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The Page Turner (Graydon House) is a story about the tendency to judge both people and the books we encounter by their surface appearance — often judging a book by its cover — without truly understanding what lies beneath. At its heart, it’s also a powerful reminder of how books and reading not only have the ability to transform us, but to save our lives.

"They saved mine," shares Wade Rouse, who writes under the pen name Viola Shipman, about his latest novel.

Steven Rowley, New York Times bestselling author of The Guncle, praises The Page Turner as “a celebration of books that lives up to its title… a deeply personal exploration of the power of stories.”

Rouse is a USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly and #1 internationally bestselling author of 18 books, which include five memoirs and 13 novels. His works have been translated into nearly 25 languages and have been bestsellers around the globe. His novel The Secret of Snow was recently optioned for a TV movie by the producers of the popular Netflix series Ginny & Georgia. 

He was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Humor (he lost to Tina Fey) and was named by Writer’s Digest as “The #2 Writer, Dead or Alive, We’d Like to Have Drinks With” (Wade was sandwiched between Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson).

Rouse chose to honor his grandmother by adopting her name, Viola Shipman, as his pen name. His grandmother, a hardworking Ozarks seamstress, made sacrifices that changed the course of his family's life and continues to inspire his fiction.

A popular speaker and teacher, he has served as both a keynoter and a faculty member at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop.