Male author channels women in ‘The Accidental Girlfriend’
Before retiring from teaching English at Manchester High School, author Stephen Richard Smith was a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The author’s picture on the back of his contemporary romance novel The Accidental Girlfriend will be valuable to remind the reader that yes — it really was written by a man.
The Accidental Girlfriend is narrated by Julie, who begins her story in 1996, the day after being laid off from her editorial job at the Canton Repository. Her sloppy-drunk friend, Katie, takes her out to drink vodka and ridicule their fellow Applebee’s patrons. One of them is George, who seems to be an uncomplicated truck driver. George picks up the girls’ tab, and Julie gives him her number.
George calls Julie for a date, and they spend an enjoyable day until he tells her that his wife had been killed in a car accident two years before; on a second date, as she visits his house in rural Holmes County, she sees portraits of the dead woman in almost every room. George tells Julie that he and his wife had promised each other that, if widowed, they would never remarry.
George tells Julie they can be no more than friends, and she tells him she is looking for something permanent, but they continue seeing each other despite his inability to commit to a relationship. Julie spills her frustrations to Katie, and their raunchy conversations, and Julie’s meetings with her ex-boyfriend, the sleazy Jack, are so real it is as if the author overheard them in a bar.
The Accidental Girlfriend (215 pages, softcover) costs $8.99 from online retailers. Smith also is the author of King of Methamphetamine Valley, about a rookie ATF agent in the San Joaquin Valley.
‘Disrespecting Lela’ too detailed
Family secrets and divided allegiances spice up Disrespecting Lela, a juicy drama by Julie Williams. The Mercer family is shocked when Lela, fed up with her husband, Curtis, and his philandering, cuts his throat with a kitchen knife. His mother, Doris, the powerful head of a beauty supply empire, and “downright mean” sister Tracey, are determined to see Lela face the death penalty; his brother, Charles, has harbored a long infatuation with Lela, and still hopes they can be together.
The death leads to much more than a potential trial. Long-ago affairs, shady financial dealings, and dirty cops figure into the story, along with Lela’s friend Ashley, who is the voice of reason. An imaginative, sensational plot is compromised by too much detail and description, and many misspellings.
Disrespecting Lela (322 pages, softcover) costs $12.99 from online retailers. Julie Williams lives in Akron, and has written an e-book of horror stories, The University of Perdition.
Ohioana Book Award nominees
Among the nominees in the Fiction category for the 2014 Ohioana Book Awards is Looking for Me by Cleveland native Beth Hoffman. In Nonfiction, nominees include Columbus historian Will Bashor’s Marie Antoinette’s Head: The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen, and the Revolution; Case Western Reserve University professor Brad Ricca’s Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, The Creators of Superman; and Laura Taxel and Marilou Suszko’s Cleveland’s West Side Market: 100 Years and Still Cooking. Nominated in the About Ohio or an Ohioan category is Carl Sferrazza Anthony for Ida McKinley: The Turn-of-the-Century First Lady through War, Assassination, and Secret Disability.
Events
Portage County District Library (Garrettsville branch, 10482 South St.) — Nelson Township resident and Warren Tribune columnist Burton W. Cole presents a summer reading and writing program and signs his new Christian-based middle-grade book Bash and the Chicken Coop Caper, sequel to the delightful Bash and the Pirate Pig, 1 to 2 p.m. Monday.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Middleburg Heights branch, 15600 East Bagley Road) — Gail Ghetia Bellamy signs Cleveland Summertime Memories: A Warm Look Back, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Monday.
Mac’s Backs (1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights) — Joe Baur, author of Best Hikes Near Cleveland, and Douglas Trattner, author of the Cleveland edition of the Moon travel handbook series, sign their books 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday in the “Tuesdays on Coventry” summer vendor village across the street from the bookstore. Michael Garriga, instructor in creative writing at Baldwin-Wallace University and author of “flash fiction” The Book of Duels, and Kevin Keating, author of The Natural Order of Things, read from and sign their books at the shop from 7 to 8 p.m. Thursday; poets Richard Meier, Nicole Wilson, Joshua Young and Abigail Zimmer read from their works, 7 p.m. Friday.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Parma-Snow branch, 2121 Snow Road) — Elizabeth Manuel, proprietor of Elizabeth’s Barber Shop in Parma, talks about work as a female barber and signs Beautiful, Beautiful, the Haircut’s Not Bad Either, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Garfield Heights branch, 5400 Transportation Blvd.) — Marty Gitlin, author of The Great American Cereal Book: How Breakfast Got Its Crunch, talks about his book from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday.
Learned Owl Book Shop (204 N. Main St., Hudson) — Minnesota journalist Wendy Webb signs The Vanishing, gothic suspense about a widow who becomes the caretaker for the estate of an eccentric horror novelist, 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday.
— Barbara McIntyre
Special to the Beacon Journal
Send information about books of local interest to Lynne Sherwin, Features Department, Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309 or lsherwin@thebeaconjournal.com. Event notices should be sent at least two weeks in advance.