Amazon My Works Category:  Humor Publisher: Random House Publishing Group ISBN-10:  0345430131 Type: Fiction Pages: 368 Copyright: Sept. 1998 ISBN-13: 9780345430137 Six women who live around the New York Metropolitan area are facing another Christmas...STILL SINGLE!!! One, the famous talk show host Aletha Brown is so frustrated with her relationship that she ends up shooting her boyfriend just two weeks before Crhistmas. In the meantime, her producer, Veronica McPhereson has just had a baby, and is fired by the jealous Aletha. There is a writer who writes a book she is not qualified to write and is on a book tour while her son is seaching (behind her back) for the father he never knew. Aletha's sister and her husband, the Simon's are so sick of being surrounded by out of control sistahs and brothas that they are planning to flee the country. The piece de rsisitance, though is the outrageouly funny Christmas party in the Connecticut mansion of Desiree and Aletha's parents house. Gingersnaps is satire using BLACK WOMEN to illustrate what you can call an abuse of power! From Booklist The author designates her main female characters "gingersnaps--spicy, and hard, brown and bold--women who refuse to let their cookies crumble when faced with a challenge." The six snaps include Aletha, a talk-show host; her sister Desiree, the psychologist; Veronica, the executive director of Aletha's show; Debra, a patient of Desiree's; Janeen, a hot interior-decorator involved with Aletha and Desiree's brother; and Louise, a best-selling author. All of the women have experiences that elicit actions that affect their relationships with each other and the men in their lives. They engage and interact in a world filled with jealousy, ambition, love, and hate, yet each possesses that inner strength to overcome adversity and rebound with style. Another African American fictional tale destined for the best-seller list. Lillian Lewis -- Excerpt Unlike most men place in a similar situation, at least he was trying to acknowledge the child as his own and arrange to support his son,Derrick reflected. He had thought about how much he had wanted that assignment in Zurich and that he had to do some fancy footwork around the white boys to get it. But she had acted as if he were some kind of race traitor, saying that black couples like themselves had so much to accomplish right here in their own country. Yet she worked for a television show that despite the presence of a black host, seemed to portray black folks --all folks actually -- in an unsavory light.

Publishers Weekly
From Publishers Weekly
Less a novel than six character sketches in search of a focus, this breezy, featherweight debut chronicles the loves and ambitions of several fantastically successful black women. Aletha Brown, a 37-year-old Oprah-like talk-show hostess, spends most of her time moping and envying the bliss of her older sister, Desiree, whose existence includes a successful New York psychiatric practice, a Connecticut home and marriage to a bestselling Jewish novelist. By contrast, Aletha has just shot her boyfriend, reporter and aspiring novelist Reggie Pinkney, after finding him in bed with a literary agent. Although the wound wasn't fatal, Aletha is in such a snit over the breakup that she fires Veronica, her producer, for having had a child out of wedlock. Rounding out the histrionic cast are Debra, a PR flak who masks her lesbian leanings with a strong desire to marry the right black man, and Janeen, whose 20-year friendship and hoped-for marriage to Desiree and Aletha's brother Marshall is doomed when he declares his undying love for Veronica's cousin Eric. Finally, there is Louise, who bears no direct relationship to any of the other characters except that she is promoting her how-to-snare-a-black-man self-help book on the Aletha Brown Show. Readers who get through this preposterous soap opera will forget the characters as soon as they put down the book. (Oct.) FYI: A sample chapter of Gingersnaps has been distributed to African American beauty parlors across the country.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Booklist
From Booklist
The author designates her main female characters "gingersnaps--spicy, and hard, brown and bold--women who refuse to let their cookies crumble when faced with a challenge." The six snaps include Aletha, a talk-show host; her sister Desiree, the psychologist; Veronica, the executive director of Aletha's show; Debra, a patient of Desiree's; Janeen, a hot interior-decorator involved with Aletha and Desiree's brother; and Louise, a best-selling author. All of the women have experiences that elicit actions that affect their relationships with each other and the men in their lives. They engage and interact in a world filled with jealousy, ambition, love, and hate, yet each possesses that inner strength to overcome adversity and rebound with style. Another African American fictional tale destined for the best-seller list. Lillian Lewis --