Book Groups

I love talking to book groups! All book club scheduling is done via Novel Network. This is a free service that arranges a 30 minute online visit either by FaceTime, Skype, or phone. The visit is free and so is your membership. Please click here to sign up for your free Novel Network membership and to request an online visit to your book club! 

If you just have a question for me, you can message me through Instagram @clynchwriter or send me a message via Goodreads.

Reviews of 

Sally Brady's Italian Adventure

"A fresh breeze of wit and glamour.... Ms. Lynch is generous with the kind of sharp dialogue usually reserved for TV scripts. 'For us, love is fun, sex is power, and marriage is business,' says Sally’s starlet benefactress, but for Sally―and this appealing novel―the war brings about a new and more warmhearted code of conduct." 

―The Wall Street Journal

“[A] powerful story of wealth, poverty, danger and near-death." 

―FIRST for Women monthly book club

"This fun romp goes back in time to the glory days of old Hollywood."

―Lee Woodruff 

"A gorgeously entertaining story about a spirited woman during wartime that manages to be a clever caper at times but taut and profound at others, while always richly evocative of the charms and contradictions of Italy. Brava!"

     —Chris Pavone, New York Times #1 bestselling author of The Expats and Two Nights in Lisbon

“As a novelist, Christina Lynch has real moxie and pluck.  Her Italian Adventure is packed with gusto, wit, and a compelling pace that starts at a full trot and only picks up speed.”

—Conan O'Brien

"Equally funny and heartbreaking, Christina Lynch's impeccably researched historical novel opens with popping corks and gossipy fun, and develops into a harrowing portrait of a dark political era that holds a mirror up to our own. Populated with unforgettable characters and wise-cracking dialogue, entertaining to the very last page, and as full of joy, pathos, and beauty as Italy itself, SALLY BRADY is a multi-tonal masterpiece."

     —Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of The Spanish Bow, Annie and the Wolves

"From the dusty corn fields of Iowa to the palm-tree lined streets of Hollywood, from lavish fetes in Tuscan gardens to chic ski weekends in Swiss chalets, Lynch’s novel takes her young protagonist Sally—and her readers --on a wild coming-of age ride set against the backdrop of WWII. It’s an ambitious, rags-to-riches fantasy with a delicious melange of movie stars, countesses, artists, farmers,  gossip columnists, maids, soldiers, dictators and other colorful characters at every turn. I loved it!"

 —Glynis Costin, Writer and former Editor at In Style, Los Angeles Magazine, former Milan Bureau Chief of W and WWD.

"From the very first page of Christina Lynch’s new novel, Sally takes hold of this narrative and never lets go. Lynch writes her into life, giving her a strong voice and a will to survive. Sally is a female Huck Finn in more modern times, her river Hollywood. 

Across the world, we find writer Lapo in Siena, Italy, who looks out toward a future barreling toward him, his son Alessandro also witness to the disturbing changes. Sally brings her Hollywood gleam and glitter with her to Italy as the war clouds darken. Each must grapple with sideways turns of fortune as Il Duce drags Italy into the war.

Parts Hollywood gossip magazine, war novel, Italian travelog, and hero’s adventure, Sally Brady’s Italian Adventure pulls the reader into the realities Italy faced during World War Two. Through Sally’s keen, perceptive eye, Lapo’s writing and study, and Alessandro’s service experience, we learn the degradations and sacrifices Italians made as the war rumbled on.

By the end of the novel, we are rewarded with not only the culmination of the fighting but a yearned for convergence that is a joy to read. Loose ends are tied up in such an amazing way, you will be glad for the journey. Missing characters are found, important characters save the day, and what we have hoped for is what we are gifted with. Wonderfully written—crackling dialogue, crisp, clean action. A detailed, important, entertaining read."

     —Jessica Barksdale Inclán, author of The Play’s the Thing and What the Moon Did

"Sally Brady is my kind of heroine. She loves good wine and knows her olive oils. She can't resist the smell of fresh-baked bread or a plate of cacio e pepe. It was a pleasure to see Italy and my paesani through her keen eyes. Brava, Sally!!"

     —Cesare Casella, Italian chef and author of Diary of a Tuscan Chef, True Tuscan, and the James Beard Award-nominated The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Italian Cuisine.

Glamor, romance, humor and peril combine to make the zippy Sally Brady's Italian Adventure a novel that will tickle you pink. Go pink!     —Diane Leslie - Diesel Bookstore

Sally Brady is a sassy, funny, adventurous American waif turned high-society gossip columnist who finds herself in the best of places—Italy—at the worst possible time, under Mussolini’s fascist boot. Christina Lynch takes us on a brilliant  journey to where Bridgerton meets Italo Calvino, as Sally comes to terms with her fast-changing fortunes—and, ultimately, herself. 

     —Peter Gumbel, award-winning author of Citizens of Everywhere 

"In 1931, eleven-year-old Sally Brady’s impoverished Iowa family ships her off to make her way in the world, and boy does she oblige. The next seventeen years take Sally from Hollywood, where she is (sort of, not really) adopted by a film star, to the playgrounds of pre-war Europe, where she secretly pens a gossip column chronicling elite shenanigans, to wartime Siena, where she is (sort of, not really) under house arrest with American journalists, to the Tuscan hillsides, where she cleverly aids the Italian resistance.  

Sally Brady has no home or family to speak of. (“Home” is the nickname she gives her steamer trunk). Yet again and again, when it really matters, Sally Brady proves exactly who she is and what she’s made of.  From now on, when things go south, I’ll think “WWSD?” (What Would Sally Do?) and take my inspiration from this witty, gritty, outrageous and courageous heroine."

     —Virginia Hume, Author of Haven Point

My other books

Reviews of The Italian Party

One of the Wall Street Journal's "Six More Books to Read This Winter" • "Required Reading," The New York Post • Library Journal's "Spring/Summer Bests" of 2018 • A Sonoma Index-Tribune Bestseller • One of CrimeReads'"Debuts to Discover Spring 2018"

"Deeply funny." —The New York Times Book Review podcast 

"[A] sweltering thriller set against the backdrop of what is probably your dream getaway destination: Tuscany." —Bustle 

"Tremendous fun! Wives with big secrets, husbands with bigger ones, swirling around a 1950s Siena teeming with seduction and spycraft." —Chris Pavone, New York Times bestselling author of The Travelers 

"Seeing the "antiquated" culture of postwar/Cold War Italy through the eyes of Americans, obsessed with modern convenience and progress, sort of mirrors my Italy to America transition in a fun way—plus there are spies! Affairs! and lot of food!!" —Giada De Laurentiis

"Imagine Beautiful Ruins plus horses; Toujours Provence with spies, a mystery and sex. The Italian Party is a fizzy, page-turning delight that begs for a Campari and soda!" —Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Be Frank With Me 

“I’ve always wanted to take a trip to Italy in the 1950’s and The Italian Party is my ticket. Like the best Italian paintings, this smart and funny book deftly combines the light and the dark. Christina Lynch’s prose pairs well with any hearty Tuscan red.” —Conan O'Brien 

The Magnus Flyte novels

I am the co-author of two comic thrillers published by Penguin under the pen name Magnus Flyte. City of Dark Magic was a New York Times and  L.A. Times bestseller. Both books are available in paperback, large print, audio and ebook, and are on sale in all the usual places. For more info about the Magnus books, check out "his" website.

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