Bestselling author NM Kelby will appear at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe on Saturday, May 17th at 7:00 PM to sign copies of her new book, Whale Season: A Novel. An added treat, Kelby will read from her soon-to-bepublished book, Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill.
Whale Season: A Novel, profiles the heart of Florida, where sunburn is the only thing you can be sure of. One Christmas Eve, Whale Harbor is visited by a man who thinks he’s Jesus and claims to be looking for a game of poker. But, as usual, things are not quite what they seem. Having some version of the Lord in town for his birthday creates a strange effect on the locals. In the steamy climes of southern Florida, you take your miracles where you can get them—and if that means being led to salvation by a schizophrenic with a rap sheet, so be it.
In the rollicking tradition of Carl Hiaasen’s Tourist Season, with the heart of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, and peopled by the kind of colorful characters who would be quite at home in any Tom Robbins novel, N. M. Kelby’s Whale Season is a sharp and funny novel made up of equal parts comic adventure and serial-killer inspired mayhem.
Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill is an irresistible tale that’s part Carl Hiaasen and part Gabriel García Márquez, part slasher-movie actress, Scottish circus clown, FBI school dropout, blind heiress, junk-food-loving millionaire developer, and Buddhaquoting bluesman. Add a couple of murders in a normally sedate retirement community in south Florida, and you get another N.M. Kelby classic. It all goes down as easy as a Key lime pie martini, the signature drink of the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill.
N. M. Kelby’s last three novels have received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, People, and the Atlantic Monthly. Carl Hiaasen has called her “a natural-born writer,” and Kirkus praised her “black humor that sizzles.” N. M. Kelby spent twenty years as a print and television journalist before she began writing novels. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, near the beach, with her husband, dogs, cats, and a kettle of vultures circling overhead.
Praise for “Whale Season”:
“Whale Season is purely delightful––rich, clever, and crawling with affectionately twisted characters. Kelby is a natural-born storyteller who manages to be very funny and very wise at the same time.” - Carl Hiaasen
". . . this is mighty good fun." - Publishers Weekly
"An engrossing story of deliverance told like a parable about second chances . . . a fast piece of pop-lit that fans of Tom Robbins will enjoy." - People magazine
"Required Reading...a trip to and beyond Hiaasen country." - New York Post
“a journey deep into the whacked-out fantasyland of Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry..." - New York Times Sunday Book Review.
“Black humor that sizzles. A cartoon Crime and Punishment in ‘Margaritaville’. . . And there's enough mad plot to hook most anyone.”- Kirkus Reviews
"Kelby manages to make the Florida shtick seem fresh and overlays it with a patina of spiritual yearning in a cross between the work of Carl Hiaasen and Christopher Moore." - Bob Lunn, Library Journal
"A terrific addition to the genus of comic swamp opera."- The Philadelphia Inquirer
"...a riotous, laugh-out-loud tour de force." - South Florida Sun Sentinel
Praise for “Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill”:
“Good grief! N. M. Kelby is another hilarious Florida writer. Vultures, matching wines with frying candy bars, a Barry Manilow impersonator, and lots of bodies in a gated community. You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, wait, Ms. Kelby did. Funny is good, and there is enough poignancy to prevent it from being a comic strip. Get the book and have a swell time.” - Otto Penzler, editor of The Best American Mystery Stories 2007
“Witty, evocative, and literate . . . Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill manages to be all three and a mystery to boot. I was hooked from the first paragraph. N. M. Kelby must be a fascinating woman, ’cause she sure is a fascinating writer.” - Adrienne Barbeau, author of There Are Worse Things I Could Do
Collected Works Bookstore has been Santa Fe’s independent bookseller since 1978. The store is located at 208 West San Francisco Street in Santa Fe, just blocks from the downtown Plaza.
