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Store Hours
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Mon - Wed 9:30 - 6:00
Thursday 9:30 - 9:00
Friday 9:30 - 6:00
Sat 9:30 - 5:00
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Greetings! Ah, February! It's the shortest month, yet it's full of good things - author events, book releases, and fun happenings around town. Mother Nature is planning to dump a foot of the white stuff on us this weekend - be sure to stop in before the flakes start falling and stock up, in case you get snowbound - books, jigsaw puzzles, activities for the kids ... we've got you covered!
Our next event is Thursday, February 7, when Emerson college professor Roseanne Montillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein. Her book, The Lady and Her Monsters, is electrifying!
On Sunday, February 10, local-area author George Harrar presents his newest novel, Reunion at Red Paint Bay. This is a mystery that really sneaks up on the reader, leading to thoughts and musings that stay with you long after you've turned the last page.
As with all our events, if you can't visit us in person to purchase a signed copy of the featured book, you're welcome to call or email before the event - we'll ask the author to personally inscribe the book to your specifications, and will arrange to ship the book or hold it for pick up.
Book picks this week include the long-lost novel by Woody Guthrie - yes, that Woody Guthrie! Also, a new novel from Jamaica Kincaid, and a second novel of suspense from Sara J. Henry. Paperback picks include biographies of Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Duchess of Windsor.
Scroll down to see what's new in our Signed Books Gallery; a "beary" cute table in our children's section; and February's "Author of the Month." And take a peek in the community window, which showcases the current offerings of the Concord Players - details below.
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: The Lady and Her Monsters with Roseanne Montillo
Thursday, February 7 at 7pm
The macabre meets art in this startling blend of grotesque nineteenth-century science and fascinating literary creation that examines the actual Victor Frankensteins and the real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.
Please join us at the Bookshop on Thursday, February 7th at 7 pm as we welcome Roseanne Montillo, discussing and signing her latest book, The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece.
A highly entertaining blend of literary analysis, lore, and scientific history, told with the verve and ghoulish fun of a Tim Burton film, The Lady and Her Monsters traces the origins of the greatest horror story of all time - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - using the novel as a centerpiece from which to explore the frightful milieu in which it was written.
Roseanne Montillo recounts how Shelley's Victor Frankenstein mirrored actual scientists of the period - curious and daring iconoclasts, influenced by their predecessors in the scientific age, who were obsessed with the inner workings of the human body and how it could be reanimated after death.
Montillo reveals how Shelley and her contemporaries were products of their time - intellectually curious artists, writers, poets, philosophers, and others intrigued by the occultists and daring scientists appearing across Europe who risked their reputations and their immortal souls to advance our understanding of human anatomy and medicine.
The result is a unique, rich, and revealing look into the creation of a classic.
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Upcoming event: George Harrar presents Reunion at Red Paint Bay
Sunday, February 10 at 3pm
Please join us on Sunday, February 10 at 3pm, as local-area author George Harrar presents Reunion at Red Paint Bay, a fast-paced and psychologically complex novel.
Red Paint calls itself "the friendliest town in Maine," a place where everyone knows one another and nothing too disturbing ever happens. Native son Simon Howe is a sturdy family man - a good father and husband - and owner-editor of the town's weekly newspaper.
One day Simon's predictable and peaceful life is disrupted by the arrival of an anonymous postcard, the first in a series of increasingly menacing messages. He tries to ignore them, but the implied danger becomes more real, threatening to engulf his wife and son as well. The Howe family becomes engaged in a full-scale psychological battle with their unidentified stalker. Secrets from Simon's past are uncovered, escalating toward a tense and unexpected climax.
More than a conventional mystery or thriller, Reunion at Red Paint Bay is an exploration of the consequences of guilt, denial, and moral absolutism. Harrar weaves a dramatic and suspenseful tale sure to spur readers into examining the limits of responsibility for one's actions.
George Harrar is the author of two novels for adults, including the literary mystery The Spinning Man. Among his dozen published short stories, "The 5:22" won the prestigious Carson McCullers Prize. Harrar lives west of Boston with his family.
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Fiction from legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie!
House of Earth by Woody Guthrie
Available at last! Legendary folk singer and American icon Woody Guthrie's only finished novel: a prophetic and powerful portrait of two hardscrabble farmers struggling to survive the elements and other powerful forces of destruction during the Dust Bowl; introduced by Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp
Finished in 1947, House of Earth is Woody Guthrie's long-lost and only fully realized novel - a powerful portrait of Dust Bowl America, filled with the homespun lyricism and authenticity that have made his songs a part of our national consciousness. It is the story of an ordinary couple's dreams of a better life and their search for love and meaning in a corrupt world.
A story of rural realism and progressive activism that is in many ways a companion piece to Guthrie's folk anthem "This Land Is Your Land," House of Earth is a searing portrait of hardship and hope set against a ravaged landscape. Combining the moral urgency and narrative drive of John Steinbeck with the erotic frankness of D. H. Lawrence, it is a powerful tale of America from one of our greatest artists.
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (1912-1967) was an American singer-songwriter and folk musician whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional, and children's songs and ballads, including the beloved classic, "This Land Is Your Land." Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Songwriters including Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jeff Tweedy, and Tom Paxton have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence.
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New novel from Jamaica Kincaid - ten years in the making!
See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid
A beautifully wrought new novel about marriage and family from the acclaimed author of Autobiography of My Mother
In, the brilliant and evocative new novel from Jamaica Kincaid, a marriage is revealed in all its joys and agonies. This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters - a mother, a father, and their two children, living in a small village in New England - as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future: for, as she writes, "the present will be now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then." Her characters, constrained by the world, despair in their domestic situations. But their minds wander, trying to make linear sense of what is, in fact, nonlinear.
