APW Book Club 11/20/21 with Margaret Spence
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: APW Book Club with Margaret Spence: Joyous Lies
Date: Nov 20, 2021
Time: 10:00 AM Arizona
Zoom: The link has been sent to APW and Book Club members. If you would like to attend and didn’t receive the link, contact Karen at kslateiner@gmail.com
Joyous Lies: A story of family secrets set on a commune in Northern California, the novel delves also into the communication powers of plants.
Maelle Woolley, a shy botanist, prefers plants to people. They don’t suddenly disappear. Raised on her grandparents’ commune after her mother’s mysterious death, she follows the commune’s utopian beliefs of love for all. Then she falls for attractive psychiatrist Zachary Kane. When Zachary claims her mother and his father never emerged alive from his father’s medical research lab, Maelle investigates. What she discovers will challenge everything she believes, force her to find strength she never knew she had, and confront the commune’s secrets and lies and asks, if plants can protect their young, why can’t humans do the same?
No scientist, but an avid gardener, Margaret loved doing the research for this book. Born in Melbourne, Australia, Margaret has lived in the United States since the age of 23. She’s lived on both East and West Coasts and enjoys Arizona winters. When she’s not at her desk she tends an unruly garden, cooks up a storm in the kitchen, and cherishes time with her family.
Find her at MargaretAnnSpence.com.
To purchase the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Joyous-Lies-Margaret-Ann-Spence-ebook/dp/B08RYB34FN
- Margaret Spence
- Margaret Spence – Joyous Lies
Ten benefits for joining APW
APW Benefits
- Meet and exchange ideas with local authors.
- One or two virtual meetings a month with a local speaker on a writing or publishing topic.
- Join the APW Book Club where read and review each other’s work (email Karen Lateiner kslateiner@gmail.com)
- Ability to use APW Zoom for book presentations or other writing-related meetings. (Contact Marie Fasano mafasano1@gmail.com or Jaimie Bruzenak calamityjaimie@gmail.com
- Enter the At-large contest for the National Federation of Press Women. First place winners go on to the national level. Many categories for these prestigious awards. See https://www.nfpw.org/professional-contest We had several winners at the At-large contest. Dianne Beaff and Wynne Brown won awards at the national level.
- Post on our Facebook page more than once about your book. (Nonmembers are limited to one post.) Share your new publications, wins and writing events.
- Keep up on local book and writing events in Arizona.
- Your book listed in the Holiday Bazaar before Christmas. Listed at least once on FB that it is there. (Email Jaimie Bruzenak calamityjaimie@gmail.com)
Additional National Federation of Press Women benefits
- Premium professional members of NFPW have access to discounted libel insurance through its group policy.
- NFPW focuses on and working to support the First Amendment. https://nfpw.memberclicks.net/the-first-amendment-network
APW Book Club meeting 9/25/21 with Meredith Whiteley
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to a virtual APW Book Club meeting on Zoom at 10 a.m. on Saturday, September 25.
Topic: APW Book Club meeting with Meredith Whiteley
Date: September 25, 2021
Time: 10:00 AM Arizona
Join Meredith Whiteley as she talks about her book Miracle on the Salt River: Water, Family, and Farming in the Arizona Desert. The book is available through major online bookstores and in some online used bookstores. It will be helpful if you have read the book, but any APW member may join. Members have received the Zoom link, but if you are not already a member of the APW Book Club, email Karen Lateiner to join and to get the link for this talk. (No charge -it’s a benefit of our membership!). And, if you would like your book to be the topic for a future meeting, email Karen also.
About the book:
Miracle on the Salt River: Water, Family, and Farming in the Arizona Desert by Meredith Whiteley
Water: It’s always been personal. When the Hohokam abandoned their civilization, it was personal. When a man shot his neighbor over the little bit in the ditch, it was personal. When a greedy developer sold one hundred thousand acres to farmers and the canal went dry, it was personal.
Personal: families dreamed, built schools, churches, towns. They celebrated, grieved, and sometimes left their horses to thirst to death when there was no more water for their own children to drink.
Meredith Whiteley follows the personal story of farmers and water in sixty years of the Valley as they realized the “miracle” that gave them all the water they would ever need—and beyond.
APW Book Club – 4/24 – Tessie’s Tales
APW Members and guests,
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to our next APW Book Club Meeting on Zoom. You do not need to be an APW member to attend, but attendees are expected to have read the book prior to the meeting. See below for information about where to obtain a copy.
TOPIC: APW Book Club: Marie Fasano –Tessie’s Tales
DATE: Saturday, April 24, 2021
TIME: 10:00 AM Arizona
Contact Karen: kslateiner@gmail.com
ABOUT THE BOOK: Award-winning Tessie’s Tales consists of the stories as told by Tessie Trotta Fasano to her family. It’s about growing up in New York City in an Italian family with Marie capturing her voice in the telling.
Available in print at $9.99 or on Kindle at $3.99
APW Book Club – March 27 – On Traigh Lar Beach
APW Book Club March 2020 meeting
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to attend the March meeting of the APW Book Club. The featured book is On Traigh Lar Beach by Dianne Beeaff. You do not need to be an APW member to attend, but attendees are expected to have read the book prior to the meeting. See below for information about where to obtain a copy.
