BELFAST — Left Bank Books in downtown Belfast invites the public to meet Linda Holmes, the multitalented NPR writer, critic, podcaster, and two-time author on Tuesday, June 6, at 7 p.m. At NPR, Holmes hosts the daily roundtable podcast “Pop Culture Happy Hour” that comments on movies, television, music, books, videogames, and more. She now has two novels to her credit, both of which take place in Midcoast Maine where Holmes’s family used to vacation.

“It’s a place I really love,” Holmes says, in a Left Bank news release. “It’s very special to me, and every time I’ve been back I’ve thought about setting a story in and around the towns that dot the coast.”

Evvie Drake (2019), Holmes’s debut novel, and a Today Show summer book club pick, opens as Evvie is frantically packing her car, making a long-planned for escape to leave her emotionally abusive and controlling husband. “Go now, or you’ll never go,” Evvie tells herself as gets into her car. That’s when she gets the phone call that changes her life. Her husband is dead from a car accident. A year later, when Evvie rents her vacant attached apartment to a former professional baseball pitcher whose career is in the tank, we know how this story is going to turn out. And we are in, hook, line, and sinker.

Holmes’s second novel (2022), Flying Solo, features Laurie Sassalyn returning to her Maine hometown while still smarting from her recently canceled wedding. She’s there to handle the estate of her great-aunt and, while sorting through boxes of mementoes, discovers a love letter to the never married aunt and an intriguing wooden duck. When the duck disappears under mysterious circumstances, Laurie finds herself swept up in a caper where she’s negotiating with antiques dealers and con artists.

“Flying Solo is a wonderfully original story about growing up, coming home, and learning to make a life for yourself on your own terms,” said Left Bank. “A testament to the truth that love comes in all shapes, sizes, and situations.”

Copies of Evvie Drake and Flying Solo books are available now at Left Bank Books.

Reservations for this free event are strongly recommended, according to Left Bank, and can be obtained by calling the shop (207.338.9009) or emailing: info@leftbankbookshop.com Ample free parking is available in front of the shop and in an adjacent public parking lot.