We're thrilled that novelist Ilie Ruby will return to the bookshop for another one-hour Jumpstart Your Writing workshop on Sunday, February 13, at 3pm.  

Pre-registration is required; a $10 deposit will save your seat, and will be returned to you as a Concord Bookshop gift certificate at the workshop.

Call us at 978-369-2405 to register, or stop at the front desk when you're in the store. This workshop was a sell-out when we offered it last month - lots of fun and enthusiasm!

You asked, we listened!  Novelist (The Language of Trees; HarperCollins/Avon) and teacher Ilie Ruby returns to the bookshop to lead a 6-session workshop that looks more deeply at specific fundamentals of the craft of writing fiction.

The workshop meets Friday mornings, delving into a different component each week (character, setting, dialogue, etc.), with a combination of overview, instruction, and response to prompts with 'free writes.'

There will be some optional at-home writing, which will strengthen your writing practice into a regular habit.  The program culminates in a reading event at which - if you so desire - you may share some of your finished pieces or vignettes.

This workshop meets Friday mornings from 10 - 11:30, beginning March 4.  The last session is Friday, April 8, with the "author event" reading evening on Thursday, April 14 at 7pm.

Please phone or stop at the front desk to register.  Workshop cost is $125; enrollment is limited.

Are you mad about Maisie?!  Maisie Dobbs, that is, the heroine of the eponymous mystery series from Jacqueline Winspear.

A Lesson in Secrets, the eighth book in the series, will be published this spring:

In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs's career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the interests of His Majesty's government."

As the storm clouds of World War II gather on the horizon, this pivotal chapter in the life of Maisie Dobbs foreshadows new challenges and powerful enemies facing the psychologist and investigator.

We're excited to offer you the opportunity to pre-order a signed first edition of Jacqueline Winspear's A Lesson in Secrets: A Maisie Dobbs Novel.  Please phone us or stop in the store for details - this offer is not available via our website.

Please join us for a discussion of Beth Hoffman's New York Times best-selling novel, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt - now available in paperback.

We have a limited number of bookplates signed by the author; one is yours free with purchase of the book (while supplies last)!

"Twelve-year-old CeeCee is in trouble. For years she's been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille- the crown-wearing, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town. Though it's 1967 and they live in Ohio, Camille believes it's 1951 and she's just been crowned the Vidalia Onion Queen of Georgia.

When tragedy strikes, Tootie Caldwell, a previously unknown great-aunt comes to CeeCee's rescue and whisks her away to Savannah. Within hours of her arrival, CeeCee is catapulted into a perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricities-a world that appears to be run entirely by women.

But CeeCee's view of the world is challenged in ways she could have never imagined: there are secrets to keep, injustices to face, and loyalties to uphold. Just as she begins to find her ballast and experiences a sense of belonging, her newfound joy collides with the long-held fear that her mother's legacy has left her destined for destruction.

Laugh-out-loud funny, at times heartbreaking, and written in a pitch-perfect voice, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is a spirited Southern tale that explores the intricate frailties and strengths of female relationships while illuminating the journey of a young girl who loses her mother but finds many others."

Food and books.  As the song says, these are a few of my favorite things ... and we find both gastronomic and literary pleasure in Lunch in Paris.

This is a memoir from a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs--one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish, soothe pangs of homesickness, and develops a crush on her local butcher. 

Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart.

Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a story of falling in love, redefining success and discovering what it truly means to be at home ... the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life.

Author Elizabeth Bard is an American journalist based in Paris. She has written about art, travel and digital culture for The New York Times,The International Herald Tribune, Wired, Time Out and The Huffington Post.

"Like an answer to a fevered prayer. ... Part academic farce, part metaphysical romance, all novel of ideas, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God may not settle the question of whether God exists but it does affirm the phenomenon of literary miracles."-Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air," NPR 

At the center of this novel is Cass Seltzer, a professor of psychology whose book, The Varieties of Religious Illusion, has become a surprise best seller. Dubbed "the atheist with a soul," he wins over the stunning Lucinda Mandelbaum-"the goddess of game theory." But he is haunted by reminders of two people who ignited his passion to understand religion: his teacher Jonas Elijah Klapper, a renowned literary scholar with a suspicious obsession with messianism, and an angelic six-year-old mathematical genius, heir to the leadership of an exotic Hasidic sect.
 
Hilarious, heartbreaking, and intellectually captivating, 36 Arguments explores the rapture and torments of religious experience in all its variety. 

Author Rebecca Newberger Goldstein received her doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University. Her award-winning books include the novels The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light, and Mazel, and nonfiction studies of Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza. She has received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. She lives in Massachusetts.

Calling all fans of Jane Austen -- this modern-day homage to Sense and Sensibility is set in Westport, Connecticut!

When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was seventy eight years old and she was seventy-five . . . He said the words "Irreconcilable differences," and saw real confusion in his wife's eyes. "Irreconcilable differences?" she said. "Of course there are irreconcilable differences. What on earth does that have to do with divorce?" 

Thus begins The Three Weissmanns of Westport, a sparkling contemporary adaptation of Sense and Sensibility from the always winning Cathleen Schine.  In Schine's story, sisters Miranda, an impulsive but successful literary agent, and Annie, a pragmatic library director, quite unexpectedly find themselves the middle-aged products of a broken home. Dumped by her husband of nearly fifty years and then exiled from their elegant New York apartment by his mistress, Betty is forced to move to a small, run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. Joining her are Miranda and Annie, who dutifully comes along to keep an eye on her capricious mother and sister. As the sisters mingle with the suburban aristocracy, love starts to blossom for both of them, and they find themselves struggling with the dueling demands of reason and romance.

Flip-flops, beach balls, sea-smoothed stones ...ah, the beach!

Are you escaping to warmer weather, or armchair traveling to a southern climate?

Our window this week includes travel guides, novels set in summer sun, outdoor activities, and children's picture books that will engage your imagination.