On the evening of Thursday, October 14, join us for extended shopping hours and, at 7:00 pm, help us welcome John Vaillant, author of a non-fiction account of a Siberian tiger and the team that is tracking him.

In December 1997, in a remote Russian village, trackers realize that seemingly random killings by the tiger are, in fact, being methodically carried out by this highly intelligent super-predator.  They must find the tiger before he strikes again.

In his book, Vaillant explores the relationships between this now-endangered animal and the historic native tribes, Russian settlers, and present-day poachers who hunt it.  In retelling the narrative events of December 1997, Vaillant creates main characters - a poacher, the lead tracker, and the tiger itself.

A resident of Vancouver, Vaillant is also the author of The Golden Spruce. He has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, and Men's Journal, among others.

Join us as John Vaillant reads from The Tiger, takes questions, and signs.

For twenty-five years, a reclusive American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a young Chilean poet who disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police; one day a girl claiming to be the poet's daughter arrives to take it away, sending the writer's life reeling. Across the ocean, in the leafy suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers, among her papers, a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer slowly reassembles his father's study, plundered by the Nazis in Budapest in 1944.

Connecting these stories is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or have given it away. As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared.

Great House is a story haunted by questions: What do we pass on to our children and how do they absorb our dreams and losses? How do we respond to disappearance, destruction, and change?

We have signed first editions in the Bookshop - call to reserve a copy of Great House, or to have one shipped.  (978) 369-2405

 

In the "stifling heat of equatorial Newark," a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability, and even death.

 

This is the startling theme of Philip Roth's wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.

 

Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain.

 

Through this story runs the dark questions that haunt all four of Roth's late short novels, Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, and now Nemesis: What kind of accidental choices fatally shape a life?

 

Author Philip Roth has won multiple awards, including the Pulitzer Prize (1997 for American Pastoral), the National Medal of Arts (1998), and the Gold Medal in Fiction awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002).  

The annual Verrill Farm Harvest Festival will be held Saturday, October 16, Noon - 4:00pm.

This event benefits Emerson Hospital Pediatric Care, and features pick your own pumpkins, a Hula Hoop contest, baseball speed pitch, hay rides, pony rides, raffles, food a la carte, and more!

For more information, call (978) 369-4494, or visit the Verrill Farm website.