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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
Open 24/7 online at:
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Greetings!
As summer winds down, many of our customers have been asking about back-to-school books. We have a large table display in the children's section - books about school-days adventures for those entering Kindergarten and beyond.
 Adults looking for more serious pursuits might want to check out our display of literature set in - or written during - the 19th century.
This week's newsletter picks include two new works of fiction which take the reader away - one to the world of a young boy's imaginary friend, the other to a quiet, but significant, life in the Pacific Northwest.
Our paperback picks offer lots of armchair fun - adventure, travel, and food!
Thank you for your many requests for foreign language books. We now have classics and contemporary literature in both French and Spanish. Our children's foreign language books are also expanded, and include basic concept primers, classics (Le Petit Prince) and Dr. Seuss!
Our fall Author Series begins in a few short weeks - scroll down to read about two upcoming events, and view our complete schedule in the left sidebar of this newsletter.
The community window features the Concord Chorus, with information about their upcoming open rehearsals and the 2012-2013 season.
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" and let us know what you're reading now!
Comments are always welcome via email to
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Our next event - Thursday, September 6 at 7pm
The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan
 Seduction, betrayal, and murder ...
Join us as we welcome Hank Phillippi Ryan, reading from and signing her most recent mystery - The Other Woman - on Thursday, September 6 at 7pm. This is the first in an explosive new series.
Hank Phillippi Ryan is is the investigative reporter for Boston's NBC affiliate, and has won twenty-seven Emmys and ten Edward R. Murrow awards. A bestselling author of four mystery novels, Ryan has won the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards.
More about The Other Woman:
Jane Ryland was a rising star in television news...until she refused to reveal a source and lost everything. Now a disgraced newspaper reporter, Jane isn't content to work on her assigned puff pieces, and finds herself tracking down a candidate's secret mistress just days before a pivotal Senate election.
Detective Jake Brogan is investigating a possible serial killer. Twice, bodies of unidentified women have been found by a bridge, and Jake is plagued by a media swarm beginning to buzz about a "bridge killer" hunting the young women of Boston.
As the body count rises and election looms closer, it becomes clear to Jane and Jake that their cases are connected...and that they may be facing a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to silence a scandal.
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Upcoming event with local author Ilie Ruby - Sunday, Sept. 9 at 3pm
The Salt God's Daughter by Ilie Ruby
Local author Ilie Ruby (author of The Language of Trees) celebrates her most recent novel, The Salt God's Daughter, at a book launch on Sunday, September 9 at 3pm!
Set in Long Beach, California, beginning in the 1970s, "The Salt God's Daughter" follows three generations of extraordinary women who share something unique-something magical and untamed that makes them unmistakably different from others. Theirs is a world teeming with ancestral stories, exotic folklore, inherited memory, and meteoric myths.
Impeccably narrated in two powerful and distinctive voices, The Salt God's Daughter puts a feminist spin on a traditional Scottish folktale about the selkies-a provocative, timeless story that explores our ability to transcend the limitations of a world that can be hostile to those who are different, and to find joy and belonging in our unmistakable humanness.
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Heartwarming story of love, loyalty, and the power of imagination
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks
"An incredibly captivating novel about the wonder of youth and the importance of friendship, whether real or imagined. Delightfully compelling reading."
-- Booklist
Budo is lucky as imaginary friends go. He's been alive for more than five years, which is positively ancient in the world of imaginary friends. But Budo feels his age, and thinks constantly of the day when eight-year-old Max Delaney will stop believing in him. When that happens, Budo will disappear.
Max is different from other children. Some people say that he has Asperger's Syndrome, but most just say he's "on the spectrum." None of this matters to Budo, who loves Max and is charged with protecting him from the class bully, from awkward situations in the cafeteria, and even in the bathroom stalls. But he can't protect Max from Mrs. Patterson, the woman who works with Max in the Learning Center and who believes that she alone is qualified to care for this young boy.
When Mrs. Patterson does the unthinkable, it is up to Budo and a team of imaginary friends to save him-and Budo must ultimately decide which is more important: Max's happiness or Budo's very existence.
Narrated by Budo, a character with a unique ability to have a foot in many worlds - imaginary, real, child, and adult - Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend touches on the truths of life, love, and friendship.
