All posts by Emily Berg

Author Visit to HOB!

October 4, 2022
by Emily Berg

S.A. Rodriguez at HOB
Friday, November 4th 2022 @ 10am

On Friday, 11/4 author S.A. Rodriquez will visit HOB to discuss her book Treasure Tracks with students.

Order your copy of Treasure Tracks here by Tuesday November 1st (11:49pm ET) to have your copy available for the author to sign at the event at HOB on the 4th. (Select “in-store pick up” and we will deliver to the school the day of the event). Use coupon code HOB15 to save 15%.

ORDER NOW

Orders received after 11/1 will be delivered to the school before Thanksgiving break.

To purchase a copy of the book at the event bring cash or check (payable to Books & Books) for $20, includes tax.

Twelve-year-old Fernando “Fin” joins his grandfather on a secret quest to find a long-lost treasure swept to sea. But when their first mission takes a near-deadly turn, leaving his abuelo weak and unable to speak, Fin’s left to navigate the hunt alone. Well, not exactly alone—his boring, totally unadventurous dad agrees to help out. With danger lurking at every turn, Fin dives into the mission in order to save Abuelo’s life. But between Dad’s constant worrying, unwanted diving babysitters, and harrowing encounters in the deep sea, the boy finds himself in a race against time to locate the treasure. If he can’t succeed? He fears he might lose Abuelo for good.

NEW WINDOWS FOR BOOKS & BOOKS

August 1, 2022
by Emily Berg

Books & Books at the Studios is currently closed for browsing as we upgrade the store windows. Staff will be available daily from 10am to 6pm during the closure to help customers by phone, email and to assist with pick-up orders. Please keep an eye on our social media accounts and on this website for updates and reopening announcements.

Our online store is always open and as a reminder we delivery to Key West and Stock Island, Monday through Friday. Look for the availability status “On Our Shelves Now” for books that are in stock and ready to be delivered.

GMA Book Club Selection author Kirthana Ramisetti

January 2, 2022
by Emily Berg

On Thursday Jan. 20th Books and Books @ the Studios welcomed Kirthana Ramisetti, author of the bestselling debut novel Dava Shastri’s Last Day – the Good Morning America December Book Club selection.

The live event has passed but you can watch the recording below and then pick up your copy at the store or by clicking here.

WATCH THE EVENT RECORDING

RAMISETTI ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA

BUY THE BOOK

About the Book

Dava Shastri, one of the world’s wealthiest women, has always lived with her reputation in mind. When she is diagnosed with brain cancer at the age of seventy, she decides to take her death—like all matters of her life—into her own hands.

Summoning her four adult children to her private island, she discloses shocking news: in addition to having a terminal illness, she has arranged for the news of her death to break early, so she can read her obituaries. As someone who dedicated her life to the arts and the empowerment of women, Dava expects to read articles lauding her philanthropic work. Instead, her “death” reveals two devastating secrets, truths she thought she had buried forever. And now the whole world knows, including her children.

In the time she has left, Dava must come to terms with every decision that has led to this moment—and make peace with those closest to her before it’s too late. Compassionately written and full of humor and heart, this powerful debut novel examines private versus public legacy, the complexities of love, and the never-ending joys—and frustrations—of family.

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About the author: 

As a former entertainment reporter for Newsday and the New York Daily News, Kirthana Ramisetti has written her fair share of stories about the lives (and deaths) of the rich and famous. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from Emerson College, and her work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, TODAY.com, and elsewhere. Dava Shastri’s Last Day is her first novel, and she lives in New York City.

Eliza Nellums: 2 ways to meet the author!

November 9, 2021
by Emily Berg

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 
VIRTUAL EVENT ON ZOOM – 6-6:30PM EASTERN TIME
IN-PERSON LAUNCH PARTY – 6:30-8PM EASTERN TIME

On Thursday December 9th Books & Books welcomed author Eliza Nellums virtually and in-person. For those who wish to joined us virtually Nellums appeared via zoom from 6pm to 6:30pm (eastern time) to discuss her new book The Bone Cay.

After we concluded the virtual event an outdoor launch party was held in the courtyard of the Carriage Trade house, next door to The Studios, at 529 Eaton Street. The launch party was a chance for guests to meet with Nellums, ask any questions, have their book signed.

You can register for the either the zoom or in-person events (or both!) below.

