Category: News

Get and give free audiobooks for Independent Bookstore Day

April 22, 2019

This Independent Bookstore Day, we want to thank all of our customers, fans and friends for supporting Books & Books @ The Studios and our friends at independent digital audiobook provider Libro.fm are helping us do that with a gift of free audiobooks. Simply create your free Libro.fm account before April 27th and you’ll receive free audiobooks. There is no cost or commitment required. Follow this link to create your account: https://libro.fm/bookskw

Already have a Libro.fm account?

If you already have a Libro.fm account, you’ll get an email on Independent Bookstore Day with your free audiobooks. Get the audiobooks for yourself by adding any (or all!) of the free audiobooks to your cart and checking out.

You can also use this opportunity to introduce your bookish friends to Libro.fm by gifting them these free books. To send the free gifts, start a new shopping experience and add any (or all!) of the free audiobooks as “gifts”. When you checkout, you’ll get to enter the email address and have the option to add a special note for the recipient. You can gift these free audiobooks as many times as you like, but the offer is only valid on Saturday, April 27th for Bookstore Day. Note: The recipient does NOT need to redeem the free audiobooks by 4/27; the gifts will be sent immediately.

Independent Bookstore Day Turns 5 April 27

April 21, 2019

by Robin Wood

Come celebrate five years of independent bookselling’s biggest party. Join Books & Books @ The Studios of Key West and more than 500 independent bookstores in 49 states celebrating our shared love of reading and shopping local, small & independent.

It’s a party for the best customers in the world. We’ll have exclusive day-of merchandise – fun products you can only get in indie bookstores and only on Bookstore Day – along with giveaways and a surprise or two. And, you’ll certainly find great books, art supplies, toys and all the other things that make our store special.

The 2019 IBD author ambassador Tayari Jones, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, says, “Indie stores stock books by hand and sell them the same way. They know what we want and need to read because they know us, as people. A writer is not a machine. A reader is not an app. We are human beings and so are the independent bookstore workers who show up each day and place books in our hands.”

Some of this year’s exclusive Bookstore Day items include:

Charles Bukowski Uncensored exclusive vinyl album
In 1993, the year before he died, Bukowski recorded selections from his classic Run with the Hunted. This exclusive vinyl edition features these selections along with additional material from that recording session including candid conversations between Bukowski, his wife Linda Lee Bukowski, and his producer. This is a true must-have for the Bukowski fan.

Women Talking (signed edition with an exclusive IBD-only cover)
Author: Miriam Toews
Fans of Toews’ darkly funny fiction have been waiting for this one. And we have an exclusive signed edition with a redesigned, IBD-only cover. Women Talking is a transformative novel — as completely unexpected as it is inspired—based on actual events that happened between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite community.

What to Eat with What You Read: A Guide for Book Clubs and Other Literary Gatherings
A companion to last year’s IBD bestseller The Book Club Journal, comes this funny, helpful guide with reading lists, recipes, and menu suggestions from 25 of our favorite authors, including Min Jin Lee, Mary Roach, Roxane Gay, Jennifer Egan, and Robin Sloan.

Ada Twist and the Perilous Pants (Exclusive, signed edition with FREE iron-on Ada patch)
Author: Andrea Beaty
A special Independent Bookstore Day exclusive autographed copy of ADA TWIST AND THE PERILOUS PANTS signed by bestselling author Andrea Beaty. Includes a collectible embroidered iron-on patch of stellar scientist Ada Twist.

If you won’t be in Key West on April 27, check out this list of participating indie bookstores: http://indiemap.bookweb.org/

Come Support May Sands Montessori’s Community Book Fair

April 9, 2019

by Robin Wood

Books & Books @ The Studios is partnering with May Sands Montessori school on a Community Book Fair, Saturday, May 18, 2019. Shoppers who present the event coupon will enable a donation to the school with their purchases. Books & Books will donate 10% of net purchases from coupon sales to support the school. Shoppers using the coupon will also have the opportunity to enter a raffle for a $50 Books & Books gift card.