Author Matthew Dicks is a writer and elementary school teacher. He has been a featured author at the Books on the Nightstand retreat and is the author of two previous novels, Something Missing and Unexpectedly Milo. Matt lives in Connecticut, with his wife and their two children.
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"... evokes a powerful sense of place, mixing tenderness and violence."
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
"Coplin is a masterful writer, the teller of an epic, unvarnished tale that sits comfortably with other novels in the tradition of great American storytelling."
-- Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed
At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit from the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect but also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.
Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, Amanda Coplin weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune. She writes with breathtaking precision and empathy, and in The Orchardist she crafts an astonishing novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in.
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"Unprecedented adventure" - in a handy paperback format
Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. One Step at a Time.
by Ed Stafford
"Vicariously joining this 860-day trek through extremely inhospitable terrain-made all the more challenging by hostile tribes, lethal animals, food scarcities, and extreme weather-has made for an exhilarating adventure."
-- National Geographic
As seen on Discovery Channel, a riveting account of one man's history-making journey along the entire length of the Amazon-and through the most bio-diverse habitat on Earth.
In April 2008, Ed Stafford set off to become the first man ever to walk the entire length of the Amazon. He started on the Pacific coast of Peru, crossed the Andes Mountain range to find the official source of the river. His journey lead on through parts of Colombia and right across Brazil; all while outwitting dangerous animals, machete wielding indigenous people as well as negotiating injuries, weather and his own fears and doubts.
Yet, Stafford was undeterred. On his grueling 860-day, 4,000-plus mile journey, Stafford witnessed the devastation of deforestation firsthand, the pressure on tribes due to loss of habitats as well as nature in its true-raw form. Jaw-dropping from start to finish, Walking the Amazon is as gripping as books by Bill Bryson, Jon Krakauer and David Grann -- the unforgettable story of an unprecedented adventure.
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Travel writing from celebrated writers and journalists
Book of Unforgettable Journeys: Volume II: Great Writers on Great Places
by various authors, introduced and edited by Klara Glowczewska
Another spellbinding trip around the globe with some of today's most celebrated writers and journalists.
This second collection of the award-winning magazine's best travel writings, includes essays by luminaries such as Russell Banks, E. L. Doctorow, André Aciman, Pico Iyer, Edna O'Brien, and the late Robert Hughes.
Whether you're preparing for your own journey or simply indulging in an armchair adventure, this new volume of The Condé Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys will open your eyes to the world.
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A new conversation about the way we eat now
The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food
by Adam Gopnik
"Unapologetically intelligent yet charmingly witty . . . [here is] history, nutrition, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology all rolled up into one delectable streusel of insight and illumination."
-- The Atlantic
Never before have we cared so much about food. It preoccupies our popular culture, our fantasies, and even our moralizing. With our top chefs as deities and finest restaurants as places of pilgrimage, we have made food the stuff of secular seeking and transcendence, finding heaven in a mouthful. But have we come any closer to discovering the true meaning of food in our lives?
With inimitable charm and learning, Adam Gopnik takes us on a beguiling journey in search of that meaning as he charts America's recent and rapid evolution from commendably aware eaters to manic, compulsive gastronomes. It is a journey that begins in eighteenth-century France and carries us to the kitchens of the White House, the molecular meccas of Barcelona, and beyond.
Throughout, he reminds us of a time-honored truth often lost amid our newfound gastronomic pieties and certitudes: What goes on the table has never mattered as much to our lives as what goes on around the table - the scene of families, friends, lovers coming together, or breaking apart; conversation across the simplest or grandest board. This, ultimately, is who we are.
Author of the best-selling Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986 and is an award-winning journalist.
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In our window
Concord Chorus - open rehearsals
The Concord Chorus, a nonprofit organization founded in 1945, occupies an honored place in the musical life of Concord and surrounding communities.
Celebrating its 67th season, the chorus provides a fine opportunity to hear works of the great choral repertoire performed by 90 singers, amateur and trained, who are committed to artistic excellence.
Open rehearsals with Music Director Kevin Leong will be conducted on Monday, September 10 and 17 at the Duvall Chapel at Newbury Court (80 Deaconess Road in Concord), from 7:30 to 10:00pm.
All singers are welcome!
For more information about these open rehearsals, or to learn about the 2012-2013 season, phone 781-862-2168, or visit www.concordChorus.org
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