Corner Bookstore

Lily Tuck and Molly Haskell in conversation about Lily's new book Heathcliff Redux
2020-02-04 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
In the title novella, a married woman reads Wuthering Heights at the same time that she falls under the erotic and destructive spell of her own Heathcliff. In the stories that follow, a single photograph illuminates the intricate web of connections between friends at an Italian café; a forgotten act of violence in New York’s Carl Schurz Park returns to haunt the present; and a woman is prompted by a flurry of mysterious emails to recall her time as a member of the infamous Rajneesh cult.
Sharp and unflinching, the novella and stories together form an exquisitely crafted collection from one of our most treasured, award-winning writers.

Lily Tuck will be in conversation with author and critic, Molly Haskell

Lydia Denworth and Randi Hutter discuss Lydia's new book Friendship
2020-01-30 18:00 - 19:30
In Friendship, science journalist Lydia Denworth takes us in search of friendship’s biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. She finds friendship to be as old as early life on the African savannas—when tribes of people grew large enough for individuals to seek fulfillment of their social needs outside their immediate families. Denworth sees this urge to connect reflected in primates, too, taking us to a monkey sanctuary in Puerto Rico and a baboon colony in Kenya to examine social bonds that offer insight into our own. She meets scientists at the frontiers of brain and genetics research and discovers that friendship is reflected in our brain waves, our genomes, and our cardiovascular and immune systems; its opposite, loneliness, can kill. At long last, social connection is recognized as critical to wellness and longevity.With insight and warmth, Denworth weaves past and present, field biology and neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed for friendship across life stages, the processes by which healthy social bonds are developed and maintained, and how friendship is changing in the age of social media. Blending compelling science, storytelling, and a grand evolutionary perspective, Denworth delineates the essential role that cooperation and companionship play in creating human (and nonhuman) societies.

Lydia Denworth will be in conversation with Randi Hutter Epstein, author Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything.

James L. May reads from his debut novel The Body Outside the Kremlin
2020-01-14 18:00 - 19:30
Solovetsky occupies the island site of a former monastery in the White Sea. Here, hundreds of miles from civilization, and with a skeleton crew of secret-policemen in charge, some prisoners are consigned to all kinds of forced labor and others sit at comfortable desks in administrative or cultural positions. With the brutal winter fast approaching, Tolya Bogomolov, a young mathematician serving a three-year sentence, hopes an acquaintance he’s been cultivating will lead to a less brutal work assignment, maybe even a little more bread in his ration. Knowing Gennady Antonov holds a privileged position restoring the monks’ seized collection of icons ought to improve Tolya’s odds of reassignment. But when Antonov’s body is discovered floating frozen in the bay, their connection turns dangerous. At first the authorities question Tolya, but then he’s mystified when they assign him to assist the elderly detective investigating the case—but better to find the real killer than have the murder pinned on him. Digging into Antonov’s secrets turns up strange expropriations of the museum’s icons, rumors of an escape conspiracy among White Army officers, and an illicit affair with a female prisoner who won’t tell all she knows. To avoid becoming the murderer’s next victim, Tolya must defy Solovetsky’s unforgiving regime and make ruthless use of his fellow prisoners. Putting his story to paper at last means reckoning the true cost of his survival.

Celebrate the re-publication of Wally the Wordworm with Anne Fadiman and illustrator Arnold Roth
2019-11-19 18:00 - 19:30
A worm who lives on words, Wally finds himself starved for inspiration . . . until the day he slithers into a magical book: the dictionary. From this moment, he embarks upon a logomaniacal odyssey of epic proportions, munching on the likes of “eft” and “escalator,” “ptarmigan” and “sesquipedalian.” From Wally the Wordworm’s first publication in 1964, children and adults alike have been delighted by Wally’s wriggling through rhymes and words of increasing difficulty and complexity, his acrobatics whimsically illustrated by The New Yorker cartoonist Arnold Roth.
Genuinely fun to read aloud, and complete with an afterword by Clifton Fadiman’s daughter, Anne Fadiman, Wally the Wordworm instills in young readers a love of words and language and an early appreciation for their vast possibilities.

