James J. Patterson Reads from MELANIE’S SONG on Latest LFTRR
The new mystery novel by ASP's Joanna Biggar is given the Patterson treatment in Episode 11 of Live from the Reading Room
“Melanie’s Song is an unputdownable, riveting feat of storytelling.”
Set in the era of Woodstock and Watergate, Melanie’s Song centers on a young woman’s mysterious disappearance, and on her friend’s determined search for her.
Melanie, who fled her marriage to a straight-laced classical musician in order to hitch-hike to Woodstock and San Francisco, was last seen at a commune in the California hills. Rumors abound: that she took up with a Black radical; that she had his child; that she and her lover, armed, ran a bank heist a la Patty Hearst; that she developed a mystical gift for spiritual healing; that she died in a possible accidental, possibly staged commune fire.
Trying to sift truth from invention pulls her friend, the young reporter, J.J., into the underbelly of the sexual and social revolutions of the 60s and early 70s, where she encounters corrupt cops, paranoid hippies, activists, mystics, drug-runners,and most astonishingly, Melanie’s own parents. Risking her job, her connections, her life, J.J. follows Melanie’s trail, determined to find out what happened to her once-compliant friend now turned, it seems, into a rebel angel.
ASP featured in “Six Local Indie Presses You Should Know”
“D.C.’s literary scene is independent to the core…” begins local author Hannah Grieco’s article on the movers and shakers of the DC publishing world featured today in the Washington City Paper.
Grace Cavalieri on Kojo Nnamdi WAMU
Grace Cavalieri on Kojo Nnamdi WAMU Grace Cavalieri was recently featured on WAMU’s “People we met in 2019”. Listen to her appearance on the Kojo Nnamdi show earlier this year. […]
“Melanie’s Song” Reviewed in The Maryland Literary Review
Charles Rammelkamp’s glowing review of Joanna Biggar’s latest novel is now up on the Maryland Literary Review.