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Katherine Dean Mazerov
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Summer Club: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Katherine Dean Mazerov (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 40 ratings
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Murder meets the absurd in the sizzling thriller Summer Club, a new novel by award-winning journalist Katherine Dean Mazerov.

Normally, politics and parent drama, drunken soirees and sex-capades reign at Lydia Phillips’s swim and tennis club. Now, a strange car following the club manager, a break-in at Lydia’s home, and a shocking discovery on the club grounds have this stay-at-home mom dusting off her newspaper-reporting skills to unravel the mystery.

Then, a body surfaces in the river, and Lydia’s life gets a whole lot more complicated—and dangerous.

In one moment, readers of Summer Club will be laughing at the colorful characters’ outrageous antics. The next moment, they will be riveted as the story reveals a troubling, complex scheme involving fraud and murder.

Perfect for parents balancing career and family, Summer Club casts a beam of dark humor across the hidden reality that makes “domestic” life—raising children and volunteering for community and school groups—sometimes more harrowing than the most cutthroat of corporate jobs.
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  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    August 23, 2020
  5. File size
    1470 KB
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  7. Word Wise
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Editorial Reviews

Review

TBA

From the Author

I NEVER PLANNED to write a novel. As a lifelong journalist--a reporter and editor at a metropolitan daily newspaper, magazine writer, and reporting on the global energy industry--writing fiction was never an aspiration. Maybe that's because I gain tremendous gratification from my work--whether a human-interest story about a teenager training to swim the English Channel, a profile of a fashion icon, or the geopolitical forces shaping world energy production. I love the process of figuring out a "lead" to engage readers and then putting it all together, like a puzzle.

When people asked if I'd ever considered writing a novel, the answer was always the same. Nope. I'm a non-fiction writer.

My life changed when I quit my newspaper job to stay home and focus on my young son. While I loved this precious time, I missed the adrenaline-filled environment of the newsroom and the opportunity to use my creative skills.

So, I started volunteering. Initially, it was all kid related. Then I started taking on other volunteer jobs, eventually becoming president of our swim and tennis club. After days filled with the deadline pressure of the newsroom, clashing egos, and flaring tempers, I figured this would be a fun, easy three-month stint that would keep me busy while I played tennis and worked on my tan. How bad could it be? I asked myself.

After all, who doesn't love summer? Long, lazy days. Warm, candlelit nights. Barbecues. Pretty plants in pots. Flip flops and shorts. In cities and suburbs across Middle America, this carefree time of year kicks off on Memorial Day with the opening of the neighborhood Summer Club. For three months, members come together to party, drink, swim, bask in the sun, play tennis and watch their kids compete. Then, on Labor Day the pool is drained, the chairs are stacked, and the gates are locked. Summer is over.

How bad could it be? How bad is there? As constant carping, board politics, and parent drama reigned throughout the summer, I found myself repeating the same mantra: You can't make this stuff up; I have to write a book. Writing Summer Club was an eight-year journey with lots of fits and starts as I got distracted with freelance projects. Also, I got stuck when it became apparent that I couldn't just write a book full of crazy anecdotes. I needed a dark element to create some tension that could be juxtaposed with the absurd. A conversation with a friend and a little research gave me the angle I was looking for.


THE STORY is loosely autobiographical and reflects the struggle many women face when balancing career and family. Volunteer extraordinaire Lydia Phillips is a journalist-turned-stay-at-home-mom trying to fill the void from her high-energy job as a newspaper editor. But she's pushed to max as president of the rundown Meadow Glen Swim and Tennis Club, complete with a leaky pool, cracked courts, and a junk food emporium run by a stoned aging hippie who may have more than candy and corndogs in mind.

The petty complaining, mishaps, power plays, and a lawsuit that could shutter the
club for good keep Lydia awake at night, distracting her from her husband and teenage
boys. Yet, it's a series of suspicious and increasingly troubling incidents that push her toward the edge, making this a summer unlike any other.

Lydia's husband, Bill, doesn't share her passion for volunteer work. After begging Lydia not to take on the role of club president," Bill doesn't hide his unhappiness that her all-consuming responsibilities at the club have ruined the family's summer. A consummate foodie, Bill redeems himself with his wry sense of humor and gourmet meals that keep the home fires burning. Think Gruyere cheese omelets with herbs de Provence. Crepes dripping with butter and powdered sugar. Succulent roasted chicken with fennel and the bounty from Bill's vegetable garden.

Not to be left out of the family dynamic is Stacie, the beloved, but very spoiled,
Phillips family dog who is Lydia's steadfast companion through the season's trials and
tribulations.


