IPG Off the Shelf

To herald the release of The Blood of Caesar: A Second Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger we are offering a special deal to readers and booksellers alike. For every book purchase of The Blood of Caesar, get Albert A. Bell, Jr.’s first novel All Roads Lead to Murder at a 50 percent discount.

Here’s what the reviewers are saying about this well-done historical mystery:

Library Journal Review - July 2008

When the body of a mason is found in the library of current Princeps (first citizen) Domitian, Pliny the Younger is asked by his mother to find the killer. At the same time, Domitian orders Pliny and his friend Tacitus to find out if there is a real heir to the throne. Their exploits in Syria (All Roads Lead to Murder) have reached the ears of all in Rome, and they now have the reputation of being competent detectives. Readers will delight in the duo’s tracing of Caesar’s blood line; walking with Pliny through his daily routine is entertaining, too. Outstandingly researched and laden with suspense, this journey into ancient Rome by history professor Bell could be one of the masterpieces of the historical mystery genre. Lindsey Davis and Steven Saylor will hold readers over until the third casebook of Pliny the Younger publishes. Highly recommended for all collections.

Midwest Reviews - July 2008

Assigned by Emperor Domitian to search for blood heirs to the Emperor Augustus, Pliny and Tacitus seek solutions to layers of mysteries. Why is a humble workman’s death important to the ruler of Rome, and what connects him to Pliny’s household? How do Domitian’s suspicions relate to the cousin of Pliny’s old friend and mentor? Like a sinister red line slashed through a carefully prpared manuscript, the legacy of Augustus marks the connections. Will the answers save the peace of Rome, or mark its doom?

Praise for the series:

“Wonderful historical mystery set in the Roman Empire… Historical figures come alive in (Bell’s) expert hands.” - Bob Spear, Heartland Reviews: Five Hearts

“Colorful characters, both fictional and historical, … reveal the sordid web of money, greed, and ruthlessness hidden behind the facade of civilization.” - Suzanne Crane, The Historical Novels Review.

“Masterful blend of history and mystery… wonderful book with splendid characters, vivid history and a fair puzzling mystery. I heartily recommend it.” Barbara D’Amato, award-winning author of three mysteries, Past President of Mystery Writers International and Sisters in Crime International

Buy The Blood of Caesar

Buy All Roads Lead to Murder

July 12, 2008 by Deidre Parker Smith

After years of work in the corporate world, Rose Senehi has settled in as an author who likes to share a message while she’s telling a story.She describes her newest book, “In the Shadows of Chimney Rock,” as a romantic thriller with an environmental theme. In this book, a woman fights developers in the Hickory Nut Gorge area when she returns to her roots in the North Carolina mountains.This is Senehi’s fourth novel, and “most, well, all, have an underlying theme of conservation,” Senehi says.It’s the first in a planned series of three books on the battle raging in the mountains between developers and those who want to preserve the land as is.

She says it’s doing extremely well, and is featured in the July issue of Our State magazine.

Senehi has been writing since she was 5. Her mother took her to the library for the first time, in white gloves and white Mary Janes, and Senehi was thrilled to learn that if a book was returned late, the library made you pay.

She went home, wrote, drew and stitched together her own books, using her mother’s sewing machine, and then took envelopes out of her father’s trash can and glued them to the back, so the books could be checked out.

When a friend borrowed a book, she told her to keep it a little longer. “When she brought it back, I charged her a nickel!” Her brief life as a librarian ended when her parents found out.

