Dream On, Amber
By Emma Shevah
October 6, 2015; Hardcover ISBN 9781492622505
Book Info:
Title: Dream On, Amber
Author: Emma Shevah
Release Date: October 6, 2015
Publishers: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Praise for Dream On, Amber:
“By turns playful and poignant, in both style and substance, this coming-of-age novel will hook readers from the first page to the last.”—School Library Journal, STARRED review
“Amber’s effervescent and opinionated narration captivates from the start, making it easy to root for her as she strives to conquer the “beast” of her worries and thrive at home and at school.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
“Shevah tenderly captures the void of growing up without a father yet manages to create a feisty, funny heroine… A gutsy girl in a laugh-out-loud book that navigates tough issues with finesse.” –Kirkus, STARRED review
“[This] novel is a charmer...While its humor and illustrations lend it Wimpy Kid appeal, its emotional depth makes it stand out from the pack. Molto bene!”- Booklist, STARRED review
Summary:
My name is Ambra Alessandra Leola Kimiko Miyamoto. But call me Amber. I have no idea why my parents gave me all those hideous names but they must have wanted to ruin my life, and you know what? They did an amazing job.
As a half-Japanese, half-Italian girl with a ridiculous name, Amber’s not feeling molto bene (very good) about making friends at her new school.
But the hardest thing about being Amber is that a part of her is missing. Her dad. He left when she was little and he isn’t coming back. Not for her first day of middle school and not for her little sister’s birthday. So Amber will have to dream up a way for the Miyamoto sisters to make it on their own.
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25965546-dream-on-amber?ac=1
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About the Author:
Emma Shevah is half-Irish and half-Thai born and raised in London. She has lived in Australia, Japan, India (her first child was born in the Himalayas) and Jerusalem before moving back to the UK. Emma has busked as a fire-juggler, been a restaurant manager, a copy writer, an English teacher, and is now a blogger and author.
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Excerpt from Dream On, Amber
Bella came in wearing her matching pink nightdress, pink dressing gown, and pink slippers with Hello Kitty all over them. I just don’t get why people like Hello Kitty. I know it’s Japanese and supposed to be kawaii (cute) and everything, so maybe I should like it, but it’s just a picture of a cartoon cat’s head. I mean, seriously, what’s the big deal?
Bella’s hands were behind her back like she was hiding something. She looked much happier than she did when we got home from the party. She moved her arms to the front and handed me a sealed envelope.
“What’s this?” I asked, putting my sharpener down.
“Can you mail it for me tomorrow?”
I looked at the front of the envelope. There was nothing written on it.
“But it’s blank, Bella.”
“Yuuup.”
“Who’s it for?”
“None of your beeswax, Mrs. Nosy Pants.”
“Um…okay. So you…you want me to put it in the mailbox?”
“Yes, Amber. Duuuh. That’s what mailing means.”
“But how is the mailman going to know who to give it to if it has no name on it?”
“Oh,” she said, frowning.
She lay down on her belly on the floor and with her red crayon from the dollar store (well, she wasn’t borrowing any of mine), she wrote on the front of the envelope: “TO MY DAD.”
I looked at her.
“Bella—”
“Shush,” she said. “Just mail it for me.”
“But there’s no address on it—”
“The mailman will know where he lives. He knows where everyone lives.”
“He won’t know where Dad lives. Nobody knows where Dad lives. Not even Mum.”
“Didn’t I say ‘shush’? I’m sure I said ‘shush.’ Just mail it for me. Pleeease, Amber.”
I sighed. What was I supposed to tell her? She was too little. She didn’t get it. So I took it and put it on my desk, just to make her happy.
I know I shouldn’t have done it and it’s probably against the law and everything but when she went out of my room, I opened it.
It said:
Dier Dad,
My nam is Bella and Im your dorta. My bithday party is on Sunday 16 Speptmbr and I rely want you too come. And I neid you to play with me in the park and posh me on the swing. Please come home
love, Bella
P.S. Please buy me a perpel Swatch wach and Sparkle Girl Julerry Makar for my bithday.
I didn’t know what to do. Obviously, I wasn’t going to mail it without an address on it. So instead, I put it in my secret place. If you pull the bottom drawer of my dresser all the way out, there’s a space under it on the floor where I put my most sacred things. I had a coin that I found in Hyde Park that I’m sure is Roman or Viking and one day I’m going to sell it and get mega rich. I had a few other cool things in there too. Some of them are embarrassing, like key-rings I made out of lanyard strings when I was, like, seven and valentine cards my mum sent me. Stuff you can’t exactly throw out but really don’t want anyone to see. The letter wasn’t one of my sacred things but where else was I going to put it?
I also had a picture of my dad holding me when I was a baby that I sneaked out of Nonna’s album. Obviously, we have a whole bunch of photos of him in that album, but I wanted one for myself. One of him with me. Just to prove to myself that he did actually exist and hold me once, and he even looked proud. I don’t look at that photo much because it makes me angry. I know it doesn’t make sense to keep it, but there you go. Not everything makes sense. If it did, he would never have left in the first place.
There was another knock on my door, so I quickly closed the drawer.
“Hang on… Okay, you can come in now.”
Bella stuck her head in.
