Kick off your holiday shopping with your favorite indie bookstore and celebrate all that shopping small brings to our community. We will open early at 9am on Saturday, November 30 for Small Business Saturday®.

See all the new products that we have in store for the holiday season, chat with a friendly bookseller, treat yourself to a new book. We will have special goodies and giveaways, so grab a friend or family member, join us the Saturday after Thanksgiving and #shopsmall.

And, don't forget to check out the Artisan Holiday Market at The Studios of Key West from 9am - 2pm. More info: https://tskw.org/holiday-artisan-fair/ The artisan market is an opportunity to support local artist and find one-of-a-kind gifts.

Books & Books presents

NADINE PINEDE
discussing her book
WHEN THE MAPOU SINGS

Sunday, Dec 1st, 2pm ET
Doors open at 1:30pm
Hugh's View - 533 Eaton Street

 

Infused with magical realism, this story blends first love and political intrigue with a quest for justice and self-determination in 1930s Haiti.

Sixteen-year-old Lucille hopes to one day open a school alongside her best friend where girls just like them can learn what it means to be Haitian: to learn from the mountains and the forests around them, to carve, to sew, to draw, and to sing the songs of the Mapou, the sacred trees that dot the island nation. But when her friend vanishes without a trace, a dream—a gift from the Mapou—tells Lucille to go to her village’s section chief, the local face of law, order, and corruption, which puts her life and her family’s at risk.
Forced to flee her home, Lucille takes a servant post with a wealthy Haitian woman from society’s elite in Port-au-Prince. Despite a warning to avoid him, she falls in love with her employer’s son. But when their relationship is found out, she must leave again—this time banished to another city to work for a visiting American writer and academic conducting fieldwork in Haiti. While Lucille’s new employer studies vodou and works on the novel that will become Their Eyes Were Watching God, Lucille risks losing everything she cares about—and any chance of seeing her best friend again—as she fights to save their lives and secure her future in this novel in verse with the racing heart of a thriller.

About the Author: Nadine Pinede is the daughter of Haitian exiles from the Duvalier dictatorship. She created her own interdisciplinary major at Harvard and then continued on to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. She also has an MFA in fiction and poetry and holds a PhD from Indiana University.

 

This is an in-person event taking place outdoors. 
Registering ahead of time helps us to plan for a successful event but is not required.
In the event that attendance reaches capacity registered guests will be seated first.

REGISTER HERE

Books & Books presents

JAN GANGSEI
discussing her book
DEAD BELOW DECK

Wednesday, Dec 4th, 6:30pm ET
Doors open at 6:00pm
Hugh's View - 533 Eaton Street

When an heiress disappears from her superyacht and security footage shows her getting pushed, the main suspect has to prove her innocence in this thrilling mystery at sea told in reverse chronological order, perfect for fans of Karen McManus and Genuine Fraud.

It was supposed to be the best-ever girls’ trip: five days, four friends, one luxury yacht, no parents. But on the final night, as the yacht cruised the deep and dark waters between Florida and Grand Cayman, eighteen-year-old heiress Giselle vanished. She’s nowhere to be found the next morning even after a frantic search, until security footage surfaces . . . showing Maggie pushing her overboard.

But Maggie has no memory of what happened. All she knows is that she woke up with a throbbing headache, thousands of dollars in cash in her safe, a passport that isn’t hers, and Giselle’s diary. And while Maggie had her own reasons to want Giselle dead, so did everyone else on board: jealous Viv, calculating Emi, even some members of the staff.

What really went down on the top deck that night? Maggie will have to work her way backward to uncover the secrets that everyone—even Giselle—kept below deck or she’s dead in the water.

Jan Gangsei crafts a compulsively readable tale of privilege, family, and identity wrapped in a wholly original mystery that will keep readers on the edges of their seats until the final twist.

About the Author: Jan Gangsei is an award-winning author of books for young adults and tweens, including Dead Below Deck, Zero Day, and Project Me 2.0. 

 She grew up in small-town Vermont. When she didn’t have her nose stuck in a book, she could usually be found writing her own stories, putting on backyard shows with her best friend, and boating on Lake Memphremagog with her family. After graduating from the University of Vermont with degrees in political science and English, Jan worked as a newspaper journalist and photographer in northern Vermont and New Hampshire. Her stories covered everything from drug trafficking cases to presidential primaries and how to properly navigate her town’s first four-way stop sign (a two-part series, front page, above the fold —no joke!). 

Eager to see the world, Jan left Vermont for Key West, Florida, where she met her future husband, a Coast Guard officer. Since then, she’s lived in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Barbados, and has worked in communications for an upscale hotel chain and an internet start-up. 

She’s now settled back in the D.C. area with her husband and kids (two humans and one rescue pup who thinks he’s a human), where she writes full-time. Her debut YA thriller, Zero Day, was named to several state award lists and was one of Bank Street’s Best Books of the Year. She’s also penned several middle-grade books, including Project Me 2.0, The Wild Bunch, as well as series fiction under various pen names commissioned by book packagers and publishers.

This is an in-person event taking place outdoors. 
Registering ahead of time helps us to plan for a successful event but is not required.
In the event that attendance reaches capacity registered guests will be seated first.

REGISTER HERE