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Store Hours
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Mon - Fri 9:30 - 6:00
Sat 9:30 - 5:00
Sun Noon - 5:00
Holiday Hours are now in effect:
Open Th. Dec 23 until 8pm
Open Dec. 24 until 4pm
Closed Dec. 25 and 26
Open Dec. 31 until 4pm
Closed January 1
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Upcoming Events
Local author and cardiologist Malissa Wood, MD launches Smart at Heart
1/22 (Sunday) 3pm-
Jeff Clements presents Corporations Are Not People
1/29 (Sunday) 3pm-
John Matteson returns to the Bookshop with his hot-off-the-presses biography, The Lives of Margaret Fuller
2/5 (Sunday) 3pm-
Alan Lightman returns to the Bookshop with his latest novel, Mr. g
2/12 (Sunday) 3pm -
We welcome Toby Lester with his newest book, Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
2/19 (Sunday) 3pm -
We welcome Sarah McCoy with The Baker's Daughter
2/26 (Sunday) 3pm -
Award-winning author Margot Livesey presents The Flight of Gemma Hardy
3/11 (Sunday) 3pm -
Kate Flora returns to the Bookshop with her latest novel, Redemption
3/18 (Sunday) 3pm -
We welcome Madeline Miller with Song of Achilles
3/22 (Thursday) 7pm-
Howard Frank Mosher returns to the Bookshop with The Great Northern Express
3/25 (Sunday) 3pm -
Natalie Dykstra presents Clover Adams
4/1 (Sunday) 3pm -
Two authors present their non-fiction books: Deborah Kops with The Great Molasses Flood, and Heather Lang with Queen of the Track
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Greetings!
Thank you for shopping with the Concord Bookshop this year, and for attending our many author events, book group discussions, and school book fairs. We're pleased to be part of your community! Best wishes to you for a wonderful holiday season and a happy and healthy New Year.
The Bookshop continues with our extended holiday hours this week; we'll be here until 8pm on Thursday. We're open until 4pm on December 24 ... and as always, complimentary gift wrapping.
On Friday, our gift wrap station will be manned by volunteers from Gaining Ground.
This week's newsletter features a selection of recent favorites - a Man Booker Prize nominated novel and novellas, a memoir/documentary about the Massachusetts oyster tradition, a new-in-paperback entry in a favorite mystery series, and a brand new translation of a classic Middle English story.
We have an addition to our signed books gallery, and information about our first event of the New Year. Check the left sidebar of this newsletter and our website for details on all upcoming events.
As always, we look forward to chatting with you in the Bookshop! Comments are also welcome via email to
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Our next event - January 8
Dr. Malissa Wood and Smart at Heart
Please join us at the Bookshop Sunday, January 8th at 3 pm as we welcome local resident Dr. Malissa Wood, discussing her new book, Smart at Heart: A Holistic 10-Step Approach to Preventing and Healing Heart Disease for Women.
Malissa Wood, MD, is the co-director of the Corrigan Women's Heart Health Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. She sits on the board of the Northeast affiliate of the American Heart Association.
Smart at Heart was written in conjunction with Harvard Health Publications.
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New in our signed books gallery
The Apple Lover's Cookbook by Amy Traverso
 Author Amy Traverso stopped in to sign copies of The Apple Lover's Cookbook.
This is the book Bon Appetit calls ""...an extensive primer on [59] apple varieties, from Ambrosia to Zabergau Reinette."
Contains over 100 recipes, both sweet and savory.
Signed editions of The Apple Lover's Cookbook are on our shelves!
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Fiction from the Man Booker prize shortlist
The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai
 "In three ensnaring novellas of consummate artistry and profoundly disquieting perceptions, master storyteller Desai reflects on the transforming power and devastating limitations of art... Desai's provocative and mysterious tales of displacement trace the reverberations when the dream of art collides with crushing reality."
--Booklist (starred review)
Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Anita Desai ruminates on art and memory, illusion and disillusion, and the sharp divide between life's expectations and its realities in three perfectly etched novellas. Set in India in the not-too-distant past, the stories' dramas illuminate the ways in which Indian culture can nourish or suffocate. All are served up with Desai's characteristic perspicuity, subtle humor, and sensitive writing.
Overwhelmed by their own lack of purpose, the men and women who populate these tales set out on unexpected journeys that present them with a fresh sense hope and opportunity. Like so many flies in a spider's web, however, they cannot escape their surroundings-as none of us can. An impeccable craftsman, Desai elegantly reveals our human frailties and the power of place.
Anita Desai is the author of Fasting, Feasting; Baumgartner's Bombay; Clear Light of Day; and Diamond Dust, among other works. Three of her books have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Desai was born and educated in India and now lives in the New York City area.
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Memoir of local interest ...
Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm by Erin Byers Murphy
 "Murray's own love of food and food writing informs the narrative, and she skillfully dramatizes the scenes of summertime sowing and depicts her many colorful co-workers. Murray eschews poetic waxing on her subject and focuses closely on the action and the hard, hard work of farming, closing each chapter with a broad range of oyster recipes."
