Juliet Grames: Book Launch & Author Talk

Join River Bend Bookshop at Hops on the Hill to celebrate the release of The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia by Juliet Grames (The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna -- psst! A River Bend favorite!)

Juliet will be in conversation with fellow mystery writer, Luanne Rice. These two best-selling writers will be talking all things murder mystery and 1960s Italy. Both authors will be signing books afterwards.

Grab a beer or a seltzer and pick up what's sure to be your next favorite mystery!

Want to win a CALABRIAN GOODIE BASKET? Each book bundle ticket will include a raffle ticket for a goodie basket inspired by the book, filled with delicious foods (sweet and savory) and some themed amenities (like olive oil soap), as well as a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle depicting a scene from the book. What a treat!
*Must be present at the event to win the raffle

REGISTRATION REQUIRED

ABOUT THE BOOK

One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy.

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.

Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.

Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Juliet Grames is the author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna, a national and international bestseller, which was shortlisted for the New England Book Award and the Connecticut Book Award, and received Italy’s Premio Cetraro for contribution to Southern Italian literature. It has been translated into nine languages. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in Best American Mystery & Suspense, Real Simple, Parade, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and the Boston Globe, among other venues.

Grames was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and raised in the Farmington Valley. She attended Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Columbia College with a degree in history before embarking on a career in book publishing. Since 2010 she has worked at Soho Press, where she is Editorial Director. In 2022, she was the recipient of the Mystery Writers of America Ellery Queen Award for her editorial work in the crime fiction genre. She lives in New England.

Luanne Rice Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of 38 novels that have been translated into 30 languages. These include LAST NIGHT, THE SHADOW BOX, BEACH GIRLS and others. Connecticut College awarded Rice an honorary degree and invited her to donate her papers to the college’s Special Collections Library. She has also received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from St. Joseph University in West Hartford, Conn.

In June 2014, she received the Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award in the Literary Arts category for excellence and lifetime achievement as a literary artist. Several of Rice’s novels have been adapted for television. Rice contributed a monologue to Motherhood Out Loud a play that premiered at Hartford Stage Company and was performed Off-Broadway and at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. She is a creative affiliate of the Safina Center, and she lives on the Connecticut Shoreline.