Get the coupon via Facebook: Book Fair Coupon

Moms love books

April 8, 2019

by Robin Wood

Trying to decide what to get Mom? Books are always a good choice.

And if you don’t know what she’s read, a gift card will give her a chance to find her #nextfavoriteread.

Pam Jenoff, author of THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS

February 27, 2019

by Robin Wood

Photo credit Mindy Schwartz Sorasky

Wednesday, April 17, at 6pm, a reading and book signing with Pam Jenoff, author of THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS.

1946, Manhattan…

After taking the world by storm with her compelling and absorbing USA Today and New York Times bestseller, THE ORPHAN’S TALE, Pam Jenoff, returns with a story of bravery, intrigue, and sisterhood in the Second World War. THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS investigates the forgotten history of a female spy ring whose agents changed the course of the war before disappearing, and the widowed American woman determined to uncover their fates.

Widowed during the war, Grace Healy is slowly rebuilding her life in 1946 Manhattan. One morning while passing through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work, she finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Unable to resist her curiosity, Grace opens the suitcase, where she discovers a dozen photographs–each of a different woman. In a moment of impulse, Grace takes the photographs and quickly leaves the station.

Grace soon learns that the suitcase belonged to a woman named Eleanor Trigg, leader of a ring of female secret agents who were deployed out of London during the war. Twelve of these women were sent to Occupied Europe as couriers and radio operators to aid the resistance, but they never returned home–their fates confidential. Setting out to learn the truth behind the women in the photographs, Grace finds herself drawn to a young mother-turned-agent named Marie, whose daring mission overseas reveals a remarkable story of friendship, valor, and betrayal.

Based on the Secret Operations Executive, this vividly rendered story of mystery and survival shines a light on the much-overlooked role that women played in the Allied victory. THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS is a suspenseful and inspiring read about the brutality of war, the scars left on its survivors and the inspiring tenacity of the human spirit.

Pam Jenoff is the author of several novels of historical fiction, including the New York Times bestseller THE ORPHAN’S TALE. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University and a master’s degree in history from Cambridge, and she received her Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania. Jenoff’s novels are inspired by her experiences working at the Pentagon and also as a diplomat for the State Department handling Holocaust issues in Poland. She lives with her husband and three children near Philadelphia where, in addition to writing, she teaches law school.

Praise for The Lost Girls of Paris

“Pam Jenoff’s meticulous research and gorgeous historical world-building lift her books to must-buy status… An intriguing mystery and a captivating heroine make The Lost Girls of Paris a read to savor!”
—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network

“In The Lost Girls of Paris, Pam Jenoff has used her finely honed story-telling skills to give us a smart, suspenseful, and morally complicated spy novel for our time. Eleanor Trigg and her girls are every bit as human as they are brave. I couldn’t put this down.”
—Jessica Shattuck, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle

“Pam Jenoff deftly brings to life the history of ordinary women who left behind their home front lives to do the extraordinary—act as secret operatives in occupied territory. Fraught with danger, filled with mystery, and meticulously researched, The Lost Girls of Paris is a fascinating tale of the hidden women who helped to win the war.”
—Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

Jason Dewees, author of DESIGNING WITH PALMS

February 27, 2019

by Robin Wood

Friday, April 19, at 6pm, a presentation and book signing with Jason Dewees, author of DESIGNING WITH PALMS.

Palms are a landscape staple in warm, temperate climates worldwide. But these stunning and statement-making plants are large, expensive, and difficult to install, resulting in unique design challenges. In Designing with Palms, palm expert Jason Dewees details every major aspect of designing and caring for palms. This definitive guide shares essential information on planting, irrigation, nutrition, pruning, and transplanting. A gallery of the most important species showcases the range of options available, and stunning photographs by Caitlin Atkinson spotlight examples of home and public landscapes that make excellent use of palms.

