I
am delighted to offer a copy of one of my favorite summer reads last year, TEN
BEACH ROAD by Wendy Wax. The paperback just came out and one lucky reader can
win a copy! Scroll down for information on how you can win and to read an
excerpt.
If
you loved Jennifer Weiner's Fly
Away Home...then try Ten
Beach Road…
“Great
escape reading, perfect for the beach.”—Library Journal
"Sexual magnetism...and a
secret...add dramatic tension...showcasing three women who rise above their
shattered realities with grace, determination, and a little elbow
grease." — Publisher's Weekly
“Full
of laughter, heartache, secrets, loyalty, and courage… run out and pick up a
copy!” —Night Owl Reviews
When
Wendy Wax introduced Madeline Singer, Avery Lawford and Nicole Grant and shared
their story of friendship, family and triumph in TEN BEACH ROAD, USA Today cited the book as one of “six that
belong in your beach bag.” Now, this highly praised novel, which has already
gone back to press seven times since its original trade paperback publication,
is also available as a mass market paperback.
Wax
set TEN BEACH ROAD at two of her favorite spots in
the world—St. Pete Beach, the city in which she was raised, and the famous
Pass-a-Grille beach—where she brings together three women, thrown together by
fate, and challenges them with choices that will change their lives.
Madeline,
Avery and Nicole are very different from one another. Madeline is a homemaker
coping with an empty nest and an unemployed husband. Avery is an architect. At
least she was until she ended up as the sidekick on her ex-husband’s television
program—the one she created, sold and co-hosted. Nicole, dating guru,
matchmaker extraordinaire and founder of Heart, Inc., is living in the shadow
of her biggest mistake—trusting her only brother. All are at the end of their
financial ropes, the victim’s of a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. All they
have left is shared ownership of the once-glorious Bella Flora mansion, now a
beachfront ruin.
Madeline,
Avery and Nikki have to make a choice—cut their losses and sell the historic
property for whatever amount of money they can get or trade sweat equity for
the backing of a local contractor in order to restore it and their bank
accounts. The women choose to save Bella Flora. There amidst the rubble and
former glory, in the midst of a sweltering summer and the backbreaking tasks of
renovation, they begin to redefine themselves, and to discover their own
strength and the power of friendship. Then, as Bella Flora again stands
magnificent and proud, secrets begin to pull them apart and fate steps in once
more, ready to destroy everything they’ve built.
Once
again, Wendy Wax has imbued the lives and dialogue of her protagonists with
energy and insights that immerse readers in their story from the very start.
ABOUT
WENDY WAX
A
St. Pete Beach native and longtime Atlanta resident, Wendy is perhaps best
known to readers for her exploration of women’s friendships and the
emotional bonds tying people to their families, friends and work. Her writing
has been called “entertaining and informative” (St. Petersburg Times) and The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution praised her “breezy wit and keen insight.” TEN BEACH ROAD is the first of Wendy’s novels to use
her hometown as her primary setting.
Wendy
has always been a voracious reader. Her love affairs with language and
storytelling paid off beginning with her first shift at the campus radio
station while studying journalism at the University of Georgia. She returned to
her home state, and then studied in Italy before graduating from the University
of South Florida and going to work for the Tampa PBS affiliate, WEDU-TV. She
was best-known in the Tampa Bay area as the host of Desperate & Dateless, a
radio matchmaking program that aired on WDAE radio, and nationally as host of The Home Front, which aired on
PBS television affiliates across the country.
The
mother of a toddler and an infant when she decided to change careers to write
professionally, Wendy has since written eight novels, including OCEAN BEACH, Ten Beach Road, Magnolia Wednesdays, The Accidental Bestseller (a Romance Writers of America Rita
Award finalist), Leave It to
Cleavage, 7 Days and
7Nights, and Single in
Suburbia. Her work has been sold to publishers in ten countries and to the
Rhapsody Book Club. Her novel, Hostile
Makeover, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine.
