All posts by Emily Berg

Divine Might – Natalie Haynes

“Haynes makes Greek Mythology come alive with a unique wit coupled to her scholarly knowledge. It’s like hearing a standup comic telling you Ancient Greek tales”
-George, Store co-founder

New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes returns to the world of ancient Greek myth in this scintillating follow-up to Pandora’s Jar.

Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin, including:

  • Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father’s brow (giving Zeus a killer headache in the process), the goddess of war and provider of wise counsel.
  • Aphrodite, born of the foam (and sperm released from a Titan’s castrated testicles), the most beautiful of all the Olympian goddesses, the epitome of love who dispenses desire and inspires longing—yet harbors a fearsome vengeful side, doling out brutal punishments to those who displease her.
  • Hera, Zeus’s long-suffering wife, whose jealousy born of his repeated dalliances with mortals, nymphs, and other goddesses, leads her to wreak elaborate and often painful revenge on those she believes have wronged her. (Well, wouldn’t you?)
  • Demeter, goddess of the harvest and mother of Persephone; Artemis, the hunter and goddess of wild spaces; the Muses, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory; and Hestia, goddess of domesticity and sacrificial fire.

Infused with Haynes’s engaging charm and irrepressible wit, Divine Might is a refreshing take on the legends and stories we thought we knew.

Once you have made your purchase you will see a confirmation screen similar to the screenshot below. Click on the “Return to Merchant” button and you will be directed to  a form to collect your information for the reserved seating. If the form does not open but you believe you have completed your purchase please call the store at 305-320-0208 or email us at booksandbooks@tskw.org.



Book + Priority Reserved Seating at March 8 Event



READ BANNED shirts are here!

You may have seen our booksellers wearing READ BANNED BOOKS & BOOKS t-shirts around the store lately. Many have asked when they would be available for purchase… We’re excited to announce that day has arrived!

These grey, soft cotton crew neck t-shirts have READ BANNED BOOKS & BOOKS IN KEY WEST FLORIDA & BEYOND printed in white on the front – handprinted in Key West by Coast Projects

Click here to shop other merch items

WELCOME BACK ROSI by Jeff Ware

AVAILABLE NOW FOR PRE-ORDER (copies will ship/available for pick up on 2/14/2025)

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ON THE VALENTINE’S DAY EVENT

This is the story of Rosi’s first two years of rehabilitation after an AVM brain bleed stroke. Its content is based on regular emails that were sent out to around 100 friends who asked to be kept updated on her progress. Many recipients of the emails suggested that their content be shared with the world, especially with others that had or were going through similar experiences. On one level the book is a caregiver and survivors’ guide to what they might expect to experience as the recovery process takes its natural journey forward. On another level it’s just a love story.


Praise for Welcome Back Rosi

“When the tireless humanitarian, Rosi Ware, suffered a stroke in January 2023 the clock stopped for her devoted husband Jeff, their chosen family in Key West and abroad, and a myriad of other people whose lives intersected with Rosi’s. Endeavoring to keep all of them regularly updated, Jeff penned emails delineating the critical and harrowing experience of diagnosis, treatment and recovery. In Welcome Home Rosi, Jeff has revisited those emails, interspersing them with delightful reminiscences of their life together, always pushing forward to tell the story of Rosi, a one-of-a-kind woman whose unassailable spirit of positivity has brought good cheer to all in her orbit. A joyful book for all readers.” 
– Stephen Kitsakos, Librettist

“Bravo, Jeff Ware! This slim book tells a huge story – of how Jeff and his wife Rosi not only survived Rosi’s sudden stroke, but did it with humor, involving friends and creating community with health-care workers and doctors along the way. It’s a story of optimism against the odds, and the refusal to give up, and told in an intimate, chatty tone that brings us with them every step of the way. The author is modest about his part in it all, and only lets us see glimpses of his own feelings – but he was and is, with Rosi’s own indomitable strength at his side, the book’s unsung hero.”
– Rosalind Brackenbury, Author

 “A loving husband takes us along on a journey through his wife’s debilitating stroke and miraculous healing”.
– Peyton Evans, Writer 


About the Author: Jeffrey was born in London in 1955. He graduated with a BA Honours Degree in 1978, the year that he met Rosi. In March of 1997 Jeff and Rosi moved to Chicago for Rosi’s work before a life changing move to Key West, Florida in 2000. Jeff and Rosi now split their time between homes in Key West and Asheville, North Carolina.

