The Friends of the McCormick Library invite you to attend an afternoon with author Gail Oust as she signs her new book “Whack ‘n’ Roll” on Friday, August 21, 2009 from 4 – 6 pm. This event will be held at the Books on Main bookstore in downtown McCormick. Refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served.
From the McCormick Messenger:
The new Oust book is the first of a three-book series that she calls the Bunco Babes Mysteries. The series heroine, Kate McCall, and her three bunco-playing friends will be solving the capers. “Kate and her friends find a severed arm in a Wal-Mart bag while playing golf,” Oust said. “The action just happens to take place in a fictional, active adult retirement community, a coincidence that has no relationship to Savannah Lakes Village (where the author resides).” The new book represents quite a change for Oust, who has been writing for 35 years. “”Whack ‘n’ Roll’ is my tenth book, but my very first mystery,” Oust said. “I was ready for a change. The market for historical fiction became a little soft, and I got this idea in my head. I just had to run with it.”
Oust, a retired nurse and vascular technologist, began writing in the middle 70s when her children went into kindergarten. “I was a closet writer,” she said. “When someone came over to the house, I’d hide my work in the closet.” She wrote her nine historical fiction books under the pen name of Elizabeth Turner. “Wild and Sweet” and “Just Before Daybreak” are two of her nine titles. “Those books required a lot of research,” she said. “I used to borrow one volume of an encyclopedia at a time to assure accuracy.” Her books have been published by Pocketbooks, Avon, Berkley and Kensington. This three-book series is being published by NAL, part of the Penguin Putnam Group. The second book, “Till Dice Do Us Part,” is due out next March.
Gail lives with her husband, Bob, in Savannah Lakes Village. The two of them have two children, two grandchildren and one great grandson.