Judy Batalion discusses her debut memoir White Walls
2016-01-07 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Judy Batalion grew up in a house filled with endless piles of junk and layers of crumbs and dust; suffocated by tuna fish cans, old papers and magazines, swivel chairs, tea bags, clocks, cameras, printers, VHS tapes, ballpoint pens…obsessively gathered and stored by her hoarder mother. The first chance she had, she escaped the clutter to create a new identity—one made of order, regimen, and clean white walls. Until, one day, she found herself enmeshed in life’s biggest chaos: motherhood. Confronted with the daunting task of raising a daughter after her own dysfunctional childhood, Judy reflected on not only her own upbringing but the lives of her mother and grandmother, Jewish Polish immigrants who had escaped the Holocaust. What she discovered astonished her. The women in her family, despite their differences, were even more closely connected than she ever knew—from her grandmother Zelda to her daughter of the same name. And, despite the hardships of her own mother-daughter relationship, it was that bond that was slowly healing her old wounds. Told with heartbreaking honesty and humor, this is Judy’s poignant account of her trials negotiating the messiness of motherhood and the indelible marks that mothers and daughters make on each other’s lives.
Judy will be in discussion with Amy Klein. Amy Klein wrote the fertility diary column for the New York Times. She’s working on a memoir of her own about her four-year journey to have a baby.
A wine & cheese reception will follow the reading.

Bill Keenan reads from his debut Odd Man Rush
2016-01-12 18:00 - 19:30
In his hilarious, gritty, and touching debut, Bill Keenan—a hockey star once on the fast-track to the NHL—tells of how he overcame multiple obstacles to find fulfillment and redemption in the strange world of European minor-league professional hockey. Keenan’s hockey obsession begins as a five-year-old on Lasker Rink in New York’s Central Park—“love at first stride,” as he calls it. He then becomes the youngest, and skinniest, player on the New York Bobcats, a Junior B hockey team. Later, after his hockey career at Harvard doesn’t end as planned—with a fat NHL contract—Keenan decides to play in the minor leagues in Europe, where the glamour of professional sports is decidedly lacking. Part fish-out-of-water travelogue, part coming-of-age memoir, Odd Man Rush will capture the interest of not just hockey fans, but also fans of good writing. Throughout, Keenan’s deep affection for the game shines through, even as he describes fans who steal players’ clothes from the locker room or toss empty beer cans onto the rink after games. Abusive fans, cold showers, long bus rides—nothing diminishes his love for the sport. “Because that’s the way it works with me and hockey. Even when it’s horrible, it’s wonderful.”

Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig read from The Forgotten Room
2016-01-19 18:00 - 19:30
New York Times bestselling authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig present a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century….
1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel’s portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room? The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers.

Celebrate the publication of Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine with author Diane Williams
2016-01-26 18:00 - 19:30
The very short stories of Diane Williams have been aptly called “folk tales that hammer like a nail gun,” and these 40 new ones are sharper than ever. They are unsettling, yes, frequently revelatory, and more often than not downright funny.
Not a single moment here is what you might expect. While there is immense pleasure to be found in Williams’s spot-on observations about how we behave in our highest and lowest moments, the heart of the drama beats in the language of American short fiction’s grand master, whose originality, precision, and power bring the familiar into startling and enchanted relief.

Maureen Sherry reads from her debut adult novel Opening Belle
2016-02-03 18:00 - 19:30
A whip-smart and funny novel told by a former Wall Street insider who reveals what it’s like for a working woman to balance love, ambition, and family in a world of glamorous excess, outrageous risk-taking, and jaw-dropping sexism. In 2008, Isabelle—a self-made, thirty-something Wall Street star—appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a handsome husband, and a high-powered job. But her reality is something else. Her trading desk work environment resembles a 1980s frat party, her husband feels employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare and homecare still falls in Belle’s already full lap. Enter Henry, the former college fiancé she never quite got over; now a hedge fund mogul. He becomes her largest client, and Belle gets to see the life she might have had with him. While Henry campaigns to win Belle back, the sexually harassed women in her office take action to improve their working conditions, and recruit a wary Belle into a secret “glass ceiling club” whose goal is to mellow the cowboy banking culture and get equal pay for their work. All along, Belle can sense the financial markets heading toward their soon-to-be historic crash and that something has to give—and when it does, everything is going to change: her marriage, her career, her world, and her need to keep her colleagues’ hands to themselves.
From Maureen Sherry, a prize winning writer, a former Managing Director on Wall Street (who never signed a nondisclosure agreement when she left), Opening Belle takes readers into the adrenaline-fueled chaos of a Wall Street trading desk, the lavish parties, the lunch-time rendezvous, and ultimately into the heart of a woman who finds it easier to cook up millions at work than dinner at home.