The book includes beautiful photos of gardens and native palm habitat in South Florida from Miami to Key West to Naples, as well as in California, South Carolina, Georgia, and Hawai`i. Celebrated Miami landscape architect, Raymond Jungles, said about the book, “Contains virtually everything you need to know about these plants and their usage in gardens. This is the go-to book.”

Jason Dewees is the staff horticulturist at Flora Grubb Gardens and East West Trees in San Francisco. Responsible for the Tree Canopy Succession Plan for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, he serves on the Horticultural Advisory Committee for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and on The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers Advisory Council.

Michael Mewshaw, author of THE LOST PRINCE

February 12, 2019

by Robin Wood

Photo credit: Sean Mewshaw

Join us Tuesday, February 26, at 6pm, as Michael Mewshaw launches his newest book, THE LOST PRINCE, an examination of his friendship with the author Pat Conroy. Pat Conroy was America’s poet laureate of family dysfunction. A larger-than-life character and the author of such classics as The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, Conroy was remembered by everybody for his energy, his exuberance, and his self-lacerating humor.

Michael Mewshaw’s THE LOST PRINCE is an intimate memoir of his friendship with Pat Conroy, one that involves their families and those days in Rome when they were both young—when Conroy went from being a popular regional writer to an international bestseller. Family snapshots beautifully illustrate that time. Shortly before his forty-ninth birthday, Conroy telephoned Mewshaw to ask a terrible favor. With great reluctance, Mewshaw did as he was asked—and never saw Pat Conroy again.

Although they never managed to reconcile their differences completely, Conroy later urged Mewshaw to write about “me and you and what happened . . . i know it would cause much pain to both of us. but here is what that story has that none of your others have.” THE LOST PRINCE is Mewshaw’s fulfillment of a promise.

Michael Mewshaw‘s five decade career includes award-winning fiction, nonfiction, literary criticism and investigative journalism. He is the author of the nonfiction works Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal and Between Terror and Tourism; the novel Year of the Gun; and the memoir Do I Owe You Something? He spends much of his time in Key West.

Praise for THE LOST PRINCE

“In THE LOST PRINCE Michael Mewshaw sets down one of the most gripping stories of friendship I’ve ever read.” —Daniel Menaker, author of My Mistake: A Memoir

“THE LOST PRINCE: A SEARCH FOR PAT CONROY is a book about male bonding rituals and reversals, but it’s also about so much more than that. It’s about how perplexed and inadequately
prepared we can be as characters who pop up in other people’s lives. It’s about unknowability
and its repercussions. It’s a fluidly written, fascinating book about Michael Mewshaw and Pat Conroy caught in the crossbeams of past and present, fated to overlap, bond, retreat, and then—as Mewshaw clearly hopes—to unite in a different configuration a final time.” — Ann Beattie, author of The Accomplished Guest

Ann Beattie, author of A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCK

February 9, 2019

by Robin Wood

Tuesday, April 9, at 6pm, a book launch party and book signing with Ann Beattie, author of A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCK.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by Vulture, The Millions, and O Magazine

A razor-sharp, deeply felt new novel–the twenty-first book by Ann Beattie–about the complicated relationship between a charismatic teacher and his students, and the secrets we keep from those we love.

At a boarding school in New Hampshire, Ben joins the honor society led by Pierre LaVerdere, an enigmatic, brilliant, yet perverse teacher who instructs his students not only about how to reason, but how to prevaricate. As the years go by, LaVerdere’s covert and overt instruction lingers in his students’ lives as they seek some sense of purpose or meaning. Ben feels the pace of his life accelerating and views his intimate relationships as less and less fulfilling; there seems to be a subtext he’s not able to access. And what, really, did Bailey Academy teach him?