After a short career in journalism, Senehi ended up working for a mall developer — the only woman on the executive level in the company. That experience prompted her to create strong women characters. With grown children and a home in Myrtle Beach, where she had managed a mall, she started writing books 14 years ago.”Nobody wanted to publish my books,” she says, so she self-published the first two. That taught her a lot about marketing, as she went around trying to sell her books to independent bookstores. With so many titles on the shelves, she learned she had to have a brand name — of some sort. “They have to know your name.” Her sign of success: “When your name gets on the list in the lady’s wallet, you know you’ve made it.”Senehi sells real estate in Pawley’s Island. One Sunday she got a call from a lady she met at a party. The woman’s husband knew Senehi through her position on a hospital board, and he thought his wife was crazy when she told him Senehi was an author.The lady said she’d read Senehi’s books, and had her name in her wallet.So Senehi knows, “people carry their favorite authors names in wallets.”Now she has a readership. “The key thing is to write a good book.” Then, even if she only sells 10, “people will share it.” Ingalls Publishing heard about her books and republished the third, “Pelican Watch,” and took on “In the Shadows of Chimney Rock.”“I get two to three e-mails a day saying they didn’t want the book to end.

“In all my books, the woman is the hero. She’s her own hero, she’s not looking for somebody to come save her.”

Senehi came of age just when women were coming into their own. “I was raised to be proactive,” and she made it in a time when men dominated the executive offices.

The women in her books work to overcome whatever challenge they face. “That’s the outlook I have.”

In “Pelican Watch,” the heroine works to save loggerhead turtles; in “Shadows in the Grass,” the theme was saving heritage seeds. That was inspired by a farm she owned in Canada. Her neighbors had seed-saving rallies, seed clubs. Some families had been saving and passing seeds down for more than 200 years.

“I use the story to get across a deeper message. … They all stand alone, and if you don’t scare easy, they’re fun to read.”

Senehi splits her time between the Chimney Rock area and the South Carolina coast.

She loves meeting her readers and has already done 32 book signings in North and South Carolina. She’s a relentless worker, too, getting up at 4 a.m. and writing until 3:30 p.m. “My existence revolves around people who read my books.”

She has visited Salisbury and finds it charming, especially downtown and the historic district. And if a couple of book clubs in the area decide to read one of her books, she would be happy to come and talk.

Buy In the Shadows of Chimney Rock

Buy Pelican Watch

Verve Magazine: North Carolina’s Smartest Magazine for Women, May/June Issue page 22, by Marcianne Miller

One of our very own Agatha Christies:

Three novels in the “Appalachian Adventure” series. As a romance novelist, Maggie Bishop creates heroines who bust criminals and flirt with Mr. Right at the same time.

Murder at Blue Falls: The Horse Found the Body features Jemma Chase, a horsewoman with a past. Set on a dude ranch near Boone in Watauga County, there’s gorgeous, rugged scenery and lanky, craggy men.

Here’s an amusing twist—each of the different heroes in Bishop’s novels are cousins from the Tucker clan. The Style: Simple and accessible. Photos of real nearby ranches and riding trails contribute to the book’s “here and now” feel.

You’ll Like Best: The sparks that fly between the feisty heroines and the broad-shouldered, square-jawed alpha males.

Appeals To: Your secret outdoor adventurer who’s ready to challenge a high mountain top—and a tall mountain man.

When She’s Not Writing: Bishop lives, hikes and skis in the Boone area and teaches writing.

The Harbour Towne Fest Band will provide stimulating, crowd pleasing Bavarian oom pah music. The dancing is contagious. German food and beverages will be available for purchase. Lift rides, hay rides and a separate kid’s area attract the whole family.

Author signings on Saturday October 11th: Maggie Bishop, Judith Geary, Bill Kaiser, Ed Krause

Author signings on Sunday October 12th: Maggie Bishop, Bill Kaiser, Jack Pyle, Taylor Reese

This year’s SIBA Annual Fall Conference and Trade Exhibit will be held in Mobile, Alabama at the Conference center adjacent to the Marriot Renaissance.

Ingalls Publishing Group, Inc. will be introducing to the Southeastern U.S. bookstores their new collection for 2008. Among those books to be introduced will be In the Shadows of Chimney Rock by Rose Senehi. Ms. Senehi is scheduled to be a featured author at the Sunday Moveable Feast and signing event to follow.

Another book introduced will be the well-received novel by Albert A. Bell, Jr., The Blood of Caesar: A Second Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger.

