The Gaithersburg Book Festival is just about a month away, and we've grown our list of featured authors to more than 100 best-selling, award-winning authors from around the globe. Since the last issue of the GBF News, we've added:
~ Fiction ~
 Jami Attenberg’s fourth book, “The Middlesteins,” is a New York Times best-seller and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. In 2013, it will be published in England, Taiwan, Russia, Italy, France, Turkey and the Netherlands. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York, Salon and others. Jami also is the author of “Instant Love,” “The Kept Man” and “The Melting Season.” She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
 Jennifer Close is the author of the national best-seller “Girls in White Dresses” and “The Smart One.” She was born and raised on the North Shore of Chicago. She is a graduate of Boston College and received her M.F.A. in fiction writing from The New School in 2005. She worked in New York in magazines for many years and now lives in Washington, D.C., where she teaches creative writing at George Washington University.
 Jeanine Cummins is the national best-selling author of the groundbreaking memoir, “A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath,” and the award-winning novel, “The Outside Boy.” “The Crooked Branch” is her second novel. She worked in the publishing industry for 10 years before becoming a full-time writer. Jeanine was born in Spain, but grew up in Gaithersburg. She also has lived in California, Ireland and New York, where she resides now with her husband and their growing family.
 Therese Anne Fowler’s book, “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald,” already has been selected by O Magazine as one of its “Ten Titles to Pick Up Now” and named one of the most anticipated books of 2013 by The Huffington Post, Flavorwire, The Australian and Publishers Marketplace. Therese is an Illinois native and a graduate of North Carolina State University, where she earned a B.A. in sociology and an M.F.A. in creative writing. She taught undergraduate fiction writing and was an editorial assistant for the literary magazine Obsidian III before leaving to write fiction full time. Therese has two grown sons and two nearly grown stepsons, and lives with her husband in North Carolina.
 Kathleen McCleary has written three novels: “House and Home” (2008); “A Simple Thing” (2012), which was recently nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards in fiction; and “Leaving Haven” (Oct. 2013). Kathleen is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ladies Home Journal, More and Good Housekeeping. When she’s not writing, Kathleen teaches writing. She has taught as an adjunct professor at American University, and is an instructor with Writopia Labs, a nonprofit that teaches creative writing to kids. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two daughters.
 Emily Jeanne Miller’s debut novel “Brand New Human Being” was called “an addictive summer novel” by Real Simple magazine. Her short stories have appeared in The Portland Review and the North American Review. Emily has a B.A. in religion from Princeton University, an M.S. from the environmental studies program at the University of Montana, and an M.F.A. from the University of Florida in Gainesville. She lives, writes and teaches in Washington, D.C.
 P.J. O’Dwyer, author of “Relentless” and “Defiant,” the first and second books in the Fallon Sisters Trilogy, is an award-winning author and an active member of Romance Writers of America. Born in Washington, D.C., and the oldest of five children, P. J. was labeled the storyteller of the family and often accused of embellishing the truth. Her excuse? It made for a more interesting story. The proof was the laughter she received following her version of events. Today, P. J. lives in western Howard County, Md., with her husband Mark, teenage daughter Katie, and their cat Scoot and German Shepherd FeFe in a farmhouse they built in 1998.
 Maryanne O’Hara is the author of “Cascade,” a Slate Best Books 2012 Editor’s Choice selection, People magazine “People Pick,” Boston Globe “Best of the New 2012” and Library Journal “Best Bet.” She was the longtime associate fiction editor of Ploughshares, and has had her short fiction widely published and anthologized. Maryanne is a graduate of Emerson College’s M.F.A. program, where she was winner of the Graduate Dean’s Award. She has been a recipient of grants from the St. Botolph Club Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She lives on a river near Boston.
 Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of “The Seamstress,” winner of the Elle Grand Prix for Fiction 2009 and the Friends of American Writers Award. Born in Pernambuco, Brazil, she is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received a Fulbright Grant, the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award and Brazil’s Sacatar Foundation Fellowship. Her short stories have appeared in the Missouri Review, Indiana Review, O. Henry Prize Stories 2005 and Zoetrope: All-Story.
