Please join us Wednesday evening, April 13th at 7 pm as we welcome Dan Barry, discussing his latest book, Bottom of the 33rd: Hope and Redemption in Baseball's Longest Game.

"On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. What began as a modestly attended minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings became not only the longest ever played in baseball history, but something else entirely. The first pitch was thrown after dusk on Holy Saturday, and for the next eight hours the night seemed to suspend its participants between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys-the ballplayers; the umpires; Pawtucket's ejected manager, peering through a hole in the backstop; the sportswriters and broadcasters; a few stalwart fans shivering in the cold.

An unforgettable portrait of ambition and endurance, Bottom of the 33rd is the rare sports book that changes the way we perceive America's pastime, and America's past." 

Author Dan Barry is a national columnist for the New York Times. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and in 1994 was part of an investigative team for the Providence Journal that won the prize for a series on Rhode Island's justice system. He is the author of a memoir, Pull Me Up, and City Lights, a collection of his New York Times columns. 

Since the time of the Transcendentalists, Bostonians have worked hard to promote gardens, parks, green spaces, and ecological conservation; today's diverse open spaces share this rich legacy and and an exciting future. Lexington resident Meg Muckenhoupt travels through the verdant world of the Bay State's capital city in her new book, Boston's Gardens & Green Spaces.

Muckenhoupt will be at the Bookshop on Sunday, April 17 at 3pm with a slideshow and discussion about the role of public spaces throughout Boston's historic and contemporary landscape. She'll look at Boston's most revered historic parks and explore the city's ever-expanding network of public spaces, examining the ways in which the philosophy behind public spaces has shifted over the years and discussing the significance of native flora and green space to the city's overall health. This fascinating journey through green Boston - past to present - will appeal to nature lovers, gardening enthusiasts, and history buffs.

Meg Muckenhoupt is a freelance environmental and travel writer, with articles in The Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Boston Magazine, the Time Out Boston guide, and many other publications. She holds a certificate in Field Botany from the New England Wild Flower Society. 

With The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking, it's possible and even convenient to create an inviting space for living and entertaining on a budget. From unique decor ideas to growing strawberries on your porch or front stoop, Kate Payne shares fun, low-cost (and often free!) creative solutions that will make anyone feel more accomplished in minutes. 

Please join us as we welcome Kate Payne, an expert on thrift stores, flea markets, and Craigslist, and a frequent consultant for design, decorating, cooking, and crafting sites.

The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking is a fun and savvy guide for both new and established "domestic engineers."  With a tongue-in-cheek tone, Kate has something for everyone.  Invite the recent college grad, those getting their first apartments, newlyweds, and your best friend. 

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons-as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca Skloot became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family - especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother's cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance? 

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

A selection of baseball-themed books -

From biographies of players, histories of games, and photo/art books of stadiums to baseball-inspired fiction for the board book set, novel lovers, and everyone in between ... we're showcasing books on America's favorite pastime!