Cristina Alger reads from her new novel This Was Not the Plan
2016-02-04 18:00 - 19:30
From the acclaimed author of The Darlings comes an incisive, hilarious, and tender exploration of fatherhood, love, and family life through the story of a widower who attempts to become the father he didn’t know he could be. Charlie Goldwyn’s life hasn’t exactly gone according to plan. Widowerhood at thirty-three and twelve-hour workdays have left a gap in his relationship with his quirky five-year-old son, Caleb, whose obsession with natural disasters and penchant for girls’ clothing have made him something of a loner at his preschool. The only thing Charlie has going for him is his job at a prestigious law firm, where he is finally close to becoming a partner. But when a slight lapse in judgment at an office party leaves him humiliatingly unemployed, stuck at home with Caleb for the summer, and forced to face his own estranged father, Charlie starts to realize that there’s more to fatherhood than financially providing for his son, and more to being a son than overtaking his father’s successes. At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, This Was Not the Plan is a story about loss and love, parenthood, and friendship, and what true work-life balance means.

Susan Jacoby reads from her latest Strange Gods
2016-02-16 18:00 - 19:30
In this original and riveting exploration, Susan Jacoby argues that conversion—especially in the free American “religious marketplace”—is too often viewed only within the conventional and simplistic narrative of personal reinvention and divine grace. Instead, the author places conversions within a secular social context that has, at various times, included the force of a unified church and state, desire for upward economic mobility, and interreligious marriage—the latter as critical in the early Christian era as in the United States today, where half of Americans have switched faiths at least once in their adult lives. The sometimes tragic, sometimes inspiring story is shaped by the competing absolute truth claims of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam and their impact on Jews—the only monotheistic believers with an older historical stake. Moving through time, continents, and cultures—dealing with the often-ignored forced conversion of American slaves to Christianity as well as with the better-known story of the Spanish Inquisition and the persecution of both atheists and Christians in modern Islamic theocracies—the story also includes conversions to authoritarian secular ideologies, notably Stalinist Communism, that resemble traditional, unquestioning faith. Finally, the author examines true religious choice—a product of the Enlightenment pioneered by the U.S. Constitution. This history is punctuated by portraits of individual converts, including the Catholic Church father Augustine of Hippo; the German Jewish convert to Catholicism Edith Stein, murdered at Auschwitz and canonized by the church; boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who scandalized white Americans in the 1960s by becoming a Muslim, and even politicians such as George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair. In a forthright conclusion to this enthralling history, Strange Gods takes on the question of why the freedom to choose a religion—or to reject religion altogether—is a fundamental human rights issue that remains a breeding ground for violence in areas of the world that never experienced an Enlightenment.

Molly Peacock reads from her latest Alpabetique
2016-02-29 18:00 - 19:30
Alphabetique: 26 Characteristic Fictions is unique, but nevertheless fits perfectly with Molly Peacock’s extraordinary body of work, drawing on the same wellsprings of creativity and artistry as her poetry, her memoir Paradise, Piece by Piece, and her bestselling work of biography (and so much more), The Paper Garden. These charming, incisive, sensual stories of love, yearning, and self-discovery are complimented by Kara Kosaka’s layered, jewel-bright collages.

Jane Mendelsohn reads from her new book Burning Down the House
2016-03-15 18:00 - 19:30
“It begins with a child . . .” So opens Jane Mendelsohn’s powerful new novel. Or really with two children, two girls. One, from the Caucasus, sold into the sex trade; the other, the adopted daughter—his beloved sister’s orphaned child—of Steve, patriarch of the Zane family. In cinematic, dazzlingly described scenes—from lavish weddings to the transglobal underworld; from London, Rome and New York to Laos and Istanbul—we meet all the Zanes, their staff, and their friends. In precise yet lush prose, Mendelsohn captures the emotional worlds of these characters with visceral immediacy, and transforms their private stories into a larger drama about the forces of globalization, human trafficking, and sexual violence, finding inextricable connections between the personal and the political.

