Our Next Event - John Smolens and The Schoolmaster's Daughter

 Sunday, September 11 at 3pm

Please join us on Sunday, September 11 at 3pm, as we welcome John Smolens with his most recent novel, The Schoolmaster's Daughter.

This novel, set during the American Revolution, explores a family torn apart - Abigail Lovell's schoolmaster father is an outspoken loyalist and prominent figurehead in the community, she and her two brothers engage in acts of espionage to undermine the British forces in Boston. Much of the story takes place in Lexington and Concord.

John Smolens is author of Cold; The invisible World; Fire point; and The Anarchist, an "editor's Choice" pick by The Denver Post. John received his MFA from the University of Iowa and is currently head of the MFA program at Northern Michigan University. 

Short fiction from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author

 We Others by Steven Millhauser 

"Every reader knows of writers who are like secrets one wants to keep, and whose books one wants to tell the world about. Millhauser is mine."
-David Rollow, Boston Sunday Globe 

Steven Millhauser's fiction has consistently dissolved the boundaries between reality and fantasy, waking life and dreams, the past and the future, darkness and light, love and lust. All of the stories in this collection are united in their unfailing power to surprise and enchant. From the earliest to the stunning, previously unpublished novella-length title story, Millhauser carves out ever more deeply his wondrous place in the American literary canon.  

Steven Millhauser is the author of numerous works of fiction, including Martin Dressler, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997, and, most recently, Dangerous Laughter, a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year. His work has been translated into fifteen languages, and his story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" was the basis of the 2006 film The Illusionist. 

Mesmerizing new fiction

 The Language of Flower by Vanessa Diffenbaugh 

  

The Language of Flowers beautifully weaves past and present, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.

Historical/political analysis - now in paperback

 The Whites of Their Eyes by Jill Lepore 

"What Lepore does best is rescue forgotten people and moments from the Revolutionary era and remind us beautifully of the many-layered power of place. In some ways, this little book is not so much about the tea party and American history as about richly knowing a city, in this case Boston. To know a city through time, to look at a spot and know what once stood there is among the most intense - and often ironic -urban pleasures. Lepore conveys this beautifully."

-- Stephan Salisbury, Philadelphia Inquirer  

Americans have always put the past to political ends; The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding.

Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, offers a careful and concerned look at American history according to the far right. Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independence. Behind the Tea Party's Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past - a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty - a yearning for an America that never was.

In Our Window

 Concord Conservatory of Music Open House

Join the Concord Conservatory of Music at their Open House on August 31, from 4-7pm, at their studios in the West Concord Union Church, 1317 Main Street.

The organization offers a range of musical experiences, including:

• Group classes
• Private lessons
• Early Childhood
• Jazz