Author Talk | Leigh Dunlop

Join us for a lively conversation with Leigh Dunlap, screenwriter-turned-novelist, as she discusses her debut thriller novel, Bless Your Heart, a sharp, funny, and unexpectedly touching story of family, reinvention, and Southern hospitality (or the lack thereof).

Motherhood and M**der link five very different women when a working-class detective clashes with wealthy moms in this upmarket thriller in the vein of May Cobb and Jeneva Rose.

Anderson Tupper, a member of one of Atlanta’s richest families, has been murdered in the dugout of the Little League field where he was a volunteer coach, and it’s up to Detective Shay Claypool, a single mother from the other side of town, to find his killer.

With the exclusive area of Buckhead threatening to secede from the city of Atlanta and take its tax revenue with it, Shay is under pressure to solve the M**der of one of Buckhead’s own. Accustomed to handling drug dealers and prostitutes, she must now contend with an even more sinister group: the Buckhead Betties, the insufferably entitled women of Georgia’s most affluent zip code. One of them might be a murderer, but who? Is it the old-money queen of Buckhead? The mysterious new girl in town? The drug-dealing trophy wife?

It seems secrets and lies are as plentiful as luxury handbags in Atlanta and everyone’s guilty of something. Shay’s investigation will make her examine her own prejudices and discover that, as a woman and a mother, she might not be that different from the Betties after all. And if she isn’t careful, they just might take her down with them.

Books will be available for sale and signing from Read It Again Books.

Leigh Dunlap is the screenwriter of the hit Warner Bros’ movie A Cinderella Story. A native of Los Angeles, she attended film school at the University of Southern California. She now splits time and personalities between South Carolina and South Kensington and dreams of one day giving it all up and searching for buried treasure. Until then, she writes movies and books, including Bless Your Heart, her debut novel.

Samira Shakib-Bregeth is an Iranian-American writer from Chicago who lives and teaches in suburban Atlanta. Samira was the recipient of the Teacher of the Year award. She earned an English M.A. in Literary Studies and is the Communications Manager at Chestnut Review. Some of her publications can be found at Literary Mama, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Wild Roof Journal, Heartwood, Parhelion, Fig & Quince, and Hungry Chimera. Currently on submission, Samira’s #ownvoices novel with a feminist bent is about a struggling artist and her Iranian mother. Her manuscript was a finalist in 2021 for UCLA’s Allegra Johnson’s Writing Prize.

Host or Publisher Gwinnett County Public Library