Ellen Feldman reads from her new book Terrible Virtue
2016-03-22 18:00 - 19:30
The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she fought for social justice beside labor organizers, anarchists, socialists, and other progressives, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. It was a battle that would pit her against puritanical, patriarchal lawmakers, send her to prison again and again, force her to flee to England, and ultimately change the lives of women across the country and around the world. This complex enigmatic revolutionary was at once vain and charismatic, generous and ruthless, sexually impulsive and coolly calculating—a competitive, self-centered woman who championed all women, a conflicted mother who suffered the worst tragedy a parent can experience. From opening the first illegal birth control clinic in America in 1916 through the founding of Planned Parenthood to the arrival of the Pill in the 1960s, Margaret Sanger sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.

Please join us to celebrate the publication of Wild By Design with Margie Ruddick
2016-03-30 18:00 - 19:30
Can nature—in all its unruly wildness—be an integral part of creative landscape design? In her beautifully illustrated book, Wild by Design, award-winning designer Margie Ruddick urges designers to look beyond the rules often imposed by both landscaping convention and sustainability checklists. Instead, she offers a set of principles for a more creative and intuitive approach that challenges the entrenched belief that natural processes cannot complement high-level landscape design. Wild by Design defines and explains the five fundamental strategies Ruddick employs to give life, beauty, and meaning to landscapes: Reinvention, Restoration, Conservation, Regeneration, and Expression. Drawing on her own projects–from New York City’s Queens Plaza, formerly a concrete jungle of traffic, to a desertscape backyard in Baja, California, to the Living Water Park in Chengdu, China–she offers guidance on creating beautiful, healthy landscapes that successfully reconnect people with larger natural systems.

Please join us for the launch of Lilac Girls with author Martha Hall Kelly
2016-04-06 18:00 - 19:30
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday, posted at the French consulate in Paris, finds her world is forever changed when Hitler’s army sets its sights on France. Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, sees her carefree youth disappear as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance. Herta Oberheuser, a young German doctor, answers an ad for a government medical position and finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi power. The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women.

Christine Reilly launches her debut novel Sunday's on the Phone to Monday
2016-04-07 18:00 - 19:30
The Middlesteins meets The Virgin Suicides in this arresting family love story about the eccentric yet tight-knit Simone family, coping with tragedy during 90’s New York, struggling to reconnect with each other and heal. Claudio and Mathilde Simone, once romantic bohemians hopelessly enamored with each other, find themselves nestled in domesticity in New York, running a struggling vinyl record store and parenting three daughters as best they can: Natasha, an overachieving prodigy; sensitive Lucy, with her debilitating heart condition; and Carly, adopted from China and quietly fixated on her true origins. With prose that is as keen and illuminating as it is whimsical and luminous, debut novelist Christine Reilly tells the unusual love story of this family. Poignant and humane, Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday is a deft exploration of the tender ties that bind families together, even as they threaten to tear them apart.

Brenda Janowitz reads from her new book The Dinner Party
2016-04-13 18:00 - 19:30
This Passover Seder is not just any Passover Seder. Yes, there will be a quick service and then a festive meal afterwards, but this night is different from all other nights. This will be the night the Golds of Greenwich meet the Rothschilds of New York City. The Rothschilds are the stuff of legends. They control banks, own vineyards in Napa, diamond mines in Africa, and even an organic farm somewhere in the Midwest that produces the most popular Romaine lettuce consumed in this country. And now, Sylvia Gold’s daughter is dating one of them. When Sylvia finds out that her youngest of three is going to bring her new boyfriend to the Seder, she’s giddy. When she finds out that his parents are coming, too, she darn near faints. Making a good impression is all she thinks about. Well, almost. She still has to consider her other daughter, Sarah, who’ll be coming with her less than appropriate beau and his overly dramatic Italian mother. But the drama won’t stop there. Because despite the food and the wine, despite the new linen and the fresh flowers, the holidays are about family. Long forgotten memories come to the surface. Old grievances play out. And Sylvia Gold has to learn how to let her family go.

