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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
Extended hours Wednesday
May 9 for author event
with Christopher Tilghman
Open 24/7 online at:
www.concordBookshop.com
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Upcoming Events
5/9 (Wednesday) 7pm-
We welcome Christopher Tilghman with his most recent novel, The Right-Hand Shore
5/13 (Sunday) 3pm-
A special Mother's Day event! Meg Mitchell Moore, author of The Arrivals, presents her most recent novel, So Far Away
5/20 (Sunday) at 3pm-
Local author Andrew Goldstein presents The Bookie's Son
6/3 (Sunday) at 3pm-
Join us as Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot presents Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free
6/10 (Sunday) at 3pm-
We welcome Nichole Bernier with The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D
6/17 (Sunday) at 3pm-
Special Father's Day event - Jerry Pallotta presents F Is for Fenway, an alphabet book for Red Sox fans of all ages
6/24 (Sunday) at 3pm-
James Geary presents a slideshow and talk about I Is An Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the World
7/8 (Sunday) at 3pm-
Local humorist and author Eric Kester presents That Book about Harvard
9/9 (Sunday) at 3pm-
Local novelist Ilie Ruby returns to the bookshop with her latest work, The Salt God's Daughter
9/16 (Sunday) at 3pm-
We welcome novelist Erika Robuck with Hemingway's Girl
Lee Woodruff presents Those We Love Most, a novel
9/30 (Sunday) at 3pm-
Maryanne O'Hara presents Cascade
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Greetings!
Our next event is Wednesday, May 9 at 7pm: Christopher Tilghman will read from, take questions, and sign his new novel, The Right-Hand Shore.
On Sunday, May 13, Meg Mitchell Moore visits us at 3pm to read from and sign both her hot-off-the-presses novel, So Far Away and her previous novel, The Arrivals, which has just been released in a paperback edition.
The left sidebar of this note contains our complete events 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.
 Mother's Day is just around the corner, and signed books make especially nice gifts! We have a bright selection of Mother's Day cards, and offer a table display of gift suggestions, including new boxed note cards.
Scroll down to learn about an addition to our signed books gallery and this week's book picks, which include new nonfiction from Anna Quindlen, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's collected letters, novels from John Irving and Toni Morrison, and three books to help you cook up some fun in the kitchen. Attention book groups: Ann Patchett's State of Wonder is a must-read that's now available in paperback.
We look forward to chatting with you in the Bookshop! When you come in to take a closer look at an item mentioned here, please tell us "I saw it in the newsletter!"
Comments are always welcome via email to
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Our next event:
Wednesday, May 9 at 7pm
The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman
Please join us on Wednesday, May 9 at 7pm, as Christopher Tilghman visits the Bookshop to read from, discuss, and sign The Right-Hand Shore.
This is a masterful novel that confronts the dilemmas of race, family, and forbidden love in the wake of America's Civil War, returning readers to the Mason family and the Chesapeake Bay that we met in Mason's Retreat.
It is 1920, and Edward Mason is making a call upon Miss Mary Bayly, the current owner of the legendary Mason family estate, the Retreat. Miss Mary is dying. She plans to give the Retreat to the closest direct descendant of the original immigrant owner that she can find. Edward believes he can charm the old lady, secure the estate and be back in Baltimore by lunchtime.
Instead, over the course of a long day, he hears the stories that will forever bind him and his family to the land. He hears of Miss Mary's grandfather brutally selling all his slaves in 1857 in order to avoid the reprisals he believes will come with Emancipation. He hears of the doomed efforts by Wyatt Bayly, Miss Mary's father, to turn the Retreat into a vast peach orchard, and of Miss Mary and her brother growing up in a fractured and warring household. He learns of Abel Terrell, son of free blacks who becomes head orchardist, and whose family becomes intimately connected to the Baylys and to the Mason legacy.
The drama in this richly textured novel proceeds through vivid set pieces: on rural nineteenth-century industry; on a boyhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; on the unbreakable divisions of race and class; and, finally, on two families attempting to save a son and a daughter from the dangers of their own innocent love. The result is a radiant work of deep insight and peerless imagination about the central dilemma of American history.
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Upcoming event:
Sunday, May 13 at 3pm
So Far Away by Meg Mitchell Moore
Please join us on Sunday, May 13 at 3pm, as Meg Mitchell Moore reads from, takes questions, and signs her hot-off-the-presses novel, So Far Away.
