Mean Season

What would you do if a movie star was living under your roof? Prepping for his new movie in the tiny town of Pinecob, West Virginia, up-and-coming actor Joshua Reed lands himself another drunk-driving conviction, this time involving a stolen limo, a dark country road and a cow. Rather than let him rot in jail for the summer, twenty-five-year-old Leanne Gitlin, his fan club president, agrees to vouch for him so he can serve out his sentence under house arrest. In her home. But playing the gracious guest isn’t in Joshua Reed’s repertoire. And while everyone in town is thinking up excuses to drop by the Gitlin house, Leanne quickly finds herself counting the days until her famous visitor leaves. Leanne, the youngest of five, watched her family fall apart and dutifully stayed put to help her mother pick up the pieces. Stuck in Pinecob, she was itching for something new, but Joshua Reed’s media circus isn’t quite what she had in mind. In a debut novel as endearing as it is wise, Heather Cochran has whipped up one season the town of Pinecob won’t soon forget.