PRE-ORDER NOW

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ON THE VALENTINE’S DAY EVENT

The Vulnerables – Sigrid Nunez

“I love Sigrid Nunez! I love her mind. If I could I’d have dinner with her every week. It’s such a pleasure to read her books. This is kind of a novel, but you also get to spend time with Sigred – time well spent, plus there’s a parrot!” – Judy Blume, store co-founder

The New York Times–bestselling, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through brings her singular voice to a story about modern life and connection

“I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez’s novels. I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny — good and strong company.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“With the intimacy and humor of a great conversation, this novel makes you feel smarter and more alive.” —People Magazine

“An ode to our basic need to connect with other beings, be they human or animal, even in a global crisis that told us to stay apart.” —NPR

Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.

Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez’s new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself. 

The Maniac – Benjamin Labatut

Don’t be fooled by the title, or its listing as fiction. This is a brilliant biography of the greatest genius of the 20th century, John von Neumann, inventor of Game Theory and the modern digital computer (known by the acronym MANIAC, which his wife Clara called the JONNYAC)that was first used to design the hydrogen bomb.

Rather than taking us dryly through von Neumann’s endless accomplishments, many of which are beyond explaining to laymen, the author beguiles us with the voices of the genius’s celebrated scientific colleagues (who either loved or hated him) and his wives (who felt the same). We thus become witness not only to von Neumann’s triumphs but also his peccadillos and (in)humanity. The book is full of vignettes, from private meetings to marital quarrels, which give it a fascinating and compelling life.

He was a consultant to the Manhattan Project, drifting in from time to time and quickly solving problems other mental giants had been struggling with, and went on to a fruitful career with the U.S. Defense Department. But the problem that challenged him most was trying to generalize the process uniting biology, technology, and computer theory to explain all self-replicating phenomena, from life on earth to the possibility of machines doing the same. 

He died at only fifty-six from cancer, in 1959, in a special suite provided for him by the government at Walter Reed Hospital, surrounded by dignitaries and attendants, hoping to catch the last pearls of wisdom from the fruitful mind of this singular polymath. 

When asked what it would take for a machine to think and behave like a human being, he said it would have to “understand language, to read, to write, to speak. And it would have to play like a child.” But his death preceded the development of the truly powerful computers of today (still operating on the fundamental principles of MANIAC) that are doing just that. The very first project of DeepMind, a leading Artificial Intelligence machine, was playing Go, the game universally acknowledged to be the most intellectually difficult, and beating its human master. (The book concludes with a dramatic blow-by-blow description of this five game challenge match.)

When asked how he could bring together his ideas on computers and self-replicating machines with those on the brain and mechanisms of thought, he offered: “Cavemen created gods, I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same.”

Don’t miss this book if you’re interested in biography, science or even science-fiction, because both were part of von Neumann’s world.” – George, store co-founder

The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson

“One of the only works of fiction to event make me cry from something other than overwhelming happiness or sadness, but from an overwhelming pure depiction of the character of honor and the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of total abject hopelessness. Sanderson tells the most epic story in the most grounded way possible that takes no shortcuts and will often leave you breathless.” – Joey (staff)

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, Book One of the Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

2022 Summer Art Contest Winners

Congratulations to the winners of our 6th Annual Art Contest!

Online Winners –
“I Had a Dalamation Once” by Kevin Assam
“Under the Poinciana” by Katrina Arnhold

In-Person Vote Winner –
“Chill” by Sherry White

And, our Grand Prize Winner with the most combined votes is…
“Beyond the Surface” by Jaelyn Estevez

Jaelyn’s work will stay on display at the store through the end of the year, and you’ll see all four designs on limited-edition store bookmarks in the near future!

Thank you to everyone who submitted art and everyone who voted.

Bitch: On the Female of Species – Lucy Cooke

“Do you love weird animal facts? Do you love academia? Do you love sticking it to the patriarchy? This book boasts all three with panache and grace.” – Riona (Staff)

CLICK HERE TO READ RIONA’S FULL REVIEW FROM OUR OCTOBER 2022 NEWSLETTER

A “playful, enlightening,” and “effervescent exposé” (Scientific American) on the queens of the animal kingdom 

Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser. 

Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted. 

In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun. 

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

“Both of Bechdel’s memoirs, this and Are You My Mother? are darkly funny and ultimately touching stories of trying to love and understand your parents to love and understand yourself.” – Robin (staff)

CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER 
Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • 
Winner of the Stonewall Book Award •  Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award •
Nominated for the GLAAD Media Award

Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. 


Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
 
In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.