Mushroom Hunting by Emily and Gregory Han

Discover the quiet joy of mushroom hunting with this delightful field guide to identifying mushrooms and reconnecting with the natural world.

For the mycologically curious, this take-anywhere handbook is the perfect thing to toss in a backpack and bring on a mushroom hunt. Learn how to identify fifteen common types of mushrooms and forage safely—not necessarily for consumption but rather as a practice in curiosity, mindfulness, and peaceful observation.

Mindful reflections and shroom-inspired rituals, such as brewing reishi hot cocoa, invite you to reconnect with the earth and consider what we can learn from these incredible specimens. Filled with charming illustrations, Mushroom Hunting is your doorway to the mysterious and magical world of these earthy life-forms.

​MUSHROOMS ARE INCREDIBLE: More closely related to humans than they are to plants, fungi are fascinating organisms. Over a hundred thousand different species have been identified, though as many as five million may exist globally. Learn more in this insightful book! With tips for hunting and detailed profiles of fifteen different types of common shrooms, this mushroom book is a lovely, accessible entry point to the world of mycology.

GREAT GIFT BOOK: Petite, gorgeously illustrated, and written in an inviting tone, this approachable guide makes a great gift or self-purchase for mushroom lovers. Package it together with hiking boots,Lion’s Mane capsules,mushroom-themed clothing, or other books in the Pocket Nature series, such as Leaf Peeping(a perfect duo for nature walks!).

EASY WAY TO SPEND MORE TIME OUTSIDE: More and more people are turning to the outdoors as a place to escape and unwind. Foraging for mushrooms is an enjoyable pastime that not only gets you outside and gets your body moving but also calms your mind. With mindful activities sprinkled throughout, Mushroom Hunting is a mushroom identification book and much more—it is an invitation to spend time in nature, quiet your racing thoughts, and honor our incredible earth.

PERENNIAL + COLLECTIBLE: The topics covered in the Pocket Nature series are perennial—beaches, clouds, sunsets, stars, mushrooms, and leaves will always be there to enjoy and admire. With new titles coming out every season and each affordably priced, there will be ever-new opportunities to grow a charming collection that looks great on the shelf.

Perfect for:

  • Mushroom enthusiasts and amateur mycologists
  • Nature lovers and the nature-curious
  • Adventurers, campers, and outdoorsy types
  • Meditators and mindfulness practitioners 
  • People who watched Fantastic Fungi and are curious to learn more about shrooms
  • Anyone looking to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

n this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

The Underworld by Susan Casey

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK TO READ THIS SUMMER • From bestselling author Susan Casey, an awe-inspiring portrait of the mysterious world beneath the waves, and the men and women who seek to uncover its secrets

“An irresistible mix of splendid scholarship, heart-stopping adventure writing, and vivid, visceral prose.” —Sy Montgomery, New York Times best-selling author of The Soul of an Octopus

For all of human history, the deep ocean has been a source of wonder and terror, an unknown realm that evoked a singular, compelling question: What’s down there? Unable to answer this for centuries, people believed the deep was a sinister realm of fiendish creatures and deadly peril. But now, cutting-edge technologies allow scientists and explorers to dive miles beneath the surface, and we are beginning to understand this strange and exotic underworld:  A place of soaring mountains, smoldering volcanoes, and valleys 7,000 feet deeper than Everest is high, where tectonic plates collide and separate, and extraordinary life forms operate under different rules. Far from a dark void, the deep is a vibrant realm that’s home to pink gelatinous predators and shimmering creatures a hundred feet long and ancient animals with glass skeletons and sharks that live for half a millennium—among countless other marvels.

Susan Casey is our premiere chronicler of the aquatic world. For The Underworld she traversed the globe, joining scientists and explorers on dives to the deepest places on the planet, interviewing the marine geologists, marine biologists, and oceanographers who are searching for knowledge in this vast unseen realm. She takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of deep-sea exploration, from the myths and legends of the ancient world to storied shipwrecks we can now reach on the bottom, to the first intrepid bathysphere pilots, to the scientists who are just beginning to understand the mind-blowing complexity and ecological importance of the quadrillions of creatures who live in realms long thought to be devoid of life.

