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Tell us a little bit about your new release, The Little Paris Bookshop.

It is a novel about books, about death, living, senses, dreams, Provence, Paris, friendship, drugs, Tango dancing and about feeling lost, when someone is leaving you behind.

Well, the synopsis is: Parisian bookseller Jean Perdu knows exactly which book a customer should read to ease the suffering of the soul. In his floating bookstore, the “Literary Apothecary,” Perdu sells novels as medicine to cure life’s ills. The only suffering he cannot heal is his own, the broken heart that has plagued him for twenty-one years, ever since the lovely Manon from Provence departed while he slept. All she left behind was a letter—which Perdu could never bring himself to read. Until one summer—the summer that changes everything and prompts Monsieur Perdu to leave his home on narrow Rue Montagnard. He embarks on a journey of memories that takes him deep into the heart of Provence and back to the land of the living.

The book took me two and a half years to think up, but only thirty-one days to write. And then twenty more to go through the edited version.

In Fact, this book is my life-turner in any ways:

Three things happened at once just as I was about to begin researching my story in Provence. My father died. He was my best friend and a mirror of myself. I lost a disc in my neck; the pain in my nape, my back and my arm was so piercing that it nearly drove me nuts. And Jean Perdu the piano tuner vanished for a year – and reappeared as a bookseller.

When, after a year of pain and mourning, I finally dared look inside myself to see what was left of the writer I’d been and of myself, I found someone who wanted to write about something important to her, something important to me. And I feel that books are the most important thing in the world.

As my „Doctor Perdu“ says:

„There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies — I mean books — that were written for one person only… A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy.“

What fictional literary world would you most like to visit?

My own, every day new.

What's on your writing desk?

A small globe that shows the „antique world“, an indian elephant made out of metal, a green candleholder, shaped like a flowerblossom, my french coffee mug (a „boule“), my MacBookAir. My writing desk is twi trestle legs and a two meter plank.

If you had an extra hour each day, how would you spend it?

Loving my husband. Or Writing.

If you had to pick one place to vacation for the rest of your life, where would you choose?

Writers never have any vacations, but if, it would be maybe Sanary-sur-mer; a place of desire and dreams, and also a place where Monsieur Perdu is healing.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Good writing comes from writing every day.

What's your favorite line from The Little Paris Bookshop?

You’re right, Manon.

It is all still there. The times we spent together are immortal, imperishable, and life never stops.

The death of our loved ones is merely a threshold between an ending and a new beginning.

(page 296)

Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?

If you start NOW, everything is possible. So … do it today, because „maybe tomorrow or when i have time to do this and that to please my life“ never comes.

Nina George is the author of the new book The Little Paris Bookshop.

Connect with Nina
Author Website
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Tell us a little bit about your new release, The Secrets She Keeps.

The Secrets She Keeps is about two sisters with troubled marriages who gather at their aunt’s now crumbling Nevada “divorce ranch." The story is told in alternating time periods - one summer at the present-day ranch, and the summer of 1951, a summer of secrets, when high-society women and Hollywood celebs stayed at such ranches to establish residency and secure difficult-to-get divorces. The Secrets She Keeps reflects contemporary life and marriage as we know it, yet it is also full of Mad Men-esque glamour, desert dust and wild mustangs, cowboys and majestic scenery. More than those things, though, it is a book about the power of female friendships, about self-discovery, and resilience. It’s a story about love - it’s timeless troubles, and it’s stubborn, enduring joys.

What are you currently craving?

Brownies. Coffee. Sourdough toast and butter. A great literary psychological novel, or an exceedingly well-written memoir.

Which book from your childhood or teenage years has stuck with you as an adult?

Ah, many, many! Ramona the Pest, Nancy Drew, The Incredible Journey, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe… I’ll stop.

If you could have dinner with anyone, alive or dead, who would you choose and why?

Since reading Hampton Sides’ fantastic “In the Kingdom of Ice” I’ve been on a huge polar exploration book binge. So, right now I’d say Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer, who was fearless, determined, and, um, irresistibly charming to women. Stuck on an ice floe or on a doomed ship, this was the man you’d want with you. We’d drink whiskey and eat some manly beef, and I’d get to hear those enthralling stories from what was called the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.”

What do you miss the most about Issaquah?

I miss so much about it! I miss the small-town-ness of it, and the way it sat between the three mountains: Tiger, Cougar, and Squak. I miss driving out to my house on long, lovely Hobart Road, seeing those mountains draped in ribbons of fog or yellow morning light. I miss driving past the paragliding school, especially on summer days when I’d have my convertible top down. The colored sails would float above our heads, and we’d try to count how many there were. I miss my house on the salmon-running creek, with the quail and the rabbits (and cougars and bears – eek!), the way it smelled like blackberries at night, and how the creek would vary in sound from a trickle to a thundering roar. The sky was very large there, with so many stars. Issaquah is a quirky little place. I once saw a deer standing at a crosswalk in town. The paragliders sometimes land in trees, and are hanging there when you pass. The salmon return, and people celebrate.

What inspired you to write about Divorce Ranches?

A few years ago, I came across a single line in a book that mentioned a “divorce ranch.” I’d never heard the term before, and out of curiosity, I looked it up. When I learned what they were, and understood the transformative experiences that were had there, I was intrigued. But when I realized how little there was about them in the popular culture, I had one of those writer–moments where your heart beats fast and you think: This. Here was all of my favorite stuff in one beautiful, dusty, desert locale: marriage, heartbreak, women of varying ages supporting one another, and attempting to understand themselves and their relationships.

Who is your favorite couple from literature?

Frog and Toad.

What's something you're truly terrible at doing?

How to choose? Playing baseball, showing restraint at the library, wrapping presents.

What's your favorite quote from The Secrets She Keeps?

“No life was ever ordinary, and no story of love was, either, not even mine. Whether tragic or commonplace, each attempt at the damn thing, each shot at love and life itself was brave. Every effort at it was flawed and messy, complicated, oh yes, occasionally triumphant, often painful, because how else could it be? Look at the mission we were given, look at the stunning, impossible mission - imperfect love in the face of loss. Any sane person with the facts would turn their back on a mission like that. And yet we loved, of course we did. We kept at it; we added our thread to the design. The courage that took - there was nothing ordinary about that.”

 Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Deb Caletti is the author of the new book The Secrets She Keeps.

Connect with Deb
Author Website
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