Paul Vidich reads from his debut novel An Honorable Man
2016-04-14 18:00 - 19:30
A debut espionage novel in the style of Alan Furst and John le Carré, An Honorable Man is a chilling Cold War spy thriller set in 1950s Washington, D.C. Washington D.C., 1953. The Cold War is heating up: McCarthyism, with all its fear and demagoguery, is raging in the nation’s capital, and Joseph Stalin’s death has left a dangerous power vacuum in the Soviet Union. The CIA, meanwhile, is reeling from a double agent within their midst. Someone is selling secrets to the Soviets, compromising missions around the globe. Undercover agents have been assassinated, and anti-Communist plots are being cut short in ruthlessly efficient fashion. The CIA director knows any news of the traitor, whose code name is Protocol, would be a national embarrassment and compromise the entire agency. George Mueller seems to be the perfect man to help find the mole: Yale-educated; extensive experience running missions in Eastern Europe; an operative so dedicated to his job that it left his marriage in tatters. The Director trusts him. Mueller, though, has secrets of his own, and as he digs deeper into the case, making contact with a Soviet agent, suspicion begins to fall on him as well. Until Protocol is found, no one can be trusted, and everyone is at risk.
Paul Vidich will be in conversation with Helen Phillips, author of The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

Joshua Hammer reads from The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
2016-04-19 18:00 - 19:30
To save precious centuries-old Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians in Timbuktu pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven. In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world’s greatest and most brazen smugglers. In 2012, thousands of Al Qaeda militants from northwest Africa seized control of most of Mali, including Timbuktu. They imposed Sharia law, chopped off the hands of accused thieves, stoned to death unmarried couples, and threatened to destroy the great manuscripts. As the militants tightened their control over Timbuktu, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. Over the past twenty years, journalist Joshua Hammer visited Timbuktu numerous times and is uniquely qualified to tell the story of Haidara’s heroic and ultimately successful effort to outwit Al Qaeda and preserve Mali’s—and the world’s—literary patrimony. Hammer explores the city’s manuscript heritage and offers never-before-reported details about the militants’ march into northwest Africa. But above all, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is an inspiring account of the victory of art and literature over extremism.

Please join Rebekah McLeod Hutto, Associate Minister at The Brick Church, to launch her book The Day When God Made Church
2016-04-25 18:00 - 19:00
Pentecost, the Church’s birthday, is an often-overlooked holiday. This book celebrates the miraculous events that occurred on Pentecost and the ways in which the Holy Spirit shaped and continues to shape who we are as God’s Church. Children will learn the story of Pentecost: the sights, the sounds, and the people that began the community of the Church. They will discover who the Holy Spirit is and how God calls each of us to follow Jesus. Parents, educators, and ministers can discover new ways to celebrate Pentecost with children in their churches and families.

Ariel Winter reads from his latest Barren Cove
2016-04-26 18:00 - 19:30
Los Angeles Times Book Prize nominee–and former Corner Bookstore bookseller–Ariel S. Winter explores the secret legacy of an enigmatic family in this thrillingly atmospheric novel with a compelling and unexpected twist.
Sapien is a relic of a bygone age, searching for meaning in a world where his outdated allegiances to a time long past have left him isolated and hopeless. Seeking peace and quiet, he retires to a beach house at Barren Cove, a stately Victorian manor even more antiquated than he. He becomes increasingly fascinated with the family whose lives are entwined with the home—angry and rebellious Clark; flamboyant Kent; fragile, beautiful Mary; and most of all, Beachstone, the mysterious man whose history may hold all the answers Sapien has been searching for. As Sapien unlocks their secret loves and betrayals, the dangerous past of Barren Cove will indelibly change him…and who he is fated to become.

Celebrate the publication of Robin Newman's latest Hildie Bitterpickles Needs Her Sleep
2016-04-28 18:00 - 19:30
A redheaded young witch named Hildie can’t get to sleep after a giant moves in next door with a “noisy beanstalk elevator” that goes “clangity, clank, clunk all night long.” Then an elderly woman with a “gazillion” noisy children shows up (their home is part Converse sneaker, part retro mobile home), and a wolf huffs, puffs, and blows the roof off Hildie’s house.
This is an exceptionally strong debut for Chris Ewald whose gauzy, caricatured images meld playful modern details with familiar storybook figures: readers will have fun spotting cameos by Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, and more.

Lorraine Boissoneault reads from her debut The Last Voyageurs
2016-05-02 18:00 - 19:30
In 1976, America’s bicentennial, 24 young men set out to re-create French explorer La Salle’s voyage down the entire length of the Mississippi River, abandoning their modern identities in order to live like the voyageurs of the 1600s. Together they set off on an eight-month, 3,300-mile expedition across the major waterways of North America. They fought strong currents on the St. Lawrence, paddled through storms on the Great Lakes, and walked over 500 miles across the frozen Midwest during one of the coldest winters of the 20th century.

