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An Indie Next Pick for November
People Magazine pick of the week
Amazon Books #1 pick for November
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The November read for Amazon's "Sarah Selects" Book Club
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14 Uplifting Books for Fall: Book Bub
Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2024: Amazon
Our Most Anticipated Reads: Criminal Element
20 mystery novels and crime collections for your fall book reading: Orange County Register
My new novel is a mystery told from the point of view of a pony who is trying to reunite with the one little girl he really loved, twenty-five years after he last saw her. It's a hilarious, rollicking escapade that takes him back and forth across America, encountering all kinds of people, animals and adventures. If you love animals, this one's for you!
Available now in hardcover, ebook or audiobook from Penguin Random House, your local bookstore, and all the places books are sold...
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About Me
The author of Pony Confidential (Berkley/PRH) as well as Sally Brady's Italian Adventure and The Italian Party, both from St. Martin's Press, Christina Lynch’s picaresque journey includes chapters in Chicago and at Harvard, where she was an editor on the Harvard Lampoon. She was the Milan correspondent for W magazine and Women’s Wear Daily, and disappeared for four years in Tuscany. In L.A. she was on the writing staff of Unhappily Ever After; Encore, Encore; The Dead Zone and Wildfire. She now lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Under the pen name Magnus Flyte, she is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller City of Dark Magic and City of Lost Dreams. She teaches at College of the Sequoias.
Book Groups
I love talking to book groups! All book club scheduling is done via Adventures By The Book. 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 Adventures By The Book 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.
My other books
Sally Brady's Italian Adventure, is set in Hollywood and Italy in 1931-1947. Follow effervescent Sally Brady as she goes from Dust Bowl refugee to glamorous gossip columnist in Rome, then gets stranded in Fascist-era Tuscany. Great for book groups!
Available in paperback, hardback, audio or ebook from your favorite booksellers.
or drop into your local bookstore and ask them to order it if they don't have a copy!
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
The Italian Party is set in Italy in 1956. A novel of Cold War intrigue, with spies, romance, and adventures in lovely Siena, it's available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, audio, and large print from St. Martin's Press.
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.
News!
Crime Reads revealed the cover and featured an excerpt of Pony Confidential on its Daily Thrill page.
I created a list of some of the best books I've come across in my research about women in wartime. It's live on Shepherd.com, a new website for booklovers. Also on Shepherd is my list of my three favorite books of 2023, and the favorites of all 949 authors they asked.
Follow Me!
Instagram: @clynchwriter
Facebook: @christinalynchauthor
Goodreads: Christina Lynch