Throughout this journey, she learned how vital the deep is to the future of the planet, and how urgent it is that we understand it in a time of increasing threats from climate change, industrial fishing, pollution, and the mining companies that are also exploring its depths. The Underworld is Susan Casey’s most beautiful and thrilling book yet, a gorgeous evocation of the natural world and a powerful call to arms.

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK!

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper’s Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times * The Millions * LitHub

From the bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives.

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.

The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger

A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger

The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history’s greatest philosophers. There were four women, in particular, whose parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century—at once in necessary dialogue and in striking contrast with one another.

Simone de Beauvoir, already in a deep emotional and intellectual partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, was laying the foundations for nothing less than the future of feminism. Born Alisa Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg, Ayn Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926 and was honing one of the most politically influential voices of the twentieth century. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would reach the hearts and minds of millions of Americans in the decades to come, becoming canonical libertarian texts that continue to echo today among Silicon Valley’s tech elite. Hannah Arendt was developing some of today’s most important liberal ideas, culminating with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism and her arrival as a peerless intellectual celebrity. Perhaps the greatest thinker of all was a classmate of Beauvoir’s: Simone Weil, who turned away from fame to devote herself entirely to refugee aid and the resistance movement during the war. Ultimately, in 1943, she would starve to death in England, a martyr and true saint in the eyes of many.

Few authors can synthesize gripping storytelling with sophisticated philosophy as Wolfram Eilenberger does. The Visionaries tells the story of four singular philosophers—indomitable women who were refugees and resistance fighters—each putting forward a vision of a truly free and open society at a time of authoritarianism and war.

Summer Sisters Gets a New Cover

25th Anniversary Cover of Summer Sisters

Celebrating 25 Years Judy Blume’s Iconic Novel Gets a New Look

Summer Sisters, Judy Blume’s iconic novel of female friendship, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a beautiful new cover – and it’s the August 2023 Read with Jenna book pick!

Jenna writes, “It’s about that time in your life where you’re trying to figure out who you’re going to be. It is the perfect, perfect beach read but that doesn’t mean that it’s an easy read.” Read more of what Jenna says at https://www.today.com/shop/read-with-jenna.

Plus, keep an eye out for more news about the Summer Sisters tv show, currently in development.

You can order a signed copy of Summer Sisters from us. All copies ordered after this date (8/1/23) will feature the new cover. If you want the book signed, please note in your order comments that you’d like a signed copy. Due to volume, it will be signed only. Also, please note, signed copies ordered now will not ship until November 2023 at the earliest.

August Staff Pick: Perilous Times

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee (Ballantine Books), picked by bookseller, Riona Jean

Do you want to fight climate change, battle a dragon, reminisce about lost friends, fight the patriarchy, and more!? Try this new Arthurian Legend on for size.

Bookseller Riona Jean with Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee on an e-reader.

Bookseller Riona Jean picked Perilous Times as the August featured staff pick because it mixed her favorite genres, fantasy and dystopias.

“It remixes the Arthurian Legend in a new and dynamic way,” she writes.

“Mariam is an ecowarrior with FETA, fighting to save the planet from extreme climate change and rising sea levels. Kay is one of King Arthur’s knights, bound to a resurrection tree by Merlin, called to action whenever Britain is in trouble. With great swaths of the UK under water and major cities falling into ruin, Mariam and Kay stumble their way through trying to do the right thing. Watch out for Lancelot, corporate greed, and a nefarious plot to resurrect Arthur getting in the way!”

“Witty, insightful, and poignant, Perilous Times perfectly marries fantastical legend and dystopian new world order.”

Ed note: Riona read Perilous Times on her Kobo Clara 2E, it’s waterproof, made with recycled plastic, and we have them at the bookstore!

Meet a bookseller: Alexander

(And say goodbye for now)

Bookseller Alexander holding The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

We’ve had the pleasure of working with Alexander this summer, and before we say goodbye, we’d like you all to get to know a little more about him.

Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

A: Hi! My name is Alexander Wilson, and I’ve had the pleasure of working at Books & Books over my summer break back home in Key West. I’m going into my sophomore year of college at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where I’m studying English as well as French & Francophone Studies. On top of that, I’m big on music as well as creative writing. I’ve been coming to B&B since high school, and I’d wanted to work at the store for a little while. Fortunately, the opportunity arose this summer, and hopefully more summers in the future. I knew I would fit in at the store because while I enjoy reading & writing, I absolutely love to interact with other people who feel the same way.

