Join us for seasonal appetizers, drinks, and literary fun in support and celebration of the Bucks County Book Festival!
This fundraising event will feature conversations with prominent authors, bookish raffles, and more as we aim to raise funds to bring the Bucks County Book Festival back to the region in May 2025.
A Taste of Book Fest
October 24, 2024
6pm - 8pm
The Inn at Fox Briar Farm
300 Carousel Ln, Doylestown, PA 18902
Tickets: $100+fees/each (includes light refreshments)
Can't attend? Please consider making a donation of any size.
Your continued generosity helps to support the Bucks County Book Festival's mission to celebrate literacy, spark imagination, and build community by connecting authors, readers, and book lovers throughout our region.
All proceeds from this event will directly support the mission of the Bucks County Book Festival.
A Taste of Book Fest: Confirmed Authors
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John Vercher
Author, Devil Is Fine (Macmillan)
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John Vercher is an Artist-in-Residence at Monmouth University, and was the inaugural Wilma Dykeman writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. His debut novel, Three-Fifths, was named one of the best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune and Booklist and was nominated for the Edgar and Strand Magazine Critics’ Awards for Best First Novel. His second novel, After the Lights Go Out, called “shrewd and explosive” by The New York Times, was named a Best Book of Summer 2022 by BookRiot and Publishers Weekly, and named a Booklist Editor’s Choice Best Book of 2022. He lives in the Philadelphia region and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program.
ACCOLADES:
IndieNext Pick
An NPR Book of the Day
TIME Magazine - 24 New Books You Need to Read This Summer
LA Times - 10 books to add to your reading list in June
The Root - Books by Black Authors We Can't Wait to Read
ABOUT DEVIL IS FINE: Reeling from the sudden death of his teenage son, our narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of immediately selling the land. But what lies beneath the dirt is much more than he can process in the throes of grief. As a biracial Black man struggling with the many facets of his identity, he’s now the owner of a former plantation. Blurring the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, Devil is Fine is a brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit.
Chuck Wendig
Author, Black River Orchard
Chuck Wendig is the New York Times bestselling author of Wanderers, The Book of Accidents, Wayward, and more than two dozen other books for adults and young adults. A finalist for the Astounding Award and an alumnus of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, he has also written for comics, games, film, and television.
He’s known for his popular blog, terribleminds, and books about writing such as Damn Fine Story.
He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his family.
ABOUT BLACK RIVER ORCHARD: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A small town is transformed when seven strange trees begin bearing magical apples in this masterpiece of horror from the author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents.
“This masterful outing should continue to earn Wendig comparisons to Stephen King.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
LOCUS AWARD FINALIST • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something besides the season is changing there.
Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black.
Take a bite of one of these apples, and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker.
This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples . . . and what’s the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?
Even if something else is buried in the orchard besides the seeds of these extraordinary trees: a bloody history whose roots reach back to the very origins of the town.
But now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. It’s harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.
Thank You to our Event Sponsors
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Jo Piazza
Author, The Sicilian Inheritance (Dutton)
Jo is the national and international bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance, We Are Not Like Them, You Were Always Mine, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, The Knockoff and How to Be Married. Her work has been published in ten languages in twelve countries and four of her books have been optioned for film and television. Jo's podcasts have garnered more than twenty-five million downloads and regularly top podcast charts. An editor, columnist and travel writer, her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, New York magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour and many other publications. She lives in Philly with her husband, Nick Aster and three feral children.
ABOUT THE SICILIAN INHERITANCE: Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie's death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara's great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered.
Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and prove her birthright. Flashing back to the past, we meet Serafina, a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly it isn’t long before a woman challenging the status quo finds herself in danger.
As Sara discovers more about Serafina she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight.
A Taste of Book Fest: Moderator
Jamie Brenner
Author, The Forever Summer
Jamie Brenner is the author and ghostwriter of nearly twenty books, fiction and nonfiction. Her novels include the national bestseller The Forever Summer (Little, Brown) and her nonfiction includes the forthcoming False Claims (HarperCollins). Jamie's short story Gold Party (Blackstone Publishing) is currently in development as a feature film. She divides her time between Bucks County, PA and New York City.
ABOUT THE FOREVER SUMMER:
Marin Bishop has always played by the rules, and it's paid off: on the cusp of thirty she has a handsome fiancé, a prestigious Manhattan legal career, and her father’s hard-won admiration. But with one careless mistake at work, Marin suddenly finds herself unemployed and alone. Before she can summon the courage to tell her parents, a young woman appears, claiming to be Marin's half-sister. Seeking answers, Marin agrees to join her on a soul-searching journey to Cape Cod, to meet the family she didn’t even know she had.
As the summer unfolds at her grandmother’s beachside B&B, it becomes clear that her half-sister’s existence is just the first in a series of truths that will shake Marin’s beliefs—in love, and in her own identity—to the core. Filled with shocking revelations, heartfelt romance, and resilient women banding together against the most unexpected twists of fate, THE FOREVER SUMMER is an emotionally resonant page-turner, and a delicious escape for any season.