Maya C. Popa reads from her debut collection of poems American Faith
2019-11-07 18:00 - 19:30
“Maya C. Popa’s poems move with a confident, quick-as-dread sweep toward an alarmingly clear articulation of what it is to be an American ‘under/ duress by a language, its failure to imagine the present world or next…’ Her lyrics address our huge unknowns, when ‘The government is cancelled/ but not the body,’ tides of unsorted information threaten to sink us, and in the poisoned sea ‘the shame is that the parrotfish/cannot be remade from scratch.’ American Faith marries a richly detailed music to this careening hour.” —Mark Doty, author of Deep Lane
Maya Catherine Popa is a Romanian-American poet and author of two chapbooks, The Bees Have Been Cancelled and You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave, published in 2018 (DIAGRAM chapbook series). She is the recipient of awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Hippocrates Society, and her writing has appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Poetry London, and Tin House among others. She is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly, and she directs the Creative Writing Program and teaches English literature at the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York City.

Sydney Stern Launches Her Latest Book The Brothers Mankiewicz
2019-11-06 18:00 - 19:30
Herman J. (1897-1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture. Despite triumphs as diverse as Monkey Business and Cleopatra and Pride of the Yankees and Guys and Dolls, the witty, intellectual brothers spent their Hollywood years deeply discontented and yearning for what they did not have–a career in New York theater. For this first dual portrait of the Mankiewicz brothers, Sydney Ladensohn Stern draws on interviews, letters, diaries, and other documents still in private hands to provide a uniquely intimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the lives, loves, work, and relationship between these complex men.

Michael Frank launches his debut novel What is Missing
2019-10-16 18:30 - 19:30
Costanza Ansaldo, a half-Italian and half-American translator, is convinced that she has made peace with her childlessness. A year after the death of her husband, an eminent writer, she returns to the pensione in Florence where she spent many happy times in her youth, and there she meets, first, Andrew Weissman, an acutely sensitive seventeen-year-old, and, soon afterward, his father, Henry Weissman, a charismatic New York physician who specializes in—as it happens—reproductive medicine.With three lives each marked by heartbreak and absence—of a child, a parent, a partner, or a clear sense of identity—What is Missing offers Costanza, Andrew, and Henry the opportunity to make themselves whole when the triangle resumes three months later in New York, where the relationships among them turn and tighten with combustive effects that cut to the core of what it means to be a father, a son, and—for Costanza—a potential mother.

Amanda Vaill presents her new book on Jerome Robbins
2019-10-03 18:00 - 19:30
He was famous for reinventing the Broadway musical, creating a vernacular American ballet, pushing the art form to new boundaries where it had never gone before, integrating dance seamlessly with character, story and music, and as Associate Artistic Director, Ballet Master, and Co-Artistic Director, with George Balanchine, shaping the New York City Ballet with daring and brio for more than five decades through his often startling choreography in ballet’s classical idiom. The titanic choreographer, revealed in his own words—the closest we will get to a memoir/autobiography—from his never-before-published letters, journals, and diaries. Amanda Vaill, draws on the vast and closely held Robbins’ archives of his writings to give us a sense of hisrange as a thinker and artist, as well as a revealing glimpse into the mind and heart of this towering cultural giant.

Amanda Vaill will be in conversation
with author Molly Haskell

Shirley Mueller launches her debut Inside the Head of a Collector
2019-09-25 18:00 - 19:30
Collecting objects gives enormous pleasure to approximately one third of the population, providing such benefits as intellectual stimulation, the thrill of the chase, and leaving a legacy. On the other hand, the same pursuit can engender pain; for example, paying too much for an object, unknowingly buying a fake, or dealing with the frustrations of collection dispersal. Until recently, there was no objective way to enhance the positive (pleasure) aspects of collecting and minimize the negative (pain). Now, for the first time, scientific research in neuro- and behavioral economics gives us a way to turn this around. The contents of this book are cutting edge, unique and sure to get attention. Mueller breaks new ground in an area not previously explored. Her information is relevant not only for collectors, but also for colleges, and universities which teach collection management, plus museum staff who interact with collectors and dealers of objects desired by collectors. Heavily illustrated with ceramics from Mueller’s collection and packed with useful information, this book will become a required vital resource.

Libby Babbott-Klein returns to launch Baby Feminists, Too
2019-09-24 18:00 - 19:30
Rosa Parks, Mia Hamm, Nelson Mandela, and Amelia Earhart were all once adorable babies–and you can meet them (and more) in this follow-up to runaway hit Baby Feminists!
On the heels of Baby Feminists, here are ten more pioneering icons in a second board book for budding leaders of all ages. Lift the die-cut flaps to discover how cute these change-makers can be, inspiring the next generation of artists, athletes, and activists to join the fight for equality and inclusion. In sturdy 7″ x 7″ board book format, this is truly a perfect gift for babies and their grownups to share and enjoy.