Q: What was your favorite thing about working at the store?

A: By far my favorite part of working at the store has been the environment – the people, the books, and the general air of life that surrounds writing. My fellow employees have been nothing short of wonderful. I feel insanely lucky to have been around such remarkable people in such a remarkable space. Moreover, B&B has customers coming from all over the world. Interacting with teachers, authors, book lovers, and even just those relieved to be out of the heat has taught me a great deal about how much a single work could change someone’s life. Being surrounded by other people’s stories is the closest we can truly get to understanding one other, and this was what surprised me: the close-knit community of reading and writing. It is such a beautiful thing, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it.

Q: What kinds of things do you typically read?

A: Although I’d like to widen my literary taste, much of what I currently read is what I would consider “realistic fiction.” While there are a few memoirs and series of essays that I’ve greatly enjoyed, I’ve found that I feel the most seen and learn the most through a good story. For me, books centered on complex human relationships help me to figure out those in my own life and inspire me to try to capture the massive emotions someone like me feels at eighteen.

I can’t say that I have an all-time favorite book just yet, but there are three I can definitively say will always be special in my life: The Color Purple by Alice Walker made me realize just how moving a novel could be and got me back into reading after a long slump period all through adolescence. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller put on display a kind of love that was novel (haha) and inspired me to believe that there are good people out there waiting to be met. Finally, The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton is a testament that it doesn’t matter if you’re in your teens or your 50s, your voice matters and you can write something worth hearing. I deeply recommend each of these books and keep them very close to my heart.

Hot Book Summer

A book, sunglasses and flower artfully arranged on the beach. Text: "Hot book summer"

Whether it’s fake dating and food, or a thorny, political take on ‘will they or won’t they’ or a wicked hot mythical retelling, there’s something for every Romance reader.

Here are a few books we’ve been enjoying or are looking forward to this summer.

Pre-order Meg Cabot’s witchy new Rom-Com, Enchanted to Meet You, which is getting great early reviews. You can get a signed copy from us, just note you want it signed when placing your order.

Lori enjoyed Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess, an opposites attract story, that deals with office politics, politics, race, and more. “Slow burn but the attraction and the obstacles are real and well portrayed,” Lori writes.

Foz Meadows kicks off a new romantic fantasy series with A Strange and Stubborn Endurance. Look for it in paperback in September, and for book 2, All the Hidden Paths in December.

6 Times We Almost Kissed (And One Time We Did) by Tess Sharpe is one of Robin’s favorite books of the year. She loved these tenacious, determined, stubborn young people, and if you’ve ever been a fan fiction reader, she thinks you will too.

Gina is devouring Katee Robert’s Dark Olympus series, and Wicked Beauty doesn’t disappoint.

Both Chef’s Choice by TJ Alexander and Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee re charming and sweet, and might inspire you to spend some time in the kitchen with someone you love.

Partners in Crime by Alisha Rai is a second-chance/caper mashup, that will take you for a thrilling ride, while Ms. Demeanor by Elinor Lipman makes house arrest sexy.

It turns out failure is absolutely an option, in Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake, and look for book 3 in this fun series, Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date, coming in October.

Secrets abound in this bookish romance, The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest.

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston brings new meaning to the concept of bad timing.

Find these and many more Romances in store.

Bookstore Romance Day 2023

Bookstore Romance Day graphic, "Indies Love Romance, 8.19.23" on a floral background.

We’re Having a Hot Book Summer

Sat. August 19, 2023, join us or indie bookstores across the country to celebrate books about love. On Bookstore Romance Day, we’ll be featuring a great display of our favorite romances, mimosas while supplies last, a giveaway with in-store purchase, a fun raffle, and maybe a surprise or two.

If you won’t be in Key West on the 19th, visit Bookstore Romance Day for a list of participating stores, and check out the slate of online panels featuring some of your favorite Romance writers.

The 2023 slate for virtual panels for Bookstore Romance Day. Find details at https://www.eventbrite.com/o/bookstore-romance-day-34004409231