Author J. Courtney Sullivan (Maine and Commencement) calls So Far Away a "powerful page-turner about love, loss, motherhood, and friendship." And author Laura Harrington (Alice Bliss) says "Meg Mitchell Moore has ... crafted a story so compellingly real you will never forget her thirteen-year-old heroine ... Moore's pitch-perfect rendering of this girl's voice is nothing short of stunning."
In addition to So Far Away, Meg will be signing her previous novel, The Arrivals. These are both excellent choices for book groups, and The Arrivals is now available in paperback. Join us with mom, grandmom, nana, auntie, or a group of girlfriends for this Mother's Day event.
Meg Mitchell Moore worked for several years as a journalist and her articles have been published in a wide variety of business and consumer magazines. She received a master's degree in English literature from New York University. She lives on the North Shore with her husband and their three children.
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New in Our Signed Books Gallery
Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man by Jay Atkinson
An enthusiastic audience greeted Jay Atkinson when he answered questions about his most recent book, Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man. Some were participants in the sport, some were fans, and some were simply rugby-curious!
A Boston-area native, Jay Atkinson has played in more than 500 rugby matches, for which he's suffered through broken ribs, a detached retina, and other injuries.
He's also taken his share of hard knocks as a writer - for his opinions, his style, and his subject matter. Over the years, Atkinson has also carved out a reputation as a prolific and talented writer, author of seven narrative books (including Legends of Winter Hill, Ice Time, and Caveman Politics), and a tough-minded literary critic and journalist. He teaches journalism at Boston University.
Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man explains why it was all worth it - the sum total of his violent adventures, and the valuable insight he has gained from them.
Signed editions are on our shelves.
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New from "America's laureate of real life" - she tells it like it is!
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen
In this irresistible memoir, the New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead - and celebrating it all - as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all the stuff in our closets, and more.
As she did in her beloved New York Times columns, and in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen says for us here what we may wish we could have said ourselves.
One thought on girlfriends:
"Ask any woman how she makes it through the day, and she may mention her calendar, her to-do lists, her babysitter. But if you push her on how she really makes it through her day, she will mention her girlfriends. Sometimes I will see a photo of an actress in an unflattering dress or a blouse too young for her or with a heavy-handed makeup job, and I mutter, 'She must not have any girlfriends.' "
From childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age, Quindlen uses the events of her own life to illuminate our own. Along with the downsides of age, she says, can come wisdom, a perspective on life that makes it satisfying and even joyful. Candid, funny, moving, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is filled with sharp insights and revealing observations.
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Writings from an eloquent and much-admired woman
Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, edited by Reeve Lindbergh
"A rich and inviting book . . . full of introspective, beautifully crafted accounts of joys and conflicts; a recurring theme is Lindbergh's frustration at the confines of prescribed gender roles. An enticing publication."
-Library Journal (starred)
In this sixth and final collection of Lindbergh's diaries and letters, we mark her progress as she navigated a remarkable life and a remarkable century with enthusiasm and delight, humor and wit, sorrow and bewilderment, but above all devoted to finding the essential truth in life's experiences through a hard-won spirituality and a passion for literature.
Between the inevitable squalls of life with her beloved but elusive husband, the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, she shepherded their five children through whooping cough, horned toads, fiancés, the Vietnam War, and their own personal tragedies. She researched and wrote many books and articles on issues ranging from the condition of Europe after World War II to the meaning of marriage to the launch of Apollo 8. She published one of the most beloved books of inspiration of all time, Gift from the Sea. She left penetrating accounts of meetings with such luminaries as John and Jacqueline Kennedy, Thornton Wilder, Enrico Fermi, Leland and Slim Hayward, and the Frank Lloyd Wrights. And she found time to compose extraordinarily insightful and moving letters of consolation to friends and to others whose losses touched her deeply.
Against Wind and Tide makes us privy to the demons that plagued this fairy-tale bride, and introduces us to some of the people who provided solace as she braved the tides of time and aging, war and politics, birth and death.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born in 1906. She married Charles Lindbergh in 1929 and became a noted aviator in her own right, eventually publishing several books on the subject and receiving several aviation awards. Gift from the Sea, published in 1955, earned her international acclaim. She was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey. War Within and Without, the penultimate installment of her published diaries, received the Christopher Award in 1980. Mrs. Lindbergh died in 2001 at the age of ninety-four.
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"A deeply moving novel about an apparently defeated man finding his manhood-and his home."
