Category: Uncategorized

How We Live Now by Bill Hayes

August 25, 2020
by George Cooper

From the beloved author of Insomniac City, a poignant and profound tribute in stories and images to a city amidst a pandemic.

A bookstore where readers shout their orders from the street. A neighborhood restaurant turned to-go place where one has a shared drink–on either end of a bar–with the owner. These scenes, among many others, became the new normal as soon as the world began to face the COVID-19 pandemic.

In How We Live Now, author and photographer Bill Hayes offers an ode to our shared humanity–capturing in real time this strange new world we’re now in (for who knows how long?) with his signature insight and grace. As he wanders the increasingly empty streets of Manhattan, Hayes meets fellow New Yorkers and discovers stories to tell, but he also shares the unexpected moments of gratitude he finds from within his apartment, where he lives alone and–like everyone else–is staying home, trying to keep busy and not bored as he adjusts to enforced solitude with reading, cooking, reconnecting with loved ones, reflecting on the past–and writing.

Featuring Hayes’s inimitable street photographs, How We Live Now chronicles an unimaginable moment in time, offering a long-lasting reminder that what will get us through this unprecedented, deadly crisis is each other.

The Smallest Lights in the Universe by Sara Seager

August 18, 2020
by George Cooper

In this luminous memoir, an MIT astrophysicist must reinvent herself in the wake of tragedy and discovers the power of connection on this planet, even as she searches our galaxy for another Earth.

Sara Seager has always been in love with the stars: so many lights in the sky, so much possibility. Now a pioneering planetary scientist, she searches for exoplanets—especially that distant, elusive world that sustains life. But with the unexpected death of Seager’s husband, the purpose of her own life becomes hard for her to see. Suddenly, at forty, she is a widow and the single mother of two young boys. For the first time, she feels alone in the universe.

As she struggles to navigate her life after loss, Seager takes solace in the alien beauty of exoplanets and the technical challenges of exploration. At the same time, she discovers earthbound connections that feel every bit as wondrous, when strangers and loved ones alike reach out to her across the space of her grief. Among them are the Widows of Concord, a group of women offering advice on everything from home maintenance to dating, and her beloved sons, Max and Alex. Most unexpected of all, there is another kind of one-in-a-billion match, not in the stars but here at home.

Probing and invigoratingly honest, The Smallest Lights in the Universe is its own kind of light in the dark.

A Virtual Event with Rosalind Brackenbury

July 20, 2020
by Emily Berg

Books & Books @ the Studios presents…
An Evening with Rosalind Brackenbury
and Katrin Schumann discussing Without Her.

Friday, August 7th, 6 PM

REGISTER HERE FOR FREE

Join us for an online event with Key West favorite Rosalind Brackenbury. Brackenbury will be speaking with author Katrin Schumann (This Terrible Beauty) [click here to purchase] about her newest book, Without Her, now out in paperback.

When her old friend Hannah doesn’t show up at her house in the south of France, everyone assumes that Claudia, who has known Hannah since their shared years at boarding school, will know where she is, and what has happened. But as Claudia travels from the USA to France to help Hannah’s husband and children conduct their search, she is forced to deal with her old jealousy of Hannah, as well as her own relationship in the present with her French lover, Alexandre. As events unfold, Claudia begins to wonder if Hannah and Alexandre may have had an affair and if that has had something to do with Hannah’s mysterious disappearance. In this exquisitely written, Ferrante-esque novel the question of whether or not Hannah will come back becomes urgent and bewildering. And if she doesn’t come back, what will the lives of her friends and family be without her?

About the Authors:

Born in London Brackenbury is a former writer-in-residence at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and has also served as poet laureate of Key West, teaching poetry workshops.

She is the author of Becoming George Sand, Paris Still Life, The Third Swimmer, and The Lost Love Letters of Henri Fournier. A former writer-in-residence at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, she has also served as poet laureate of Key West, teaching poetry workshops. She has attended the yearly Key West Literary Seminar as both panelist and moderator. Born in London, Rosalind lived in Scotland and France before moving to the United States. Her 2016 novel, The Third Swimmer was a 2016 INDIES Silver Winner in adult General Fiction. She now lives in Key West, Florida, with her American husband. 

Katrin Schumann enthralled readers with her debut novel, The Forgotten Hours, a Washington Post bestseller that critics praised as “an addictive and timely read” (Kirkus) with a “clear and resonant” voice (New York Journal of Books) and a style that “will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty, Paula Hawkins, and Jenna Blum” (Booklist).

