Isla Jewell, a New York Times bestselling author who has also written under the names Delilah S. Dawson and Lila Bowen, will promote her novel, “Books & Bewitchment,” with a stop at M.Judson Booksellers in Greenville.
Serving as the first installment in her Arcadia Falls series, the book follows Rhea Wolfe, who lives a simple life with her pet parrot in small-town Alabama. When her estranged grandmother dies and leaves her everything, including a magical heritage she never knew she carried, Wolf finds herself in Arcadia Falls, a quaint mountain town her mother made her swear to avoid at all costs.
She also inherits a defunct video store that she decides to upgrade and finds help in the town’s resident handyman, Hunter Blakely, who is also the grandson of her grandmother’s sworn enemy in witchcraft.
“‘Books & Bewitchment’ is a cozy, witch romance set in (the) north Georgia mountains,” Jewell said. “It’s kind of like ‘Gilmore Girls’ meets ‘Practical Magic.’”
After not seeing other books in the same genre take place in this region, the Georgia native felt she should set her series in an area she knew well.
“It (the region) seemed like a fertile ground to play with the concepts of a quirky small town and found family,” Jewell said. “A lot of people have ideas of what people are like in the South and they are not aware of how diverse, progressive, supportive and smart these smaller towns are, so it was really fun to create a bunch of wacky characters who become the found family and support the main character as she turns her grandmother’s defunct video store into a bookstore.”
Jewell will participate in M.Judson Booksellers’ Books Over Drinks series Feb. 9 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Admission is $35 per person and includes a signature cocktail or mocktail and a signed copy of “Books & Bewitchment.” For more information, visit mjudsonbooks.com.