Home by Toni Morrison
"... packs all the thundering themes Morrison has explored before. She's never been more concise, though, and that restraint demonstrates the full range of her power."
-- Ron Charles,
The Washington Post
America's most celebrated novelist, Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison extends her profound take on our history with this twentieth-century tale of redemption: a taut and tortured story about one man's desperate search for himself in a world disfigured by war.
Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he's hated all his life. As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.
Toni Morrison is the author of ten novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Song of Solomon, and A Mercy. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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John Irving's new novel - desire, secrecy, and sexual identity
In One Person by John Irving
A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love - tormented, funny, and affecting - and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences.
Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect," a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of "terminal cases," The World According to Garp.
His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving's In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy's friends and lovers - a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, this is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a man who is dedicated to making himself "worthwhile."
John Irving has had nine international bestsellers, including The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980. In One Person is his thirteenth novel.
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Now in paperback -
Moral choices meet adventure
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
"Expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett's fiction."
-New York Times Book Review
In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, State of Wonder presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional resonance and moral complexity.
As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she will be forced to surrender herself to the lush but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness. Stirring and luminous, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss beneath the rain forest's jeweled canopy.
Award-winning, bestselling author Ann Patchett returns with a provocative and assured novel of morality and miracles, science and sacrifice set in the Amazon rainforest. Infusing the narrative with the same ingenuity and emotional urgency that pervaded her acclaimed previous novels Bel Canto, Taft, Run, The Magician's Assistant, and The Patron Saint of Liars, Patchett delivers an enthrallingly innovative tale of aspiration, exploration, and attachment in State of Wonder - a gripping adventure story and a profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and love.
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Cooking up some fun with Mom
Not for mothers only - three of our most recent favorites in the kitchen:
 The Mom 100: 100 Recipes Every Mom Needs in Her Back Pocket by Katie Workman
A cookbook for every mother with kids at home - it solves the 20 most common cooking dilemmas.
Katie Workman, founding editor in chief of Cookstr.com and mother of two school-age kids, offers recipes, tips, techniques, attitude, and wisdom for staying happy in the kitchen while proudly keeping it homemade - because homemade not only tastes best, but is also better (and most economical) for you.
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 Very Fond of Food: A Year in Recipes by Sophie Dahl
In her gorgeous second cookbook, bestselling author Sophie Dahl offers up 100 wholesome recipes for health-minded home cooks who yearn for a bit of indulgence. Favoring natural sweeteners, minimal meat, and abundant produce, these dishes satisfy yet never feel ascetic. Recipes are organized seasonally, and the book finishes with a full chapter of luscious desserts. But the recipes are only part of the story -- Sophie's food-filled memories and musings on the good life make this a book to treasure for its writerly charms as much as for its advice in the kitchen.
Very Fond of Food will enchant the eye with evocative photography and whimsical drawings; inspire the mind with witty recollections on family, travel, and romance; and captivate the palate with recipes that comfort body and soul. Sophie Dahl invites you into a delightful world where every meal is a story, and there's always an excuse for cake.
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 Weeknights with Giada: Quick and Simple Recipes to Revamp Dinner by Giada De Laurentiis
Giada tackles weeknight cooking, sharing her fvorite tips and go-to dishes - all in her vibrant signature style - to get a delicious meal on the table in a flash.
Weeknights with Giada rises to the challenge, delivering soups, sandwiches, pizzas, pastas, and meat and fish dishes that come together quickly as stand-alone main courses - most in half an hour or less. From inventive breakfast-for-dinner dishes and meatless Monday vegetarian recipes - both weekly traditions in Giada's house - to picnic sandwiches and hearty salad recipes for reinventing leftovers, Weeknights with Giada reveals every secret in her repertoire. Even the desserts are quick to mix and bake.
Here is Giada at her most inventive - and at her most laid-back. Flavor, freshness, and fun take center stage while cooking times, pots dirtied, and stress are kept to a minimum. With gorgeous color photographs and intimate home snapshots of Giada and her family,Weeknights with Giada is a welcome handbook of fantastic recipes and surefire Monday-to-Friday strategies for every home cook.
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In our window
Concord Art Association presents "Paint the Town"
The "Paint the Town" preview show will be held May 10-18 at the Concord Art Association.
On May 19, the Association will hold their fourtheenth annual fundraising auction. They will showcase 36 artists in a live auction and over 50 artists in a silent auction.
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