HOW BAD does it get? The list seems endless. Poop in the pool. Sex-capades. A syrupy flood in the snack bar. Drunken soirees planned by the club's sexy queen of cocktails. These shenanigans and more are perpetrated by a parade of personalities who have come together in a perfect summer storm of bad, self-serving behavior. There are the club bullies:
  • The slimy, combative, and bigoted club treasurer who spends no time at the club, yet curiously insists on having a key to the grounds;
  • The self-aggrandizing, beer-guzzling Swim chair who struts around the pool deck showing off his bulging muscles and running swim meets by firing off a pistol;
  • A loud, win-at-all-costs tennis player who has no problem making questionable line calls but takes a "boys will be boys" attitude when her three bratty kids consistently mark their territory on the playground.
And the high-maintenance whiners:
  • An overly dramatic, sanctimonious helicopter mom who thinks her girls don't need to follow the swim and tennis team rules because, of course, they're gifted;
  • The neurotic swim team mom who makes a scene at every meet, certain her daughter is being cheated out of first place;
  • A disgruntled male member who cries discrimination over the ladies book night.

Despite the ongoing dysfunction, Meadow Glen does have a few things going for it, notably the club manager, Pete Merrick. After making millions on Wall Street, Pete took early retirement and is now pursuing his true passion: teaching advanced high school math and economics. He fills his summers managing the club, which he's slowly but surely turning around. However, his summertime gig is clouded by strange goings-on at the club--and the realization that someone is watching him.

A break-in at Lydia's home and a startling discovery on the club grounds raise the stakes even higher. When a body surfaces in the river, the newspaper reporter in Lydia begins to suspect these events are somehow connected.


AS DAILY CHAOS rages on at Meadow Glen, Lydia can't resist the urge to follow her
instincts that something dark and insidious is indeed afoot. She soon becomes
consumed by the trail of clues that lead her down a path of baffling twists and turns. At the same time, she can't help but wonder about some "curious" pool-goers:
  • A card-shark tweener who appears out of nowhere to make Meadow Glen his second
  • home--with no parent in sight;
  • An aloof lap swimmer who makes a spooky splash with his bulging stomach, zinc oxide-smeared face and tight-fitting goggles. He's a charter member of the club, yet, strangely, few seem to know who he is or what he does.
Using her investigative reporting skills to unravel a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and murder right under her nose, Lydia ultimately finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time late on an eerie moonless night. What she once had hoped would be a fun, laid back summer ends up with Lydia fighting for her life.


WEAVING the two sides of the Summer Club story together was certainly challenging. But
transitioning from non-fiction to fiction was my biggest hurdle. As a reporter, I had
learned to write on deadline and construct a story to fit a finite amount of space. So, I had to work at taking my time to let the scenes unfold naturally, in a way readers could savor and absorb, and develop characters that people could connect with emotionally--good or bad.

My Summer Club adventure forced me to push the envelope of creativity in ways I had never considered. Once I got the hang of this thing called fiction, I realized that combining characters and events to create a compelling narrative is much more fun than sticking to the facts.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08GL1Q9DZ
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Outskirts Press, Inc. (August 23, 2020)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 23, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1470 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 197722203X
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 40 ratings

