FICTION · GENERAL
Julie Kistler
Also known as: Kistler
Julie Kistler is the author of 30 romance novels and five shorter works, including one Cat Crime, two chapters for charity projects, an online serial and a novella. Julie won the Madcap Award for the best romantic comedy of 2001 for JUST A LITTLE FLING, a Harlequin Temptation, and she was nominated for Romance Writers of America's Rita Award for BLACK JACK BROGAN, a Harlequin American Romance. Several of her books have hit the Waldenbooks Best-Seller Lists. She and her husband, Scott Johnson, co-authored ONCE THERE WERE GIANTS, the story of how tiny Hebron High School won the Illinois High School basketball tournament in 1952. That book came out in 2002 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hebron's amazing run to the state championship. Julie was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois (yes, she "played in Peoria") but moved to the Chicago area for high school, where she met her husband Scott in 10th grade. (He sat in front of her in math class and she was attracted to his tall, dark, handsome and very smart ways.) Scott and Julie both attended the University of Illinois, and Julie graduated with a BA in history (Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude) in 1978. She married Scott in 1980, and then 1) got a law degree (cum laude) from the University of Illinois, 2) passed the Minnesota bar exam, 3) ran off with Scott for a two-month trip to Europe, and 4) moved to Minnesota to be a lawyer (in that order). But law didn't suit her very well, and Julie left the legal world to be a full-time writer in 1985. She also sold her first book in 1985 (nine days after quitting her job.) That book was THE VAN RENN LEGACY, a madcap treasure hunt with a quote-acrostic for readers to solve, and it also earned Julie her second Golden Heart nomination. Julie and Scott moved back home to Illinois in 1989, and have lived in Central Illinois ever since. A lifetime movie and theater lover, Julie began a side career as a theater critic for the Champaign News-Gazette in 1990. She has now joined the Board of Directors of Heartland Theatre, in Bloomington, Illinois, and she initiated an annual ten-minute play contest there which has proved to be very popular. Julie's play, "Hopeless Romantics," was performed in the first year of Heartland's Ten-Minute Playfest. In her life, Julie has been a student, front desk clerk, room service waiter, switchboard operator, pizza chef, criminal prosecutor, singing and dancing law book, prose reader, legal research expert, member of the Board of Directors of Romance Writers of America, president of Novelists Inc, marketing manager, romance writer, sportswriter, reporter, critic, Fred Astaire fanatic, cat lover, White Sox fan, daughter, sister, wife and friend.
In the spring of 1916, an Irishman named Sir Roger Casement-former British consul, human rights activist, poet, and gay man-was charged with high treason and confined to the Tower of London to await execution.
— from Scandal
Most acclaimed
Best wishes
Known as the Grande Dame of the Rockies, The Stanley Hotel had its share of legends. But when a mysterious stranger gave front-desk manager Hayley Austin a magic golden apple, she didn't know she was about to make history. The apple was famous -- as Hayley soon discovered when a horde of apple hunters descended upon The Stanley. Hayley was caught up in the fever, which is why she told no one about her newest possession. Not even Mason Wilder. With his steely blue eyes, Mason was the man Hayley had dreamed of, the man her heart wished for. Was it sheer coincidence? Or was the apple truly magic?
Touch Me Not
The blow of her father's death falls all the harder on Lindsay MacClane Lee, for she had been used to the best things of life, and he dies leaving her practically penniless. She is left to face the bitter struggle of life with the additional responsibility of bringing up her three-year-old brother. The struggle is a hard one, especially when she obtains a position which necessitates her leaving her brother for days on end; and very much against her will she is forced to accept the hospitality of her guardian. Before he died, her father named Neil MacKinnon as the guardian of Lindsay and her brother, and although she had never seen him before, the MacClane blood in her, a heritage from her mother, rebelled against this, for the MacClanes and the MacKinnons were sworn enemies. The clash of wills between the determined Lindsay and the proud and fearless head of the MacKinnnon clan was inevitable, but the story is a stirring one, and the solution to this conflict will find a place in the heart of every reader.
It's in His Kiss
2005
Meet Our Hero ...Gareth St. Clair is in a bind. His father, who detests him, is determined to beggar the St. Clair estates and ruin his inheritance. Gareth's sole bequest is an old family diary, which may or may not contain the secrets of his past .. and the key to his future. The problem is — it's written in Italian, of which Gareth speaks not a word.Meet Our Heroine ...All the ton agreed: there was no one quite like Hyacinth Bridgerton. She's fiendishly smart, devilishly outspoken, and according to Gareth, probably best in small doses. But there's something about her — something charming and vexing — that grabs him and won't quite let go ...Meet Poor Mr. Mozart ...Or don't. But rest assured, he's spinning in his grave when Gareth and Hyacinth cross paths at the annual — and annually discordant — Smythe-Smith musicale. To Hyacinth, Gareth's every word seems a dare, and she offers to translate his diary, even though her Italian is slightly less than perfect. But as they delve into the mysterious text, they discover that the answers they seek lie not in the diary, but in each other ... and that there is nothing as simple — or as complicated — as a single, perfect kiss.