Corner Bookstore

Hannah Wunsch discusses her debut The Autumn Ghost
2023-05-25 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Americans knew polio as the “summer plague.” In countries further North, however, the virus arrived later in the year, slipping into the homes of healthy children as the summer waned and the equinox approached. It was described by one writer as “the autumn ghost.”
Intensive care units and mechanical ventilation are the crucial foundation of modern medical care: without them, the appalling death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic would be even higher. In The Autumn Ghost, Dr. Hannah Wunsch traces the origins of these two innovations back to a polio epidemic in the autumn of 1952. Drawing together compelling testimony from doctors, nurses, medical students, and patients, Wunsch relates a gripping tale of an epidemic that changed the world.
In vivid, captivating chapters, Wunsch tells the dramatic true story of how insiders and iconoclasts came together in one overwhelmed hospital in Copenhagen to save the lives of many polio patients dying of respiratory failure. Their radical advances in care marked a turning point in the treatment of patients around the world–from the rise of life support and the creation of intensive care units to the evolution of rehabilitation medicine.

Rose Styron in conversation about her new book Beyond This Harbor
2023-06-13 18:00 - 19:30
An intimate portrait of a celebrated magic life and the famous and infamous who dropped in, summered, traveled with, played with, and the decades of friendship with everyone from Truman Capote and Robert Penn Warren to the Kennedys, the Bernsteins, Alexander Calder, John Hersey, and Lillian Hellman.
Here as well are the years of dedication and risk, traveling the world, from Pinochet’s Chile to El Salvador, Belfast, and Sarajevo, as Rose Styron, in search of those hiding from dictators and autocrats, bore witness to atrocities and human rights violations . . .

Styron writes of her childhood, born into a German Jewish, assimilated Baltimore family; a rebel from the start, studying poetry at Wellesley, Harvard, Johns Hopkins; traveling to Rome and her (second) meeting with Bill (the first time, “I can’t remember even shaking hands. I wasn’t thinking about him at all.”); their eventual marriage, and their more than fifty years together–in bucolic Roxbury, Connecticut, and on Martha’s Vineyard.
Rose Styron will be in conversation with her editor, Victoria Wilson. Ms. Wilson is a Vice President, Executive Editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Publishers. She has served on the boards of PEN American Center, the National Board Review of Motion Pictures, the Writing Program of the New School for Social Research, and Poets & Writers. Wilson is the author of A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907–1940, Volume One and is at work on the concluding volume.

Susannah Marren in conversation about her new book Maribelle's Shadow
2023-06-27 18:00 - 19:30
Maribelle, the eldest of the three Barrows sisters, deserves to be envied. Not only for her plum position as editorial director of Palm Beach Confidential, but for her impressive husband, Samuel, and his involvement in the family business. Together, they present themselves as the “it” couple of Palm Beach. She might have even aced her two stunning younger sisters.
But things aren’t always what they seem. When Samuel unexpectedly dies, suspicion around the Barrows family swirls. Suddenly the authenticity of their socially ambitious mother, Lucinda, and their lavish existence of mansions, prestige, privilege, and couture wardrobe are in question.
As their carefully constructed image unravels, their tidily placed aspirations are challenged. Each sister realizes she must fend for herself and fight for not only what she longs for, but believes in. For Maribelle, it is the will to rise above the discovery that her husband was not who he seemed. For Caroline, the middle sister, it is facing the fact that she is suffocating from the life she built to please her family. For Raleigh, the youngest, her double life surfaces, threatening her status of wife and young mother.
As each of the Barrows sisters searches for a pathway out, an unexpected power play emerges. Until the price of escape is too dear and worth any risk. Until the winner takes all.
Susannah Marren will be in conversation with Kara Feifer, producer of the podcast She Wants More

