The producers of Dancing with the Stars haven’t cast season 12 yet, but we hope they consider our petitions for Kathy L. Patrick and Claire Cook. In the meantime, fans can watch Patrick’s new online book club show with Random House.

Random House marketing director Avideh Bashirrad explained in the release: “We’ve seen increased demand for digital content from book clubs, so we developed a program that would offer them more of what they love. Kathy Patrick was our ideal choice for the partnership since she has been an advocate of our books for many years.”

The first two shows aired on January 14th with Karen Abbott‘s American Rose and Paula McLain‘s The Paris Wife. Patrick founded the Pulpwood Queens Book Club, a group with 400 chapters across the country. Other authors who will appear on the new show include: Pat Conroy, Fannie Flagg, Helen Simonson, Deborah Rodriguez, Frank Delaney, Yann Martel, Janelle Brown, Melanie Benjamin, Susan Vreeland, and Lisa See. (Via Shelf Awareness)

EDITOR’S NOTE: We corrected a spelling error in this post.

Novelist Paula McLain just sold a novel about the life of Ernest Hemingway‘s first wife, reportedly landing a half-million dollar deal.

According to the NY Observer, Random House executive editor Susanna Porter bought the historical novel about the relationship between Hadley Richardson and Hemingway (pictured via, circa World War I). Agent Julie Barer sealed the deal.

The article explains how the book follows “the five-year period after World War I during which Richardson and Hemingway, who was in his 20s, were married and living as expats in Paris alongside Lost Generation writers like Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson.”