NYC Launch of I Stand Corrected with Eden Collinsworth
2014-10-07 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
A fascinating fusion of memoir, manners, and cultural history from a successful businesswoman well versed in the unique challenges of working in contemporary China.
During the course of a career that has, quite literarily, moved her around the world, no country has fascinated Eden Collinsworth more than China, where she has borne witness to its profound transformation. After numerous experiences there that might best be called “unusual” by Western standards, she concluded that despite China’s growing status as a world economy, businessmen in mainland China were fundamentally uncomfortable in the company of their Western counterparts. This realization spawned an idea to work collaboratively with a major Chinese publisher on a Western etiquette guide, which went on to became a bestseller and prompted a branch of China’s Ministry of Education to suggest that she create a curriculum for the school system. In I Stand Corrected, Collinsworth tells the entertaining and insightful story of the year she spent living among the Chinese while writing a book featuring advice on such topics as the non-negotiable issue of personal hygiene, the rules of the handshake, and making sense of foreigners. Scrutinizing the kind of etiquette that has guided her own business career, one which has unfolded in predominately male company, Collinsworth creates a counterpart that explains Chinese practices and reveals much about our own Western culture. At the same time, I Stand Corrected is a wry but self-effacing reflection on the peripatetic career she led while single-handedly raising her son, and here she details the often madcap attempts to strike a balance that was right for them both.

Molly Peacock and Amy Clark read from and discuss their new chapbook A Turn Around the Mansion Grounds: Poems in Conversation & a Conversation
2014-10-24 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Molly Peacock writes, “Tucked inside the verb ‘converse’ is ‘verse,’ of course. Conversari, the Latin root, means ‘to turn about with.’ The sense of lines walking and turning in a poem echoes the idea of walking and talking together.” In A Turn Around the Mansion Grounds, Molly Peacock and Amy M. Clark present sixteen paired poems followed by a conversation about the poems, the collaboration, and the craft of poetry. The book is third in Slapering Hol Press’s series of limited-edition collaborative chapbooks featuring the work of an established woman poet alongside an emerging woman poet who was mentored by the former.

Cover art by Kara Kosaka

Peter Wortsman reads from his new novel Cold Earth Wanderers
2014-11-06 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
16 year old Elgin Marble has had enough of a world that is decidedly vertical. When his father, an upstanding elevator man, is marked for disposal, Elgin joins an underground group called the Crabs. This illicit group tirelessly digs tunnels in the hope of one day breaking through to the outside. But who are the Crabs, and can they be trusted? Elgin’s mother, Ellen, is worried sick about her son. The ruthless school principal, Mr. Orion, warns her that Elgin is in big trouble and blackmails her for sexual favors. Together they go underground to search for the boy. Meanwhile, agents of the IVT (Institute for Vertical Thinking) are also hot on his trail, and the Crabs are feeling the heat.

Cover Design by Harold Wortsman

Celebrate the publication of Fifty Shrinks with author Sebastian Zimermann
2014-11-10 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
In his groundbreaking new book, Fifty Shrinks, psychiatrist and photographer Sebastian Zimmermann presents a fascinating, first of its kind, photographic survey of the current field of psychiatry and psychology through penetrating portraits of fifty therapists all taken in the most sacred of places – the private office where they see their patients. Ranging from luminaries to newly minted analysts, Zimmermann’s subjects hail from widely different orientations that collectively reveal the diversity of approaches to therapeutic practice today.
Zimmermann’s photographs in Fifty Shrinks capture the feeling of the rooms in which a powerful process occurs; and through the interviews we begin to understand why the room looks the way it does. It is a glimpse into both the private spaces we rarely see and the minds of the healers who work there. Fifty Shrinks takes one on a profound journey that inspires belief in the possibility for positive change in human behavior and understanding.