Since the publication of her first short-story collection, At the Bottom of the River, which was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Kincaid has demonstrated a unique talent for seeing beyond and through the surface of things. In See Now Then, she envelops the reader in a world that is both familiar and startling - creating her most emotionally and thematically daring work yet.
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New suspense from award-winning author
A Cold and Lonely Place by Sara J. Henry
The second work of suspense featuring the same daring heroine from the author's acclaimed first thriller, Learning to Swim.
Troy Chance is innocently taking pictures of the Saranac Lake ice palace when she discovers the body of her roommate's boyfriend encased in the ice. Tobin Winslow was born rich but had been playing at a blue-collar life. And when Troy starts questioning how a wealthy kid from Greenwich, Connecticut, ends up frozen in an upstate New York lake, she has no idea of the web of deceit and danger she will become entangled in.
What's the secret the Winslow family guards so closely? Who's trying to get hold of Tobin's belongings? Who was he trying so desperately to protect? To uncover the truth, Troy must seek the answers etched into the dark side of the ice.
Sara J. Henry is the author of Learning to Swim - winner of the 2012 Anthony Award for best first novel, 2012 Agatha Award for best first novel, and the 2012 Mary Higgins Clark Award; also nominated for the Barry Award and Macavity Award. A Tennessee native, she studied in Knoxville and Canada, and now lives in Vermont.
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Engaging biography of Sir Thomas Wyatt, now in paperback
Graven With Diamonds: The Many Lives of Thomas Wyatt: Poet, Lover, Statesman, and Spy in the Court of Henry VIII by Alan Bradley
"A fluid, poised, quick-witted dance through the poetic and political career of one of the most elusive, glittering figures of Tudor England."
-- Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall
In this thrillingly entertaining book, Nicola Shulman interweaves the bloody events of Henry VIII's reign with the story of English love poetry and the life of its first master, Henry VIII's most glamorous and enigmatic subject: Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Poet, statesman, spy, lover of Anne Boleyn and favorite both of Henry VIII and his sinister minister Thomas Cromwell, the brilliant Wyatt was admired and envied in equal measure. His love poetry began as risqué entertainment for ambitious men and women at the slippery top of the court. But when the axe began to fall and Henry VIII's laws made his subjects fall silent in terror, Wyatt's poetic skills became a way to survive. He saw that a love poem was a place where secrets could hide.
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Biography of the Duchess of Windsor, now in paperback
That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
by Anne Sebba
"A solid biography of the woman who became the King of England's excuse for abdicating his throne . . . depicts Wallis as a woman who sought power and privilege but never expected the damage she wrought or the wrath she engendered."
--The New York Times
This is the story of the American divorcée notorious for allegedly seducing a British king off his throne. "That woman," so called by Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, was born Bessie Wallis Warfield in 1896 in Baltimore. Neither beautiful nor brilliant, she endured an impoverished childhood, which fostered in her a burning desire to rise above her circumstances.
Acclaimed biographer Anne Sebba offers an eye-opening account of one of the most talked about women of her generation. It explores the obsessive nature of Simpson's relationship with Prince Edward, the suggestion that she may have had a Disorder of Sexual Development, and new evidence showing she may never have wanted to marry Edward at all.
Since her death, Simpson has become a symbol of female empowerment as well as a style icon. But her psychology remains an enigma. Drawing from interviews and newly discovered letters, That Woman shines a light on this captivating and complex woman, an object of fascination that has only grown with the years.
Anne Sebba is a biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent who has written eight books and is a member of the Society of Authors Executive Committee. She lives in London.
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New in our Signed Books Gallery
News from Heaven: The Bakerton Stories
by Jennifer Haigh
 We had a lovely evening with Jennifer Haigh, who was here with her new short fiction collection. The stories are set in and around Bakerton, PA, a fictional coal-mining town which has gone from boom to bust. The audience was treated to a reading of a full story, and enjoyed the Q&A.
Ms. Haigh signed News from Heaven, as well as her previous books - Mrs. Kimble, Baker Towers, The Condition, and Faith.
Signed copies are on our shelves!
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Crossing the Borders of Time: A True Love Story of War, Exile, and Love Reclaimed by Leslie Maitland
On Sunday, Leslie Maitland presented a talk on the new paperback edition of her book. Maitland, a former New York Times investigative reporter, tells the true story of a love that time, war, and distance couldn't dim.
She had often heard stories of the her mother's first love; a man she had to leave behind when her family fled Europe on the eve of WWII. Nearly fifty years later, Maitland set out to learn - what ever happened to that young man, and where was he now?
Ms. Maitland's talk was accompanied by a slideshow of photographs and historic documents - fascinating!
Signed copies of Crossing the Borders of Time are in the store!
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Author of the Month -
George Saunders
George Saunders is literally "in the spotlight" as February's "Author of the Month!"
Saunders is the acclaimed author of several collections of short stories, as well as a collection of essays and a book for children.
Mr. Saunders is a MacArthur "Genius Grant" fellow, a Guggenheim fellow, a PEN/Hemingway nominee, and a multiple-National Magazine Award winner. He was named a "best writer under 40" by The New Yorker, and in 2009, received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.
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Bear with us!
Tall bears
Small bears
We've got 'em all ...
Bears
This beary nice table display in our children's section has us growling with pleasure!
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In our window
Concord Players - Musical Comedy Murders of 1940
The Concord Players presents "The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940."
February 8, 9, 15,
16, 17 (matinee), 22, & 23, 2013.
Written by John Bishop, this production is directed by John Pease.
Tickets are $20 each. For more information, or to make reservations, please call 978-369-2990, or visit
www.concordPlayers.org.
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