Books by Bart A. Charlow: Catskills Romance Novels & Borscht Belt Memoirs
Books by Bart A. Charlow: Catskills Romance Novels & Borscht Belt Memoirs
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Sequel novel "This Never Should Have Happened" is now live!
PREMIERING - This Never Should Have Happened
PREMIERING - This Never Should Have Happened
The Catskill Saga Continues
The Catskill Saga Continues
Lived-In Love Series Book 2 - OUT NOW!
Lived-In Love Series Book 2 - OUT NOW!
A second-chance romance sixty years in the making, set in the Catskills hotel country pictured in Dirty Dancing.
Aaron Ben-Ami fell for Elyse Krieger almost sixty summers ago, in a Borscht Belt hotel like the ones that inspired Dirty Dancing. He lost her, wrote the bestselling novel about it, and built a marriage and a life, leaving that memory behind, so he thought. Now a widowed psychotherapist turned novelist, he returns to the Catskills resorts of his youth for the potential series based on the movie of his book — and finds himself falling for two women at once.
Monica Stuart offers a future built on trust, passion, and hard-earned companionship. Izzy Sandler, the young actress cast to play Alice, the fictionalized version of the love Aaron lost, is Elyse's granddaughter. She wears her grandmother's face and her grandmother's laugh, and she reopens a love Aaron swore was finished. — and reopens a love Aaron swore was finished.
Set between the legendary hotels of the Catskills and the California coast, This Never Should Have Happened is upmarket fiction about second chances, hidden family secrets, and what it costs later-in-life adults to love again after loss.
Book Two in the Lived-In Love™ series — following That Catskill Summer — this is a second-chance-at-love story for readers of mature romance novels and morally complex romantic fiction, who want their happy endings to actually cost something. Order to be first to read it.
Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook. Releases everywhere books are sold online.
Just the FAQs
Just the FAQs
What's the difference between the memoirs and the novels?
What's the difference between the memoirs and the novels?
The Borscht Belt Books are true memoir — my own life, family, and the resort world I actually grew up in. The Lived-In Love series is fiction, set in that same world but with invented characters and stories. Same setting, same emotional truth, different contract with the reader: one happened, one is imagined from what did.
Do I need to read the books in order?
Do I need to read the books in order?
Each book stands on its own. But if you want the fuller experience, I'd recommend the memoirs in order (A Catskill Carnival, then Pickle Barrel Tales) and the novels in order (That Catskill Summer, then This Never Should Have Happened) — later books carry emotional weight from earlier ones, even though they don't require it.
Are the novels based on your real life?
Are the novels based on your real life?
Loosely, and less than people assume. The Catskills world, the hotel culture, the psychological terrain — that's drawn from lived experience and decades of hearing people's real stories in the therapy room. The characters and plots themselves are invented. Think of the memoirs as what happened, and the novels as what I know to be true about people, dressed up as fiction.
Who are these books for?
Who are these books for?
The Lived-In Love Series is for Adult readers — especially anyone who's loved, lost, and started again later in life. If you want tidy romance tropes and twenty-somethings, look elsewhere. If you want complicated, honest adults figuring out second chances, you're in the right place.
The Borscht Belt Books Series is suitable for all ages.
Will there be more books?
Will there be more books?
Yes. The Lived-In Love series continues beyond This Never Should Have Happened, and there are more Borscht Belt stories still to tell. I'm working on a third book in the series. Give me a little time for that!
Meantime, please join the Reader Circle for updates, spinoffs, and other goodies. I won't spam you.
Where can I get these — and are they available as audiobooks or large print?
Where can I get these — and are they available as audiobooks or large print?
Virtually every online bookstore carries all the books. Some only carry eBooks, but there is always a way to get a paperback or hardcover book. In fact, Amazon carries an audiobook of A Catskill Carnival too. Large print books and more audiobooks take a lot of time and work, so they are not yet available. Stay tuned.
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