Jenna Blum & Christopher Castellani — Murder Your Darlings & Last Seen

Known for such brilliant historical novels as Those Who Save Us and The Lost Family, A Mighty Blaze co-founder and New York Times bestselling author Jenna Blum now offers a contemporary, suspenseful novel about love, loss, and revenge in the world of books.Simone “Sam” Vetiver is a mid-career novelist finishing a lukewarm publicity tour while facing a deadline for a new book on which she’s totally blocked. Recently divorced, Sam is worrying where her life is going when she receives glowing fan mail from stratospherically successful author William Corwyn, renowned for his female-centric novels. When William and Sam meet and his literary sympathy is as intense as their chemistry, both writers think they’ve found The One.Jenna Blum is the New York Times and # 1 internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family; memoir Woodrow on the Bench; audiocourse “The Author at Work: The Art of Writing Fiction” and original podcast The Key of Love. Jenna is CEO and Co-Founder of online author interview platform A Mighty Blaze and one of Oprah.com readers’ Top 30 Women Writers. Jenna earned her MA in Creative Writing at Boston University and has taught workshops for Boston University, Grub Street Writers, A Mighty Blaze, and numerous other institutions for over 25 years. She interviewed Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and is a professional public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally to speak about her work. Jenna is based in Boston. For more about Jenna, please visit www.jennablum.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X (@Jenna_Blum), Instagram (@Jenna_Blum), TikTok (@jenna.blum), and Substack.———Caleb was driving home for Christmas. Steven was pounding beers at a local bar. Matthew was out looking for his ex-girlfriend. Leo was walking in the woods on a winter night. Then they disappeared.Days, weeks, years later, their bodies turn up in icy rivers hundreds of miles apart. How did they get there? What, if anything, connects them? Some of their loved ones believe the official answers. Some are convinced the boys are victims of an insidious network called the Smiley Face Killers. Some are trying to forget them altogether. Meanwhile, Caleb, Steven, Matthew, and Leo find one other—and other boys like them—in the murky depths of the afterlife. Each tells his story in his own way, speaking his version of truth, confessing his desires and grievances and even his hopes for a future he still somehow believes belongs to him. Each revelation brings the reader deeper into their intertwined fates, along a journey through the landscapes of identity, intimacy, and the haunting echoes of unresolved grief.Christopher Castellani is the author of four previous novels (the trilogy A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love) and The Art of Perspective, a book of essays on the craft of fiction. He is the winner of a 2024 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim and Mass Cultural Council fellow, and the 2022-24 writer in residence at Brandeis University. His fourth novel, Leading Men, is currently being adapted into a film for Fox Searchlight Pictures by Oscar-winning producer Peter Spears and director Luca Guadagnino. He lives in Boston and Provincetown.PURCHASE BOOKS HERE:https://politics-prose.com/jenna-blum-030526