Sam Freedman presents his new book Into the Bright Sunshine
2023-07-11 18:00 - 19:30
During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president -the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate -but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. Even under Franklin Roosevelt, the party had dodged the issue in order to keep a bloc of Southern segregationists-the so-called Dixiecrats-in the New Deal coalition.
On the convention’s final day, Hubert Humphrey, just 37 and the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium. Defying Truman’s own desire to occupy the middle ground, Humphrey urged the delegates to “get out of the shadow of state’s rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” Humphrey’s speech put everything on the line, rhetorically and politically, to move the party, and the country, forward.
To the surprise of many, including Humphrey himself, the delegates voted to adopt a meaningful civil-rights plank. With no choice but to run on it, Truman seized the opportunity it offered, desegregating the armed forces and in November upsetting the frontrunner Thomas Dewey, a victory due in part to an unprecedented surge of Black voters.
The outcome of that week in July 1948-which marks its 75th anniversary as this book is published-shapes American politics to this day. And it was in turned shaped by Humphrey. His journey to that pivotal speech runs from a remote, all-white hamlet in South Dakota to the mayoralty of Minneapolis as he tackles its notorious racism and anti-Semitism to his role as a national champion of multiracial democracy. His allies in that struggle include a Black newspaper publisher, a Jewish attorney, and a professor who had fled Nazi Germany. And his adversaries are the white supremacists, Christian Nationalists, and America Firsters of mid-century America – one of whom tries to assassinate him.
Here is a book that celebrates one of the overlooked landmarks of civil rights history, and illuminates the early life and enduring legacy of the man who helped bring it about.

Janet Wallach reads from her new book Flirting with Danger
2023-08-01 18:00 - 19:30
Born a privileged child of America’s Gilded Age, Marguerite Harrison rebelled against her mother’s ambitions, married the man she loved, was widowed at thirty-seven, and set off on a life of adventure. Hired as a society reporter, when America entered World War I she applied to Military Intelligence to work as a spy.
She arrived in Berlin immediately after the Armistice and befriended the enemy, dining with aristocrats and dancing with socialists. Late into the night she wrote prescient reports on the growing power of the German right. Sent to Moscow, she sneaked into Russia to observe the results of the Bolshevik Revolution. Although she carried press credentials she was caught and imprisoned as an American spy. Terrified when told her only way out was to spy for the Cheka, she became a double agent, aiming to convince the Russian rulers she was working for them while striving to stay loyal to her country.
In Germany and Russia, Harrison saw the future–a second war with Germany, a cold war with the Soviets–but her reports were ignored by many back home. Over a decade, Harrison’s mysterious adventures took her to Europe, Baghdad, and the Far East, as a socialite, secret agent, and documentary filmmaker. Janet Wallach captures Harrison’s daring and glamour in this stranger-than-fiction history of a woman drawn to the impossible.

Nick McDonell reads from his new book Quiet Street: On American Privilege
2023-09-19 18:00 - 19:30
Nick McDonell grew up on New York City’s Upper East Side, a neighborhood defined by its wealth and influence. As a child, McDonell enjoyed everything that rarefied world entailed–sailing lessons in the Hamptons, school galas at the Met, and holiday trips on private jets. But as an adult, he left it behind to become a foreign correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Quiet Street, McDonell returns to the sidewalks of his youth, exhuming with bracing honesty his upbringing and those of his affluent peers. From Galápagos Island cruises and Tanzanian safaris to steely handshakes and schoolyard microaggressions to fox-hunting rituals and the courtship rites of sexually precocious tweens, McDonell examines the rearing of the ruling class in scalpel-sharp detail, documenting how wealth and power are hoarded, encoded, and passed down from one generation to the next. What’s more, he demonstrates how outsiders–the poor, the nonwhite, the suburban–are kept out.
Searing and precise yet ultimately full of compassion, Quiet Street examines the problem of America’s one percent, whose vision of a more just world never materializes. Who are these people? How do they cling to power? What would it take for them to share it? Quiet Street looks for answers in a universal experience: coming to terms with the culture that made you.
Nick will be in conversation with his editor, Lisa Lucas.
Lisa Lucas is the Senior Vice President & Publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books at Penguin Random House. Previously, Lucas was the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation for five years. Prior to joining the Foundation, she served as the Publisher of Guernica, a non-profit online magazine focusing on writing that explores the intersection of art and politics with an international and diverse focus.