THIS EVENT HAS ENDED

WATCH THE RECORDING OF THE ZOOM EVENT HERE

BUY THE BOOK

About the Book

Magda Trudell is the present-day caretaker of Whimbrel Estate, the Key West home of the famous poet Isobel Reyes. Isobel’s suicide at the residence in 1918 has nearly overshadowed her creative legacy–but Magda, a botanist and avid historian, is determined to protect it. Over the past decade, Magda has lovingly restored the house to the exact condition Isobel would have known. And even though a fierce October hurricane is headed straight for the Keys, she isn’t about to abandon her life’s work to evacuate.

As the mighty storm makes landfall, the dangers mount. First, a fire and flood threaten to destroy the house. Then the storm claims most of Magda’s supplies. When part of the house collapses, she unearths an old steamer trunk in the rubble that contains a woman’s remains. Is there more to Isobel’s story than Magda knows?

The unexpected appearance of a teenage girl and her father seeking shelter from the storm poses unnerving new questions. Are they really who they seem? And could they have a connection to the house’s shadowy past? As the storm rages, Magda desperately tries to solve the real mystery of Isobel’s death–and keep the living in one piece.

Click here to purchase The Bone Cay.

About the Author

Raised in the Detroit suburbs, Eliza Nellums now lives with her cat outside Washington DC. Her first novel, All That’s Bright and Gone, was praised in the Washington Post and RealSimple Magazine. She is a member of the Metro Wriders, a weekly critique group that meets in Dupont Circle. An amateur botanist and avid gardener, she divides her time between plants, books, and cats. Visit her at ElizaNellums.com.

GREAT WORKS SPEAKING COMPETITION

September 8, 2021
by Emily Berg

Bring the written words to life through the power of reading and performance!

Books & Books at the Studios presents
The Great Works Speaking Competition.
 
Open to High School Students the Florida Keys.
Cash prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place contestants.
Registration has now closed for the 2021 competition.

We hope you’ll join us in watching this year’s competitors.
The competition is open to the public.

Saturday 10/16 at 2pm (Alternative Rain date: Sunday 10/17 at 2pm)
at The Studios of Key West – HUGH’S VIEW Rooftop Terrace (533 Eaton Street, Key West, FL)

Select a work of writing from one of the authors listed below (all of whom have lived or worked in the Florida Keys). Participants may chose works from authors not listed below but will be judged on the works connection to Key West and the Florida Keys.

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
-Aldous Huxley

On competition day each contestant will present their prepared reading as follows: Introduce themselves, their school, their author and selection, give a brief back ground and lead in to what the excerpt will be. Then they read it; a three-to- four-minute passage. No props or costumes, but with feeling and a nuanced voice.

This is a reading competition so contestants will not be memorizing their work but rather reading directly from the page. A group of Judges will access each contestant based on series of criteria ranging from their Reasons for Selecting that particular piece to Eye contact and stage presence.

“When you’re performing, you’re creating a moment.”
-Erykah Badu

Participants receive a Letter of Recognition and a line on their college resume, just for participating. The highest scoring readers will win cash prizes: 

$750 – 1st place 
$500 – 2nd place
$250 – 3rd place 

Suggested Authors:

  • Elizabeth Bishop
  • Jimmy Buffett
  • Ralph Ellison
  • Robert Frost
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • John Hersey
  • Alison Lurie
  • Jose Marti
  • Harry Mathews
  • Joy Williams
  • Tennessee Williams
  • Other (contestants will be judged of their selections connection to Key West and/or the Florida Keys)

Register Online Now

Registration has now closed for the 2021 competition.

This event is made possible by the generous donation of Fred and Joanne Klein.

Hilma Wolitzer in conversation with Judy Blume

August 27, 2021
by Emily Berg

Books & Books presents

Author HILMA WOLITZER
in conversation with JUDY BLUME

Tuesday, September 14th at 7:00 p.m.

WATCH A RECORDING OF THE EVENT HERE

Books and Books @ the Studios welcomes Hilma Wolitzer, award winning author of the new short story collection Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket. Wolitzer will appear via zoom with store founder Judy Blume.

