Tag: store events

Shining a light on history with Pam Jenoff, author of THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS

March 17, 2019

Author photo: Mindy Schwartz Sorasky

Pam Jenoff is the author of historical novels, including the New York Times bestseller THE ORPHAN’S TALE. Her novels are inspired by her experiences working at the Pentagon and also as a diplomat for the State Department handling Holocaust issues in Poland.

We had the opportunity to ask her a few questions before her reading and book signing of THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS on Wednesday, April 17 at 6pm.

Q: What does a U.S. foreign service officer do? Where was the most interesting place you were posted to?

A: A foreign service officer is a career diplomat. They are posted to embassies and consulates all over the world to do political, economic, consular and cultural affairs work. Krakow, Poland was my only posting.

Q: In addition to writing novels, you teach law school? How do those two endeavors compare and contrast?

A: I am proud to be on the faculty of Rutgers Law in New Jersey; it’s a wonderful place. There is a great synergy between writing and teaching. I can bring fiction writing techniques to the legal writing classroom in order to help my students know themselves better as writers and jumpstart creativity. Legal writing helps my novels by providing me with critical skills such as revision. Additionally, I love to balance the solitude of writing with the sociability of teaching. Truly a great combination!

Q: THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS is based on a true story, why did you want to fictionalize it?

A: I prefer to say “inspired by actual events” because I take great liberties with the history and I don’t want to stake too large a claim as to the real story – that belongs to those who lived it. I was researching when I discovered the remarkable history of the women who served as agents for Britain’s Special Operations Executive in World War II, deployed behind enemy lines to engage in sabotage and subversion. I was taken by the scope of their heroism, their tragic downfall and the dark betrayals that led to that. I wanted to shine a light on their stories through my own medium – fiction.

Q: What have you learned about publishing along the way that it would have been useful to know earlier in your writing career?

A: In the beginning, I probably did not understand the importance of historical accuracy to readers. I thought of myself as creating a world in a Tolkien-esque way and I think there were mistakes and missteps that I would do differently now.

Q: What are you reading and recommending currently?

A: I read everything. In historical fiction I loved THE WARTIME SISTERS by Lynda Loigman and IN ANOTHER TIME by Jillian Cantor. In suspense, I can’t say enough good things about Annie Ward’s new book BEAUTIFUL BAD and the forthcoming Heather Gudenkauf title, BEFORE SHE WAS FOUND. In contemporary books, I loved Kristin Higgins GOOD LUCK WITH THAT and ONE DAY IN DECEMBER by Josie Silver.

Q: Are you working on anything new?

A: It’s very early days, but my new project was inspired by the true story of a young girl who survived World War II in a sewer.

~Robin Wood, Associate Manager

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

Beyond the Legend: Michael Mewshaw, author of THE LOST PRINCE

February 22, 2019

by Robin Wood

Photo credit: Sean Mewshaw

Michael Mewshaw often writes about famous people and his goal is to take the reader deeper than what they think they know. “The greatest challenge is overcoming readers’ preconceived notions. Celebrities get a lot of publicity, much of it inaccurate. I feel a responsibility as a writer to explore the truth behind the public image. That’s been my modus operandi for my 50-year career,” Mewshaw said recently when we caught up with him ahead of his Tuesday night event launching his newest book, THE LOST PRINCE, an examination of his friendship with the author Pat Conroy.

We had the opportunity to ask him how this book is different, what makes Key West special and what he’s reading now.

Q. For THE LOST PRINCE, in specific, why did you want to share this story? What do you hope readers will take away from it?

A. I hope they’ll take away an accurate picture of Pat Conroy and of our relationship. I’d also like to emphasize that Pat urged me to write about this, painful as he knew it would be for both of us. He’s dead now, but it’s still painful for me, and I hope readers will understand that you can be honest even about someone you loved.

Q. How long has Key West been your winter home? Given that you’ve traveled all over the world, what makes Key West special?