Douglas Brunt in conversation about his new book The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel
2023-09-21 18:00 - 19:30
September 29, 1913: the steamship Dresden is halfway between Belgium and England. On board is one of the most famous men in the world, Rudolf Diesel, whose new internal combustion engine is on the verge of revolutionizing global industry forever. But Diesel never arrives at his destination. He vanishes during the night and headlines around the world wonder if it was an accident, suicide, or murder. After rising from an impoverished European childhood, Diesel had become a multi-millionaire with his powerful engine that does not require expensive petroleum-based fuel. In doing so, he became not only an international celebrity but also the enemy of two extremely powerful men: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and the richest man in the world. The Kaiser wanted the engine to power a fleet of submarines that would finally allow him to challenge Great Britain’s Royal Navy. But Diesel had intended for his engine to be used for the betterment of mankind and refused to keep the technology out of the hands of the British or any other nation. For John D. Rockefeller, the engine was nothing less than an existential threat to his vast and lucrative oil empire. As electric lighting began to replace kerosene lamps, Rockefeller’s bottom line depended on the world’s growing thirst for gasoline to power its automobiles and industries.
At the outset of this new age of electricity and oil, Europe stood on the precipice of war. Rudolf Diesel grew increasingly concerned about Germany’s rising nationalism and military spending. The inventor was on his way to London to establish a new company that would help Britain improve its failing submarine program when he disappeared.
Douglas Brunt will be in conversation with Joseph Kanon, author of The Berlin Exchange, Istanbul Passage, and Leaving Berlin, amongst others.

James Shulman discusses his new book The Synthetic University
2023-10-04 18:00 - 19:30
US colleges and universities have long been the envy of the world. Institutional autonomy has fostered creativity among faculty, students, and staff. But this autonomy means that colleges tend to create their own solutions for every need. As a result, higher education suffers from costly redundancies that drive tuitions ever upward, putting higher education, essential to the fabric of the country, at risk. Instead of wishful thinking about collaboration or miraculous subsidies, The Synthetic University describes intermediary organizations that can provide innovative, cost-effective solutions.
Offering answers to challenges jointly faced by thousands of institutions, James Shulman lays out a compelling new vision of how to reduce spending while enabling schools to maintain their particular contributions. He explains why colleges are so resistant to change and presents illuminating case studies of mission-driven and market-supported entrepreneurial organizations–such as the student tracking infrastructure of the National Student Clearinghouse or the ambitious effort of classics professors to create a shared transinstitutional department. Mixing theory with lessons drawn from his own experience, he demonstrates how to finance and implement the organizations that can synthesize much-needed solutions.

Melissa Newman presents her book Head Over Heels
2023-10-26 18:00 - 19:30
Their love story is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman became not only movie stars and stage actors, but also artistic collaborators, political activists, and philanthropists whose legacies are expansive and enduringly modern.
These striking images–many rare and some never before published–are accompanied by snapshots, letters, handwritten notes, and family treasures. Together they beautifully illuminate the connection between two complex, passionate artists who opened their hearts and minds to each other for over half a century. This book is an homage to the possibility and power of love.

Maggie Jackson reads from her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure
2023-11-07 18:00 - 19:30
In an era of terrifying unpredictability, we race to address complex crises with neat algorithms, bullet points, or hurried tweets. How could we find the clarity and vision so urgently needed today by being unsure? Uncertain is about the unsung triumph of doing just that. A scientific adventure tale set on the front lines of a volatile era, this paradigm-shifting book by award-winning author Maggie Jackson shows us how to skillfully confront the unexpected and the unknown, and how to harness not-knowing in the service of wisdom, invention, mutual understanding, and even resilience. Long neglected as a topic of study, the newly discovered gifts of uncertainty now fascinate the greatest cognitive scientists – and offer a remarkable antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our day. In laboratories, operating rooms, boardrooms, and on the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, Uncertain unlocks the secrets to a state of mind that is critical to human achievement yet treated as a shameful flaw.

