(Review of Bride of the Living Dead)

In Lynne Murray’s newest novel the dream of a picture-perfect wedding becomes the stuff nightmares are made of—that is, if nightmares were scripted by the Marx Brothers.

"I hate weddings," declares big, beautiful and rebellious Daria MacClellan, heroine of the romantic comedy, Bride of the Living Dead. "If you had a sister like Sky, you would too."

Daria, an independent film critic, wants to marry the man she loves, but finds herself slipping on the rose petals on the road to matrimony as if they were banana peels. She’s most comfortable in a monster movie poster T-shirt and blue jeans, but when family drama hijacks her engagement she’s trapped into a formal wedding with her perfectionist, anorexic sister planning the whole thing.

Bride of the Living Dead is being published in original trade paperback ($18.95) and ebook format ($9.95) June 1, 2010 by local independent publisher Pearlsong Press. The first people who purchase a paperback copy of the novel from the website (www.pearlsong.com) will be eligible for a special promotion by the author and publisher.

Murray has donated 44 autographed first edition copies of her first novel, Termination Interview (1988, St. Martin’s Press), as a giveaway for people who buy a paperback copy of Bride of the Living Dead and one other paperback book from the Pearlsong Press website. Those 44 customers will also receive a free booklet, "The Road to Life-Sized Fiction," in which Murray writes about her journey from writing novels with slim heroines (Termination Interview and its sequel, Death Flower) to writing sleuths—and independent film critics—of size.

Murray is the award-winning author of four fat-positive mystery novels featuring Josephine Fuller, a sleuth of size who doesn’t apologize, as well as the earlier mystery series and three ebooks of encouragement for writers. The first of her Josephine Fuller novels, Larger Than Death, won the Distinguished Achievement Award from the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), but the novels are now out of print.

Murray wonders if books "with a lower fat content," particularly where female characters are concerned, sell better. But she just can’t write books in which all the characters are thin.

"I don’t live in a world like that, and the idea of such a narrow range of humanity saddens me," she writes in "The Road to Life-Sized Fiction." "My friends and neighbors and the people I love and hate come in all sizes. In my fictional world, at least some of the fat characters have to stand up and face the issues that real fat people deal with every day of our lives."

And so does Daria in Bride of the Living Dead.

Bride of the Living Dead is available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other online retailers, and by special-order at brick-and-mortar bookstores, as well as from the publisher’s online store at www.pearlsong.com. Murray is promoting the book with a blog tour and a June 9 teleconference call with her publisher, Peggy Elam, in which fans are encouraged to participate (www.pearlsong.com/pearlsongconversations.htm). Details of the blog tour can be found at http://brideofthedead.blogspot.com.

Download the media kit for Bride of the Living Dead at http://www.pearlsong.com/newsroom/lynnemurray/Bridemediakit.pdf .