 Grady Smith draws on his military career in his debut novel, “Blood Chit.” He attended infantry Officer Candidate School, Airborne and Ranger training, all at Fort Benning. He commanded an infantry company in Vietnam and ultimately spent 20 years in military service. He also is a produced playwright, and taught Greek and Roman comedy at George Mason University for seven years. His “Travel Abroad,” the first translation of a humanist Latin comedy, “Peregrinatio,” was published in 2003. He now lives in Arlington, Va., with his wife.
~ Non-Fiction ~
 Peggielene Bartels, author of “King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village,” was born in Ghana in 1953 and moved to Washington, D.C., in her early twenties to work at Ghana’s embassy. She became an American in 1997. In 2008, she was chosen to be king of Otuam, a Ghanaian village of 7,000 people on the west coast of Africa.
 Kathy Boehlert is a wife and the mother of three boys. When her youngest son, Patrick, was diagnosed with lymphoma at the age of nine, her family began a journey of heartache and fear. It was also a journey of incredible inspiration and support. Kathy and Patrick decided to share their account in the book “The Little Things That Matter in the Big Game.” The Boehlert family resides, attends school, works and supports the Magruder Colonels in Montgomery County, Md.
 Judy Colbert is an award-winning writer and photographer who has written about Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Delaware for decades. Her latest book is “Peaceful Places Washington, D.C.: 114 Tranquil Sites in the Nation’s Capital and Beyond.” She also has written about Super Bowl trivia, temper tantrums, divorce, the hospitality industry, spas and cruising. Her articles have appeared in international, national and regional publications, and on numerous Internet sites. Her favorite reaction when someone reads something she’s written is, “I didn’t know that.” She hopes to spend a year or two cruising the Seven Seas.
 Rachel S. Cox began her latest book, “Into Dust and Fire: Five Americans Who Went First to Fight the Nazi Army,” when curiosity about her lost uncle’s fate in World War II inspired her to discover the untold story of the five idealistic American volunteers who fought at El Alamein with the British. Rachel previously wrote about war for “The Civil War” and “The Epic of Flight” series of Time Life Books. A Harvard graduate, she was an editor of Preservation magazine, and her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, World War II, CQ Researcher and other national magazines.
 Tom Dunkel, author of “Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line,” is a long-time contributor to The Washington Post Magazine and a former feature writer for the Baltimore Sun. His other writing credits include The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic Traveler and Smithsonian. He lives in Washington, D.C. “Color Blind” is his first book.
 Barbara Glickman, author of “Capital Splendor: Gardens and Parks of Washington, D.C.,” has been an avid and active member of the D.C. gardening community for many years. Her extensive travels have taken her to gardens around the country and the world. She holds a B.A. in English from Franklin and Marshall College, a Master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan, and an M.B.A. in marketing from George Washington University. She worked in health care administration for 20 years and has lived in the Washington area for more than 30 years.
 Mel Goodman, the author of “National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism” and the acclaimed “Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA,” is the director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy and an adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former professor of international security at the National War College, Mel was an intelligence adviser to the strategic disarmament talks in the 1970s. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area.
 John A. Jenkins, author of ”The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist,” has been writing from Washington, D.C., about the law and lawyers since 1971, when, shortly before his graduation from the University of Maryland College of Journalism, he went to work as a reporter covering the Justice Department. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ and many other newspapers and national magazines in the United States and abroad. As a longtime Washington publishing executive, he built the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly and created First Street, a revolutionary political intelligence tool for tracking money and influence in politics. He is the recipient of four Certificates of Merit from the American Bar Association Gavel Awards, one of the highest honors in legal journalism.
 Karen Yaffe Lottes and Dorothy Pugh have collaborated on “In Search of Maryland Ghosts: Montgomery County.” Karen is an historian and museum educator. She worked for many years as education director for the Montgomery County Historical Society (MCHS) and is currently a museum consultant. She has developed site-specific and county-wide local history programs, including “In Search of Ghosts,” one of the first history-based Halloween programs in the Washington, D.C., area. This is Karen’s first book, although she has published extensively on the history of Montgomery County, Md., in MCHS publications as well as in local newspapers. She lives in historic Washington Grove, Md. Dorothy has had a lifelong interest in history which she was able to turn from hobby to vocation when she volunteered for many years at the MCHS’s Library and Archives as an assistant librarian and researcher. She has researched and written extensively about the history of Montgomery County. Her article “Ghost Stories of Montgomery County,” published in the Montgomery County Story, led her to the realization that most paranormal happenings can be tied into the history of a house or place, thus creating an intriguing story.