A: I spent two winters in Key West, one in 1973, the other in ’78, back when the place a raffish, rundown, low-priced paradise. I returned in 2000 and have been spending the winter here ever since. It’s a much different town, just as I’m a much different and older person. But many of KW’s best qualities remain — the weather, the tolerance for idiosyncrasies, and the tennis courts in Bayview Park where people continue to be patient with my geriatric game.

Q. What are you reading and recommending currently?

A. I read incessantly, both fiction and nonfiction. Recently I’ve finished a few books about Spain which pertained to my current project. For pleasure I’ve been reading Lauren Groff’s short story collection, FLORIDA, and Deborah Eisenberg’s collection, YOUR DUCK IS MY DUCK. Anyone who loves language would glory in these books.

Q. What are you working on next?

A. I’ve finished a very rough first draft of a novel that’s set in Granada, Spain. I just started rewriting it and have a great deal of work to do. It’s much too early to say more.

~ Robin Wood, Associate Manager

Moving off the Princess Track with Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of FASTING GIRLS & THE BODY PROJECT

February 17, 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.

Leading up to this event, we had the opportunity to ask Joan a few questions about her books and herself.

Q: Since THE BODY PROJECT and FASTING GIRLS were originally published how have the issues explored in the books changed? Has there been an increase or decrease in anorexia nervosa with the growth of social media?

A: Social media and scientific medicine may have intensified the cultural imperative for bodily perfection. There are many more “body projects” requiring time, energy, money and persistent maintenance. The number of diagnosed cases of anorexia nervosa remains consistent but there is more disordered eating and orthorexia.

[Editor’s note: Orthorexia is the obsessive pursuit of ‘healthy’ eating.]

Q: From the research you’ve done about girls and body image, what’s the one thing you wish you could impart to girls and parents?

A: Stop reading each others bodies as well as your own. What your body can do is far more important than what it looks like. Young girls need to be moved off The Princess Track.

Q: What’s your relationship to Key West?

A: My husband and I are happy snowbirds, two months here, for almost a decade. We like winter in the Conch Republic and summer in Ithaca, NY on Cayuga Lake. We chose Key West because it is so different than the rest of Florida.

Q: What are you reading and recommending currently?
So far this season: Finished BECOMING on the plane and thought it was far better than most autobiographies of public figures. But I’ve also read THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS by Pam Jenoff, EARTHLY REMAINS by Donna Leon, THE WINTER SOLIDER by Daniel Mason. At home, I read mostly nonfiction, but not here.

~Robin Wood, Associate Manager

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)

Artists & Mothers: Talking with Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME

February 2, 2019

by Robin Wood

Hearing Susan Conley, author of ELSEY COME HOME read from and discuss her novel was a great way to close out a busy January 2019 calendar of events. Conley’s novel about an expat American living in China deals with issues of artistic and personal identity, addiction, marriage, and motherhood.

Elsey, the novel’s protagonist is trying to figure out how to reconcile the divergent needs of marriage, motherhood with small children and art. Her husband suggests a yoga retreat in the mountains where Elsey meets a cast of characters, who, among other things, depict women dealing with different kinds of issues and challenges.

“Elsey’s problem is that she can’t cohere all the parts of herself,” Susan said. Painting and parenting both call for a kind of obsession, focus, that it is hard to divide. Art calls for a kind of recklessness – and more than anything else – for time.

And, though, Susan herself is now the mother of teenagers rather than young children, she says that need for time doesn’t go away. But while children require the alteration of artistic habits, Susan says they have also been a gift to her work as a writer. “A deeper sense of empathy, a more expansive emotional bandwith, I am more committed to my work,” she said.

~ Robin Wood, Associate Manager

Planting Seeds with Andrew Furman, author of GOLDENS ARE HERE

February 2, 2019

by Robin Wood

Inspired by true events surrounding an historic Florida citrus season and the civil rights struggle, Andrew Furman’s GOLDENS ARE HERE offers a glimpse of the sea changes occurring in Florida and the nation in the 1960s through the prism of one family’s negotiations with the land, their neighbors, and each other. Leading up to his reading and book signing Feb. 6, we had the opportunity to chat with him about his background and new book.