Jody Gelb reads from her debut Micro-Memoir She May Be Lying Down but She May Be Very Happy
2023-11-09 18:00 - 19:30
Everything was going right in the delivery room until, suddenly, it wasn’t. The baby’s brain was damaged; the new mother, unprepared for the life she and her family would now be living.
In dense, lyrical prose, Jody Gelb pays tribute to her daughter’s short life. She May Be lying Down but She May Be Very Happy is a marvel of compression and potency. Gelb lays her experience bare in the full range of its emotional complexity, from profound suffering to ecstatic joy. It is a mother-daughter memoir scrubbed of sentiment. She May Be lying Down but She May Be Very Happy isn’t so much a book as the naked truth of being human in this imperfect world.

Julian Tepper reads from his latest novel Cooler Heads
2024-01-23 18:00 - 19:30
Julian Tepper’s fourth novel, Cooler Heads, is a story about modern love. With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest. A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a city–New York–that would have us think that we can have it all, Cooler Heads is a tour de force and impossible to put down, a literary triumph.

E.L. Shen in conversation about her new book Maybe It's a Sign
2024-01-25 18:00 - 19:30
Seventh-grader Freya June Sun has always believed in the Chinese superstitions spoon-fed to her since birth. Ever since her dad’s death a year ago, she’s become obsessed with them, and believes that her father is sending her messages from beyond. Like how, on her way to an orchestra concert where she’s dreading her viola solo, a pair of lucky red birds appear–a sure indication that Dad wants Freya to stick with the instrument and make him proud.
Then Freya is partnered with Gus Choi, a goofy and super annoying classmate, for a home economics project. To her surprise, as they experiment with recipes and get to know each other, Freya finds that she may love baking more than music. It could be time for a big change in her life, even though her dad hasn’t sent a single sign. But with the help of her family, Gus (who might not be so annoying after all), and two maybe-magical birds, Freya learns that to be her own person, she might just have to make her own luck.

E.L Shen will be in conversation with Christina Li. CHRISTINA LI is the author of children’s and YA books Clues to the Universe, which was a Washington Post summer book club pick, Ruby Lost and Found, which was an NPR, Kirkus, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, and the forthcoming True Love and Other Impossible Odds (from HarperCollins / Quill Tree Books). She grew up in the Midwest and California but now calls New York home

Roxana Robinson reads from her upcoming novel Leaving
2024-02-15 18:00 - 19:30
Leaving charts a passage through loyalty and desire as it builds to a shattering conclusion. In her boldest and most powerful work to date, Roxana Robinson demonstrates her “trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life” (Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune) in an engrossing exploration of the vows we make to one another, the tensile relationships between parents and their children, and what we owe to others and ourselves.

Ellen Feldman in conversation about her novel The Trouble with You
2024-02-20 18:00 - 19:30
Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble With You is the story of a young woman whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. A vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light years away and strangely immediate.

Josie Cox reads from her new book, Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality
2024-03-04 18:00 - 19:30
From an experienced financial journalist, Women Money Power is the story of how women have fought for financial freedom, and the social and political hurdles that have kept them from equality. Cox delves deep into the challenges women face today and the culture and systems that hold them back. A fascinating narrative account of progress, women’s lives, and the work still to be done.

Clare McHugh reads from her latest novel, The Romanov Brides
2024-03-14 18:00 - 19:30
From the author of A Most English Princess comes The Romanov Brides, a moving and fascinating portrait of two bold and spirited royal sisters, bringing imperial Russia to vivid life—a dazzling, decadent world on the brink of disappearing forever.