About the author

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Katherine Dean Mazerov

Katherine Dean Mazerov

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Career journalist KATHERINE DEAN (Katie) MAZEROV understands the power of stories that resonate with people, touch their lives. In her debut novel, Summer Club, she explores the complexities of life and foibles of human nature that emerge at rundown swim and tennis club rife with hilarious dysfunction and parent drama--and where a journalist-turned-stay-at-home-mom stumbles onto a dark fraud scheme. The award-winning newspaper reporter and editor has been a magazine writer, worked in corporate communications for a Fortune 500 company and written extensively on trends, market outlook and emerging technologies for the global energy industry. As an editor at The Denver Post, Katie was a member of the team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. Like the protagonist in her book, she has experienced the challenges of balancing career and family. After putting her own career on hold to stay home, she did her fair share of volunteering—from the classroom to her own neighborhood swim and tennis club—which, she learned, can sometimes be more competitive and ruthless than even the most stressful work environment. Decades after launching her career path on the college newspaper, she remains passionate about writing, expanding her horizons along the way as a wife, mom, tennis player, skier, cyclist and world traveler. She can’t imagine a world without dogs. She lives in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
40 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book with twists and turns
Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2021
Verified Purchase
Recommended by book club. Enjoyed how the book started with a mystery and resolved at the end of the book.
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Pat Stoltey
4.0 out of 5 stars Good pacing, fun characters
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2021
Verified Purchase
Lydia Phillips has the not-so-delightful job of board president for her neighborhood's summer club with its social events, tennis tournaments, and swim meets. It's a rowdy group of members and a series of misadventures, including a crime or two, that send Lydia on a search for the owner of $50,000 found on the property as well as anyone who might have knowledge of a murder. There are a lot of interesting characters to keep track of, but the pacing is good. A very enjoyable mystery with a strong lesson--don't volunteer to serve on the board of a summer club.
One person found this helpful
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TaSigmund
2.0 out of 5 stars Meh
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2021
Verified Purchase
This book is something else, after reading the blurb I thought it was a murder mystery. This is all about a Club House at some high priced development. Lydia is the Club House President, someone the residents complain to about they're displeasure at the Club House. There is a murder but you don't find out about it til later in the book. You have to read just over half the book before you find out about the murder. I guess you might call this Literary Fiction. This was my type of book but it was ok I guess. I'm not gonna say this is an awful book cause it wasn't, it's just not my cup of tea.
One person found this helpful
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Margaret Mizushima
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Cozy Mystery
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2021
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This well written mystery provides an entertaining read and a peek into what it takes to keep a summer club running. I really enjoyed it.
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Jo Ellen Cohen
4.0 out of 5 stars Very entertaining!
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2021
Verified Purchase
It was a great summer/beach read! Fun with lots of surprises
Some interesting characters and an entertaining story. I really enjoyed it.
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Barb Reinhold
5.0 out of 5 stars Hoping this will become a series
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2023
If Lydia Phillips thought that when she decided to take a break from her career as a successful journalist she would be leaving behind having to deal with the whiners, social climbers, criminals, and assorted other scoundrels one commonly encounters in her line of work, she was wrong.

One could even say dead wrong.

Her plan was to be a full-time Mom to her children for the summer. However, much to her eventual dismay, she finds herself taking on the thankless volunteer job as president of the board of her neighborhood’s Meadow Glen Swim and Tennis Club.

Whiners and pettiness abound among the club members. Lydia may not have the patience of Mother Teresa, but with all that she has to put up with from the members, she certainly comes close in that she herself hasn’t actually murdered any of them. Let me hasten to say that my description of the club members isn’t in any way meant to be critical of the author because these characters are exactly as they should be for purposes of the story. One of Mazerov’s strong points is her skill at creating characters who fit seamlessly into the plot and are perfect to carry it.

Lydia, by the way, is one of the best female characters I’ve come across in a long time. Another author might have made a character in Lydia’s situation into a handwringing whiner or shrewish screamer, but Mazerov chose a quite different direction and imbued Lydia with a sense of humor. Mazerov’s liberal use of humor throughout the book in general and including a delightful canine character reminiscent of my own beloved and much missed dogs earn her big bonus points from me. This is a truly great book. I am hoping for a sequel.
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Kathleen Hughes
4.0 out of 5 stars Summer Club drama!
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2021
We all expect summer days to be long, hot and relaxing, right? They are everything but that for Lydia Phillips, former newspaper reporter and super volunteer who has met her greatest challenge - the job of Board President of the neighborhood Meadow Glen Swim and Tennis Club. She’s constantly pestered with various petty complaints, must make sure that old equipment functions perfectly, has to guide the club through a lawsuit, and deals with worrisome security issues. All this takes time away from her husband Bill and their three children. When the body of a property manager is found in the river, Lydia wonders if he was connected to some mysterious events at Meadow Glen. Can she discover the connection before it is too late for her and Meadow Glen?

Summer Club just missed the mark as great summer read. That’s too bad because Lydia is a great character. We can all identify with a volunteer job that looks easy but isn’t and we’ve all tried to balance family with outside interests. Summer Club is just too long and needs to be tightened. Eliminate the multiple dog incidents, the Murphy boys and some of the swim team drama. I hope that Katherine Mazerov writes a sequel with Lydia returning to a newspaper or digital media position. 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Outskirts Press and Katherine Mazerov for this ARC.
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Segmar
5.0 out of 5 stars Most enjoyable
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2022
Summer Club is a great escape and enjoyable read. A little bit of everything…fantasy, reality, community, relationships, mystery, jealousy, stuffiness, fun and introspection. Did some of it truly happen in every day life or was it the author’s vision of what could happen? I suspect a little of both. Anyone who has ever been associated with a summer club can identify with the drama, pettiness, the stories and the family dynamics when thrown together in a variety of competitive endeavors. Enjoy this book…it’s well done and makes one laugh and cringe often at the same time. I like there is a mystery element too. Really enjoyed this book.
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