Lambs is hosting another event !
Please join us at Lambs Tuesday August 19th where author Kerry Cullen will be talking about her debut novel House of Beth with guest author Christine Vines joining in on the conversation.
Doors and bar at 5pm
Reading and conversation 6-7pm
Signing and bar hangs 7-9pm
Kerry Cullen’s fiction has been published in The Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, One Teen Story, and more. She earned her MFA at Columbia University, and she lives in New York. HOUSE OF BETH is her debut novel.
The short tagline on the book is: "A woman steps into a life that may still belong to someone else" so we could leave it at that, or use the more full copy below (or an excerpt of it)--up to you!
A haunting and seductive tale of a young career woman who slides quickly into the role of stepmother, in a life that may still belong to someone else. “Vivid, addictive, and crackling with life (yes, even the ghost), House of Beth asks us to consider how and why we make the lives we make” (Lynn Steger Strong).
After a heart-wrenching breakup with her girlfriend and a shocking incident at her job, Cassie flees her life as an overworked assistant in New York for her hometown in New Jersey, along the Delaware. There, she reconnects with her high school best friend, Eli, now a widowed father of two. Their bond reignites, and within a few short months, Cassie is married to Eli, living in his house in the woods, homeschooling the kids, and getting to know her reserved neighbor, Joan.
But Cassie’s fresh start is less idyllic than she’d hoped. She grapples with harm OCD, her mind haunted by gory, graphic images. And she’s afraid that she’ll never measure up to Eli’s late spouse, who was a committed homemaker and traditional wife. No matter what Cassie does, Beth’s shadow still permeates every corner of their home.
Soon, Cassie starts hearing a voice narrating the house’s secrets. As she listens, the voice grows stronger, guiding Cassie down a path to uncover the truth about Beth’s untimely death.
Christine Vines (Kerry's conversation partner):
Christine Vines is a fiction writer from Wichita, KS. Her work has appeared in One Story, BOMB, Witness, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Electric Literature, The Chicago Tribune, Book of the Month’s Volume 0, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2022 Cecilia Joyce Johnson Award for the Short Story from the Key West Literary Seminar, runner-up for the 2018 Nelson Algren Literary Award, and 2022 American Short Fiction Workshop Scholar. She has been a Steinbeck Fellow, a Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow at the Carson McCullers Center, and a writer-in-residence at the Hambidge Center, the Catwalk Institute, Write On Door County, the Joshua Tree Highlands Artists Residency, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Cornell University, and currently teaches creative writing at Vassar College.