News from The Concord Bookshop

Another week full of fantastic new books arriving daily at the bookshop; we highlight just a few in this newsletter and invite you to come in to find the rest - they're falling in like leaves this season. When you do visit, please tell us "I saw this in the newsletter!"

Our next event is with Sarah Brannen on Sunday, October 9 at 3pm. Sarah is the illustrator for the delightful picture book The Pig Scramble, a tale about a country fair, and a young boy's quest for more than sweet treats and amusement rides at the fair.

Later that week, on Friday, October 14 at 4pm, area author Marcella Pixley joins us for the launch of her newest book for young adult readers, Without Tess.

Other upcoming events are listed in the left sidebar of this weekly newsletter and on our Facebook page. If you're unable to attend an event, but would like a signed copy of the book, please call us to pre-order. We'll have the book personally inscribed to your specifications, hold it for pick-up, or arrange to ship it.

New in our signed books gallery is The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian.

Our featured books this week include the latest from Booker Prize winner Michael Ondaatje; Julie Klam's heartwarming dog-centric memoir, now in paperback; Philip Roth's latest novel, also available in paperback; and an exciting middle grade spy novel set in 1950s London from novelist Maile Meloy.

Scroll down in this newsletter to peak at our window and the Verrill Farm Harvest Festival to benefit Emerson Hospital Pediatric Care.

As always, we look forward to chatting with you in the Bookshop; tell us what you're packing in your tote bag. Looking for a nice new bookbag? Concord Bookshop canvas totes are for sale at our front desk. Comments are also welcome via email to info.concordBookshop@gmail.com.

Our next event

The Pig Scramble written by Jessica Kinney, illustrated by Sarah Brannen

Please join us on Sunday, October 9at 3pm as we welcome the illustrator of The Pig Scramble, area artist Sarah Brannen.

"Clarence has always felt very small compared to his two big brothers. He just can't seem to find his place on the family farm. But advice from his inventive uncle helps him win the county fair's pig scramble and gain some confidence in the process. Told in a true storytelling fashion and accompanied by illustrations of a pig every kid will want to take home, The Pig Scramble is perfect for read-aloud story times or for newly independent readers."

Upcoming event

Without Tess by Marcella Pixley

Please join us on Friday, October 14 at 4pm for the launch of Marcella Pixley's newest book for young adults, Without Tess.

"Tess and Lizzie are sisters, sisters as close as can be, who share a secret world filled with selkies, flying horses, and a girl who can transform into a wolf in the middle of the night. But when Lizzie is ready to grow up, Tess clings to their fantasies.

As Tess sinks deeper and deeper into her delusions, she decides that she can't live in the real world any longer and leaves Lizzie and her family forever. Now, years later, Lizzie is in high school and struggling to understand what happened to her sister; Lizzie searches for a way to finally let Tess go."

Kirkus Reviews says "Pixley once again plumbs the emotional depths of a tough subject with sensitivity and insight into the complexities of human nature and sibling bonds."

Marcella Pixley is a middle school Language Arts teacher in Carlisle. Her poetry has been published in various literary journals, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first book, Freak, received four starred reviews.

New in our signed books gallery

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

"A page-turner of uncommon depth. Guilt, egotism, and fear all play parts in the genre-bending novel."

-Booklist, Starred Review

"In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts.

The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, a commercial pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain after double engine failure. The body count? Thirty-nine - a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door. Meanwhile, Emily finds herself wondering about the women in this sparsely populated White Mountain village - self-proclaimed herbalists - and their interest in her fifth-grade daughters. Are the women mad? Or is it her husband, in the wake of the tragedy, whose grip on sanity has become desperately tenuous?

The result is a poignant and powerful ghost story with all the hallmarks readers have come to expect from bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian: a palpable sense of place, an unerring sense of the demons that drive us, and characters we care about deeply.

The difference this time? Some of those characters are dead."

Signed copies of The Night Strangers are on our shelves!

New fiction from a Booker prize winner

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

"Ondaatje's most accessible, compelling novel to date. It may also be his finest...A breathtaking account not only of boyhood, but of its loss....Universal in its themes, heartbreakingly so, and a journey the reader will never forget."
--Vancouver Sun

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table"-as far from the Captain's Table as can be-with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys.

As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.

As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story-by turns poignant and electrifying-about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.

Favorite fiction, now in paperback

Nemesis by Philip Roth

"Roth's book has the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama."

- The New Yorker

Set in a Newark neighborhood during a terrifying polio outbreak, Nemesis is a wrenching examination of the forces of circumstance on our lives.

Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weightlifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As the devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky's playground, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain.

Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startlingly depicts Cantor's passage into personal disaster, the condition of childhood, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.

Author Philip Roth has won numerous awards for his writing, including the Pulitzer Prize (American Pastoral, 1997), the National Medal of Arts (1998), the Gold Medal in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002), the PEN/Nabokov Award (2006), the PEN/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction (2007), and the Man Booker International Prize (2011).

Warm memoir, now in paperback

You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness by Julie Klam

The secrets of love, health, and happiness gleaned from a life lived with dogs.

Julie Klam was thirty, single, and working as a part-time clerk in an insurance company, unable to meet a man she could spend her life with. And then it happened: she had a dream about a Boston terrier- a dream that practically hit her over the head. The companion she needed was not necessarily the one she'd had in mind.

As fate would have it, a dog is exactly the thing that she needed. The New York Times bestselling You Had Me at Woof is the often-hilarious and always charming story of one woman's discovery of all she really needed to learn about life through her relationships with her canine companions. Klam shares how her love for dogs and the lessons she's learned caring for them has shaped her heart. This is a funny, earnest, and emotionally compelling look at the surprises, pleasures, and revelations that happen when you let any mutt, beagle, terrier, or bulldog go charging through your world.

New middle grade fiction from an award-winning author

The Apothecary by Maile Meloy

It's 1952 and the Scott family has just moved from Los Angeles to London. Here, fourteen-year-old Janie meets a mysterious apothecary and his son, Benjamin Burrows - a fascinating boy who's not afraid to stand up to authority and dreams of becoming a spy. When Benjamin's father is kidnapped, Janie and Benjamin must uncover the secrets of the apothecary's sacred book, the Pharmacopoeia, in order to find him, all while keeping it out of the hands of their enemies - Russian spies in possession of nuclear weapons. Discovering and testing potions they never believed could exist, Janie and Benjamin embark on a dangerous race to save the apothecary and prevent impending disaster.

Together with Ian Schoenherr's breathtaking illustrations, this is a truly stunning package from cover to cover.

Maile Meloy is the award-winning author of the short story collection Half in Love and the novels Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, Liars and Saints, and A Family Daughter. This is her first novel for young readers.

In Our Window

Verrill Farm Harvest Festival

to benefit Emerson Hospital Pediatric Care

The annual Verrill Farm Harvest Festival will be held Saturday, October 15, from noon to 4pm.

This event benefits Emerson Hospital Pediatric Care, and features pick-your-own pumpkins, mining for gems, a hay treasure hunt, raffle items, baseball speed pitch, hay rides, pony rides, food a la carte and more!

For more information, call 978-369-3394, or visit the Verrill Farm website.