Paul Batista reads from his latest The Borzoi Killings
2014-11-13 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
When the 10th richest man in the world is brutally murdered along with his prized Borzoi dogs in a luxurious East Hampton beach house, only one man is suspected of committing the crime: Juan Suarez, a handsome, charismatic—and illegal—Mexican immigrant who worked for the victim. Now, renowned trail lawyer Raquel Rematti must take on the defense of the man the media has dubbed, “The Blade of the Hamptons.” Not only must she take on one of the wealthiest families in the country, she must protect Suarez and herself from ruthless people bent on lethal revenge, while straddling the dangerous line between concerned involvement and forbidden passion for her client. Set in one of the most exclusive resorts in the world, The Borzoi Killings mixes all the twists of a sensational trial with all the “dirty little secrets” of the elite Hampton socialite lifestyles—from lavish parties, drug and sex to corruption and dangerous secret cartels.

Celebrate the Publication of Nicholas Nixon's The Brown Sisters with MoMA curator Sarah Meister
2014-11-19 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
In August 1974, Nick Nixon made a photograph of his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters. He wasn’t pleased with the result and discarded the negative. In July 1975 he made one that seemed promising enough to keep. At the time, the Brown sisters were 15 (Mimi), 21 (Laurie), 23 (Heather), and 25 (Bebe). The following June, Laurie Brown graduated from college, and Nick made another picture of the four sisters. It was after this second successful picture that the group agreed to gather annually for a portrait, and settled on the series’ two constants: the sisters would always appear in the same order—from left to right, Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie—and they would jointly agree on a single image to represent a given year. Also significant, and unchanging, is the fact that each portrait is made with an 8 x 10″ view camera on a tripod and is captured on a black-and-white film negative. This book celebrates the 40th anniversary of the series, featuring luminous tri-tone reproductions of all 40 portraits.

Paul Strohm reads from his latest Chaucer's Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury
2014-11-20 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
A lively microbiography of Chaucer that tells the story of the tumultuous year that led to the creation of The Canterbury Tales
In 1386, Geoffrey Chaucer endured his worst year, but began his best poem. The father of English literature did not enjoy in his lifetime the literary celebrity that he has today—far from it. The middle-aged Chaucer was living in London, working as a midlevel bureaucrat and sometime poet, until a personal and professional crisis set him down the road leading to The Canterbury Tales. In the politically and economically fraught London of the late fourteenth century, Chaucer was swept up against his will in a series of disastrous events that would ultimately leave him jobless, homeless, separated from his wife, exiled from his city, and isolated in the countryside of Kent—with no more audience to hear the poetry he labored over. At the loneliest time of his life, Chaucer made the revolutionary decision to keep writing, and to write for a national audience, for posterity, and for fame. Brought expertly to life by Paul Strohm, this is the eye-opening story of the birth one of the most celebrated literary creations of the English language.

Nicholas Carlson reads from his debut book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!
2015-01-08 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
When Yahoo hired star Google executive Marissa Mayer to be its CEO in 2012 employees rejoiced. They put posters on the walls throughout Yahoo’s California’s headquarters. On them, there was Mayer’s face and one word: HOPE. But just more than a year later–on November 4, 2013–Mayer sat in front those same employees in a huge cafeteria on Yahoo’s campus and took the beating of her life. Her hair wet, and her tone defensive, Mayer read and answered a series of employee-posed questions challenging the basic elements of her plan. There was anger in the room – and behind it, a question: Was Mayer actually going to be able to do this thing? Nicholas Carlson’s fast-paced narrative is the inside story of how Yahoo got into such awful shape in the first place, Mayer’s controversial rise at Google, and her desperate fight to save an Internet icon.
Nicholas Carlson is Business Insider’s chief correspondent. His investigative reporting re-wrote the histories of Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon. His coverage of Yahoo won Digiday’s award for “Best Editorial Achievement” of the year. Carlson is a frequent guest on CNBC and contributes to the Bloomberg biography series, Game Changers.

