✍ Scribed by Dawson, Maddie
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
**_Warmhearted, insightful, funny and poignant, bestselling author, Maddie Dawson, takes the unfathomable ways of love and family, and celebrates [the joys of] the ordinary craziness of being human.
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Devoted, creative single-mom Jamie McClintock’s world is thrown into chaos by the sudden death of Harris, her vibrant, elderly landlord. Not only does she mourn him terribly, but she has to face the unkind gossip about their unorthodox living arrangement (free board in exchange for watching adorable grandson Christopher, her own son’s best friend) and assume full responsibility for grieving Christopher, who was left in Harris’ care by his estranged, highly successful son, Nate.
Then Nate returns to claim his son… and that’s when life really gets chaotic...
“Sexy hero, lovable heroine, adorable kids– Kissing Games of the World has it all. A complete delight. Fall into this buoyant, funny, genuinely touching story of two incomplete people finding the rest of themselves in each other. I loved it.”—Patricia Gaffney, New York Times bestselling author of _Mad Dash
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“ Kissing Games of the World**** has the shape of a classic romance, in which opposites at first repel, then attract, and after many ups and downs find love. It's been done countless times, but rarely as engagingly as Shelton does it in this novel.” — _The Boston Globe
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“Quite wonderful. . . . Like Anne Tyler, Shelton seems to possess a nearly boundless capacity for empathy. She has the ability to make us love her characters for their faults, not in spite of them.” — Connecticut Post
“An engrossing, charming, and often funny exploration of love and relationships that result…the author [explores] love in its different incarnations.” — Library Journal , starred review
“An absolute treat, Shelton’s work rarely falters and is filled with realistic twists, complex characters and a moving conclusion.” — _Publisher Weekly
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“[A]s the seemingly star-crossed lovers navigate their rocky path, with children in tow, they eventually discover their true destination, their true home.” — Booklist
"A warm, sentimental love story is told with a tenderness of heart and a nurturing eye guiding complexly drawn characters. She effortlessly melds love and loss with heartrending care, exposing the layers of a budding romance with a deft hand. It's full of humor, flaws, and a togetherness of spirit fit for any modern love story where family is what you make it." — Romantic Times
“Sexy hero, lovable heroine, adorable kids– Kissing Games of the World has it all. A complete delight. Fall into this buoyant, funny, genuinely touching story of two incomplete people finding the rest of themselves in each other. I loved it.”—Patricia Gaffney, New York Times bestselling author of _Mad Dash
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“Shelton’s greatest talent is a gift for juxtaposing comedy and tragedy to the pulsing beat of the modern-day mating dance.” — BookPage
**This book was originally published under the pen name, Sandi Kahn Shelton.
**ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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I grew up in the South, born into a family of outrageous storytellers—the kind of storytellers who would sit on the dock by the lake in the evening and claim that everything they say is THE absolute truth, like, stack-of-Bibles true. The more outlandish the story, the more it likely it was to be true. Or so they said.
You want examples? There was the story of my great great aunt who shot her husband dead, thinking he was a burglar; the alligator that almost ate Uncle Jake while he was waterskiing; the gay cousin who took his aunt to the prom, disguised in a bouffant French wig. (The aunt, not the cousin.) And then there was my mama, a blond-haired siren who, when I was seven, drove a married man so insane that he actually stole an Air Force plane one day and buzzed our house. (I think there might have been a court-martial ending to that story.)
And in between all these stories of crazy, over-the-top events, there was the hum of just daily, routine crazy: shotgun weddings, drunken funerals, stories of people’s affairs and love lives, their job losses, the things that made them laugh, the way they’d drink Jack Daniels and get drunk and foretell the future. There were ghosts and miracles and dead people coming back to life. You know, everyday stuff.
How could I turn into anything else but a writer? My various careers as a substitute English teacher, department store clerk, medical records typist, waitress, cat-sitter, wedding invitation company receptionist, nanny, daycare worker, electrocardiogram technician, and Taco Bell taco-maker were only bearable if I could think up stories as I worked. In fact, the best job I ever had was a part-time gig typing up case notes for a psychiatrist. Everything the man dictated bloomed as a possible novel in my head.
Today I live in Connecticut, and spend part of every day on my screened-in back porch with my trusty laptop, writing and writing and writing, looking out at the willow tree and the rosebush and the rhododendron that has a nice nest of cardinals, who I imagine to be yelling at me to get back to work whenever I wait too long to write the next sentence.
Please visit Maddiedawson.com to discover more! Or connect on Twitter or Facebook!
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
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