Jim Tilley launches his debut novel Against the Wind
2019-09-18 18:00 - 19:30
A successful environmental lawyer is forced to take himself to task when he realizes that everything about his work has betrayed his core beliefs. A high school English teacher asks her former high school love to take up her environmental cause. A transgender adolescent male raised by his grandparents struggles to excel in a world hostile to his kind. A French-Canadian political science professor finds himself left with a choice between his cherished
separatist cause and his marriage and family. An accomplished engineer is chronically unable to impress his more accomplished father sufficiently to be named head of the international wind technology company his father founded. The Quebec separatist party’s Minister of Natural Resources, a divorcée, finds herself caught between her French-Canadian lover and an unexpected English-Canadian suitor.

Kate & Jim McMullan celebrate the publication of their new picture book As Warm as the Sun
2019-09-17 18:00 - 19:30
Toby loves basking in the morning sun, snuggling in a lap in the afternoon, and toasting his tummy by the fireside at night, but somehow his warm spots never last. What Toby wants more than anything is to find something as warm as the sun that never fades or fizzles.
Then one day, Pinkie comes along, and she starts hogging all of Toby’s favorite places. Toby feels alone and forgotten, and slinks away. . . but Pinkie follows him, determined to prove that she is the something as warm as the sun Toby has been looking for all along.From the acclaimed duo of Kate and Jim McMullan, creators of I Stink! and I’m Dirty!, comes this story about two unforgettable French bulldogs–the perfect story for parents bringing home a new sibling.

Rosanne L. Kurstedt launches her debut picture book Karate Kid
2019-09-11 17:00 - 19:00
A goat kid loves to do karate! And he is sure to inspire young kids to try karate as well. Follow Goat as se goes through the major stances and karate moves, teaching readers to channel focus and strength through each pose. Karate Kid‘s simple, measured, and meditative text is complemented by playful yet instructive illustrations by Mark Chambers to teach youngsters how to get involved in karate–and to have fun while doing so, too.

Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist launch their debut novel The Woman in the Park
2019-09-10 18:00 - 19:30
When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children. But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman’s disappearance. Her lover is nowhere to be found, her husband is suspicious of her, and her therapist is talking to the police.
With no one to trust, Sarah must face her inner demons and uncover the truth to prove her innocence.
A thriller that questions what is real-with its shocking twists, secrets, and lies—The Woman in the Park will leave readers breathless.

Jonathan Vatner reads from his debut novel Carnegie Hill
2019-08-20 18:00 - 19:30
At age thirty-three, Penelope “Pepper” Bradford has no career, no passion and no children. Her intrusive parents still treat her like a child. Moving into the Chelmsford Arms with her fiancé Rick, an up-and-coming financier, and joining the co-op board give her some control over her life—until her parents take a gut dislike to Rick and urge Pepper to call off the wedding. When, the week before the wedding, she glimpses a trail of desperate text messages from Rick’s obsessed female client, Pepper realizes that her parents might be right. She looks to her older neighbors in the building to help decide whether to stay with Rick, not realizing that their marriages are in crisis, too. Birdie and George’s bond frays after George is forced into retirement at sixty-two. And Francis alienates Carol, his wife of fifty years, and everyone else he knows, after being diagnosed with an inoperable heart condition. To her surprise, Pepper’s best model for love may be a clandestine romance between Caleb and Sergei, a porter and a doorman.
Jonathan Vatner’s Carnegie Hill is a belated-coming-of-age novel about sustaining a marriage—and knowing when to walk away. It chronicles the lives of wealthy New Yorkers and the staff who serve them, as they suffer together and rebound, struggle to free themselves from family entanglements, deceive each other out of love and weakness, and fumble their way to honesty.

Elyssa Friedland launches her new book The Floating Feldmans
2019-07-23 18:00 - 19:30
Sink or swim. Or at least that’s what Annette Feldman tells herself when she books a cruise for her entire family. It’s been over a decade since the Feldman clan has spent more than twenty-four hours under the same roof, but Annette is determined to celebrate her seventieth birthday the right way. Just this once, they are going to behave like an actual family.
Too bad her kids didn’t get the memo.
Between the troublesome family secrets, old sibling rivalries, and her two teenage grandkids, Annette’s birthday vacation is looking more and more like the perfect storm. Adrift together on the open seas, the Feldmans will each face the truths they’ve been ignoring—and learn that the people they once thought most likely to sink them are actually the ones who help them stay afloat.