March Book: On Traigh Lar Beach by Dianne Beeaff
Date: Saturday, March 27, 2021
Time: 10:00 AM Arizona
CONTACT: Karen Lateiner kslateiner@gmail.com Members of the book club have been sent the Zoom link. Contact Karen if you did not receive it and would like to attend.
MARCH SELECTION
On Traigh Lar Beach by Dianne Beeaff
DIANNE EBERTT BEEAFF is the award-winning author of five previously published books. Her poetry, watercolors, graphite drawings, and magazine articles have been featured throughout the United States and Canada. Dianne and her husband, Dan, reside in Tucson, Arizona, USA.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
On Traigh Lar Beach, a short story collection published by She Writes Press on October 13, 2020.
Erica Winchat, a young writer overwhelmed by the stress of her first book contract, discovers thirteen curious items tangled in the flotsam on the Scottish beach of Tràigh Lar. Inspired by the objects, she tells the intriguing story of the owner of each one, uncovering a series of dramatic events – from a Chicago widow’s inspiring visit to Quebec City to a shrimper’s daughter facing Tropical Storm Ruby in North Carolina.
The thirteenth item, a concert laminate badge, gives rise to a novella Erica calls Fan Girls, in which the separate stories of four fans of the Scottish rock band Datha unfold in first person, culminating in their reunion at a concert in Chicago –where a shooting takes place.
GET A COPY: The book is on Amazon Kindle for $9.95, and in paperback at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and Walmart.com for $16.95.
DeBeeaff.wordpress.com; @diannebeeaff; Facebook Author Page
- Dianne Ebertt Beeaff
- On Traigh Lar Beach – Dianne Ebertt Beeaff https://www.amazon.com/Traigh-Lar-Beach-Dianne-Ebertt-Beeaff/dp/1631527711/ref=sr_1_1
APW Book Club February 27 – Skirting Traditions
Karen Lateiner is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Contact Karen if you have not received the Zoom link and would like to attend. Open to members and nonmembers who have read the book.
TOPIC: APW Book Club Guest: Brenda Warneka, SkirtingTtraditions
DATE: Saturday, Feb 27, 2021
TIME: 10 a.m.
Meet Brenda Warneka as she leads us in a discussion about the APW publication Skirting Traditions.
Brenda Warneka was the project leader, an editor, and one of eighteen writers for the APW book, “Skirting Traditions: Arizona Women Writers and Journalists 1912-2012,” which is an anthology about women writers and journalists active in Arizona’s first one-hundred years. It was an official Arizona Centennial Legacy Project in 2012. Brenda will talk about how this award-winning book came to be and lead the discussion. A past president and long time member of APW, she has a degree in history and is a lawyer and writer.
Copies may be obtained for reading on Kindle or the Kindle app or through Marie Fasano for our Scholarship Fund for $5.00 and $3.00 shipping. Email Marie at RNPilot 2@aol.com
- Brenda Warneka with her award-winning book, Around Laughlin
- Skirting Traditions: Arizona Women Writers and Journalists 1912-2012 https://www.amazon.com/Skirting-Traditions-Arizona-Journalists-1912-2012/dp/1604945974
November 2020 meeting of the APW Book Club
Join the NEW APW Book Club for our second meeting November 28, 10:00 am on Zoom (url to be emailed a few days before the meeting), showcasing Marylee MacDonald’s new publication, Surrender.
APW members and nonmembers are welcome to download a 15-chapter sample of the book. If you’d like to join our group and discuss it, then Marylee will be happy to provide the FULL COPY of the book for free. Email Marylee for a copy. Maybe this will be an incentive for you to join! It’s so interesting to see the diverse perspectives everyone brings to a book discussion. We really enjoyed discussing Karen’s memoir, Timeless Dance.
Below is the Amazon book blurb for Surrender:
Her young life changed in an instant. Now she shares her story with the child she gave away.
Adopted at birth, Marylee’s parents told her she was a “chosen child.” She tried her hardest to make them proud, but her parents’ divorce sent her into the comforting arms of a handsome Catholic boy. Convinced that he was her Romeo and she a modern-day Juliet, she surrendered to passion. Unfortunately, it was 1961. Pregnant girls were sent away, and their babies given up for adoption.
Nature vs. nurture: Which plays a greater role in who we become? The family we were raised in, or the parents we never knew? In telling her adult son the story of his birth, can the narrator find compassion for her own wounded inner child?
If you like truthful accounts laced with the passion of youth and the wisdom of age, read Marylee MacDonald’s funny and poignant memoir about how we grow up, grow old, and learn to accept ourselves.
The ebook version of SURRENDER is available for preorder now on Amazon with a delivery date of November 19.

Important links:
- Download a 15-chapter sample at https://BookHip.com/GPKGG
- Here’s the preorder link. https://www.amazon.com/Surrender-Memoir-Nature-Nurture-Love-ebook/dp/B08F7CYSNY/
- If folks would like to know more about Marylee and this book in particular, then please visit her book launch page. https://booklaunch.io/maryleemacdonald/surrender.
- Obtain a free copy of the book if you plan to attend the Book Club Meeting by emailing Marylee at mm@maryleemacdonald.org
- If you are a member and would like your book to be discussed at a future meeting, email or call Karen Lateiner: kslateiner@gmail.com, 973-997-7204
- Zoom link: APW members will be sent the Zoom link a few days before the meeting. If you are not a member and would like to attend, email Marie Fasano at mfasano.apw@gmail.com Put “Nov 28 Zoom link” in the subject line.