Kate Feiffer in conversation about her new book Morning Pages
2024-05-07 18:00 - 19:30
Elise Hellman was once heralded by audiences and critics as a “playwright to watch.” Then they forgot all about her. When a prestigious theater company unexpectedly offers her a generous commission to write a new play, she has an opportunity to turn her career around. With sixty-five days left until her deadline, Elise starts scribbling a few pages of stream-of-consciousness first thing every morning as a way to get over her writer’s block–a technique called Morning Pages, popularized in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. What emerges is a witty confessional in which Elise chronicles her life with her teenage stoner son and her overbearing and eccentric mother, who is losing her memory but not her profanity. She writes about her lingering feelings for her ex-husband, her best friend who is acting oddly, and the confusing encounters she has with a handsome stranger in an elevator. As she writes, the marked-up scenes from her play, Deja New, are revealed, as a story within the story. Morning Pages is about what life throws at you when you’re trying to write. It is both a humorous exploration of the creative process and a relatable coming-of-age tale for the generation sandwiched between caring for their parents and caring for their kids.
Kate Feiffer will be in conversation with Gretchen Young, founder and publisher of Regalo Press.

Debbie Babitt reads from her new thriller The Man on the Train
2024-05-14 18:00 - 19:30
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Linda Haley is awakened early one morning by two police officers at the door. She has no idea that her husband has been living a secret life during his daily commute from Scarsdale into the city. Now Guy is the prime suspect in a brutal murder that could derail Linda’s high-powered career and may be connected to a cold case.
And Guy has disappeared.
With a warrant out for her husband’s arrest, Linda sets out to prove his innocence accompanied by an ex-cop who harbors a secret affection for her. Together, they travel to the scene of a forty-year-old unsolved murder and a night of violence that shattered the serenity of a small fishing hamlet just past the Hamptons.
But as the manhunt intensifies and she begins to uncover the shocking truth–and the past Guy has buried deep–Linda must decide if the stranger she married is innocent or guilty. And if he truly deserves to be saved.
Featuring tense, atmospheric suspense that moves at breakneck speed, this Hitchcockian thriller careens from a bedroom community just north of New York City to the picturesque beaches of eastern Long Island to a suburban train station, where a killer hiding in plain sight waits to exact a final revenge.

Editor Andrew Blauner presents his latest anthology On the Couch with contributors Adam Gopnik & Phillip Lopate
2024-05-21 18:00 - 19:30
W. H. Auden described Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) as “a whole climate of opinion / Under whom we conduct our differing lives.” The controversial father of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Freud charted the human unconscious, brought us the talking cure, and wrote books that now rank among the classics of world literature. In On the Couch, the great analyst is analyzed by some of today’s great writers and thinkers, who help us understand the man who has helped us understand ourselves as much, if not more, than anyone else, ever. The result is a fresh, multifaceted reassessment of Freud’s continuing relevance and influence on ideas, literature, culture, science, and more.

We are pleased to welcome contributors Adam Gopnik and Phillip Lopate.

John Darnton in conversation about his new book Burning Sky
2024-05-29 18:00 - 19:30
In Burning Sky, three generations of a family confront the life-and-death challenge of global warming. The first, a cantankerous climatologist, raises the alarm. The second, a brilliant scientist with a lust for power that spawns a dictatorship, constructs “the Cocoon,” a stratospheric shield to deflect sunlight. When it cuts the Earth off from the blue sky and majestic stars and plunges our planet into an eternal miasmic fog, it is up to the third generation—the very son and daughter of the scientist—to try to overthrow him and dismantle his pernicious works.
In aiming to undo the damage of their ancestors, perhaps the younger generation can set humanity on a wiser course.
John Darnton will be in conversation with author David Grann.

Teddy Wayne reads from his latest novel The Winner
2024-05-30 18:00 - 19:30
Conor O’Toole has never been anywhere as casually glamorous as Cutters Neck, a gated community near Cape Cod. It’s a sweet deal for the summer: free lodging in a guest cottage in exchange for tennis lessons, luxuriously far from the cramped Yonkers apartment he shares with his diabetic mother. In this oceanfront paradise, however, new clients prove hard to come by, and Conor has bills to pay. Then a sharp-tongued divorcée appears, offering him double his usual rate. Soon he realizes Catherine is expecting additional, off-the-court services for her money, and Conor tumbles into a secret erotic affair unlike anything he’s experienced before. Despite his steamy flings with a woman twice his age, he simultaneously finds himself falling for the artsy, outspoken girl he met on the beach. Conor somehow finds a way to manage this tangled web–until he makes one final, irreversible mistake.
A dark, explosive literary thriller that brilliantly skewers the elite, Whiting Award winner Teddy Wayne’s unputdownable novel is cinematic, shocking, and a psychological masterpiece.

