Local author comes to AS York book club

Former Holland Landing author Judy Penz Sheluk will be the guest speaker at AS York’s The Rakuten Kobo Digital Book Club meeting on World Alzheimer’s Day, Sept. 21.

“I am so grateful and honoured to have been asked to the meeting,” said Penz Sheluk. “I love talking to readers, learning what they liked and didn’t like. My hope is that my books will provide a brief escape for caregivers of people living with dementia.”

The book club, promoted by Rakuten and supported by TechCoaches, is for people living with dementia and their caregivers. AS York clients receive a free Kobo to keep for as long as they are in the club. Members of the group, which have been meeting since November, choose one book to read the following month. So far they have read Gone but Still Hear and Red Wolf by Jennifer Dance, Country Music by Dolly Parton, and Skeletons in the Attic by Penz Sheluk.

Skeletons in the Attic is Book 1 of A Marketville Mystery series and features main character Calamity (Callie) Barnstable, who “isn’t surprised to learn she’s the sole beneficiary of her late father’s estate, though she is shocked to discover she has inherited a house in the town of Marketville—a house she didn’t know he had. However, there are conditions attached to Callie’s inheritance: she must move to Marketville, live in the house, and solve her mother’s murder.

“Callie’s not keen on dredging up a 30-year-old mystery, but if she doesn’t do it, there’s a scheming psychic named Misty Rivers who hopes to expose the Barnstable family secrets herself. Determined to thwart Misty and fulfill her father’s wishes, Callie accepts the challenge. But is she ready to face the skeletons hidden in the attic?”

Skeletons in the Attic is the most popular in book in Penz Sheluk’s A Marketville Mystery series, which the author said is because of its great cover (“covers sell books), but also because it’s “told from Callie’s point of view, and readers can follow her journey, with her. And she’s far from perfect, with a complicated past and an uncertain future.”

While she loves all of her books, Penz Sheluk’s favourite in that series is Past & Present.

 “That one has a very personal connection for me. You’d have to read the foreword to understand why, but it was written after my mother passed away, and I felt she was with me while I wrote it.”

A voracious reader – Penz Sheluk reads about 45 to 50 books in a year – her go-to books tend to be mystery and suspense.

“I like the problem-solving aspect. And in my case, it can be quite cathartic. If someone does me wrong, I can always get even with them in a book!”

Penz Sheluk lived in Holland Landing for 25 years and now lives near Sault Ste. Marie, overlooking the shores of Lake Superior. Her books are often set in York Region – sort of.

The Glass Dolphin Mysteries are set in Lount’s Landing, “a fictionalized Holland Landing with Newmarket’s Main Street…The Marketville Mysteries are set in Marketville, a fictionalized Newmarket.”

Penz Sheluk will be the guest author at the Book Club on World Alzheimer’s Day, Sept 21.

Learn more about Penz Sheluk by visiting her website.