“When do you think he’ll get it?” she asked.
“Well, they have to find him first. It’s not easy, you know. It takes teams of detectives monthsto find missing people.”
She walked in to my room and said, “Oh,” and did that thing where she points her toes inward and puts one foot over the other, like her toes are hugging.
“Do you think he’ll get it before my birthday?”
“I don’t know, Bella. I don’t think so. But if by some weird miracle he did get it before then, I’m sure he’d come to your party.”
Bella unhugged her toes and put her hands on her hips. “Amber?”
“Mmm?”
“How do you know I want Dad to come to my party?”
Oops.
“Well, it’s kind of obvious, Bella. You did ask if he’d get it before your birthday.”
“Oh,” she said, frowning. “Hmm. Well, okay.” And she skipped back to her room.
The letter wasn’t my biggest problem at that point. I was so worried about starting my new school in the morning that I couldn’t get to sleep for ages. When you can’t sleep, your mind starts going a bit doolally. Well, mine does anyway. I start thinking all kinds of crazy things. And eventually the problem with Bella and her letter worked its way into my churning brain.
It was kind of mean and everything but there were times I really wished Bella wasn’t my sister. But knowing there was a huge hole where our dad was supposed to be wasn’t much fun either. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe, just maybe, I could do something about it. I could save Bella from years of torture with one quick solution.
It seemed straightforward enough.
I decided to pretend to be my dad and write back to her, you know, to make her feel better.
And that was it.
Paff!
The most ingenious idea I’ve ever had lit up my mind like a firework.
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Kay Smith will be on tour October 19-26 with her novel Lotus
Newlywed Lotus Price has everything that she should have ever wanted: a great husband and a dream job as an executive of a prominent Chicago philanthropic foundation. Her life is going exactly as she planned—until she discovers she is pregnant and then unexpectedly encounters her first love. Despite his offer to be friends, Lotus wants to keep the past where it belongs. As the pregnancy begins to interrupt the dream that Lotus envisioned for her marriage, she is forced to rethink everything she thought she knew about her path to this point, including the single day that led her to her husband and away from the man she saw herself spending forever with. Now, as long-buried scars resurface, only time will tell what direction Lotus will take in the future—and who will be willing to give up what they have in order to get what they have always desired?
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Bio:
Kay W. Smith is a writer and blogger living in Chicago, Illinois with her husband and two sons. She worked in public policy for several years before pursuing her passion to write full-time. She is a graduate of Spelman College and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
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Author Bio
With an eye for detail, an ear for well-tuned dialogue and an incredible grasp of the obvious, all honed while performing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles and improvisational theater in San Francisco, Sherman adds just enough bawdiness to delivercharacter-driven contemporary novels that will have the reader laughing, thinking and even connecting with the characters in her books
Writing has been a part of Randi’s life since she was a teenager, one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. But being pragmatic and realizing that she preferred having an income, living indoors and eating regularly, she reluctantly put her dreams on hold and entered the corporate world, yet never left behind her sense of humor and creative storytelling ability, skills which were not always appreciated during budget and strategy meetings.
Now, after living indoors for a while and eating regularly, albeit too much, Randi has picked up her pen again and her third novel, THE TRUTH ABOUT CAROLINE is here. It is the continuation to her second novel CAROLINE STARTS OVER (2014). Randi's first book PAULA TAKES A RISK was released in 2012. Look for Randi's next novel THE LOBBY, Spring-ish 2016.
Randi lives in the California wine country. She would never claim to have a genius IQ, the body of a super model. However, she can spell “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Randi maintains a trim, well-toned body that is cleverly concealed beneath twenty pounds of soft protective layering and she has the appetite of a bird (vulture).
Things that Randi cannot live without: people to laugh with, her car horn, a gym membership where there are chubby women who break into a sweat while putting on a jog bra, wine, waist capes, and her wife, Carol.
Randi can live without: mean-spirited people, liver, left-overs, communal dressing rooms, tight underwear, and people who point.
Randi is five-foot-seven.
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Mickey J Corrigan will be on tour October 5-12 with her novel Ex-Treme Measures
Vanna Treme runs a domestic investigations agency in downscale Deport Beach, Florida. She spies on cheating spouses while struggling to recover from her own imploded marriage. Vanna's unique PI firm also offers Ex-Treme Measures, special services designed to get rid of the marital problem. Forever.
Ringo, Vanna's trusted assistant, a hunky ex-cop, is worried. Their clients are lying to them, local competition is moving in, and everyone in South Florida is crazy or untrustworthy—or both. But Vanna refuses to listen. She heads for the superficial glitter of Palm Beach, where the hits just keep on coming her way.
Ex-Treme Measures combines humor, action, and evolutionary biology to investigate some of our culture's most pressing mysteries, including why men act like men, and why the hell women put up with it.
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Bio:
Mickey J. Corrigan writes pulp fiction, literary romance, and psychological thrillers. Her stories have been called "delightful pulp," "oh so compulsive" reads, and "bizarre yet believable." Recent books include the edgy novellas in The Hard Stuff series from The Wild Rose Press; the neo-noir satire The Blow Off; and the thrillerSongs of the Maniacs from Salt in the UK. Salt will release her new novel in 2017.
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