We will also introduce Maggie Bishop’s latest novel, Perfect for Framing, and scheduled for January 2009 release Dresses, Dreams and Beadwood Leaves by renowned Appalachian author Julia Taylor Ebel.

“We always love exhibiting at this event. The energy and enthusiasm to know their business, displayed by the Southern Independent booksellers is awesome!” Sales Manager Wendy Dingwall has attended this event for the past five years, and will be bringing along the High Country Publishers imprint mascot Bob the Book Bear.

Chimney Rock Sets the Scene For Eco-novel
May 18, 2008 - Asheville Citizens-Times; Arnold Wengrow, Correspondent

Rose Senehi begins her new novel, In the Shadows of Chimney Rock, with a scene of such high drama — some might say melodrama — you wonder if she can sustain the intensity. On a July day in 1916, Hayden Taylor, the third generation of Hayden Taylors in the mountains of Western North Carolina, flees the flooding Rocky Broad River, retrieves the body of his drowned daughter, clings all night to the branches of a tree and miraculously discovers his baby son, the fourth Hayden Taylor, still alive in the mud.When rescuers from Rutherfordton ask if he’s ready to leave this place, he angrily replies, “Us’n Taylors come unto this here gorge in 1784 and this devil of a flood hain’t gonna push us out.” Men named Hayden Taylor, and women, as we soon learn, are tough as the granite of Chimney Rock.Senehi, a Murrells Inlet, S.C., resident with a home in Hickory Nut Gorge, not only sustains that opening intensity, she ups it in a high-speed tale with as many twists as a mountain road. Fate of the land.

That first chapter may make you think you’re in for a generational saga of a Southern family and its attachment to the land. And you’d be right.

But while the fate of the land — 400 acres on Round Top Mountain — is uppermost (a developer and a land conservancy are competing for it), Senehi has much more on her mind. She mixes genres as breezily as her heroine, the first female Hayden Taylor, a beautiful Charleston socialite, throws together a batch of frogmore stew for her would-be beau, football hero Ben Beckham. Ben and Hayden are the romance novel ingredient in Senehi’s stew. But she concocts her hearty mix on a strong thriller base.Hayden travels to Chimney Rock to meet the father she thought died in Vietnam. She learns his body has been discovered only hours before her arrival.Now Hayden must uncover the mysteries of his past and the truth of both his supposed death in Vietnam and his real death in his mountain cabin.Southern recipe.

Senehi’s recipe has all the necessaries of a satisfying Southern potluck. Romantic hero who is both studly and sensitive? Ben is not only a veteran of the Super Bowl, he’s an accomplished gardener who began by nursing a truckload of sickly discount flowers back to health. After his football career, he returned to his first love, art, and became a sculptor and art teacher.

Now he’s turning his football fame to use as the fund-raiser for the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy. Most importantly, he’s a recent widower ready to love again.

Domineering Southern mother-matriarch? Elizabeth Tarrington, heiress to a South Carolina timber fortune, keeps a tight rein on her money and her daughters. Sinister housekeeper? Addie Mae cleaned for Hayden’s father and may be carrying his child. Does she resent Hayden’s arrival? What do you think?

Is there a ruthless villain? Freddy Lucas is a serial rapist who won’t hesitate to kill Hayden to get his hands on her father’s hidden treasures.

Local color

What gives “In the Shadows of Chimney Rock” special spice for Western North Carolina readers are references to familiar places and people. Hayden’s father runs an art gallery and school in the Grove Arcade and Ruth Summers, the real-life executive director of the Grove Arcade Public Market Foundation, makes an appearance.

The Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy did indeed acquire the 1,568-acre World’s Edge tract for Chimney Rock State Park Senehi describes.

Some of the local color is, as we say in the South, a hoot.

When Hayden’s mother tries to dissuade her from going to see her father, she says, “Darling, you simply do not understand how things work. … If anything happens to your father, our names could be smeared all over his obituary. Remember … I know people in Asheville.”

The art faculty at Warren Wilson College might get chuckle to learn that Ben teaches there, even though he only has a bachelor of arts degree and “earned his degree in Fine Arts by mostly posing.”