Q: Please tell us a little about how you came to write GOLDENS ARE HERE?

A: I’ve lived here in south Florida for the past 22 years and one of my favorite things to do is hop in the car with my family and visit some of the more scruffy out-of-the-way outposts of our Sunshine State. The seeds for GOLDENS ARE HERE, if I might use a botanical metaphor, originated in one of these trips with my family to the small town of Titusville and its rural outskirts. As I walked the streets of this historic town and visited the remaining orange groves along the nearby Indian River, I found myself imagining what the place must have looked like and meant to the people who lived there in what might be considered the region’s hey-day, the 1960s when the space-race was hitting its stride, the citrus industry was booming, and, as my research would uncover, the Civil Rights struggle was impacting black and white lives in significant ways. It seemed like a rich time and place to direct my creative energies. It wasn’t too long before a cast of characters and a story emerged in my mind that would allow me to engage with the intersections between the social and environmental realms, which has long been a primary interest of mine.

Q: You’ve also written a memoir about Florida? Can you say a little about how you decide to cast a subject as fiction or nonfiction and how you think readers respond to those narrative choices?

A: This is an excellent question that preoccupies much of my attention these days. In fact, I’m currently teaching a graduate writing workshop at Florida Atlantic University entitled, Writing Across Genres, which examines the work of writers (e.g., Colson Whitehead, Marilynne Robinson, Jesmyn Ward) who write both nonfiction and fiction. The aim, ultimately, is for my students to contemplate their own choices, vis a vis genre, more deliberately. Most of my writing—both nonfiction and fiction, and as my answer above suggests—originates in place. From there, I might choose the essay form if I feel that my own personal experiences in and of a particular place stands the chance of resonating with readers in a powerful way, and/or the real-life experience of another person associated with that place demands attention, or if some feature of the place (an animal or plant, say) intrigues me so much that I’m compelled to research and reflect upon this feature in earnest. BITTEN, my recent memoir, documents my experiences coming to know various fascinating aspects of my adopted home state.

I think I turn to fiction when there’s something about a place that inspires me to imagine an entire story and set of characters outside my own personal experiences, when to imagine a place as fully as I desire, I require the freedom of the “make believe” realm. As I review this response, I realize that I’ve positioned fiction, perhaps, as the more “creative” genre. I resist this notion, in theory, as I believe that the essay form can be every bit as creative as fiction, and as some of my most creative work, certainly from an aesthetic point of view, exists within the pages of my essays. But there we are.

In terms of how readers respond to these narrative choices, this is an even tougher question. But if I understand the question correctly, and given all the scandals in the realm of nonfiction lately (James Frey, Margaret B. Jones, et. al.), I will say that I believe that writers enter into a sort of contract with their readers when they purport to write nonfiction, that writers implicitly promise to be telling the truth (not to be inventing characters or events out of whole cloth, for example) and that readers have a right to be disappointed when writers are discovered to have violated these essential terms. In my creative nonfiction classes, my students and I spend a good bit of time brooding over the more nuanced terms of this contract.

Q: If you can boil it down, what’s the top piece you’d give aspiring writers?

A: This one’s easy. Don’t give up! That is, if you love the writing part of writing, keep at it and don’t be discouraged by the obstacles that come your way as you seek publication. I find that many aspiring writers simply don’t realize how many false starts, how many drafts, how many rejections by agents and editors, how many years, in short, go into a typical book. Perseverance pays.

Q: What are you reading and recommending currently?

A: The best novel I read recently is Richard Powers’ THE OVERSTORY, in which several interconnected characters and plot-lines beautifully evoke the long and tangled relationship between trees and us. On the nonfiction front, I was fascinated and moved by Sy Montgomery’s THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS, which forced me to look at octopuses (not “octopi,” I learned) in an entirely new light, and to rethink my alimentary choices at Greek restaurants and sushi bars!