To win a copy of TEN BEACH ROAD by Wendy Wax, send an email to
contest@gmail.com, with "TEN BEACH ROAD" as the subject or click here. Make sure to include your name and mailing address
in the US only. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age. One
entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold
to anyone. All entries, including names, email addresses and mailing addresses,
will be purged after winner is notified. This contest ends July 10, 2012. Good
luck!
Excerpt from TEN BEACH ROAD
by Wendy Wax
An eternity later, they hobbled out to the backyard
just as the sky was beginning to pinken. Bedraggled, they dropped into
the beach chairs with a scrape of aluminum against concrete.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this dirty in my entire
life.” Madeline plopped a family-sized container of hummus and triangles of
pita bread on the upside down packing box that their Sam’s purchases had been
carried in.
“Me, neither.” Avery dropped a bag of Cheez
Doodles beside it and swiped the back of her forearm across her forehead,
managing to add another streak of dirt to her face.
Nicole set an unopened bottle of Chardonnay on the
pool deck next to her bare feet and handed a plastic cup to each of them.
“If there was an inch of water in this pool, I’d be in it.” Nicole
slumped in her chair. “I think we should make it a top priority.”
“We barely have a working bathroom,” Avery pointed
out. “It took me forever to clean the shower and tub up in the
hall. There’s pretty much no water pressure. I’d rather have a
shower than a swim in a pool.”
“I want both,” Nicole said, lifting the cup to her
lips. “It’s not an either/or sort of thing.”
“Well, it is here.” Avery took a long sip of
wine as the sun slipped farther toward the Gulf. “Everything’s not going
to get done at once, but I will talk to Chase about the schedule and how things
should be prioritized.”
Madeline looked ruefully down at herself.
Together they could have posed for the illustration of “something the cat
dragged in” – even Nicole in her high-end running clothes and her hair pulled
back in a glittery clasp. This was only day one; she could hardly
imagine what they’d look like after the long, hot summer that lay ahead.
Her arms were so tired that it took real effort to
lift even the small plastic cup, but she nonetheless touched it to the
others. “Cheers!” she said, and they nodded and repeated the toast.
“Will you be able to run your business from here?” she asked Nicole as they
contemplated the sinking sun.
Nicole’s cup stopped midway to her lips. In the
pass, a boat planed off and gathered speed as it entered the Gulf.
“Sure,” she finally said. “Have laptop and cell phone, will match
make.” She turned her gaze from the boat that was now disappearing from view to
focus on Madeline. “How about you?” Nicole asked. “Can you really
leave home for the whole summer?”
Madeline finished the last drops of wine and set her
glass on the makeshift cocktail table. “You make it sound like going to
camp,” she said in what could only be described as a wistful tone. “I was
hoping my husband, Steve, would come down and help for a while.”
“Oh, is he retired?” Avery asked.
Madeline felt her cheeks flush. Nicole raised an
eyebrow and poured them all another glassful.
“Not exactly,” Madeline admitted. “He was a
financial planner who made the mistake of putting all his clients’ money in
Malcolm Dyer’s fund. Along with his family’s.”
Her teeth worried at her bottom lip. She hadn’t
meant to say so much. Or sound quite so pathetic.
“He stole my father’s entire estate,” Avery
said. “Everything he’d built over a lifetime of hard work went into that
thief’s pocket.” She grimaced and shoved her sunglasses back up on top of
her head. “I still can’t believe it. Anything short of being drawn
and quartered would be far too good for him.”
Madeline saw Nicole shiver slightly. “Are you
cold?” The sun had not yet set, but its warmth had diminished.
“No.” Nicole turned her attention to the boat
traffic in the pass. A Jet Ski swooped close to the seawall, its plume of
seawater peacocking behind it. The rider was big shouldered and solid
with jet black hair and heavily muscled arms. Nicole watched idly at first,
presumably because he was male and attractive, but straightened in surprise as
the rider locked gazes and offered a mock salute before revving his engine and
zooming away.
“Do you know that guy?” Madeline asked Nicole,
surprised. “He waved at you.”
“No,” Nicole said. “I don’t think he was
actually waving at me. He …”
“Yes, he was,” Madeline insisted. “He acted like
he knew you.”
“That guy was definitely hunky,” Avery said.