Celebrate the publication of In Love in New York with authors Caitlin Leffel and Jacob Lehman
2015-01-13 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
New York is a city for lovers: In Love in New York guides the reader to the most romantic sights and destinations the city has to offer. Whether you want to watch the sun rise over the East River like Woody and Diane or enjoy a Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr moment at the top of the Empire State Building, there is no greater city than New York for couples in love. The book begins with “first impressions,” the iconic New York sights that never fail to dazzle: the skyline (and the best places to view it), the most beautiful blocks and neighborhoods, the famous views (rooftops, bridges, riverside parks). Chapters follow on great date ideas, including destination museums and unusual “dinner-and-a-movie/theater” combinations. For readers ready to commit, the authors detail the best proposal spots; where to go ring shopping; the coolest places to register for gifts; and information about the legal requirements for marrying in the city (gay and straight), including a rundown on the classic City Hall wedding—with the best places to buy flowers and to celebrate afterwards, naturally. There are also ideas for planning honeymoons and anniversaries. Throughout, sidebars offer romantic options such as wonderful bars with fireplaces, the prettiest park benches, great New York literary and film affairs to inspire your visit, and romantic day trips within and near the five boroughs. From champagne on the Peninsula rooftop in midtown to ice skating in Bryant Park, In Love in New York is the perfect gift for any couple dreaming of experiencing the romance of New York.

Burt Weissbourd reads from his latest Corey Logan thriller Teaser
2015-01-21 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Teaser, the sequel to Inside Passage, takes Corey and Abe into the interconnected worlds of private school kids and the runaways who roam Seattle’s streets. Billy attends the Olympic Academy, where two friends, Maisie and Aaron, are experimenting with sex and drugs. They’ve become close to Star, a streetwise seductress who leads them down a treacherous path. Despite the best efforts of Abe and Corey, Maisie is abducted by the diabolical “Teaser,” a man determined to take revenge on her father, his former cellmate. Teaser is a mystery to everyone except Abe and Corey, who alone realize what they must do to rescue Maisie. They contrive a plan that shocks even them.

Celebrate the publication of Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom with Lynda Blackmon Lowery, Elspeth Leacock, and Susan Buckley
2015-01-22 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed eleven times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today’s young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history.
Straightforward and inspiring, this beautifully illustrated memoir brings readers into the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, complementing Common Core classroom learning and bringing history alive for young readers.

CANCELLED: Michael Callahan reads from his debut Searching for Grace Kelly
2015-01-27 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
WE STILL HAVE THE BOOK!

For a small-town girl with big-city dreams, there is no address more glamorous than New York’s Barbizon Hotel. Laura, a patrician beauty from Smith, arrives to work at Mademoiselle for the summer. Her hopelessly romantic roommate, Dolly, comes from a working-class upstate town to attend secretarial school. Vivian, a brash British bombshell with a disregard for the hotel’s rules, rounds out the trio of friends. Together, the girls embark on a journey of discovery that will take them from the penthouse apartments of Park Avenue to the Beat scene of Greenwich Village to Atlantic City’s Steel Pier — and into the arms of very different men who will alter their lives forever.

Celebrate the publication of The Crazy Thing with Carl Lehmann-Haupt
2015-01-29 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
The Crazy Thing tries to respond to this endless question. It is a love story entwined with a philosophic quest. Beginning from the question about dying it goes on to explore some ways in which it might be possible to begin over again, and perhaps still learn how to live ‘somewhere near the end.’ The Crazy Thing is a memoir with three themes: It tells the story of the author’s long love affair with the poet, Celestine Frost; the drama of his enigmatic calling as an artist, writer and thinker; and his lifelong search for the incalculable limits of the self. The Crazy Thing is a work in progress, whose outcome is yet to be known. This first small volume will be followed by six more. It contains an invitation to the reader to post their questions, comments and refutations regarding the book’s conclusions on a website — thecrazything.net. The author will take into account the most pertinent of those challenges to his understanding as he composes the subsequent installments. In the end, the book will be a work of collaboration between the author and the community it creates.

