Celebrate recent releases from writers Don Lesser, Linda Bass, and Cheli Lange!
About Don Lesser:
Don Lesser has been writing all his life. He grew up in Queens, went to college in Western New York State. Don received his M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts in 1981 and immediately went to work as a business and technical writer for companies as diverse as IBM nationally and Sanderson-MacLeod Twisted Wire Products in Palmer. Along the way, he wrote food articles and restaurant reviews, winning awards at the Greenbrier Symposium for Professional Food Writers. His fiction has been published in the Write Angles Conference Journal. He ran a computer training and programming company for 30+ years, retiring in December 2023. Crystal Springs is his first published novel.
About the book:
Crystal Springs follows the life of Steven Bennett who is trying to track down the truth of the death of a young woman who may or may not be his daughter. The mystery of Suzi’s death is set against Steven’s life in the Pioneer Valley and his lifetime friendship with the people he met when he first moved to town.
About Linda Bass:
Linda Bass grew up in Wisconsin before moving to California, where she earned a BA in psychology from UCLA and an MA in psychology from UC Berkeley. She worked in the work-force development field for thirty years, most recently as the executive director of a regional workforce board in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also worked as a Crystal Reports designer on a consulting basis. After retiring, she moved to Western Massachusetts, where she spends her
time writing and painting, solving puzzles, reading, singing (to herself), enjoying friends and family, and feeling grateful for all of it. She is currently working on a second book.
From an author with a psychology background, a candid memoir about the interior of her own psychotic episode.
After the culture shock of moving from a small Wisconsin town to the tumult of Los Angeles in 1967, Linda’s family disintegrates: her parents decide to divorce, and she and her younger brother, Brian, suddenly must fend for themselves. While she finds a foothold in academic pursuits, Brian spirals downward into schizophrenia and, finally, commits an irrevocable act. Plagued with guilt, Linda loses her sense of purpose, abandons a promising career in psychology, and finds herself in a life she never envisioned—poor, alcoholic, an accidental parent in an unhappy marriage, feeling invisible and alone.
When Linda sees a psychologist, Sam, he helps her recover what she has lost: her sense of self. Feeling truly seen, she falls in love with him and suspects her feelings might be reciprocated, but can’t be certain. The ambiguity, mingled with other overwhelming stresses, triggers her descent into a psychotic episode—one that echoes her dreams, Brian’s experience, and Sam’s own phobia, and is ultimately life-changing.
About Cheli Lange:
Cheli Lange, LPC, is a licensed psychotherapist, writer, and accidental almost philosopher who specializes in untangling the messiest parts of being human. She’s the author of “The Spotlight of Love: Insights and Skills for Couples” and “The Side Effects of Dying”—two books (one professional, one deeply personal) that explore love, loss, and the absurd beauty found in between. Her work speaks to anyone who’s ever wondered, “Is it just me?” and finds comfort in the answer, “It’s all of us.”
About the book:
In The Side Effects of Dying, Cheli Lange offers an unflinching yet tender account of her mother’s final days, a six-day crescendo of love, grief, and unexpected clarity. What begins as a daughter’s desperate rush to her ailing mother’s side evolves into a profound meditation on family, autonomy, and the messy beauty of letting go. Lange, a psychotherapist and mother of three, wields her professional lens and personal vulnerability with equal grace, crafting a narrative that is both deeply specific and achingly universal.