BUY THE BOOK

In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of her life. And in several linked stories throughout, the relationship between the narrator and her husband unfolds in telling and often hilarious vignettes. Of their time and yet timeless, Wolitzer’s stories zero in on the intimacies of the domestic sphere with wit, candor, grace, and an acutely observant eye. Brilliantly capturing the tensions and contradictions of daily life, TODAY A WOMAN WENT MAD IN THE SUPERMARKET is full of heart and insight, providing a lens into a world that was often unseen at the time, and often overlooked now—reintroducing a beloved writer to be embraced by a whole new generation of readers.

About the author: 

Hilma Wolitzer is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, New York University, Columbia University, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her first published story appeared when she was thirty- six, and her first novel eight years later. Her many stories and novels have drawn critical praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home. She lives in New York City.

Virtual Event with RJ Hoffmann

May 6, 2021
by Emily Berg

Books & Books presents

Author RJ HOFFMANN
in conversation with Patricia McNair

Thursday, May 27th at 7:00 p.m.

THIS EVENT HAS ENDED BUT YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING HERE

BUY THE BOOK

Books and Books @ the Studios welcomes RJ Hoffman, author of the new novel Other People’s Children. Hoffmann will appear via zoom with author Patricia McNair.

In Other People’s Children, three mothers make excruciating choices to protect their families and their dreams—choices that put them at decided odds against one another. You will root for each one of them and wonder just how far you’d go in the same situation. This riveting debut is a thoughtful exploration of love and family, and a heart-pounding page-turner you’ll find impossible to put down.

Publisher’s Weekly called Other People’s Children a “high-stakes exploration of how far people will go to protect their family…A nail-biting examination of socioeconomic disparity and loyalty…[The] believable characters don’t disappoint, and [Hoffmann’s] engrossing look at fraught issues piques. This sharp tale of heartache, loss, and redemption resonates.”

About the author

  • Photograph © Amy McConnell

RJ Hoffmann was born and raised in St. Louis and received an MFA in fiction from Columbia College Chicago. Hoffmann’s writing has appeared in Barely South Review, The Sun, Harpur Palate, The Roanoke Review, Booth, and Lunch Ticket. He is the winner of The Madison Review’s 2018 Chris O’Malley Prize for Fiction and a finalist for The Missouri Review’s 2019 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize. He lives in Elmhurst, Illinois with his wife and two children.

About the moderator

Patricia Ann McNair’s recently released short story collection, Responsible Adults, was selected as a Legacy Series book by Cornerstone Press, and was named a Distinguished Favorite by the Independent Press Awards. Her essay collection, And These are The Good Times was named a finalist for the Montaigne Medal for most thought-provoking book of 2017. The Temple of Air, McNair’s debut story collection, received the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award, Southern Illinois University’s Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award, and the Society of Midland Authors (US) Finalist Award. She teaches in the English and Creative Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago.

Climate Change and Fiction: A Virtual Event

April 15, 2021
by Emily Berg

Books & Books and Coral Restoration Foundation present . . .
CLIMATE CHANGE & FICTION: A VIRTUAL EVENT
with authors Julie Carrick Dalton, Angie Hockman & Claire Holroyde.

Thursday, May 6th at 7:00 p.m.

THE LIVE EVENT IS OVER BUT YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING HERE

BUY THE BOOKS HERE 

Books and Books @ the Studios is excited to team up with Coral Restoration Foundation to  host a panel of three debut fiction authors whose work incorporates climate change and environmental issues into fiction.

This event will be held through Zoom on Thursday, May 6th at 7:00 p.m.

Julie Carrick Dalton (Waiting For the Night Song – Forge Books), Angie Hockman (Shipped – Gallery Books) and Claire Holroyde (The Effort – Grand Central Publishing) each celebrated the publication of their first novels in January 2021. Dalton and Holroyde have both published numerous non-fiction articles and short stories while Hockman has had careers in law, education, and eco-tourism. 

The three authors are members of the Climate Fiction Writer’s League, a group of authors who believe in the necessity of climate action, immediately and absolutely and use fiction to inspire passion, empathy and action in readers. 

Though their books span genres; literary fiction, sci-fi and romance, all have embraced and explored the powerful impact that changes to the earth have on a individuals and their story.  

In Waiting for the Night Song a forestry researcher is called back to her childhood home to face
up to a long-buried secret. There she must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures, and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farmworkers and locals.

Shipped sets its protagonist in the Galapagos, with a nod to eco-tourism and the benefits of finally experiencing the beauty of Earth on the book’s work focused characters. 

