Blurb:
Excerpt:
Author Bio:
If you love European settings,
wine, romance, female friendships, laughter, heartbreak, redemption, and a bit
of spice, these are the books for you!
Will There Be Wine?
by Whitney Cubbison
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Austen Keller was living her dream. She landed a career-defining job
which moved her and her husband to Paris. Swoon! Shortly thereafter, she was
divorced. Thud. This wasn’t the plan. Yet there she was—pushing 40 and starting
over.
A decade after she’d last been
single, Austen enters the dating scene playing by a new set of rules in a
different language, culture, and lingerie standards. She experiences every type
of miserable first date imaginable and lives to tell the tales of Pierre the
Mansplainer, Simon the Snoozer, Emile the Over-Sharer, Guillaume of the Gym
Shorts, and many more. On most dates, she struggles to get past one glass of
Bordeaux without wanting to bolt. Even worse, no one chases after her when she
runs. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that whoever said French men were
romantic deserves a swift kick in the pants.
A rewarding and high-powered
career. Check!
Fabulous female friendships. Nailed it!
True love. Umm?
Austen continues to ask herself:
Is “having it all” too much to ask?
A genuine and tragically hilarious
novel about an ex-pat woman's journey of self-discovery through a string of
disastrous dates, relationships forged in a deep cultural divide, world
travels, and wine. A lot of wine.
Will There Be Love?
by Whitney Cubbison
Genre: Romantic Drama
A
propulsive exploration of romantic and platonic love, commitment, shared
history, betrayal and personal reckoning.
To
celebrate her fortieth birthday, Ophelia and her husband Gianluca gather an
unlikely group of eight friends and lovers – some old, some new, some false,
some true – for a long weekend in Ibiza. However, the idyllic villa setting may
be the only thing holding together a complicated tangle of friendship, love,
and betrayal.
Among the guests is Ophelia’s old university flame, Matt, and his new
girlfriend, Austen. While Matt finds himself falling in love, Austen is holding
back, carefully protecting her heart.
Ophelia knows she loves her husband, but “love” is a word she never learned to
say, a silence rooted in a childhood tragedy. What she doesn’t know is that
Gianluca has been whispering it to someone else. And when his mistress crashes
the party along with her own boyfriend, she brings a revelation that could
unravel everything.
Across Rome, Paris and Ibiza, the party guests navigate the tangled paths that
bring people together and push them apart, exploring where love begins, where
it falters, and the courage it takes to hold on—or to let go.
Will There Be Love? is the sequel to
Whitney Cubbison’s debut novel, Will There Be
Wine?, however it can be read as a stand-alone.
Whitney Cubbison is a dual
American & French citizen living in Paris since 2009. She grew up in Texas
and California and graduated from UCLA with a degree in French. She started her
career in Communications working for high-tech PR agencies in San Francisco and
eventually joined Microsoft where she worked for sixteen years, thirteen of
which from the Paris office. During that time, she held various international
roles that encompassed public relations, employee communications, executive
speechwriting, and social media.
She earned her French citizenship
in early 2022 and left Microsoft that summer to focus on completing her first
novel, Will There Be Wine?, which came out in January 2023. The story, while
fiction, was deeply inspired by Whitney’s own experiences as an ex-pat divorcée
living in Paris and trying to navigate the cultural minefield of dating in a
foreign country. A sequel called Will There Be Love? will be out on April 29,
2025.
When she’s not writing, Whitney
can be found sitting in Parisian cafés and restaurants with her friends,
drinking wine.
Website * Facebook * Instagram * Bluesky * Bookbub * Amazon
* Goodreads
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One of my favorite artists is Norman Rockwell. He captured emotion with paint that conveyed a story. After President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced his concept of the Four Freedoms, Rockwell created these amazing illustrations of those rights for The Saturday Evening Post.
The ideas enunciated in the Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms were the foundational principles that grew into the Atlantic Charter declared by Winston Churchill and FDR in August 1941; the United Nations Declaration of January 1, 1942; President Roosevelt’s vision for an international organization that became the United Nations after his death; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 through the work of Eleanor Roosevelt.
When Samantha and her students uncover a campus death, they must draw on everything from science to seances, to learn what happened before Samantha gets fired for “dabbling in the paranormal.
As she walked to her first class of the day, Samantha congratulated herself that for the first time this semester she would arrive at her own class on time. A glance at her watch revealed she even had five minutes to spare. With Douglas Hall in sight and her classroom on its main floor, she was sure to make it on time—
“Samantha!”
Grrr! So close. Although showing up late for class frustrated her, she was mostly annoyed by the person who was about to detain her. If I ignore him, maybe he’ll go away.
“Samantha!” This time he was more insistent.
Samantha released a breath of resignation. She should have known better. He wasn’t the kind to be ignored. Samantha turned to face him as she reached the door of the building. She hadn’t been at Vanderlaan long enough to flout someone who carried the weight around here that he did. “What can I do for you, Len?”
Dr. Len Titus stood before her, dressed as always, in a suit with a starched white shirt and tie which he would loosen by afternoon. His graying hair with a precise part on the side had become his hallmark, along with his hands-on-hips pose and gravelly voice. Levi’s imitation of each was spot on, although professional decorum required that Samantha refrain from the encouragement her laughter would ensure. Since Len Titus was of slight frame, someone unfamiliar with this man might assume passivity or weakness. Not Samantha.
“I see we’re both teaching in Douglas Hall this semester,” he said. “Hope I won’t be in your way.” He peered over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Or you in mine.”
Samantha took a breath, gritted her teeth, and walked through the door. She would use the back entrance next time.
Susan Harris Howell is a psychologist, speaker, and author of The Spirit of Vanderlaan. This book is a fun, cozy, ghost story featuring a professor, Samantha Hayes, and her lively band of students who get caught up in solving a campus mystery. This book draws on her teaching career of over thirty years to capture the camaraderie and warmth between a professor and the assortment of personalities which inhabit her office.
Susan is also the author of Buried Talents, which explores the subtle ways women are discouraged from entering male-dominated occupations. Buried Talents was named a winner in InterVarsity Press’s 2022 Readers’ Choice Awards.
Susan and her husband have two grown children, a daughter-in-law, one adorable grandson, and an incorrigible beagle named Doc. While Doc doesn’t understand a word she says, he fully supports her speaking and writing endeavors.
I’ve lived and worked in several countries in Europe and also in south America and visited many more, using my language skills to understand the culture and how it affects anyone with a different background. I taught and was writing educational materials but not fiction until about ten years ago.
Now I use the setting of those countries in my novels to give my readers the experience of being in that place in the same way as I am as I write..
I like to make the main character in my novels a strong young woman determined to make her way in the world and each novel has a love story at its centre.
I live on the beautiful English Riviera in the UK with my artist husband where I indulge in my passions of writing, reading and creating things, especially in fabric.
My next romance will be set in France, a country I know well, though I have noticed that doesn’t seem to make it any easier to write.
Website: https:// https://marygeorginadegreyauthor.com/
Email: marygeorginadg@gmail.com for newsletter and other enquiries.
I have since written three further novels:
Then The Earth Moved https://amzn.eu/d/fNtaXHK (Italy)
Let Love Find a Way https://amzn.eu/d/gHMpQkC (Wales and Colombia)
Then Time Stands Still https://amzn.eu/d/1pGgH5Q (Spain)
The Disappeared is romantic suspense and not yet published. (Colombia)