Lisa Green reads from her debut On Your Case
2015-02-19 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
The legal guide every woman needs to protect herself and her family
If your best friend had a law degree, she would offer the useful counsel Lisa Green delivers in On Your Case. From dating, marriage, and kids to divorce, retirement, and aging parents, On Your Case offers smart, jargon-free lessons on how to solve the legal challenges that arise over the course of every woman’s lifetime. A lawyer and television legal analyst herself, Lisa shares court cases and real-life legal horror stories (including her own) to illustrate how readers can not only solve problems, but learn how to protect themselves before a crisis hits.
Lisa’s warm, inviting voice imparts essential information about these important topics and many more:
Always clear and often funny, Lisa will help you take legal charge of your life, telling it to you straight without putting you to sleep or scaring you to death. She provides all the essential tools and inspiration necessary to care for yourself, your assets, your family, and your career.

Lili Anolik launches her debut novel Dark Rooms
2015-03-03 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
The Secret History meets Sharp Objects in this stunning debut about murder and glamour set in the ambiguous and claustrophobic world of an exclusive New England prep school.
Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly—a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession—but memory and instinct won’t allow Nica’s older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed.
Dropping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school in Hartford, Connecticut, from which she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with identifying and punishing the real killer.
Compulsively readable, Lili Anolik’s debut novel combines the verbal dexterity of Marisha Pessl’s Special Topic in Calamity Physics and the haunting atmospherics and hairpin plot twists of Megan Abbott’s Dare Me.

Celebrate the NYC launch of The Fifth Gospel with author Ian Caldwell
2015-03-04 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
In Ian Caldwell’s follow-up to his international sensation The Rule of Four, a lost gospel, a contentious relic, and a dying pope’s final wish converge to send two brothers—both Vatican priests—on an intellectual quest to untangle Christianity’s greatest historical mystery.
Ten years ago, Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason’s The Rule of Four became a literary phenomenon that earned comparisons to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Hailed as “ingenious…profoundly erudite” (The New York Times), “compulsively readable” (People), and “an exceptional piece of scholarship” (San Francisco Chronicle), it spent forty-nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold nearly two million copies in North America, and was translated into thirty-five languages around the world. Now, after a decade of painstaking primary research, Ian Caldwell returns with a new intellectual thriller that confirms his place among the most ambitious popular storytellers working today.

James Grissom reads from his debut Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog
2015-03-05 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
An extraordinary book; one that almost magically makes clear how Tennessee Williams wrote; how he came to his visions of Amanda Wingfield, his Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski, Alma Winemiller, Lady Torrance, and the other characters of his plays that transformed the American theater of the mid-twentieth century; a book that does, from the inside, the almost impossible—revealing the heart and soul of artistic inspiration and the unwitting collaboration between playwright and actress, playwright and director.
At a moment in the life of Tennessee Williams when he felt he had been relegated to a “lower artery of the theatrical heart,” when critics were proclaiming that his work had been overrated, he summoned to New Orleans a hopeful twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written an unsolicited letter to the great playwright asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on the playwright’s behalf to find out if he, Tennessee Williams, or his work, had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him, those who had led him to what he called the blank page, “the pale judgment.”
Among the more than seventy giants of American theater and film Grissom sought out, chief among them the women who came to Williams out of the fog: Lillian Gish, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Kim Stanley , Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Jo Van Fleet, Rosemary Harris, Eva Le Gallienne, Julie Harris, and Geraldine Page.

Laura J. Snyder launches Eye of the Beholder
2015-03-16 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
The remarkable story of how an artist and a scientist in seventeenth-century Holland transformed the way we see the world.On a summer day in 1674, in the small Dutch city of Delft, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek—a cloth salesman, local bureaucrat, and self-taught natural philosopher—gazed through a tiny lens set into a brass holder and discovered a never-before imagined world of microscopic life. At the same time, in a nearby attic, the painter Johannes Vermeer was using another optical device, a camera obscura, to experiment with light and create the most luminous pictures ever beheld.“See for yourself!” was the clarion call of the 1600s. Scientists peered at nature through microscopes and telescopes, making the discoveries in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and anatomy that ignited the Scientific Revolution. Artists investigated nature with lenses, mirrors, and camera obscuras, creating extraordinarily detailed paintings of flowers and insects, and scenes filled with realistic effects of light, shadow, and color. By extending the reach of sight the new optical instruments prompted the realization that there is more than meets the eye. But they also raised questions about how we see and what it means to see. In answering these questions, scientists and artists in Delft changed how we perceive the world.In Eye of the Beholder, Laura J. Snyder transports us to the streets, inns, and guildhalls of seventeenth-century Holland, where artists and scientists gathered, and to their studios and laboratories, where they mixed paints and prepared canvases, ground and polished lenses, examined and dissected insects and other animals, and invented the modern notion of seeing. With charm and narrative flair Snyder brings Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek—and the men and women around them—vividly to life. The story of these two geniuses and the transformation they engendered shows us why we see the world—and our place within it—as we do today.