The Effort follows people around the world as they unite to prevent a global catastrophe. Based on real-life impact scenarios and inspired by actual event explores the deadly consequences of deliberate non-cooperation between nations.

This event is co-sponsored by Coral Restoration Foundation™, the largest coral reef restoration organization in the world. Founded in response to the wide-spread loss of the dominant coral species on Florida’s Coral Reef the organization grows and returns endangered species of coral to the wild to restore reef sites to a healthy state. Please visit their website (www.coralrestoration.org) to donate and to find information on how to get involved in the important work that they do for the Florida Keys. 

This event is free and open to the public though preregistration is encouraged.

A Virtual Event with Michael Patrick F. Smith

March 19, 2021
by Emily Berg

Books & Books presents…
A *VIRTUAL* EVENT MICHAEL PATRICK F. SMITH
IN CONVERSATION WITH SHAWN HATOSY
to discuss Smith’s book The Good Hand

THE LIVE EVENT IS OVER BUT YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING HERE

READ AN EXCLUSIVE Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR

Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa, and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows, and searched for jobs they couldn’t get back home. Smith’s goal was to find the hardest work he could do—to find out if he could do it. He was hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer’s 100 degree dog days to deep into winter’s bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence.

THE GOOD HAND is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America’s marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith “make a hand.”

Smith brings musicality, sharp dialogue, and meticulous characterization to THE GOOD HAND and writes with great heart, humor, and the broken-in details of lived experience, providing a vivid window into the world of working-class men during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota. While ultimately this is a book about the value of hard work, male bonding, father-son relationships, and the boomtown mentality, it is also a book, as proven by the example of Michael, about how to become a “good hand” at writing and at creating something—about the value of artistry and creativity as good work.

This “affecting snapshot of blue-collar America in a singular place and time” (Booklist) marks the debut of a talented writer whom we are sure to hear more of.

Signed personalized copies available. If you’d like your copy of The Good Hand to be signed to you leave that information in the comments of your order.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Michael Patrick F. Smith is a folksinger, playwright and current Artist in Residence at The Studios of Key West. His plays, including Woody Guthrie Dreams and Ain’t No Sin, have been staged in Baltimore and New York. As a musician, he has shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, as well as several prominent indie rock bands. Smith has also worked as a stage actor, a bartender, junk hauler, furniture mover, book store clerk, contractor, receptionist, event producer, driver, office temp, stage hand, waiter, security guard, set fabricator, legal assistant, grocer, oil field hand, and now writer. THE GOOD HAND is his first book. 

ABOUT THE MODERATOR:

Shawn Hatosy currently appears as Andrew “Pope” Cody on TNT’s family crime drama Animal Kingdom. He is in production on the 6th & final season and is also one of the show’s directors. Among Hatosy’s acting credits are the films The Faculty, Anywhere But Here, In & Out, Factory Girl, The Cooler, Outside Providence, Alpha Dog and more. In the realm of critically lauded telefilms, Hatosy starred as John McCain in Faith Of My Fathers and played lead roles in Frank Pierson’s Peabody Award-winning Showtime drama Soldier’s Girl and the Emmy®-nominated Witness Protection. Originally from Ijamsville, Maryland, Hatosy currently resides in Los Angeles.

 

Books & Books is turning 5!

February 6, 2021
by Emily Berg

BIRTHDAY PARADE AND CELEBRATION
SATURDAY, FEB. 13th 2021
1-3pm

Books & Books at the Studios is turning 5! 

We want to celebrate with all of you, the customers that have helped us have a successful 5 years of bookselling. In person parties still aren’t a reality for us so to celebrate safely we’re inviting everyone to join us in a birthday parade.

Decorate your car, bike or scooter and come by the store to show off your work between 1pm and 3pm on Saturday, February 13th. We’ll snap a photo of your decorative mobile and put it up on our website. Online voting will determine a winner to receive a store gift certificate for $55.

We’re also handing out mini cupcakes and special edition bookmarks that day while supplies last. 

No pre-registration necessary. Just include the phrase “Happy Birthday Books & Books” in decorations to be entered to win the gift card. Voting will open at 5pm on 2/13 and run through 2/16 at 5pm on our website. Winner will be announced Wednesday, 2/17.