freedom? Were the Sixties actually a groovy time of peace and love? Has the U.S. always been dependent on foreign oil? mental_floss sets the record straight and shares the fascinating stories behind politics, literature, fashion, televangelism, serial killers, genetic engineering, Yuppies, SPAM, the original Swine Flu, potato chips, rollerskating, mobsters, rum, communists, beaver wars, the rise and fall of irony, and everything else made in the U.S.A. – FROM BARNES & NOBLES

• Pub. Date: October 2010
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Erik Sass is a journalist who covers the media business from his main base of operations in Los Angeles, with branch offices around the country. When not writing for mental_floss, he reports on magazines, newspapers, radio, and billboard advertising for MediaPost.com.

A shy, withdrawn child (“loser”), Erik spent many of his formative years reading about history. Ironically, the knowledge he acquired transformed him from mopey misfit to man-about-town; now much sought after for his historical anecdotes, he is considered an indispensable conversational ornament to any party attended by persons of substance.

A giver, Erik also works with mental_floss to share these benefits with others. In addition to the present volume, he was a contributing author for mental_floss presents: Forbidden Knowledge, and also writes about history for mental_floss magazine.

Erik has not vomited on the shoes of government officials or their spouses; however, he has vomited on his own shoes more than once.

FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS…Interesting historical book to have on the shelves. Sass takes us through history from  23,000 B.C.E – 2010. The book ends with a chapter describing each of the 45 presidents up to Obama.

We’re giving away 1 copy of The Mental Floss History of the United States
to one lucky reader of The Book Faery Reviews.
This giveaway runs now until 11:59pm ET on December 18th, 2010.

PLEASE NOTE CHANGE IN GIVEAWAY NOTIFICATION: The selected commentor will be noted within the comments at the end of the giveaway and within the Weekly Recap Newsletter that goes out on Sundays to all e-mail subscribers. You must either subscribe to these comments or the email in order to find out if you are the winner as we will no longer be sending out individual emails to winners.

MANDATORY GIVEAWAY ENTRY…What was your favorite history topic in school? (This must be answered first for all other entries to count.)

EXTRA ENTRIES…

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#Book #Giveaway: @farrah1230 is giving away 1 copy of Mental Floss History of the United States now thru 12/18: http://ow.ly/3hfpN #tbfr

Poignantly interweaving his family history with major historical events, Boyer has written a novel for America and the world. “Where the Heart Was” is a literary tour de force who time has come, and is a definite candidate for ‘Best American Novel.’ – FROM THE BOOK BACK

FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS…Thanks to BoothMedia and Legendary Publishing company, I was able to snag Mr. Boyer for a bit and ask him why he wrote his novel Where the Heart Was.

FROM THE AUTHOR...I wrote “Where the Heart Was,” to reinvoke the soul of the American Republic – that pride and fighting spirit that saw our nation through the American Revolution, the Civil War, the two World Wars – the patriotism that seems to have been cast aside in the 21st century.

The novel is set in the years of the Great Depression, and I used my own experiences as a kid growing up in Illinois and Wisconsin with a father out of work and contemplating suicide, and a mother whose life to that point had been a series of bad breaks.

Even through tough times, we all believed in Lincoln’s eloquent evocation of America as, “The last, best hope of earth.”  I believe in it still.  And I believe in literature that projects hope, not despair, that paints our nation as one that deserves Lincoln’s statement.

We must learn from the past – our failures and mistakes as well as our victories – and we must take pride in our accomplishments as a nation.

This is a book unlike my other novels, although those, too, deal with history and characters who lived, struggled, survived.

It seems that I and everyone who grew up in the 30′s and 40′s are now members of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.”  We didn’t know that then, but I recognize the truth of it.  We never gave up, and we made it through.

“Where the Heart Was,” took twenty years to write.  Hopefully, it will be read, re-read, enjoyed, and understood as a love song to America and its people – not only as the land of the free and the home of the brave, but as an advocate of freedom everywhere.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Glenn G. Boyer was born January 5, 1924, in a log cabin in north central Wisconsin. A child of the Great Depression, Boyer served in the U.S. Armed Forces for 22 years beginning in 1943, during the height of WWII.

Boyer first read about Wyatt Earp in 1937, an event that had a significant bearing on the remainder of his life. At the time, he was just about to learn that his father had known Wyatt personally and on a casual basis, but had never realized who he was, since at that time he was not yet famous. This is difficult to believe today given that Wyatt Earp is an international legend.

Now 85, Boyer has devoted some 71 years to the diligent research, preservation and sharing of irreplaceable and historically significant information regarding the real story behind Wyatt Earp and events in Tombstone, Arizona.  And as he emphasizes, even more important may have been discovering how myths are made – the universal steps observable in the creation of each legendary hero – from Homer’s Achilles though Robin Hood, Davy Crockett, down to Wyatt Earp in our time.

Besides the full-time job of being an internationally celebrated author, historian, and Wyatt Earp authority, Boyer reads extensively and with great interest in social subjects.  He particularly enjoys education, economics, world affairs, psychology, and politics. He is an avid reader of Business Week, Scientific American and the Wall Street Journal. He is also a gifted painter, dabbles with predictive statistics, pistol shooting, and photography. – FROM AUTHOR SITE