 Cory MacLauchlin, author of “Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole,” is a producer, biographer and teacher. He is featured in the award winning documentary film “John Kennedy Toole: The Omega Point.” He has published on topics in American and British literature, ranging from Mark Twain to the mysterious history of The Hummums, a centuries-old literary institution of London. As a member of the English faculty at Germanna Community College, he teaches American Literature and Composition. With a belief in the ability of writing to rehabilitate lives, he also teaches writing and literature classes at a nearby state prison. He currently is researching the life of Carl Laemmle.
 Les Standiford is the author of 20 books and novels, including The New York Times Editors’ Choice “The Man Who Invented Christmas” and The New York Times best-selling “Bringing Adam Home.” AARP Magazine named his latest book, “Desperate Sons: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Patrick Henry and the Desperate Radicals Who Led the Colonies to War,” its #1 “Big Read” for the winter season. He is the recipient of fellowships in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. He directs the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, where he lives with his wife Kimberly, a psychotherapist and artist.
~ Children's & Young Adult ~
 Christopher Healy is the author of “The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle” and “The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom.” He has been deeply immersed in children’s media for most of the past decade, covering children’s entertainment for Parenting, Time Out New York Kids, Real Simple Family, Cookie, iVillage and AOL’s Parentdish.com. He lives with his wife and two children in Maplewood, N.J.
 Illustrator Diane Kidd and Margaret A. Weitekamp, Ph.D., a space history curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, have collaborated on the children’s book, “Pluto’s Secret: An Icy World’s Tale of Discovery.” Diane’s book “Weird Stories From the Lonesome Café” won the Parent’s Guide to Children’s Media Award, the Beverly Cleary Award and Nevada Young  Reader’s Award. Diane is the manager of the Barron Hilton Early Childhood program at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Margaret oversees more than 4,000 individual pieces of space memorabilia and space science fiction objects. In addition to writing “Pluto’s Secret,” she has co-edited a scholarly volume called “Analyzing Art and Aesthetics” and written the award-winning “Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program.”
~ Special Interest ~
 Matt Dembicki is a local comics creator who edited and contributed to the comic anthology “District Comics,” named one of The Washington Post‘s best books of 2012. He also edited and contributed to “Trickster: Native American Tales: A Graphic Collection,” a 2011 Eisner Award nominee and 2011 Aesop Prize winner. Matt was the writer and artist on the 2012 graphic novel “Xoc: The Journey of a Great White Shark.” In 2005, he co-founded the D.C. Conspiracy, a comics creators collaborative in Washington. He has two books scheduled for release in 2014 from Fulcrum Publishing.
 Courtney Rau is a 15-year-old songwriter who has been singing, playing music and acting most of her life. She has had lead roles in many musicals and productions, and her passion for music keeps growing. In 2010, Courtney was crowned Miss Teen Potomac. Courtney has spent a lot of time in Nashville this past year writing and recording original music, and performing at local writers’ nights, including the Commodore Grille, Loew’s Hotel and Opry Mills Mall. She recently completed a music video with Jessica Harp of her latest single, “After the Storm.”
 Sarah Schmelling, author of “Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook,” is a journalist and humor writer. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Spin, Slate, Salon, Newsweek, Real Simple, The Los Angeles Times, Parents, The Huffington Post and many other publications. She is a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and a piece she wrote for that site, “Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition),” inspired “Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float.” She lives with her family outside of Washington, D.C.
~ Poetry ~
 Eric Pankey is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently “Trace.” He is the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University and his work has been supported by fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His poems have appeared widely in journals such as Poetry, The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Yale Review.
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Books, booze and charity. You’d think that these three have nothing in common…but they do when it comes to Booktini, a national book club that started in Oakland, Calif.