 

 

A *VIRTUAL* Event with Meg Cabot

July 19, 2020
by Emily Berg

Books & Books presents…
An Evening with Meg Cabot
discussing No Offense

 

Tuesday, August 11, 7 PM

 

REGISTER HERE FOR FREE

New York Times-bestselling author Meg Cabot’s returns with a charming romance between a children’s librarian and the town sheriff in the second book in the Little Bridge Island series.

Click here to read our Q&A with Cabot last fall. 

Welcome to Little Bridge, one of the smallest, most beautiful islands in the Florida Keys, home to sandy white beaches, salt-rimmed margaritas, and stunning sunsets—a place where nothing goes under the radar and love has a way of sneaking up when least expected…

A broken engagement only gave Molly Montgomery additional incentive to follow her dream job from the Colorado Rockies to the Florida Keys. Now, as Little Bridge Island Public Library’s head of children’s services, Molly hopes the messiest thing in her life will be her sticky-note covered desk. But fate—in the form of a newborn left in the restroom—has other ideas. So does the sheriff who comes to investigate the “abandonment”.  When John Hartwell folds all six-feet-three of himself into a tiny chair and insists that whoever left the baby is a criminal, Molly begs to differ and asks what he’s doing about the Island’s real crime wave (if thefts of items from homes that have been left unlocked could be called that). Not the best of starts, but the man’s arrogance is almost as distracting as his blue eyes. Almost…

Clever, hilarious, and fun, No Offense will tug at readers’ heartstrings and make them fall in love with Little Bridge Island and its unique characters once again.

About the Author:
Meg Cabot’s many books for both adults and tweens/teens have included multiple global and #1 New York Times bestsellers, selling over twenty-five million copies worldwide. Her Princess Diaries series has been published in more than 38 countries and was made into several hit films by Disney. Meg is still waiting for her real parents, the king and queen, to restore her to her rightful throne. She currently lives in Key West, FL, with her husband and various cats.

 

Reader Meet Writer – Virtual Event with Sarah Broom

July 18, 2020
by Emily Berg

Let us deliver authors to your living room.

Sarah M. Broom – The Yellow House [order here]
THURSDAY AUGUST 13th at 7PM EDT

The next author in the Reader Meet Writer series is Sarah M. Broom.  Broom is the 2019 National Book Award winner in Nonfiction for her memoir The Yellow House.

Broom will be talking with us THURSDAY AUGUST 13th at 7PM EDT about the memoir as well as answering your questions. Broom is one of many authors we’ll be bringing into your living room.

In 1961 Sarah M. Broom’s mother, Ivory Mae, bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant—the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah’s father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah’s birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae’s thirteenth and most unruly child.

A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house’s entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and
defy erasure. Located in the gap between the “Big Easy” of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir
of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.

To attend please RSVP here

You can also RSVP by emailing booksandbooks@tskw.org with the subject line “RSVP for SARAH M. BROOM”

Attendance is limited.

If you elect to attend, we will email you on Thursday morning (8/13) with the link to attend this virtual event, plus the link to purchase books.  If you purchase the book through our website we will automatically send you the login information you need to join the event. If you ordered by phone please RSVP above.  

Happy Reading!

A Virtual Event with Lucy Burdette

July 17, 2020
by Emily Berg

Books & Books @ the Studios presents…
An Evening with Lucy Burdette
and Deborah Crombie discussing The Key Lime Crime.

Tuesday, August 18th, 6 PM

REGISTER HERE FOR FREE

Join us for an online event with Lucy Burdette, author of the bestselling Key West Food Critic Mystery series. Burdette will be speak with author Deborah Crombie (A Bitter Feast) [click here to purchase] about her latest book in the series The Key Lime Crime, out 8/11.

With her intimidating new mother-in-law bearing down on the island and a fierce rivalry between Key lime pie bakers to referee, food critic Hayley Snow is feeling anything but festive…

It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s and Key West is bursting at the seams with holiday events and hordes of tourists. Adding to the chaos, Key lime pie aficionado David Sloan has persuaded the city to host his Key Lime pie extravaganza and contest. Hayley Snow can’t escape the madness because her bosses at Key Zest magazine have assigned her to cover the event. Every pie purveyor in Key West is determined to claim the Key lime spotlight—and win the coveted Key Lime Key to the City.
Another recipe for disaster—Hayley’s hubby, police detective Nathan Bransford, announces that his mother will be making a surprise visit. Newlywed Hayley must play the dutiful daughter-in-law, so she and her pal Miss Gloria offer to escort his mom on the iconic Conch Train Tour of the island’s holiday lights. But it’s not all glittering palm trees and fantastic flamingos–the unlikely trio finds a real body stashed in one of the elaborate displays. And the victim is no stranger: Hayley recognizes the controversial new pastry chef from Au Citron Vert, a frontrunner in Sloan’s contest.

