A local authors book festival puts writers and readers within reach of each other.

Summer reading can be a good time for escapist books that indulge in faraway places, remarkable characters and incredible plots. But in Monterey County a reader doesn’t have to go far to find authors who can deliver those.

Margie McCurry, a member of the Monterey Elks Lodge, has conceived and coordinated the new Page Turners Book Fest, enlisting the Central Coast Writers to gather 44 local authors (they stopped at 44 because they ran out of capacity) at the scenic banquet hall of the Elks Lodge for a free book fair on July 15. Authors of mysteries, memoirs, thrillers, kids books, sci-fi, travel, etc., will sit in pairs at tables, with their books, ready to meet and talk with readers, and sell and sign books if the exchange so inspires it.

The day starts with former spy D.S. Kane (Swift Shadow, Death Byte) talking about how to write a thriller, and there will be a full bar in the next room. Hemingway would feel right at home.

Below is a sampling of authors (part of their registration fee goes to the Food Bank at Veterans Transition Center), stories and books you will find there.

Wes Kelley is tabling three of his books, including For God and Country, about a troubled, young American soldier who intends to die in battle until he meets a beautiful, orphaned Kurdish girl.

Kelley gamely responds in vernacular to a question about what drives him through Seamus O’leary, a character from another one of his books, Timer: “I kin put it right simple: He don’t pull no punches and he don’t play no sides. What he sez has got a lotta sand in it ‘n he don’t waste no time sayin’ it. He’s a good ‘un ‘n that’s fer sure.”

Jill Cody’s book America Abandoned promotes more political engagement than fantastical escape (as do others, see story, p. 18), arguing that Americans have been let down by “behemoth corporations, the uber-rich, the media, Congress, and the Supreme Court.”

Rose Marie Zurkan (The Expat Murders) says she is not expecting much from the book festival, and likens the act of writing to a disease that, despite the rejections and lack of reward, is hard to cure. But in a twist to all that, she says of her books, “I require happy endings.”

Maxine Carlson grew up in an Italian family in Pebble Beach, which is the setting for her children’s books like The Wild Buck (illustrated by Drew McSherry) in which siblings Molly and Fern are encouraged by their “Nonna” to explore the flora and fauna of Del Monte Forest. She also maintains a similarly family, food and forest-themed blog called huckleberryhilladventure.com.

Russell Sunshine says, “I made my first international voyage at the age of 5, sailing through the Panama Canal on a Norwegian freighter, accompanying my mother carrying trunks full of goodies to cheer cousins still trapped in war-torn Europe.”

That early formative experience grew into a career as a globe-trotting independent policy adviser, and out of that 40-year career he’s spun a travel/memoir adventure called Far & Away: True Tales from an International Life.

Nancy Swing is a mystery writer who’s looking forward to meeting readers because, she says, they spark her creativity. Her latest book is Child’s Play, the first in a trilogy set in a fictitious West Virginia town about a poor teen girl and a down-and-out middle-aged woman who team up to solve the murders of someone close to each of them. She’s just finished the first draft of the second book, titled Lazarus. And thanks to the success of True Detective and the S-Townpodcast, Southern gothic is in healthy demand.

Marcia Rosen’s The Senior Sleuths Mysteries: Dead in Bed is fashioned like a Jewish take on the classic The Thin Man series, with inspiration from her real-life acquaintance with underworld people like Doc, The Gimp, Johnny the Jig and Fat Lawyer.

“My father was a gangster,” she says. “So, it wouldn’t take a genius… to figure out the genesis of my fascination with crime and criminals. Believe me, I saw and heard a lot.”

Donald Craghead has set his book The Enchanted Emerald on the Central Coast, but with a twist. It’s 150 years in the future after a cataclysmic event has rendered technology useless and decimated the human population – and the rules of magic have supplanted science.

Joshua Converse is the author of the short story collection Time in the Dark, a Cloud Atlas-like genre-jumping book of fiction, memoir, magical realism, noir and more, as well as two poetry collections including Accidental Existential.

He may have one of the loftier hopes for the book fest: “At a time when reading for pleasure is at a low ebb, I think it’s important that we come together to promote literacy, the free exchange of ideas, empathy and human imagination.”

And Kathy Keenan – author of Fire in the Ocean, in which a woman goes on an eco-vacation and finds herself embroiled with the old gods of Hawaii – harbors simpler aspirations that all the authors might share: “I’m hoping to get the word out about my books a little, meet some interesting people, and have fun.”

PAGE TURNERS BOOK FEST is 1pm for the thriller novel talk, 2-5pm for the authors festival, Sunday, July 15, at Monterey Elks Lodge, 150 Mar Vista Drive, Monterey. Free.margiemccurry@gmail.com, centralcoastwriters.org