Christin Brecher launches her debut mystery Murder's No Votive Confidence
2019-06-25 18:00 - 19:30
Jessica Sterling’s candlelight-themed nuptials promises to be the perfect kick-off to the summer’s first official holiday weekend. Stella’s thrilled to have been chosen to provide the decorative centerpiece for the wedding ceremony: a two-foot-tall scented unity candle—a symbol of the happy couple’s love. But it looks like the bride-to-be’s uncle won’t be walking his niece down the aisle after he’s found dead. The murder weapon is Stella’s seemingly indestructible candle, now split in two.
When a beloved local bartender is arrested, Stella’s sure a visiting police captain running the case made a rush to justice. With superstitious brides-to-be canceling orders and sales waxing and waning at her store, the Wick & Flame owner decides to do some sleuthing of her own. Abetted by a charming reporter and challenged by the town’s sexiest cop, Stella’s determined to shine a light on the truth and uncover a killer who’s snuffing out her own flame.

Celebrate the launch of 20 Recipes Kids Should Know with Esme & Calista Washburn
2019-05-30 17:30 - 19:00
Whether they’re helping stir cake batter or producing their own YouTube cooking channel, kids of all ages are getting increasingly busy in the kitchen. This cookbook features twenty classic recipes that are fun, healthy, adaptable, and easy to prepare. From banana bread and the perfect grilled cheese to breaded chicken and apple pie, each recipe is written in a clear, accessible style that young cooks of every level will be able to follow. The author is a young chef whose love of cooking developed from her own family’s food traditions like baking popovers with her grandmother and Sunday-night pizza making. This book is the perfect launching pad to finding their way around the kitchen.—or launching their own cookbook.

Roxana Robinson reads from her new book Dawson's Fall
2019-05-22 18:00 - 19:30
In Dawson’s Fall, a novel based on the lives of Roxana Robinson’s great-grandparents, we see America at its most fragile, fraught, and malleable. Set in 1889, in Charleston, South Carolina, Robinson’s tale weaves her family’s journal entries and letters with a novelist’s narrative grace, and spans the life of her tragic hero, Frank Dawson, as he attempts to navigate the country’s new political, social, and moral landscape.
Dawson, a man of fierce opinions, came to this country as a young Englishman to fight for the Confederacy in a war he understood as a conflict over states’ rights. He later became the editor of the Charleston News and Courier, finding a platform of real influence in the editorial column and emerging as a voice of the New South. With his wife and two children, he tried to lead a life that adhered to his staunch principles: equal rights, rule of law, and nonviolence, unswayed by the caprices of popular opinion. But he couldn’t control the political whims of his readers. As he wrangled diligently in his columns with questions of citizenship, equality, justice, and slavery, his newspaper rapidly lost readership, and he was plagued by financial worries. Nor could Dawson control the whims of the heart: his Swiss governess became embroiled in a tense affair with a drunkard doctor, which threatened to stain his family’s reputation. In the end, Dawson—a man in many ways representative of the country at this time—was felled by the very violence he vehemently opposed.

Eugene Linden reads from his debut novel Deep Past
2019-05-16 18:00 - 19:30
A routine dig in Kazakhstan takes a radical turn for thirty-two-year-old anthropologist Claire Knowland when a stranger turns up at the site with a bizarre find from a remote section of the desolate Kazakh Steppe. Her initial skepticism of this mysterious discovery gives way to a realization that the find will shake the very foundations of our understanding of evolution and intelligence. Corrupt politics of Kazakhstan force Claire to take reckless chances with the discovery. Among the allies she gathers in her fight to save herself and bring the discovery to light is Sergei Anachev, a brilliant but enigmatic Russian geologist who becomes her unlikely protector even as he deals with his own unknown crisis. Ultimately, Claire finds herself fighting not just for the discovery and her academic reputation, but for her very life as great power conflict engulfs the unstable region and an unscrupulous oligarch attempts to take advantage of the chaos. Drawing on Eugene Linden’s celebrated non-fiction investigations into what makes humans different from other species, this international thriller mixes fact and the fantastical, the realities of academic politics, and high stakes geopolitics—engaging the reader every step of the way.