Please celebrate the launch of Jay Greenfield's debut Max's Diamonds
2016-05-03 18:00 - 19:30
A stunning decades-spanning debut novel, about a man forced to confront his moral culpability, the legacy of impossible loss, and the claims of his Jewish identity.
Paul Hartman, coming of age in postwar Rockaway, grows up haunted by the specter of his cousin Max, an Auschwitz survivor, and Max’s mysterious cache of diamonds, which fund Paul’s Harvard Law education and even sparkle in his fiancée’s engagement ring. When a stranger from his past confronts him with an impossible demand, one that could destroy his law career, his marriage and his sense of self, Paul must make choices that will change his fate forever.

Betsy Lerner launches her new book The Bridge Ladies
2016-05-04 18:00 - 19:30
After a lifetime defining herself in contrast to her mother’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” generation, Lerner finds herself back in her childhood home, not five miles from the mother she spent decades avoiding. When Roz needs help after surgery, it falls to Betsy to take care of her. Tentatively at first, Betsy becomes a regular at her mother’s Monday Bridge club. Through her friendships with the ladies, she is finally able to face years of misunderstandings and family tragedy, the Bridge table becoming the common ground she and Roz never had.
Betsy Lerner will be in conversation with Julie Klam, author of You Had Me at Woof.

Ben Lindbergh reads from his debut The Only Rule Is It Has to Work
2016-05-05 18:00 - 19:30
It’s the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies — with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That’s what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story in The Only Rule is it Has to Work is unlike any other baseball tale you’ve ever read. We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule for judging each innovation they try: it has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance.

Please join us for the launch of Birdwatching in New York City and on Long Island with authors Kellye Rosenheim and Deborah Rivel
2016-05-09 18:00 - 19:30
Over 500 species of birds can be seen in New York City’s five boroughs and on Long Island, one of the most densely populated and urbanized regions in North America, which also happens to be situated directly on the Atlantic Flyway. Including the latest information on the seasonal status and distribution of more than 400 species, with 39 maps and over 50 photographs, this full-color guide features information essential to planning a birding visit. It will become the go-to book for both the region’s longtime birders and those exploring the area for the first time.

Celebrate the publication of How to Speak Golf with author Sally Cook and illustrator Ross MacDonald
2016-05-10 18:00 - 19:30
From ace to zinger, How to Speak Golf includes over 125 golf terms paired with charming and clever illustrations that decode the words and phrases that fly around a golf course. Clubhouse Chatter sections are sprinkled throughout where you’ll learn about everything from the origins of golf, the worst courses and biggest sand bunkers in the world, to the reason why there are so many bird references in golf terminology, a history of famous holes-in-one, and much, much more!
Some of the terms included in the book are:
–Army golf: The inconsistent hitting of the ball from one side of the fairway to the other. (Think: Left, right, left.)
-Cabbage: The worst of the rough. (Also known as “Spinach” or “Lettuce.” Whatever you call it, this is a salad to be avoided.)
–Ham and egg: When two players on a team pair well, with one player excelling whenever the other falters.
–Velcro: Greens that are slow, where it seems like the ball sticks to the grass.
A perfect blend of funny anecdotes and fascinating bits of history and trivia, this is the perfect gift book to have you talking like a master whether you’re a pro, a lifelong fan, or a novice on the greens.

Burt Weissbourd reads from his latest Minos
2016-05-11 18:30 - 19:30
Minos, the third work in the Corey Logan Trilogy, derives from the mythical king of Crete who every lunar year condemns seven Athenian youths and seven maidens to be eaten by the ferocious Minotaur. Minos begins at the Olympic Academy, where Billy’s friend Sara has just carved a magic circle in the hardwood bathroom floor with an ancient double-edged dagger. She twirls inside her circle calling on the Oracle of Apollo to help her find a modern-day Theseus, the reincarnation of Athens’ “hero of all heroes” who slew the Minotaur. Lost in her magical dance, she knocks over a candle, sets fire to the curtains, and is suspended from school. She is sent to Abe for treatment. Abe discovers that Sara has patched together an entire mythological universe and language with which she tries to make him see that lives are at stake. It is not easy to convince the authorities. But Corey knows that young people are indeed being murdered, and soon Sara’s dire warnings begin to make sense. But who is the modern-day descendant of Minos? The key is inside Sara’s head.