Allison Pugh in conversation about her new book The Last Human Job
2024-06-04 18:00 - 19:30
Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Allison Pugh develops the concept of “connective labor,” a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other’s humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where connective labor thrives, offering practical steps for building a social architecture that works.
Vividly illustrating how connective labor enriches the lives of individuals and binds our communities together, The Last Human Job is a compelling argument for us to recognize, value, and protect humane work in an increasingly automated and disconnected world.

Allison Pugh will be in conversation with Deborah Copaken.

Deborah Copaken is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Shutterbabe, The Red Book, Between Here and April, and Ladyparts– her most recent memoir of bodily destruction and resurrection during marital rupture (Random House, 2021). A contributing writer at The Atlantic, she was also a writer on the Emmy/Golden-Globe nominated Netflix hit, Emily in Paris a performer (The Moth, etc.), and an Emmy Award–winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Slate, O, the Oprah Magazine, Daily Beast, Air Mail, and Paris Match, among others.

Phillip Lopate launches his latest book My Affair with Art House Cinema
2024-07-16 18:00 - 19:30
Phillip Lopate fell hard for the movies as an adolescent. As he matured into an acclaimed critic and essayist, his infatuation deepened into a lifelong passion. My Affair with Art House Cinema presents Lopate’s selected essays and reviews from the last quarter century, inviting readers to experience films he found exhilarating, tantalizing, and beguiling–and sometimes disappointing or frustrating–through his keen eyes.
In an essayist’s sinuous prose style, Lopate captures the formal mastery, artistic imagination, and emotional intensity of art house essentials like Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, as well as works by contemporary filmmakers such as Maren Ade, Hong Sang-soo, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Christian Petzold, Paolo Sorrentino, and Jafar Panahi. Essays explore Chantal Akerman’s rigorous honesty, Ingmar Bergman’s intimacy, Abbas Kiarostami’s playfulness, Kenji Mizoguchi’s visual style, and Frederick Wiseman’s vision of the human condition. Lopate also reflects on the work of fellow critics, including Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and Jonathan Rosenbaum. His considered, at times contrarian critiques and celebrations will inspire readers to watch or rewatch these films. Above all, this book showcases Lopate’s passionate advocacy for not only particular films and directors but also the joys and value of a filmgoing culture.

Please join us for the NYC launch of Melanie Hamrick's new book The Unraveling
2024-08-20 18:00 - 19:30
Jocelyn Banks has always felt like an outsider in the ballet world. She was raised in rural Louisiana, taught to scrap and hustle for the life she wanted. And ever since Jocelyn found ballet, she has been able to take her life into her own hands. After years of success at the North American Ballet, she is now on a hiatus to enjoy life in London.But in an instant, Jocelyn’s world is turned upside down and she’s forced find a way back into the ballet world. But the ballet scene in London is completely different from the one in America. It’s not just talent and drive that will move you forward; if you don’t secure a sponsor to pay your salary, you will go nowhere. Jocelyn manages to score a donor, which is crucial at the Royal National Ballet—but the hardest part is yet to come.Jocelyn is unable to break through her emotions, afraid that if she does, she’ll be flooded with feelings she can’t afford to have. But something about her sponsor, the charismatic Alastair Cavendish, sets a fire in her. What she feels when she’s with him is raw and real. If she goes down this precarious path, she knows she’s doomed to fall into an intoxicating spiral of self-sabotage. But the lust and magnetizing lure of power and prestige keep clawing at her, ultimately forcing her to choose between desire and duty.