Finally, upon learning of Mary Oliver’s recent passing (who was living just up the coast in Hobe Sound), I’ve been re-reading many of the poems I’ve so admired over her long career and reading some of her newer work in DEVOTIONS, a fairly comprehensive recent anthology of her poetry.

Q: What are you working on next?

A: Funny that you ask. I’m delighted to report that I’m currently working on a novel manuscript and a related collection of stories set in the Florida Keys! While I don’t like to talk too much about my current projects, I will say that I was inspired by my several bird-watching visits to the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park. As some of your readers surely know, this hammock and much of north Key Largo was slated for residential development in the 1970s and 80s, and some construction had ensued. Thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts of various environmental groups, including the Izaak Walton League, Friends of the Everglades, and the Upper Keys Citizens Association, led by Dagny Johnson, the land was finally acquired by Florida’s Conservation and Recreational Lands Program. The 2,421 acre park, which I encourage readers to visit, is now home to 84 protected species of plants and animals.

~ Robin Wood, Associate Manager

A Q&A with Holly Goldberg Sloan, co-author of TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH

February 2, 2019

by Robin Wood

Photo credit: Gary A. Rosen

Come meet Holly Goldberg Sloan, co-author of TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH and be among the first people to read her new middle-grade book. Attendees at Holly’s Sunday, February 10, reading and book signing will have the opportunity to get the book two days before its official release.This 2pm store event is free, family friendly and open to the public.

Holly Goldberg Sloan, author of the New York Times bestsellers COUNTING BY 7s and SHORT, has teamed up with Meg Wolitzer, the New York Times-bestselling author of novels for adults and kids, on TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH, a moving, exuberant, laugh-out-loud novel about friendship and family, told entirely in emails and letters. Get to know a little bit about Holly and her new book below and come ready with your own questions.

Q: How did you and Meg Wolitzer come to write this novel together?

A: Meg and I met in Naperville, Illinois at Anderson’s Bookshop’s YA Conference. I thought Meg was so funny, and it wasn’t long before we discovered that we had so many life similarities. We’re both writers married to writers. We both have two sons. We both want to laugh more than anything. Over the course of the next few years, as we sent each other email and text messages, we decided we wanted to write something together. We didn’t know how, exactly. I remember asking my husband, and he said, “Just start by emailing each other.” He meant, for the record, that we should send emails back and forth with ideas, themes and possible outlines. I didn’t understand. I thought he meant I should email Meg as a character. So I did that. The very first email of TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH remains very, very close to that first message! I’m pretty proud of that. We never had an outline. And in fact, I resisted talking much about the story. It was so exciting to not know where it was all going.

Q: What do you hope readers will take away from Avery, Bett and their family?

A: Our book is about two young girls who are trying to navigate the fact that their single fathers are now in a relationship. It’s about identity and family, and it’s funny and, I hope, moving. The big take away, I believe, is one of acceptance. We live in times of great division. If these two girls (and their two dads) can find a way to work things out, there’s hope for us all.

Q: What do you like about writing for middle-grade readers?

A: I think that both Meg and I write stories that interest us. So we don’t target readers so much as we target intriguing characters and stories. I believe that adults will get as much out of TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH as kids.

Q: What are you reading and recommending? For adults? For kids?

I loved EDUCATED, by Tara Westover. And I just finished ASYMMETRY, by Lisa Halliday. I love all of Kate Dicamillo’s books. And Jackie Woodson makes the world go round.

Q: Have you been to Key West before? What are you most looking forward to here?

A: I have never been to Key West and I will visit 15 cities in the next month as Meg and I promote this new novel. Key West is by far the place I’m most excited to see. I have heard that the drive from Miami is epic. I’m ready!

~ Robin Wood, Associate Manager