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Start giftingThe Cherry Cola Book Club
Narrator
Marguerite Gavin
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn more
Length
7 hours 40 minutes
Language
English
With its corrugated iron siding and cramped interior, the Cherico, Mississippi library is no Antebellum gem. But for young librarian Maura Beth Mayhew, it’s as essential to the community as the delicious desserts at the Twinkle, Twinkle Café. It’s a place for neighbors to mingle and browse through the newest bestsellers, for the indomitable Miss Voncille Nettles to host her “Who’s Who in Cherico?” meetings. The library may be underfunded and overlooked, but it’s Maura Beth’s pride, and she won’t let the good ol’ boys on the City Council close it down without a fight.
Which is why Maura Beth has founded the Cherry Cola Book Club, a last-ditch attempt to boost circulation and save her job. Over potluck dinners featuring treasured family recipes, the booklovers of Cherico come together to talk about literary classics. But soon it’s not just Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee being discussed over chicken gumbo and homemade biscuits with green pepper jelly. Secrets are shared, old dreams rekindled, and new loves slowly blossom.
Southern charm, wit, and warmth combine in this delightful novel about great books, true friends, and the stories that give life its richest meaning, on and off the page.
Ashton Lee was born in historic Natchez, Mississippi, into a large, extended Southern family which gave him much fodder for his fiction later in life. His father, who wrote under the pen name of R. Keene Lee after WWII, was an editor and writer in New York of what is now called pulp fiction. As a result, Ashton inherited a love of reading and writing early on and did all the things aspiring authors are supposed to do, including majoring in English when he attended the University of the South, affectionately known as Sewanee. Ashton lives in Oxford, MS.
Marguerite Gavin is a seasoned theater veteran, a five-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award, and the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones and Publishers Weekly awards. She has been an actor, director, and audiobook narrator for her entire professional career. With over four hundred titles to her credit, her narration spans nearly every genre, from nonfiction to mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and children’s fiction. AudioFile magazine says, “Marguerite Gavin…has a sonorous voice, rich and full of emotion.”
Reviews
“Down-home and delicious, The Cherry Cola
Book Club combines everything we love about Southern cuisine, small-town
grit, and the transformative power of books.”
“Lee’s buoyant David-versus-Goliath tale zestfully illuminates a real problem confronting libraries and cities of all sizes.”
“For anyone who has ever believed in the power of a good book, Ashton Lee’s charming novel of a small Southern town with a flavorful plan to save its precious but woefully underfunded library will have you cheering from the start. Clever, sassy, and as tasty as an icebox pie, The Cherry Cola Book Club is a rare treat. Community activism has never been more delicious—or more fun.”
“If Fannie Flagg and Jan Karon’s Mitford were to
come together, the end result might very well be Cherico, Mississippi. Ashton
Lee has created a magical town with characters who will inspire readers and
bring them back to a simpler time and place. With both humor and moving passages,
Lee has captured the quirkiness and warmhearted people of the small town south
to a ‘T.’ Fix yourself a cherry Coke and savor this fun and moving book.”