“And he was definitely eyeing Nicole.”
“He must have thought I was someone else,” Nicole took
a sliver of pita and chewed it intently before changing the topic.
“So, how many kids do you have?” she asked Madeline.
“Two,” Madeline said, unsure how much information to
share. “My son’s struggling a bit at school; he’s in his freshman year at
Vanderbilt,” she said. “And my daughter, well, right before I left she
lost her job-she’s a filmmaker- and she came home unexpectedly to live.”
She cleared her throat as if that might somehow stop this bad news dump.
“That was right after my mother-in-law moved in.”
“Good Lord,” Nicole said. She lifted the bottle,
eyed the little that was left, and poured the remaining drops into Madeline’s
glass. “No wonder you want to go away to camp.” She smiled with
what looked like real sympathy. “Drink up. Girl; I’d run away from home,
too, if I had to deal with all that.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping their
wine, as the sun grew larger and brighter. A warm breeze blew gently off
the Gulf, stirring the palms and riffling their hair.
“Maybe you should get your daughter to come down and
shoot some ‘before’ video for us,” Avery suggested. “That’s actually what
led to Hammer and Nail.” She furrowed her brow. “I had no
idea what was coming down the pike when I shot that first ten minutes.”
Madeline considered the small blonde. “My
mother-in-law seemed to think it was your husband’s show, that he got you on
it.”
“A lot of people came to believe that,” Avery said,
her tone wry. “Including my ex-husband. But the idea was
mine. I’m the one who sold it, and us, to the network.”
They fell silent as the sun burned with a new
intensity, shimmering almost white, then turning golden red that tinged the
Gulf as it sank smoothly beneath it.
“God, that was beautiful,” Madeline breathed as they
all continued to stare out over the Gulf, unable to tear their gazes from the
sky and the last painted remnants of daylight. “It makes me feel like
anything is possible.”
No one responded, and she supposed she should be
grateful that no one trampled on her flight of fancy. The show was over,
but Madeline could still feel its power. It moved her in a way her fear
and even her resolution and Little Red Henness had not. She raised her now-empty
glass to Avery and Nicole. “I propose that we all make a sunset
toast. That we each name one good thing that happened today.”
“Good grief,” Nicole said. “Look around
you.” She motioned with her empty plastic glass at the neglected house
that hunkered behind them, the cracked and empty pool, the detached garage with
its broken windows and listing door. “Is your middle name Pollyanna?”
Madeline flushed at the comment, but she didn’t
retract her suggestion. “I’m not saying we should pretend everything’s
perfect,” she said. “I’m just saying that no matter how bad it is it
would be better to dwell on the even slightly positive than the overwhelming
negative.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Avery asked.
They all still held their empty glasses aloft. “How good a thing does it
have to be?”
“That’s up to you.” Madeline said. “I’m not
interested in judging; there will be no ‘good enough’ police.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Nicole snorted.
“All right, hold on a sec,” Madeline said. She
went into the kitchen and retrieved a second bottle of wine from the fridge,
grateful that John Franklin had had the power turned on. As she refilled
their glasses, she searched for a positive. Nicole was right, it wasn’t
an easy task.
“Okay.” She raised her now-full glass and waited
for the others to do the same. “I think it’s good that three complete
strangers were able to reach an agreement and commit to a course of action.”
They touched glasses and took a sip. Madeline
nodded at Avery. “Your turn.”
“Hmmmm, let me think.” She looked out over the
seawall at the gathering darkness as the three of them sat in a spill of light
from the loggia. A few moments later she raised her glass. “I think
it’s good that this house is not going to be torn down. It deserves a
facelift and a new life.”
They clinked and drank and turned their gazes to
Nicole. Madeline could hardly wait to hear what she would say.
Nicole looked back at the house, then at them. A
small smile played around her lips, and Madeline wondered if she was going to
tell them to stuff the happy crap or simply refuse to participate. But
she raised her glass in their directions and with only a small sigh of
resignation said, “It’s a good thing no one saw me in that minivan. I
can’t imagine how I’d ever live it down.”
©Wendy Wax
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