The 2025 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was, as always, a celebration of literary voices, cultural insight, and creative storytelling. Amid a weekend brimming with panels, signings, and artistic showcases, one quietly powerful moment came with the screening of the book trailers.
Unveiled during a multimedia session spotlighting emerging and independent authors, the trailer played to a crowd of curious festivalgoers gathered in one of the festival’s booths. With subtle cinematic flair and a contemplative tone, the trailer gave audiences a visual and emotional introduction to the story’s deeply evocative work.
While brief, the video presentation left a lasting impression. It was less a marketing tool than a piece of art in its own right. Book trailers are becoming an increasingly popular way for authors to connect with readers beyond the page—especially at large-scale events like LATFOB. It was a reflective pause in an otherwise bustling festival day, giving readers a moment to digest and consider. As the festival continues to embrace new formats for literary storytelling, moments like this remind us that books don’t just live on shelves—they live in sound, image, and collective experience. Mark Eric Johansen’s Janine: Tale of an Abandoned Wife and Mother has now made its mark not just in print, but in motion.
The 2025 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFOB), held on April 26–27 at the University of Southern California (USC), was a significant cultural event that brought together a diverse array of participants and marked its 30th anniversary with a vibrant celebration of literature, culture, and community. The festival is known for attracting a large crowd each year. For instance, the 2024 festival drew over 150,000 attendees, and the 2025 event featured more than 550 writers, experts, and storytellers, along with hundreds of exhibitors.
The festival offered over 100 ticketed author events, children’s storytelling sessions, poetry readings, book signings, and more than 400 exhibitor booths. Notable participants in the 2025 festival included authors such as Stacey Abrams, Jon M. Chu, Amanda Gorman, Chelsea Handler, Ibram X. Kendi, and Rebecca Yarros, among many others. The festival’s success was also attributed to the generous involvement of volunteers, who assisted with various aspects of the event, including welcoming attendees, staffing author events, and supervising book signings.
As LATFOB celebrates three decades of literary achievement, the 2025 festival underscored the importance of storytelling in shaping culture and community. With its diverse programming and commitment to accessibility, the festival continues to be a premier event for book lovers and cultural aficionados. The success of this year’s event sets a promising precedent for future festivals, ensuring that the tradition of literary celebration will continue to thrive in Los Angeles.
Janine: Tale of an Abandoned Wife and Mother by Mark Eric Johansen tells the story of a woman named Janine, who faces immense hardship after her husband abandons her. She grapples with homelessness and financial ruin while trying to understand and explain her husband’s actions, which include theft and other misdeeds, leading to the loss of her friends and social standing. Janine, a single mother, lives a picture-perfect life with her husband Brent Sr., their sixteen-year-old daughter Olivia, twelve-year-old son Brent Jr. (aka Alan), and eight-year-old daughter Monica. Their world is warm, secure, and wrapped in luxury—until one day, everything shatters. Brent Sr. vanishes into thin air, as if he never existed. Within days, Janine finds herself evicted from her home with no money, no support, and nowhere to go. Then, just when she thinks things couldn’t get worse, she lands behind bars, wrapped in a nightmare of financial fraud cases orchestrated by her vanished husband.
The real tragedy? There’s no one from his family to rescue her, no lifeline to hold onto. Having lived a privileged life, Janine never needed to work or build a skill set for survival. Now, with the weight of false allegations and no way out, how will she prove her innocence? How will she fight back against the world that has turned its back on her? This is where the gripping journey of an abandoned wife and mother truly begins. As the story unfolds, Janine’s path is filled with relentless police investigations, ruthless thieves, unsettling deaths, rotting corpses, betrayals, heartbreaks, tender moments of innocence, unexpected friendships, and heart-racing thrills. Will she find a way to survive, or will fate deal her an even crueler hand? To uncover the answers, dive into Johansen’s novel.
Mark E. Johansen is an acclaimed author known for his ability to create deeply moving narratives that explore the complexities of human emotions and real-life struggles. His work often focuses on themes of survival, betrayal, and perseverance, with an emphasis on the extraordinary resilience that emerges from life’s most difficult trials. Johansen’s writing style is immersive and emotionally gripping, drawing readers into the lives of his characters with meticulous detail and raw authenticity.
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