Week of 8/24 Book Buddy News
Book Buddies - hello hello hello! Here’s what’s up this week.
The next book club is October 26 7pm - 8:30pm EST with Natalie Lemle as a guest! We’ll discuss her book, Artifacts! Here’s the publishers’s blurb:
One of The New York Times's Sizzling New Summer Thrillers: “Even now, Lena might be in danger from some of the unscrupulous characters she met all those years ago. Can she put her history behind her?”
For fans of The Cloisters and Counterfeit, Natalie Lemle’s debut novel offers an insider’s view into the world of stolen artifacts and the hidden networks that link museums to organized crime, when a woman is forced to remember the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in Italy, as everyone she knew then may now be in danger.
Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later.
Lena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back.
Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth.
Powerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity.
Feedback Group Submission Schedules!
IRL Group Wednesdays @ beautyland 6:30-8:30: The next meeting is September 2 mand Rich and Aimee have floor time. Let’s try to get pages in by the weekend?
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The next meeting is September 3 is our next meeting, and Jill will have the floor then, pages due August 27.
Weirdlings Wednesdays 12pm - 1:30: Ed is next on deck for September 2. Pages due August 26.
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is August 27 and Susan and Rebecca have the floor. Susan’s pages are in, Rebecca’s are forthcoming.
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is September 3 and Garth and Kristina will be up with pages due August 27.
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is August 29! Morgan and Nora have floor time, pages due roughly August 26.
Gen Writing Prompt
August 25 and 29, 2026
New Beginnings
As you all know I’m spending this week packing ahead of moving on Monday, so all manner of fresh starts are on my mind. Let’s write about it.
Begin a new piece in any genre/medium that somehow includes:
A person or family purchases a new home but when they arrive to the neighborhood, not everything is as they expected
A person moves into an apartment complex and discovers the folks living in neighboring apartments are involved in a scheme of some sort
A new home is haunted or appears to be - could be an elaborate prank!
A person flees a harrowing experience that want to keep secret to start over in a new place
A person temporarily moves into a rehab facility of any sort
A person gets a new roommate
A person awakens to find themselves in the afterlife or reincarnated as someone or something else
That’ll do it for us this week!
Looking forward to seeing you!
Your bestie-
Kate