Beth Gutcheon reads from her latest Death at Breakfast
2016-05-12 18:00 - 19:30
From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Still Missing, More Than You Know, and Gossip comes the first entry in a stylish and witty mystery series featuring a pair of unlikely investigators—a shrewd novel of manners with a dark heart of murder at its center, set in small-town New England. Indulging their pleasure in travel and new experiences, recently retired private school head Maggie Detweiler and her old friend, socialite Hope Babbin, are heading to Maine. The trip—to attend a week-long master cooking class at the picturesque Victorian-era Oquossoc Mountain Inn—is an experiment to test their compatibility for future expeditions. Hope and Maggie have barely finished their first aperitifs when the inn’s tranquility is shattered by the arrival of Alexander and Lisa Antippas and Lisa’s actress sister, Glory. Imperious and rude, these Hollywood one-percenters quickly turn the inn upside-down with their demanding behavior, igniting a flurry of speculation and gossip among staff and guests alike.
But the disruption soon turns deadly. After a suspicious late-night fire is brought under control, Alex’s charred body is found in the ashes. Enter the town’s deputy sheriff, Buster Babbin, Hope’s long-estranged son and Maggie’s former student. A man who’s finally found his footing in life, Buster needs a win. But he’s quickly pushed aside by the “big boys,” senior law enforcement and high-powered state’s attorneys who swoop in to make a quick arrest.

Whit Stillman reads from Love & Friendship
2016-05-14 17:00 - 18:30
Austen’s unfinished (funniest and least known) novel is a comedy-of-manners centered on recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon—impossibly beautiful, witty, and completely self-absorbed—who arrives at her brother-in-law’s estate to find husbands for both herself and her daughter. With a pitch-perfect Austenian sensibility and wry social commentary, filmmaker and writer Whit Stillman cleverly reimagines one of our greatest writers’ unfinished works.
Please note, reading will begin at 5:00 not 6:00.

Gerald Marzorati reads from his new book Late to the Ball
2016-05-17 18:00 - 19:30
An award-winning author shares the inspiring and entertaining account of his pursuit to become a nationally competitive tennis player—at the age of sixty.
Being a man or a woman in your early sixties is different than it was a generation or two ago, at least for the more fortunate of us. We aren’t old…yet. But we sense it coming: Careers are winding down, kids are gone, parents are dying (friends, too), and our bodies are no longer youthful or even middle-aged. Learning to play tennis in your fifties is no small feat, but becoming a serious, competitive tennis player at the age of sixty is a whole other matter. It requires training the body to defy age, and to methodically build one’s game—the strokework, footwork, strategy, and mental toughness.
Gerry Mazorati started playing the game seriously in his mid-fifties. He had the strong desire to lead an examined physical life, to push his body into the “encore” of middle age. In Late to the Ball Mazorati writes vividly about the difficulties, frustrations, and the triumphs of his becoming a seriously good tennis player. He takes on his quest with complete vigor and absolute determination to see it through, providing a rich, vicarious experience involving the science of aging, his existential battle with time, and the beautiful, mysterious game of tennis. Late to the Ball is also captivating evidence that the rest of the Baby Boomer generation, now between middle age and old age, can find their own quest and do the same.

Emily Voigt reads from her debut The Dragon Behind the Glass
2016-05-24 18:00 - 19:30
A young man is murdered for his prized pet fish. An Asian tycoon buys a single specimen for $150,000. Meanwhile, a pet detective chases smugglers through the streets of New York. Delving into an outlandish realm of obsession, paranoia, and criminality, The Dragon Behind the Glass tells the story of a fish like none other: a powerful predator dating to the age of the dinosaurs. Treasured as a status symbol believed to bring good luck, the Asian arowana is bred on high-security farms in Southeast Asia and sold by the hundreds of thousands each year. In the United States, however, it’s protected by the Endangered Species Act and illegal to bring into the country—though it remains the object of a thriving black market. From the South Bronx to Singapore, journalist Emily Voigt follows the trail of the fish, ultimately embarking on a years-long quest to find the arowana in the wild, venturing deep into some of the last remaining tropical wildernesses on earth.
With a captivating blend of personal reporting, history, and science, The Dragon Behind the Glasstraces our modern fascination with aquarium fish back to the era of exploration when intrepid naturalists stood on the cutting edge of modern science, discovering new and wondrous species in jungles all over the world. In an age when freshwater fish now comprise one of the most rapidly vanishing groups of animals on the planet, Voigt unearths a paradoxical truth behind the dragon fish’s rise to fame—one that calls into question how we protect the world’s rarest species. An elegant exploration of the human conquest of nature, The Dragon Behind the Glassrevels in the sheer wonder of life’s diversity and lays bare our deepest desire—to hold onto what is wild.
