Book Launch Party & Free Comedy Show

Local author, Rachel Astarte Piccione, released her comedic novel, The Bride of Manhattan, this spring -- just in time for wedding season. This summer, Nyack Comedy will host a launch party to celebrate the book.

The Bride of Manhattan tells the poignant yet humorous story of a native New Yorker who returns home from Santa Fe after a failed marriage to begin her love life again, only to discover that her true love is Manhattan itself.

"I wanted to share a few of my own experiences as a single woman living in Manhattan," says Piccione. "It was an amazingly restorative time of solitude, which allowed me to learn who I really was as a person. Yet I felt a lot of external pressure to find a romantic partner. I thought, 'Why isn't it enough for me to be who I am and be alone?' I loved New York -- and my life in it -- so much that I often fantasized about marrying myself to the city!"

The heroine of the novel, Garden Tate, struggles with a similar conflict: How to find her true self while society pressures her to find a mate. Dr. Barry H. Leeds, author of The Enduring Vision of Norman Mailer, calls The Bride of Manhattan, "...witty and humorous, wise and perceptive by turns, sometimes all simultaneously. A penetrating study of love and marriage, it is also a riveting page-turner, filled with palpably real characters (notably the narrator/protagonist) about whom the reader really cares."

Meet the Author: Nyack Comedy presents a book launch party at Olive's Bar & Restaurant in Nyack, NY on August 27, 2011 at 6.30 p.m. The evening features stand-up comedy by local New York comics, drink specials, raffles, prizes, and giveaways. Rachel Astarte Piccione will read from the novel and sign copies. Books will be on sale at the discounted rate of $15.00.

The Bride of Manhattan is available in eBook ($3.99) and paperback ($18.75) from Smashwords.com at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/46632, Barnes & Noble at http://bit.ly/tbomonbn, and Amazon at http://amzn.to/thebrideofmanhattan.

For more information, please write to: info@nyackcomedy.com with the subject line: "TBOM Book Launch."