While relationships with his stepmother and sister improve, and a move to upstate New York offers respite from his anxiety about love and work, LaVerdere’s reappearance in his life disturbs Ben’s equilibrium. Everything he once thought he knew about his teacher–and himself–is called into question. Written by one of our most iconic writers, known for casting a cold eye on her generation’s ambivalence and sometimes mistaken ambition, A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCKis a keenly observed psychological study of a man who alternates between careful driving and hazardous risk-taking, as he struggles to incorporate his past into the vertiginous present.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER NOW

Ann Beattie has published twenty-one books and lives with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry, in Maine. She is a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Praise for A WONDERFUL STROKE OF LUCK

“Even if you’re not old enough to remember the thrill of reading Beattie’s first-ever story to be published in The New Yorker, you’ll find that the short fiction master’s latest foray into long form is a marvel of wry wit and wisdom.”
—Oprah magazine

“I would read anything by Beattie.”
—Lila Shapiro, Vulture (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019)

“How do our charismatic teachers set the stage for the rest of our lives? That’s one of the questions that Ann Beattie tackles in this novel. When a former New England boarding school student named Ben looks back on his childhood, he starts to question the motives of his superstar teacher. Later on, his teacher gets in contact, and Ben has to grapple with his legacy.”
—The Millions (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019)

“[Beattie’s] elegantly sculpted tale is both wrenchingly sad and ultimately enigmatic: as usual.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Gimlet-eyed Beattie has created a stunningly unnerving and provocative tale spiked with keen cultural allusions and drollery. This jarring dissection of privilege and anxiety, gender expectations, lust, ludicrous predicaments, defensive selfishness, moral confusion, and numbing loneliness projects a matrix of angst somewhat countered by the solace and sustenance found in a quiet life far from the grasping, hurried, hostile world. . . . Beattie’s literary reign continues apace, thanks to her stealthily eviscerating insights and disquieting wit.”
—Booklist (starred review)

Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of FASTING GIRLS & THE BODY PROJECT

February 1, 2019

by Robin Wood

Thursday, March 28, at 6pm, a reading and book signing with Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of FASTING GIRLS & THE BODY PROJECT. Join us for a fascinating and timely discussion about women, girls, body image and social change.

Joan Jacobs Brumberg is the award-winning author of FASTING GIRLS: THE HISTORY OF ANOREXIA NERVOSA and THE BODY PROJECT. She is a Stephen H. Weiss Professor at Cornell University, where she holds a unique appointment teaching in the fields of history, human development, and women’s studies. Her research and sensitive writing about American women and girls have been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony.

Winner of four major awards, the updated edition of Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s FASTING GIRLS, presents a history of women’s food-refusal dating back as far as the sixteenth century. Here is a tableau of female self-denial: medieval martyrs who used starvation to demonstrate religious devotion, “wonders of science” whose families capitalized on their ability to survive on flower petals and air, silent screen stars whose strict “slimming” regimens inspired a generation. Here, too, is a fascinating look at how the cultural ramifications of the Industrial Revolution produced a disorder that continues to render privileged young women helpless. Incisive, compassionate, illuminating, FASTING GIRLS offers real understanding to victims and their families, clinicians, and all women who are interested in the origins and future of this complex, modern and characteristically female disease.

A hundred years ago, women were lacing themselves into corsets and teaching their daughters to do the same. The ideal of the day, however, was inner beauty: a focus on good deeds and a pure heart. Today American women have more social choices and personal freedom than ever before. But fifty-three percent of our girls are dissatisfied with their bodies by the age of thirteen, and many begin a pattern of weight obsession and dieting as early as eight or nine. Why?

In THE BODY PROJECT, Brumberg answers this question, drawing on diary excerpts and media images from 1830 to the present. Tracing girls’ attitudes toward topics ranging from breast size and menstruation to hair, clothing, and cosmetics, she exposes the shift from the Victorian concern with character to our modern focus on outward appearance—in particular, the desire to be model-thin and sexy. Compassionate, insightful, and gracefully written, THE BODY PROJECT explores the gains and losses adolescent girls have inherited since they shed the corset and the ideal of virginity for a new world of sexual freedom and consumerism—a world in which the body is their primary project.