Author Event: Jennifer Manocherian and T.M. Dunn in Conversation

Womrath Bookshop is excited to welcome the illustrious authors Jennifer Manocherian, author of Alpha Bette, and T.M. Dunn, author of Her Father’s Daughter, as they discuss their latest novels. Don’t miss out on an unforgettable discussion about these stories full of family secrets and the impacts they can have. Mark your calendars and join us at Womrath Bookshop for an exciting evening! Audience Q&A and book signing are to follow.

About Alpha Bette

Bette Gartner, a ninety-five-year-old widow, wakes up one morning and decides to give a dinner party that night for her small family, staff, two neighbors, and a medium—and no one knows why.

The story takes place over the course of the day and is told through the multiple points of view of Bette’s guests, switching back and forth between them as we learn about their motivations, dreams, hopes, and fears. These various storylines converge at the dinner table, where the coming together of different personalities, each with their own tensions and pain points, erupts into epiphanies, resolutions, and new beginnings before the final act of the evening Bette has planned.

Alpha Bette is more than the story of a particular family’s history. Aside from recounting how the characters navigate the daily mundanities of urban life, it also dwells on their larger existential anxieties and the impact of the holes and absences that deceased and displaced loved ones leave behind.

About Her Father’s Daughter

Skillfully weaving together domestic suspense, a desperate police investigation, a love affair, and a serial killer on the loose, acclaimed author T. M. Dunn’s Her Father’s Daughter makes for a raw, edgy, and hard-hitting hero’s journey into a family’s twisted secrets, perfect for fans of Oyinkan Braithwaite and Karen Dionne.

Twenty-five-year-old Linda Donovan has spent her life working for her father, Anthony, at Donovan and Daughter Exterminators in New York City. On the anniversary of her mother’s death, her father makes his annual visit to his late wife’s grave while Linda heads to a Park Avenue apartment building to work solo.

When she arrives, she finds the body of an elderly resident, partially eaten by rats. The gruesome death not only speaks poorly of the Donovans’ exterminating services—it also points to foul play. When the cops show up, they demand to speak to Linda’s father. But despite her efforts to contact him, Anthony has gone off the radar.

As he evades a possible murder charge, Linda’s father records in five notebooks—and five damning acts—the story of how he met and fell in love with her mother, a previously untold history of familial abuse, tormented souls, and true love gone terribly wrong.

About Jennifer Manocherian

Alpha Bette is Jennifer Manocherian’s first novel. She put much of her personal and professional life experience into writing it, having been a family therapist, divorce mediator, Broadway and Off-Broadway producer, musical book writer, screenwriter and producer, and screenwriting teacher. She cowrote and produced the films Family Blues and Boundary Waters (in production) as well as wrote the book of two musicals that are streaming online: Marry Harry, a full-length musical, and Cockroaches & Cologne, a short musical. She is a proud board member of New York Stage and Film, The Peace Studio, and 18by Vote. She is married with five children and many grandchildren—great source material!

About T.M. Dunn

Patricia (a/k/a T.M.) Dunn is the author of the psychological thriller, Her Father’s Daughter(Crooked Lane Books July 18, 2023.) She is also the author of Rebels by Accident (Sourcebooks, 2014) and Last Stop on the 6 (Bordighera Press, C.U.N.Y. 2021). Dunn has served as Senior Director of the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, where she holds an MFA in creative writing. She coaches aspiring and established writers and teaches creative writing workshops. She is a co-founder of Key to the Castle Workshop and is the co-host of the Westport Library’s podcast, “Go Ahead, Write Something” and co-chair of programming for Sisters-in-Crime CT.

She lives in Stamford, Connecticut where she is currently working on her next novel, with her rescue puppy Blanqui snuggled at her side.