Getting it right

Senehi’s research into the ways and byways of the mountains keeps her accurate for the most part. Her description of Hayden’s father in his art studio sounds like she’s carefully watched a watercolorist at work. If the gallery she imagines in the Grove Arcade would take half a wing to accommodate all the action she sets there, her admiration for artists and their aspirations is evident.

A transplant from Upstate New York, Senehi hasn’t quite mastered the nuances of the many Southern regional dialects. I haven’t heard one “tarnation” or “lil’ole” in my almost 40 years in Western North Carolina, and when I was growing up in South Carolina we knew “y’all” was the second personal plural of you and never said “y’all come back” to one person.

Even though some of her characters talk like Snuffy Smith, Senehi clearly has the deepest respect for mountain people and their land. “In the Shadows of Chimney Rock” is the first in a series of novels Senehi plans to set in Hickory Nut Gap. Y’all come back.

This is the opinion of Arnold Wengrow, who is an Asheville writer and the book review editor for Theatre Design and Technology magazine.

This young reader historical is interesting enough for adults to enjoy. Middle School educators are calling it as exciting as a “Harry Potter” but based on real ancient Roman history. 

Getorix has one last opportunity to gain his father’s respect and earn welcome into the Otherworld, as a man. At almost fifteen winters, he marches beside his father, a defeated Celtic leader, in the Roman triumph parade — a celebration that ends in death. To face the ordeal of sacrifice before the Romans will truly be his man-making. Instead the gods throw him an entirely different challenge. Can Getorix accept friendship with the Roman who spares his life if the cost is his honor?Modern readers will relate to the challenges these two young men from opposing cultures face in reconciling their differences in experiences and value systems. The ancient Roman setting lends a fantastic quality, yet the political turmoil and social upheaval evoke parallels with our own time.

Geary, Judith. Getorix: The Eagle and the Bull. 278 p. $15.95 pap. Claystone/Ingalls, 2008 ISBN 978-1-932158-73-1 [6-12, FIC]Set in ancient Rome, this novel focuses on Getorix, a young captive Celt, who unexpectedly escapes the execution met by his father Claodicos. Lucius, the young Roman who asks to spare Getorix, thinks he is showing him mercy by bringing him home to live as a slave. Far from grateful, Getorix refuses to serve Lucius and continues to think of ways that he can die honorably and join his father in the Otherworld. While he is kept under lock and key for his defiant behavior, he develops a friendship with Keltus, a trusted slave in the house of Lutatius Catulus, and eventually with the young Lucius as well. Along with Getorix, readers discover some of the details of Roman Life in 101 BCE. The ingenuity of the water supply and sewer systems and the magnificence of the buildings contrast with the practices of animal sacrifice and dining on dormice. The different backgrounds and cultures of the two main characters offer interesting discussions on point-of-view. This novel by a North Carolina writer would make an excellent interdisciplinary unit for middle school. AUTHOR’S NOTES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, SELECTED MAPS, DIAGRAMS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS, GLOSSARY. [ELA, SS]Keywords: ancient civilizations, historical fiction, North Carolina, North Carolina authors, RomeSubject Areas: English Language Arts, Fiction, Social Studies

Getorix’s World

Horton, Sandra K. and Judith Geary. Getorix’s World. 98 p. $25. Claystone/Ingalls, 2008. ISBN 978-1-932158-28-1 [PROF, SS]

This curriculum is designed to accompany Getorix: The Eagle and the Bull to facilitate the novel’s study for a class or literature circle. Part one contains synopses and study questions, both short answer and discussion, as well as activities using quotations and character monologues. Section two focuses more on the culture of Rome during that era of history and has activities related to dress, diet, and education. There is also a timeline and ideas for interdisciplinary study. This curriculum is also available in digital format on a CD-ROM, which includes a PowerPoint presentation introducing the novel and featuring color photographs of Roman ruins. This curriculum is an excellent resource for the social studies or English language arts class and is free with the order of a class set of 25 books (includes 1 hardback copy of the book). [ELA, MATH, SCI]