Sande Boritz Berger reads from her new book Split-Level
2019-05-08 18:00 - 19:30
In Split-Level, set as the nation recoils from Nixon, Alex Pearl is about to commit the first major transgression of her life. But why shouldn’t she remain an officially contented, soon-to-turn-thirty wife? She’s got a lovely home in an upscale Jersey suburb, two precocious daughters, and a charming husband, Donny. But Alex can no longer deny she craves more—some infusion of passion into the cul-de-sac world she inhabits.
After she receives a phone call from her babysitter’s mother reporting that Donny took the teen for a midnight ride, promising he’d teach her how to drive, Alex insists they attend Marriage Mountain, the quintessential 1970s “healing couples sanctuary.” Donny accedes—but soon becomes obsessed with the manifesto A Different Proposition and its vision of how multiple couples can live together in spouse-swapping bliss. At first Alex scoffs, but soon she gives Donny much more than he bargained for. After he targets the perfect couple to collude in his fantasy, Alex discovers her desire for love escalating to new heights—along with a willingness to risk everything. Split-Level evokes a pivotal moment in the story of American matrimony, a time when it seemed as if an open marriage might open hearts as wel

Kate White launches her new Bailey Weggins Mystery Such a Perfect Wife
2019-05-07 18:00 - 19:30
On a sunny morning in late September, Shannon Blaine sets off for a jog along the rural roads near her home in Lake George, New York. It’s her usual a.m. routine, her “me time” after dropping the kids off at school…except on this day she never returns. Is her husband lying when he says he has no clue where she is? Could Shannon have split on her own, overwhelmed by the pressures of her life? Or is she the victim of a sexual predator who had been prowling the area and snatched her before she knew what was happening.True crime writer Bailey Weggins, on assignment for the website Crime Beat, heads north from New York City to report on the mysterious disappearance. An anonymous tip soon leads Bailey to a grisly, bone-chilling discovery. Every town has its secrets, Bailey reminds herself, and nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. She keeps digging for answers until—when it’s almost too late—she unearths the terrifying truth.

Kate White will be in discussion with forensic medicine expert Barbara Butcher on “How to Commit the Perfect Murder”

Emma Otheguy launches her new YA book Silver Meadows Summer
2019-04-30 18:00 - 19:30
Eleven-year-old Carolina’s summer–and life as she knows it–is upended when Papi loses his job, and she and her family must move from Puerto Rico to her Tía Cuca and Uncle Porter’s house in upstate New York. Now Carolina must attend Silver Meadows camp, where her bossy older cousin Gabriela rules the social scene. Just as Carolina worries she’ll have to spend the entire summer in Gabriela’s shadow, she makes a friend of her own in Jennifer, a fellow artist. Carolina gets another welcome surprise when she stumbles upon a long-abandoned cottage in the woods near the campsite and immediately sees its potential as a creative haven for making art. There, with Jennifer, Carolina begins to reclaim the parts of the life she loved in Puerto Rico and forget about how her relationship with Mami has changed and how distant Papi has become. But when the future of Silver Meadows and the cottage is thrown into jeopardy, Carolina and–to everyone’s surprise–Gabriela come up with a plan to save them. Will it work?

Sarah Rose launches her new book D-Day Girls
2019-04-23 18:00 - 19:30
In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently declassified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There’s Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE’s unflappable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war.
Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high.

Susannah Marren in conversation with Jamie Brenner about Susannah's new book A Palm Beach Wife
2019-04-17 18:00 - 19:30
For readers of Elin Hilderbrand, Susannah Marren’s A Palm Beach Wife is a delicious and irresistible novel set among the high society galas and gossip of Palm Beach.

Amid the glamour and galas and parties of Palm Beach, Faith knows that image often counts as much if not more than reality. She glides effortlessly among the highest of the high society so perfectly that you would never suspect she wasn’t born to this. But it wasn’t always so; though she hides it well, Faith has fought hard for the wonderful life she has, for her loving, successful husband, for her daughter’s future.
In this town of secrets and gossip and rumors, Faith has kept a desperate grip on everything she holds so dear, built from so little. And yet even she—the only one who knows just how far she has to fall—never suspects from which direction, or how many directions all at once, betrayal will come.