Alice Eve Cohen reads from her new book The Year My Mother Came Back
2015-03-31 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
“A riveting journey . . . Funny, painful, absurd, and heartwarming. Alice’s mother comes fully to life in all her complexity, a woman of her times and ahead of her time. Alice’s own struggle to accept her imperfect self is a loving message to mothers who struggle to live life with grace. A beautiful book.” —Julie Metz, New York Times bestselling author of Perfection
Thirty years after her death, Alice’s mother appears to her, seemingly in the flesh, and continues to do so during the hardest year of parenting Alice has had to face. As it turns out, it’s entirely possible for the people we’ve lost to come back to us when we need them the most.
Although letting her mother back into her life is not an easy thing, Alice navigates it with humor, intelligence, and honesty. What she learns is that she must revisit her childhood and allow herself to be a daughter once more in order to take care of her own girls. Eventually, understanding and then forgiving her mother’s parenting transgressions leads her to accept herself and to realize that she doesn’t have to be perfect to be a good mother.

Mary Norris launches her debut Between You and Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen
2015-04-06 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
The most irreverent and helpful book on language since the #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves.Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker’s copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.Between You & Me features Norris’s laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage—comma faults, danglers, “who” vs. “whom,” “that” vs. “which,” compound words, gender-neutral language—and her clear explanations of how to handle them. Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord’s Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster’s groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world’s only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders.

A reading by Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer from their debut Hissing Cousins
2015-04-07 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
A lively and provocative double biography of first cousins Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, two extraordinary women whose tangled lives provide a sweeping look at the twentieth century.
When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his beautiful and flamboyant daughter was transformed into “Princess Alice,” arguably the century’s first global celebrity. Thirty-two years later, her first cousin Eleanor moved into the White House as First Lady. Born eight months and twenty blocks apart from each other in New York City, Eleanor and Alice spent a large part of their childhoods together and were far more alike than most historians acknowledge.
But their politics and temperaments couldn’t have been more distinct. Do-gooder Eleanor was committed to social justice but hated the limelight; acid-tongued Alice, who became the wife of philandering Republican congressman Nicholas Longworth, was an opponent of big government who gained notoriety for her cutting remarks (she famously quipped that dour President Coolidge “looked like he was weaned on a pickle”). While Eleanor revolutionized the role of First Lady with her outspoken passion for human rights, Alice made the most of her insider connections to influence politics, including doing as much to defeat the League of Nations as anyone in elective office.
The cousins themselves liked to play up their oil-and-water relationship. “When I think of Frank and Eleanor in the White House I could grind my teeth to powder and blow them out my nose,” Alice once said. In the 1930s they even wrote opposing syndicated newspaper columns and embarked on competing nationwide speaking tours. Blood may be thicker than water, but when the family business is politics, winning trumps everything.
Vivid, intimate, and stylishly written, Hissing Cousins finally sets this relationship center stage, revealing the contentious bond between two political trailblazers who short-circuited the rules of gender and power, each in her own way.

Carol Weston returns with Ava and Taco Cat
2015-04-08 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Ava desperately wants a pet for her eleventh birthday-but gets way more than she bargained for when she adopts T-A-C-O-C-A-T.
When Ava Wren hears about an injured yellow tabby with mismatched ears, she becomes obsessed and wants to rescue him. She even picks out a perfect palindromic name: T-A-C-O-C-A-T. But when Taco joins the family, he doesn’t snuggle or purr-all he does is hide. Worse, Ava’s best friend starts hanging out with Zara, a new girl in fifth grade. Ava feels alone and writes an acclaimed story, “The Cat Who Wouldn’t Purr.” What begins as exciting news turns into a disaster. How can Ava make things right? And what about sweet, scared little Taco?
The New York Times called AVA AND PIP “a love letter to language. ” With this second diary, Girls’ Life advice columnist Carol Weston hits another home run.