Cynthia Zarin launches her new poetry collection Next Day: New and Selected Poems
2024-09-05 18:00 - 19:30
Beginning with several dozen new poems that have appeared in The New Yorker, among other publications, this volume is a tour through Zarin’s five exquisitely made collections, beginning with The Swordfish Tooth, published in 1989. Zarin, a poet in the line of Elizabeth Bishop, allows the reader to experience human truths through a poem’s shape and music, bodied forth through intimate images–the turn in the stair, a snow globe, naked birch branches, a vase of flowers–and a propulsive syntax. From the clarity of childhood memory to the maze of marriage and divorce, from her own consciousness–shaping landscapes of New York, Cape Cod, and Rome, to the shifting tides of history and the troubled conscience of a nation, her subject matter encompasses all of a woman’s life, with passion–its risks, satisfactions, and shattering immediacy–her first and truest subject.

Carolyn Jack launches hew debut novel The Changing of Keys
2024-09-17 18:00 - 19:30
With his father dead, a gifted, fourteen-year-old pianist finds himself sent away from his Caribbean home against his will, to study classical music in the U.S. with a family friend he’s never met. His first angry, frightened step away from the controlling mother he’s never been able to reach becomes a sharp break with her expectations: he leaps into the dramatic and cutthroat world of opera. In this high-stakes milieu, his fierce desire to be a star fires both his brilliance and the dark distrust of women and of love that is the legacy of his childhood, a legacy that threatens his career, his impulsive marriage, and the young daughter he never wanted.

Paulina Bren launches her new book She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street
2024-09-18 18:00 - 19:30
First came the secretaries from Brooklyn and Queens—the “smart cookies” who learned on the job despite the obstacles. Then came the first Harvard Business School grads, who, despite their hard-earned diplomas, often settled for less. Eventually came the yuppies of the 1980s in power suits and commuter sneakers. In She-Wolves, award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the story of the first generations of women who fought their way into the bad-boy culture and lavish opulence of the finance world. If the wolves of Wall Street made a show of their ferocity, the she-wolves did so with tough-as-nails persistence. Starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of Wall Street’s clubs and unapologetic sexism and racism were the norm at top firms, Bren chronicles the remarkable women who demanded a seat at the table. She-Wolves is an engaging and enraging look at the collision of women, finance, and New York from the go-go years to ground zero.

Sarah Gronningsater in conversation about her new book The Rising Generation
2024-09-25 18:00 - 19:30
The Rising Generation chronicles the long history of emancipation in the United States through the cradle-to-grave experiences of a generation of black New Yorkers. Born into precarious freedom after the American Revolution and reaching adulthood in the lead-up to the Civil War, this remarkable generation ultimately played an outsized role in political and legal conflicts over slavery’s future, influencing both the nation’s path to the Civil War and changes to the US Constitution.
Sarah will be in conversation with author Matt McCarthy. Matt is the author of The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly & Odd Man Out

Stephen Bruno reads from his debut Building Material
2024-09-26 18:00 - 19:30
As an academically gifted Latino kid growing up in the Bronx, Stephen Bruno’s family had high aspirations for his future. He attended magnet schools and selective academic programs and was on track to realize his potential. But those dreams were derailed when, much to his Mami’s dismay, he followed a girlfriend to Minnesota and a dead-end job. Languishing and unable to get it together, Stephen eventually moved back home. Broke and eager to make a way for himself–and away from the oppressively religious father wreaking havoc on his love life–the affable, easy going, and quick-witted Stephen lands a much-coveted job as a doorman at a high-end building on Park Avenue.
Hilarity and drama soon abound as Stephen learns the dos and don’ts of being a doorman for the rich and famous and witnesses the antics going on behind the front entrance of this swanky building. In Building Material, he shares those entertaining tales and introduces an unforgettable cast of characters–from Puerto Rican and Albanian doormen battling it out for turf to quirky one percenters to slimy sugar daddies to his peers, both friends and frenemies. Throughout, Stephen offers a glimpse into the unfathomable lives of the residents and a sharp portrait of an everyday man wanting more for himself.
Both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, Building Material is a captivating true tale of class, failure, and redemption–and how to come back swinging–from a gifted young talent.
