Alexandra Ripley (January 8, 1934 - January 10, 2004)

Alexandra Ripley, née Braid (January 8, 1934, Charleston, S.C. - January 10, 2004), the only child of Alexander and Elizabeth Braid, was an American writer best known as the author of Scarlett (1991), the sequel to Gone with the Wind. Her first novel was Who's that lady in the President's bed? (1972). Charleston (1981), her first historical novel, was a bestseller, as were her next books On Leaving Charleston (1984), The Time Returns (1985), and New Orleans Legacy (1987). Scarlett received some damning reviews, but was very successful nonetheless.

She attended the elite Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina, and graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1955 with a major in Russian. She worked at several publishing houses, writing catalog and flap copy for books until she got up the nerve to become an author in her own right.

In 1958 she married Leonard Ripley, and divorced in 1963 after having two sons. She re-married with John Graham and she had other two sons.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Ripley

Event: Sleeper novel of the season

Date: Thursday, January 12
Time: at 7:00 pm
Place: WORD Books at 126 Franklin Street in Greenpoint, New York City

Named one of the Washington Post Book World's Notable Fiction Titles of 2011!

“The title of Russell’s splendid novel hints at its contents: Sergey Nabokov was the younger, homosexual brother of Vladimir, and in this fictional biography, we learn of his mingling among the greats in Parisian salons and of the difficulty of living in his brother’s shadow.”—The Washington Post Book World

If you are in New York City on Thursday, January 12, at 7:00 pm, you can hear Paul Russell in conversation with Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters, at WORD Books at 126 Franklin Street in Greenpoint. You can get a preview the conversation between these two incredible writers by reading this interview at The Millions.

The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov: A Novel by Paul Russell
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Cleis Press; 1 edition (November 8, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1573447196
ISBN-13: 978-1573447195
Amazon: The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov: A Novel

In this novel based on the extraordinary life of the gay brother of Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Russell re-creates the rich and changing world in which Sergey, his family and friends lived; from wealth and position in pre-revolutionary Russia, to the halls of Cambridge University, and the Parisian salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. But it is the honesty and vulnerability of Sergey, our young gay narrator, that hook the reader: his stuttering childhood in the shadow of his brilliant brother, his opium-fueled evenings with his sometime lover Cocteau, his troubled love life on the margins of the Ballets Russes and its legendary cast, and his isolation in war-torn Berlin where he was ultimately arrested, sent to a camp and died in 1945.

Momentum is building swiftly for this remarkable book.