Hayley must not only decipher who’s removed the chef from the contest kitchen, she’s also got to handle a too-curious mother-in-law who seems to be cooking up trouble of her own.

About the Authors:
Clinical psychologist Lucy Burdette (aka Roberta Isleib) is the author of 18 mysteries, including THE KEY LIME CRIME (Crooked Lane Books,) the latest in the Key West series featuring food critic Hayley Snow. Her books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She’s a past president of Sisters in Crime and the current president of the Friends of the Key West Library.

Deborah Crombie is a native Texan who has lived in both England and Scotland. She lives in McKinney, Texas, sharing a house that is more than one hundred years old with her husband, three cats, and two German shepherds.

 

Reader Meet Writer – Virtual Event with Daniel Nayeri

July 13, 2020
by Emily Berg

Let us deliver authors to your living room.

Daniel Nayeri – Everything Sad is True [order here]
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 3rd at 7PM EDT

The next author in the Reader Meet Writer series is Daniel Nayeri. Nayeri is the author of several books for young readers, including Straw House, Wood House, Brick House Blow: Four Novellas.

Nayeri will be talking with us THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 3rd at 7PM EDT about his new book as well as answering your questions.

At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls “Daniel”) stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much.

But Khosrou’s stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from the moment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them, back to the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy.and further back to the fields near the river Aras, where rain-soaked flowers bled red like the yolk of sunset burst over everything, and further back still to the Jasmine-scented city of Isfahan.

Like Scheherazade in a hostile classroom, Daniel weaves a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. And it is (a true story). It is Daniel’s.

Daniel Nayeri was born in Iran and spent a couple of years as a refugee before immigrating to Edmond, Oklahoma at age eight with his family. He is a former professional pastry chef, and if he’s not writing or baking, he’s likely playing board games, or riding motorcycles. He lives with his family in New Jersey.

To attend please RSVP here

You can also RSVP by emailing booksandbooks@tskw.org with the subject line “RSVP for DANIEL NAYERI”

Attendance is limited.

If you elect to attend, we will email you on Thursday morning (9/3) with the link to attend this virtual event, plus the link to purchase books.  If you purchase the book through our website we will automatically send you the login information you need to join the event. If you ordered by phone please RSVP above.  

Happy Reading!

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

June 23, 2020
by George Cooper

Named One of the Best Books of the Summer by: New York Magazine, Time Magazine, Town & Country, Marie Claire, Refinery 29, PopSugar, the Today Show, and more

From one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds an ominous note on a walk in the woods.

While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one.

Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate. With very little to go on, she invents a list of murder suspects and possible motives for the crime. Oddly, her suppositions begin to find correspondences in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to fade into menacing certainty. As her investigation widens, strange dissonances accrue, perhaps associated with the darkness in her own past; we must face the prospect that there is either an innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one.

A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, and the stakes have never been higher.

A Virtual Evening with Curtis Sittenfeld, author of RODHAM

June 21, 2020
by Robin Wood

Books & Books presents…
“AN EVENING WITH CURTIS SITTENFELD”
discussing Rodham: A Novel
Moderated by: JIA TOLENTINO

Friday, June 26 at 7PM

REGISTER HERE

 

New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld brings her incredible talent to bear as she taps into the very unknowable mind and heart of a very well-known person in her new novel, RODHAM. In RODHAM, Sittenfeld tells a story of instant attraction and betrayal, taps into what it feels like to be a powerful woman in a country that hasn’t fully accepted powerful women, and offers a richly imagined alternate history.

CURTIS SITTENFELD is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, and Eligible, which have been translated into thirty languages. Her story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. She is the 2020 guest editor for the Best American Short Stories. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, The Atlantic, Time, and New York Magazine’s The Cut, and has been broadcast on public radio’s This American Life. A native of Cincinnati, she currently lives with her family in Minneapolis.