Matt McCarthy reads from his latest The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly
2015-04-09 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
In medical school, Matt McCarthy dreamed of being a different kind of doctor—the sort of mythical, unflappable physician who could reach unreachable patients. But when a new admission to the critical care unit almost died his first night on call, he found himself scrambling. Visions of mastery quickly gave way to hopes of simply surviving hospital life, where confidence was hard to come by and no amount of med school training could dispel the terror of facing actual patients.
This funny, candid memoir of McCarthy’s intern year at a New York hospital provides a scorchingly frank look at how doctors are made, taking readers into patients’ rooms and doctors’ conferences to witness a physician’s journey from ineptitude to competence. McCarthy’s one stroke of luck paired him with a brilliant second-year adviser he called “Baio” (owing to his resemblance to the Charles in Charge star), who proved to be a remarkable teacher with a wicked sense of humor. McCarthy would learn even more from the people he cared for, including a man named Benny, who was living in the hospital for months at a time awaiting a heart transplant. But no teacher could help McCarthy when an accident put his own health at risk, and showed him all too painfully the thin line between doctor and patient.

The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly offers a window on to hospital life that dispenses with sanctimony and self-seriousness while emphasizing the black-comic paradox of becoming a doctor: How do you learn to save lives in a job where there is no practice?

Patricia Morrisroe reads from her latest book 9 1/2 Narrow: My Life in Shoes
2015-04-14 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
A funny, poignant coming-of-age memoir told through the shoes that she wore.
From baby booties to orthopedic brogues (and all the high and low heels in between) shoes mark important rites of passage, reminding us of both the good and bad times: the road not taken, the prince that got away, the missed opportunities, the traveling, the fun. Most of all, they bring to mind the people we’ve loved and sometimes lost along the way.
Combining tidbits of cultural history, Morrisroe chronicles her life as a bullied Catholic schoolgirl in “Moby Dick” brogues; a besotted college student in granny boots; an aspiring journalist in Annie Hall oxfords; a skeptical bride in her first Manolos; a reluctant fashionista in towering peep-toe pumps; and a concerned daughter, whose elderly mother hoped that her New Balance sneakers would help her regain her old balance. With wit and compassion, she introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, from her grandfather, who treated the family to legendary foot rubs, to her husband, whose vast collection of vintage Puma sneakers threatened to overwhelm their apartment and derail their marriage.
Morrisroe’s “coming-of-age” is, at its heart, the story of a generation of women who’ve enjoyed a world of freedom and opportunity that was unthinkable to their mothers. Spanning five decades and countless footwear trends, 9 ½ Narrowis, like Love, Loss and What I Wore, about how we remember important events through a coat, or a dress, or in this case, a Beatle boot or Confirmation “wedgie.” With her charming sense of humor and irresistible voice, Morrisroe not only recounts her own story but also everywoman’s. Funny, candid and unexpectedly poignant, 9 ½ Narrow is about how we grow up, grow older, and finally grow into our own shoes.

Juliana Romano reads from her YA debut First There Was Forever
2015-04-23 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
Perfect for fans of Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty and Huntley Fitzpatrick’s My Life Next Door, Juliana Romano’s expressive debut is an absorbing and bittersweet story about first love, first loss, and the friends that carry us through it all.
Lima and Hailey have always been best friends: Lima shy and sensitive, Hailey funny and free-spirited. But Hailey abandons Lima to party with the popular kids and pursue Nate, her disinterested crush. As their friendship falters, Lima and Nate begin spending more time together. And before Lima knows what she’s feeling, she and Nate do something irreversible. Something that would hurt Hailey….if she knew it happened. Lima thinks she’s saving her friendship by lying, but she’s only buying time. As the secrets stack up, Lima is forced to make a choice: between her best friend forever, and the boy who wasn’t meant to be hers.