Dr. Adrienne L. Simone, Dr. Jaqueline Worth, and Danielle Claro celebrate the launch of their New Rules of Pregnancy
2019-04-10 18:00 - 19:30
Picture this: a calm, chill pregnancy book with the magical soothing powers of a yoga class. That’s the approach of The New Rules of Pregnancy. Here the experts guide you, the modern pregnant woman, through all aspects of pregnant life in an easy-to-digest, compassionate, and motivating way. Instead of a detailed week-by-week look at your baby’s development, it’s all about you, and how to help your pregnancy go as smoothly as possible. It assumes an intelligent, busy reader (who, somewhere inside, is shouting, “Just tell me what to do!”). Every aspect of pregnant life is covered—from the practical details (how to fly pregnant) to the complex issues (“What makes it postpartum depression?”). The book also covers that critical “fourth trimester”—“Nursing” and “How to Feel Like Yourself Again”—because once the baby is born, self-care typically goes out the window, and you really need someone to have your back. Its strong point of view and expertise come from gynecologist Adrienne Simone and obstetrician Jaqueline Worth—two renowned New York doctors dedicated to bringing patients the safest, calmest, least invasive pregnancies possible. The book’s voice—motivating, supportive, real—comes from Danielle Claro, coauthor of The New Health Rules.

“As caring as the physicians who wrote it, The New Rules of Pregnancy contains all you need to know about the amazing sci-fi adventure that is having a baby. Wise, beautiful, and needed.”—Amy Poehler “A mindful, intelligent guide—supportive, concise, and full of actionable advice. This is the pregnancy book I would give to my daughter.”—Frank Lipman, MD

Bridget Moynahan and Amanda Benchley launch their new book Our Shoes, Our Selves
2019-04-09 18:00
Ask any woman about her favorite pair of shoes, and you’re sure to get an answer that goes beyond their material design. In Our Shoes, Our Selves: 40 Women, 40 Stories, 40 Pairs of Shoes, actress Bridget Moynahan and journalist Amanda Benchley ask 40 accomplished women to recount the memories behind their most meaningful pair of shoes. This collection features stories from icons like Bobbi Brown, Danica Patrick, and Misty Copeland to intrepid reporters like Christiane Amanpour and Katie Couric to creative forces like Rupi Kaur, Maya Lin, and Gretchen Rubin. Beautifully illustrated with a portrait of each woman and her chosen shoes, the stories explore what most women already know: that what we wear can have power and significance beyond merely clothing our bodies. Our Shoes, Our Selves reveals these remarkable journeys, and the steps these inspiring women have taken to get there, with the hopes of encouraging all women to forge their own paths.

Mary Norris in conversation with Benjamin Dreyer about her new book Greek to Me
2019-04-02 18:00 - 19:30
In her New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils and punctuation in The New Yorker’s celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and funny paean to the art of self-expression, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek.Greek to Me is a charming account of Norris’s lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine—and more than a few Greek men—Greek to Me is the Comma Queen’s fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own.
Benjamin Dreyer is the author of Dreyer’s English.

Terese Svoboda reads from her new book of short stories Great American Desert
2019-03-26 18:00 - 19:30
“Great American Desert is a devious and extraordinary new collection of stories from one of our best writers, Terese Svoboda. A kaleidoscopic tour through the Plains that spans decades and beautifully fuses the tonal worlds of comedy, horror, history, and myth. Svoboda is sexy, funny, frighteningly intelligent, and sublimely attuned to the hum of ancient water running underneath our thirsty world.” —Karen Russell
“Terese Svoboda has brought a poet’s lyrical intensity and factual density to prose fiction and writes like no one else.”
—Tom McGuane

Terese Svoboda will be introduced by author Kurt Andersen.

Bill Doyle is back! Celebrate the launch of his new book Escape This Book! Titanic
2019-03-19 18:00 - 19:30
Reader, beware! Once you open this book, there is no turning back. You will have three chances to survive the Titanic‘s fateful voyage. Decide which path to take first.
Passenger: Exploring the ship is fun! Just don’t get caught on the wrong deck when there’s an iceberg ahead!
Crew Member: You work for a family in first class. Can you persuade them to save you along with their beloved dog?
Stowaway: You snuck onto this ship. Can you draw your way onto a lifeboat?
In the Escape This Book! series, YOU are the star of history! Doodle your way through adventures as you decide the best path for survival. Don’t be afraid to rip or fold a page. . . . Your escape may depend on it!