--Publishers Weekly
In March of 2009, Erin Byers Murray ditched her pampered city girl lifestyle and convinced the rowdy and mostly male crew at Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, Massachusetts, to let a completely unprepared, aquaculture-illiterate food and lifestyle writer work for them for 12 months to learn the business of oysters.
Shucked is part love letter, part memoir and part documentary about the world's most beloved bivalves. An in-depth look at the work that goes into getting oysters from farm to table, Shucked shows Erin's full-circle journey through the modern day oyster farming process and tells a dynamic story about the people who grow our food, and the cutting-edge community of weathered New England oyster farmers who are defying convention and looking ahead.
The narrative also interweaves Erin's personal story - the tale of how a technology-obsessed workaholic learns to slow life down a little bit and starts to enjoy getting her hands dirty (and cold).
This is a book for oyster lovers everywhere, but also a great read for locavores and foodies in general.
Erin Byers Murphy is a Boston area journalist, specializing in food and wine writing. Her work as been published in the Boston Globe, Food and Wine, Boston Magazine, Bon Appetit, and others.
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Fiction from the Man Booker shortlist
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
A thrilling and powerful novel about a young boy lured to sea by the promise of adventure and reward, with echoes of Great Expectations, Moby-Dick, and The Voyage of the Narwhal.
Jamrach's Menagerie tells the story of a nineteenth-century street urchin named Jaffy Brown. Following an incident with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Thus begins a long, close friendship fraught with ambiguity and rivalry.
Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedition. Onboard, Jaffy and Tim enjoy the rough brotherhood of sailors and the brutal art of whale hunting ... until a violent storm hits.
Drifting across an increasingly hallucinatory ocean, the survivors are forced to confront their own place in the animal kingdom. Masterfully told, wildly atmospheric, and thundering with tension, Jamrach's Menagerie is a truly haunting novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.
Carol Birch is the author of nine other novels published in Britain. She has won the David Higham Award for Life in the Palace and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for The Fog Line, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 for Turn Again Home. Jamrach's Menagerie was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
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"Inspector Ian Rutledge" mystery series - now in paperback
A Lonely Death by Charles Todd
"Todd invests this absorbing fiction with creative storytelling (including intriguing subplots), memorable characters and graceful, seemingly effortless prose....This is fiction that moves, entertains, and as always, underscores life's victories over death."
-- Richmond Times-Dispatch
A breathtaking blend of psychological complexity, haunting atmosphere, compelling twists, and impressive detail, the novels in the Ian Rutledge mystery series have garnered their author widespread acclaim and numerous honors and awards.
At the heart of the series is the compelling Scotland Yard detective inspector Ian Rutledge, a veteran of the Great War who understands all too well the darkness that lies within men's souls.
Now three men have been murdered in a Sussex village, and Scotland Yard has been called in. It's a baffling case. The victims are soldiers who survived the horrors of World War I only to meet a ghastly end in the quiet English countryside two years later. Each had been garroted, with small ID discs left in their mouths.
But even Scotland Yard's presence doesn't deter this vicious and clever killer. Shortly after Inspector Ian Rutledge arrives, a fourth soldier is found dead. With few clues to go on and the pressure building, Rutledge must gamble everything-his job, his reputation, and even his life-to find answers.
The books are authored by the mother-son writing team of "Charles Todd," who have penned the many Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries, the Bess Crawford mysteries, and one stand-alone novel.
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"Hot off the presses" new translation
The Death of King Arthur translated by Simon Armitage
King Arthur comes to vivid life in this gripping poetic translation by the renowned poet and translator.
First appearing around 1400, The Alliterative Morte Arthure, or, The Death of King Arthur, is one of the most widely beloved and spectacularly alliterative poems ever penned in Middle English. Now, from the internationally acclaimed translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, comes this magisterial new presentation of the Arthurian tale, rendered in unflinching and gory detail.
Following Arthur's conquests across the cities and fields of Europe, all the way to his spectacular fall, this masterpiece features some of the most spellbinding and poignant passages in English poetry. Never before have the deaths of Arthur's loyal knights, his own final hours, and the subsequent burial been so poignantly evoked.
Echoing the lyrical passion that so distinguished Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, Simon Armitage has produced a virtuosic new translation that promises to become the definitive edition for generations to come.
The award-winning Simon Armitage has published ten volumes of poetry. His translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was covered on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.
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Another fiction pick from John
On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry
From the two-time Man Booker shortlisted author of The Secret Scripture comes a magnificent new novel that is the story of the twentieth century in America.
If you've come into the Bookshop recently and asked to John about fiction that unfolds slowly, allowing you to savor the beautiful prose, it's likely he's talked to you about On Canaan's Side; this novel is a favorite of his.
Told in the first person, as a narrative of Lilly Bere's life over seventeen days, On Canaan's Side opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly revisits her past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland, at the end of the First World War, and continues her tale in America, a world filled with both hope and danger. At once epic and intimate, Lilly's story unfolds as she tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, from the Great Depression to World War II and the Vietnam War, it is the heartbreaking story of a woman whose capability to love is enormous, and whose compassion, even for those who have wronged her, is astonishing.
Author Sebastian Barry's plays have been produced in London, Dublin, Sydney, and New York. His novel A Long, Long Way was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as was The Secret Scripture.
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