Robin Newman launches her debut for children The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake
2015-04-30 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
When food goes missing on Ed’s farm, Detectives Wilcox and Griswold do what it takes to track down the thieves. In this case, Miss Rabbit’s carrot cake has disappeared. Has it been stolen? Or eaten? Or both? Who dunnit?
Raised in New York and Paris, Robin Newman is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the City University of New York School of Law. She’s been a practicing attorney and legal editor, but she prefers to write about witches, mice, pigs and peacocks. She is the author of The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake, A Wilcox & Griswold Mystery, illustrated by Deborah Zemke (Creston Books, Spring 2015) and Hildie Bitterpickles Needs Her Sleep, illustrated by Chris Ewald (Creston Books, Fall 2015). She received a 2010 and 2012 SCBWI Barbara Karlin Grant Letter of Commendation. She lives in New York with her husband, son and English Cocker Spaniel, who happens to have been born on the Fourth of July.

Our very own Katherine Cox launches her debut Early Reader Katie Fry, Private Eye
2015-05-01 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
A great introduction to simple, fun mysteries for beginning readers!
Katie Fry may be little, but she’s got a big brain, and she uses it to solve mysteries. So when she finds a very cute, VERY lost kitten named Sherlock, she decides to take his case. Can Katie track down the clues to find Sherlock’s home?
Beginning readers will love hunting for clues in the art right along with Katie and Sherlock!

Janice Nimura reads from her debut Daughters of the Samurai
2015-05-04 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
In 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan. Raised in traditional samurai households during the turmoil of civil war, three of these unusual ambassadors—Sutematsu Yamakawa, Shige Nagai, and Ume Tsuda—grew up as typical American schoolgirls. Upon their arrival in San Francisco they became celebrities, their travels feted by newspapers across the nation. The passionate friendships they formed reveal an intimate world of cross-cultural fascination and connection. Ten years later, they returned to Japan—a land grown foreign to them—determined to revolutionize women’s education.Based on in-depth archival research in Japan and in the United States, Daughters of the Samurai is beautifully, cinematically written, a fascinating lens through which to view an extraordinary historical moment.

Josh Davis launches his debut book Two Awesome Hours
2015-05-06 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
Whether we love our jobs or not, the amount of work on our plate has reached unsustainable levels. We start each workday anxious about how we will get it all done, and which important tasks will have to be sacrificed—again—so we can keep our heads above water. We often respond to our out-of-control to-do lists by focusing on being more efficient—trying to get more done in less time. According to Josh Davis, Ph.D., we’re going about it the wrong way. The answer is not to get more done faster, but rather to create the conditions for at least two awesome hours of peak productivity each day.
Neuroscience and psychology research is revealing what those conditions are. Drawing on this research, Davis explains that our minds operate according to complex factors that, when leveraged the right way, can make us truly effective. Davis shows us five deceptively simple strategies to create the conditions for incredible productivity and to restore sanity and balance to our lives.

Mary Davis launches her debut for young adults Oliphant Island
2015-05-12 18:00 - 20:00 UTC
The Oliphant sisters–Miranda, Lulu and Leggy–spend every summer at their family’s run-down Great Camp in the Adirondacks built by their great-great grandfather, back when the family was prosperous. As much as the girls look forward to time away from their New York City all-girls school, the tedium of an entire summer enjoying unspoiled nature, with no wireless connection anywhere, is more than they can bear. This summer their parents, Professor and Judge Oliphant, are busy with work and have handed them over to their kind but absentminded Aunt Ariel, who provides even less structure than their parents. Miranda daydreams about redecorating their moldy, book-filled camp; Lulu hungers for competitive sports; and Leggy, the littlest Oliphant, drives everyone crazy with her constant talk of fairies. When their odious cousins arrive unexpectedly, bringing with them all the tensions the girls thought they had left behind for the summer, the girls, who were each adopted from China, fight for their place in the family and for their beloved summer home. They discover that being an Oliphant brings lots of surprises.
