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Lenore's latest novel, Becky, follows the lives of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer,  Becky Thatcher, and Huck Finn -- as adults. It's now available in both HARDCOVER and TRADE PAPERBACK from St. Martin's Press. In Becky, Tom Sawyer's first love finally gets to tell her side of the story. It opens in 1910, and Mark Twain -- best known to Becky as Sammy Clemens of Hannibal -- has suddenly passed away, just when he said he would, "gone with Halley's comet." Now she's going to tell the story of Tom and Huck and Sid and her as it really happened, and put back the parts Twain left out of his novel . . . such as how Injun Joe really died, and what actually happened when she and Tom were trapped in the cave, and why she finally rejected Tom and came to marry his cousin Sid. But can she ever really forget the sweet-talking, maddening, irresponsible Tom Sawyer?  She plans to try. . . .  

The novel before that was Ordinary Springs (PenguinPutnam, January 2005) set in Florida in the fifties and sixties.  Pubisher's Weekly called it "Gritty, fierce . . . a fine vintage portrait of a tough girl whom life teaches to be tougher." Dory Gamble's mother left when she was a baby, so she was raised by her father, Owen, and grew up working alongside him in their hardware store in Ordinary Springs. She always thought the two of them would be inseparable. But when she's fifteen, Owen falls for their attractive new neighbor, whose husband is too sick to even come outside. Soon Dory understands how one betrayal can breed and multiply; how willing even good people can be to hurt each other. When she lashes out against everything she once loved, nothing can ever be the same. 

Lenore's first young adult novel, The Treasure of Savage Island, published in September 2005 by Dutton, was nominated for several YA book awards. She is now at work on a new novel, Nevermore, the story of the marriage of Edgar Allan Poe, told by his wife and young cousin Virginia Clemm. Part literary tale, part historical novel, part ghost story, it will be published by St. Martin's Press in January 2010.

She has also lectured or taught at Florida State University, George Mason University, Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Eastern Shore Community College, the Cape May Institute, The U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Eckerd College, Old Dominion University, The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Christopher Newport University, and Tidewater College in Virginia Beach. She's been featured on Voice of America and in three segments of the syndicated PBS television series "Writer To Writer."  She has also been a Visiting Writer at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. She lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia with her husband, novelist David Poyer, and their daughter, Naia.

To arrange for an appearance, please get in touch with Hilary Rubin Teeman, at St. Martin's Press.  She's at (800) 221-7945, ext.  5637.  Or you can write Lenore direct at PO Box 647, Nassawadox, VA 23413-0647.

For Hart's bio, or for more information on each book, see the links above.  To find out more about the low residency MA/MFA in Creative Writing, visit Wilkes University.

© Copyright 2008 Lenore Hart