Keywords: ancient civilizations, historical fiction, North Carolina, North Carolina authors, novel guides, Rome

Subject Areas: English Language Arts, Mathematics, Professional, Science, Social Studies

Buy Getorix: The Eagle and the Bull

Boone, North Carolina, home to one of Daniel Boone’s favorite hunting grounds, and site of historic battles between the British Colonialists, and Indians will host a two-day festival which includes a symposium on Daniel Boone with best-selling author Robert Morgan, Fess Parker wine dinners, a foot race to the top of Boone’s Howard’s Knob, and music and culture from the “High Country”.

Saturday September 6th, starting at noon and running until close of the event at 9:00pm, High Country Authors will be signing their latest books. On hand to sign will be Maggie Bishop author of several Appalachian Adventure Mysteries, and presenting her newest novel; Perfect for Framing.

Signing from noon to 3:30pm will be Maggie Bishop, Bill Kaiser author of Civil War novel Bloodroot, Nora Percival author of memoir Weather of the Heart, Dottie Isbell author of memoir Reflections.

Signing from 3:30pm to 6:00pm will be Maggie Bishop, Jane Wilson author of cookbook Mountain Born and Bread, Donna Warmuth author of several regional historical books, and Judith Geary, author of young adult historical Getorix: The Eagle and the Bull.

Signing from 6:00pm to 9:00pm will be Maggie Bishop, Judith Geary, Frank Thomas author of memoirs regionally based, and Bill Kaiser.

Buy our author books:

by Maggie Bishop: Appalachian Paradise, Emeralds in the Snow, Murder at Blue Falls, Perfect for Framing

by Judith Geary: Getorix: The Eagle and the Bull (Hardcover),  Getorix: The Eagle and the Bull (Paperback)

by Nora Percival: Weather of the Heart: A Child’s Journey out of Revolutionary Russia,  Silver Pages on the Lawn

Donna Warmuth: Plumb Full of History: A Story of Abingdon, Virginia

Banner Elk, North Carolina. From Highway 105 (Linville Rd.) Take Hwy. 184 West toward Banner Elk. Great Train Robbery on left before arriving at downtown Banner Elk.

Find the best of the best in local artists and crafts persons. Pat Fay, Fair coordinator prides herself on having only top professionals in the arts. While you’re there visit the Great Train Robbery Emporium for quality local furnishings and accessories.

Local Authors signing Saturday from 10:00am to 5:00pm:                                                                  

Maggie Bishop,  Judith Geary,  Nora Percival,  Bill Kaiser

Local Authors signing Sunday from 10:00am to 5:00pm:                                                                     

Maggie Bishop,  Judith Geary,  Bill Kaiser,  Donna Warmuth 

This years High Country Writers Book Fair is a featured event scheduled during the Blue Ridge Food & Wine Festival. Two author wine receptions, one on Saturday, April 12th, and one on Sunday, April 13th, each from 12noon-5pm will follow the popular “Fire on the Rock” cooking competition, which will be held in the new Blowing Rock Performing Arts Center.

During the Author’s Receptions, visitors to the center will have the opportunity to mix and mingle with local authors, enjoy refreshments, and purchase autograph copies of their favorite regional books.

Ingalls Publishing Group authors that are scheduled to participate are: Maggie Bishop, author of Appalachian romance and mystery suspense novels; Judith Geary, author of young adult historical novel Getorix; Nora Percival, author of two memoirs; Rose Senehi, author of several women’s regional suspense novels; Donna Warmuth, author of regional fiction and non fiction stories.

Other non IPG authors scheduled to sign are: Bart Bare, author of Satan’s Bargain; Dick Graham, author of Escape from Andersonville; Bill Kaiser, author of Bloodroot. Earl LeClaire, author of O’l Swampers “Rogues’ Island” Shellfish and Clambake Cookbook.

Check back frequently to hear about other authors who will be signing at this event.