This week's newsletter - new novel addresses social justice, short fiction from Alan Bennett, wintry fun for kids

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 happy and healthy New Year.

We have a full schedule of events lined up for you this winter - starting with local resident and Mass General cardiologist Malissa Wood. Dr. Wood will be here on Sunday, January 8, discussing Smart at Heart, a must-read for all women; details are below in this newsletter.

The left sidebar of this note contains our complete event calendar; you can also check details on our website and/or rsvp on our Facebook page.

If you're unable to attend an event, but would like a signed copy of the book, simply call us to pre-order. We'll ask the author to inscribe it to your specifications, then hold it for pick up or arrange to have it shipped.

This week's newsletter features a selection of recent favorites - several pieces of award-winning fiction, a spotlight on Belgian author Georges Simenon, and wintry reads from our children's section.

As always, we look forward to chatting with you in the Bookshop! Have you made any reading resolutions for 2012?

Comments are also welcome via email to

info.concordBookshop@gmail.com.

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.

Award-winning fiction

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron

"Benaron accomplishes the improbable feat of wringing genuine loveliness from unspeakable horror . . . It is a testament to Benaron's skill that a novel about genocide . . . conveys so profoundly the joys of family, friendship, and community." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

Running the Rift follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions.

Born a Tutsi, he is thrust into a world where it's impossible to stay apolitical; yet in an environment increasingly restrictive for the Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream of becoming Rwanda's first Olympic medal contender in track, a feat he believes might deliver him and his people from this violence.

Running the Rift is a staff pick; Dawn says "When ethnic tensions increase, Jean Patrick is on the minority side, and is forced to make decisions that affect him and his own future, as well as that of his family and friends. It's a difficult book at times - Benaron writes so that we get to know (and care about) the characters, and she doesn't gloss over the violence; she eases us into seeing and confronting something very uncomfortable. That same difficulty/unease is one reason I will push it into your hands. Fans of The Kite Runner will appreciate Running the Rift."

Running the Rift won the 2010 Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

Award-winning fiction,

now in paperback

Witches on the Road Tonight by Sheri Holman

witches on the road "Undeniably impressive . . . [Holman] boasts a fine Gothic imagination, summoning visceral details at will . . . [and] evoking the blur between the real and the supernatural as if it were the most straightforward thing ... explores the dark vein of magic that runs just beneath our real lives."

-The New York Times Book Review

As a child growing up in Depression-era rural Virginia, Eddie Alley's quiet life is rooted in the rumors of his mother's witchcraft. But when he's visited by a writer and glamorous photographer researching American folklore for the WPA, the spell of his mother's unorthodox life is violently disrupted, and Eddie is inspired to pursue a future beyond the confines of his dead-end town.

He leaves for New York and becomes a television horror-movie presenter beloved for his kitschy comedy. Though expert at softening terror for his young fans, Eddie cannot escape the guilty secrets of his own childhood. When he opens his family's door to a homeless teenager working as an intern at the TV station, the boy's presence not only awakens something in Eddie, but also in his twelve-year-old daughter, Wallis, who has begun to feel a strange kinship to her notorious grandmother. As the ghost stories of one generation infiltrate the next, Wallis and Eddie grapple with the sins of the past to repair their misguided attempts at loyalty and redemption.

A Boston Globe Book of the Year and a New York Times Editors' Choice, Witches on the Road Tonight teases out the dark compulsions and desperate longings that blur the line between love and betrayal.

Short fiction from a favorite British dramatist

Smut by Alan Bennett

"Tender and comic ... Good, old-fashioned British humor with the lightest of subversive twists."

-The Independent (London)

Alan Bennett, one of England's finest and most loved writers, explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people's public appearance and their private desires in two tender and surprising stories.

In "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson," a recently bereaved widow finds interesting ways to supplement her income by performing as a patient for medical students, and renting out her spare room. Quiet, middle-class, and middle-aged, Mrs. Donaldson will soon discover that she rather enjoys role-play at the hospital, and the irregular and startling entertainment provided by her tenants.

In "The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes," a disappointed middle-aged mother dotes on her only son, Graham, who believes he must shield her from the truth. As Graham's double life becomes increasingly complicated, we realize how little he understands, not only of his own desires but also those of his mother.

In Smut, Bennett dissects a very English form of secrecy with two stories of the unexpected in otherwise apparently ordinary lives.

Spotlight on Georges Simenon

"Irresistible. A writer of total pessimism and total integrity, yet marvelously alive. . . . You read him at your peril, avoid him at your loss."

-The Sunday Times (London)

Come in and browse our table display of books from the New York Review of Books. Dozens of paperback editions of quality literature and non-fiction, for under $15 each.

We feature a nice assortment of books in translation by Georges Simenon, the prolific Belgian author who created the fictional detective Commissaire Maigret. His dozens of psychological novels (romans durs) "display a sympathetic awareness of the emotional and spiritual pain underlying the routines of daily life." Many of his books have been adapted into film.

Titles to explore include:

Pedigree
Act of Passion
Tropic Moon
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan
Monsieur Monde Vanishes
The Engagement

Wintry fun in our children's section

We've avoided significant snowfall so far this season, but, with temperatures dropping, wintry fun is right around the corner.

Be prepared with non-fiction titles such as Snow Play: How to Make Forts & Slides & Winter Campfires Plus the Coolest Loch Ness Monster.

After building your snow fort, warm up with a cup of hot chocolate and classics like The Snowy Day and Owl Moon, or discover our many other winter-themed children's books, including Here Comes Jack Frost, Making a Friend, and Eloise and the Snowman.