Are you e-book curious?

Come to an interactive e-book demonstration on Sunday, March 6 at 3pm.

We'll take you through the process of purchasing a Google e-book via the Concord Bookshop's website.  These books can be read on your computer browser, many e-reader devices, and smart phones.

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.

From the author of recent novels House of Sand and Fog (adapted into an Academy Award nominated film) and The Garden of Last Days, a riveting memoir about growing up in a depressed Merrimack Valley town, then reconciling his past through the art of writing.

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists; on a fast track to getting killed or killing someone else, he signed on as a boxer.

Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash of worlds couldn't have been more stark or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by becoming a writer himself could Andre begin to bridge the abyss and save himself. His memoir is a riveting, visceral, profound meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love. 

A major new talent tackles the complicated terrain of sisters, the power of books, and the places we decide to call home.

There is no problem that a library card can't solve.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected

Flavia de Luce is a "precocious chemist with a passion for poisons" who spends her days reading, riding her bicycle (Gladys), and solving murders that baffle the local constable in Bishop's Lacey.

This 11-year-old narrator is a charming, the literary references are delightful, and the mystery is clever and satisfying.  The various personalities in the small English town, as well as the dynamics within the de Luce family, add to the wonderful package of A Red Herring without Mustard.

You may have met Flavia in Alan Bradley's first book of the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which received many crime writers and mystery awards.  The second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, is also highly regarded.  

This week's window shares information about the Daughters of Abraham and book selections from their book list.

From the group's website: We are Christian, Jewish and Muslim women who have been meeting monthly since 2002 to explore our religious faiths through books. The mission of the Daughters of Abraham is to overcome stereotypes and to foster mutual respect and understanding among Muslim, Jewish and Christian women. Through the discussion, insights and relationships that grow out of regular book group meetings, we hope to: learn about the commonalities and differences found in Islam, Judaism and Christianity; develop an interfaith community of women who can speak intelligently about the Abrahamic faiths.

The group has almost 20 chapters, several in Massachusetts. For more information about the Daughters of Abraham, visit their website.