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Informationen zum Autor New York Times bestselling author Virginia Kantra is the author of almost thirty novels. She is married to her college sweetheart, a coffee shop owner who keeps her well supplied with caffeine and material. They make their home in North Carolina, where they raised three (mostly adult) children. She is a firm believer in the strength of family, the importance of storytelling, and the power of love. Klappentext "After her mother's death, Dee and her sister Toni settled with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in Kansas, and Dee attended the University of Kansas. But after falling in love with and subsequently being humiliated by an adjunct faculty member and novelist, Dee is unable to face him--and the rest of the school--and applies to the writing program at Trinity College Dublin. At Trinity, Dee finds solace in a new group of friends: Sam Clery, who dropped out of college and now runs a newsagents ('No brains,' his sister says); .... Tim Woodman, who refused to take back his ex-fiancâee ('You have no heart,' she accuses); ... and Reeti Kaur, who is kindhearted but too afraid to tell her parents she wants to teach underprivileged girls rather than obtain her MBA and work in the family business ('I basically have no courage,' she says). Throughout the semesters, the friends grow closer and encounter new opportunities, love, and heartbreak" Leseprobe one Our mother was Judy Gale. The artist. Every time she left us behind with a friend or a nanny or (when friends and nannies couldn't be found) bundled us off to Kansas, I'd tell my sister we were off on an adventure. Like the Pevensies fleeing wartime London or Harry taking the train to Hogwarts. Sometimes we were princesses in exile or orphans escaping cruel relatives. I dropped the orphans bit after our mother died. But lots of stories I told my little sister still began that way, with children on a trip into the magical unknown. There was nothing magic about the English department office at Trinity College Dublin. The metal frame chairs and cinderblock walls were straight from my high school media center. The familiar smells of toner and floor cleaner overlaid the whiff of graduate student desperation in the air. Except for the glimpse of Georgian architecture through the windows and the bust of Yeats on a filing cabinet, I could almost be back in Kansas. But this was Ireland, land of poets and fairies, witches and warriors, Jonathan Swift and Derek Mahon. I was finally moving on. Getting somewhere. Leaving my old self behind. And maybe I was still telling myself stories to make me feel better. I smiled hopefully at the gatekeeper behind the desk. A round woman, a cardigan draping her plump shoulders, green-framed glasses on a silver chain around her neck. "Hi. I'm here to see Dr. Eastwick?" Her glasses flashed at me. "Sorry?" "I have an appointment. Ten o'clock." My flight from Newark had been delayed. I'd taken a cab straight from the Dublin airport so I wouldn't be late. "You're American." "Yes." She tapped her keyboard. "Name?" My heart raced. I cleared my throat. "Dorothy Gale." After my maternal grandmother. Dodo and Toto, Toni dubbed us when she was small. I'd never minded my old-fashioned name. It was unique, right? Mine. Nothing to be ashamed of. Until this past year, when Destiny Gayle, the titular character of a novel by critically acclaimed author Grayson Kettering, spent thirty-two weeks at the top of the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists. It wasn't just the similarity in our names. Destiny dressed like me, in vintage skirts and thrift shop sweaters. ("Her wardrobe reflected her mind," the novel's hero said on page 32, "only gently used, full of secondhand ideas and castoff morality.") Plus, anyone who read his bio knew Grayson Kettering was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Kansas. And anyone who did a ...
