Coming June 17, 2025 from Regal House Publishing
Three Guesses
Recipient of the 2023 Fugere Book Prize Recognizing Finely Crafted Novellas
Pre-Order at Regal House Publishing, your favorite indie bookstore, or through Bookshop.org.
In Memphis, get your copy at Burke’s Bookstore *June 26, 2025* at the release event or pre-order if you can’t attend.
Three strangers from Memphis, Phoenix, and New York City, connected only by a mesmerizing painting named Three Guesses, embark on an extraordinary journey of friendship in this charming epistolary novella. Over the years, their letters reveal intimate details about their lives and loves, dreams, trials and triumphs, and a shared desire to find their places in the world—deepening their bond without ever having met in person. Then, as each contends with critical turning points, the unlikely trio considers breaking their mail-only pact to meet at the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Humorous and heartbreaking, soulful and breathtaking, Three Guesses celebrates love, friendship, hope, and the life-changing power of human connection.
Sharp, eccentric, engaging and refreshing,
every letter in Three Guesses is a story all its own.
“Original, eloquent, engaging, and an entertainingly memorable read from cover to cover.”
—Midwest Book Review
I’m in love. I’m in love with the characters in this book, with the structure of this book, with the gorgeous, surprising, poetic, intimate, riveting prose that Chris McClain Johnson seems to effortlessly unravel as if it were the telling of a beautiful dream...What an unforgettable and astonishing book!”
—Diane Wald, award-winning author of My Famous Brain and The Bayrose Files
“This quirky wonderful book is a paean to friendship and love and creativity. I couldn’t put it down. I felt uplifted on every page. For readers who loved 84 Charing Cross Road, Three Guesses is a delightful successor.”
—Martha Anne Toll, author of Three Muses and Duet for One
From the Author
Writing is a joyful obsession for me, rich with muses that first appeared in my childhood, inspired by the beauty and wonders of our family farms in Mayfield, Kentucky. They swarmed me like gnats and sparked my imagination as I roamed the fields, hiked winding creek beds, and daydreamed then and still today about characters and scenes beyond my back yard, even beyond our dimension where old souls live on, people can fly, and animals do indeed talk.
My writing is literary fiction and a bit speculative at times. My characters are usually trying to find their places in this crazy world or doing their very best to manage the world they’re in—soul searchers, daydreamers, lovers, family, found family and friends, and sometimes mere acquaintances whose one-time meeting just might change the very fabric of their life tapestries.
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Award-winning Southern writer Chris McClain Johnson grew up in Mayfield, Kentucky, graduated from Murray State University in Kentucky, and has lived in Memphis, Tennessee, for almost 40 years.
At age 60, Chris fulfills the lifelong dream of having her first book published. Three Guesses, recipient of Regal House Publishing’s 2023 Fugere Book Prize Recognizing Finely Crafted Novellas, releases June 17, 2025. Her debut epistolary novella has received wide praise for being “intensely clever” and “wildly entertaining and smart” with “intimate, riveting prose” and “a fascinating look at modern friendship.”
See A Self Interview to learn more about Chris and the quirky characters in Three Guesses.