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Greetings! We hope you've dug out from the storm! It was exciting to see a flurry (!) of activity late last week, as many stopped in to stock up on bookish supplies - after securing milk and bread, you were inspired to purchase novels, activity books, jigsaw puzzles, and Valentine greetings. Later this month we have two "double header" events - inspirational memoirists Margaret Roach and Katrina Kenison visit on February 24, and novelists Randy Susan Meyers and Juliette Fay join us on February 28 - details are below.
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 a study of Paul Klee's many angels; the harrowing survival story of an Antarctic explorer; a political biography of Rosa Parks; and a raucous literary guide to the "bad boys" of Western Lit.
Scroll down to see what's new in our Signed Books Gallery - Roseanne Montillo, George Harrar, Roger Hobbs, and Karen Russell. Our community window showcases the Geography Quest undertaken by students in Concord Public elementary schools.
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: An afternoon with two inspirational memoirists
Sunday, February 24 at 3pm
We are so fortunate to have - not one, but two - fantastic memoirists visiting with us on Sunday, February 24. Join us as Katrina Kenison discusses her most recent, Magical Journey, and Margaret Roach presents The Backyard Parables.
From the author of The Gift of an Ordinary Day, Katrina Kenison's intimate memoir of loss, self-discovery, and growth will resonate deeply with any woman who has ever mourned the passage of time, questioned her own purpose, or wondered, "Do I have what it takes to create something new in my life?"
With the candor and warmth that have endeared her to readers, Kenison reflects on the inevitable changes wrought by time: the death of a dear friend, children leaving home, recognition of her own physical vulnerability, and surprising shifts in her marriage. She finds solace in the notion that midlife is also a time of unprecedented opportunity for growth as old roles and responsibilities fall away, and unanticipated possibilities appear on the horizon. 
After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo." In The Backyard Parables, Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her, and meditates on the science and spirituality of nature, reminding her readers and herself to keep on digging.
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Upcoming event: A conversation with novelists Randy Susan Meyers and Juliette Fay
Thursday, February 28 at 7pm
Please join us at the Bookshop on Thursday evening, February 28th, as we welcome Juliette Fay, author of The Shortest Way Home, and Randy Susan Meyers, author of The Comfort of Lies, in a joint reading and conversation.
With The Murderer's Daughters, Randy Susan Meyers established herself as an author to watch, garnering critical praise, award nominations, and passionate reader response. An international bestseller, the powerful first novel was called an "an impressively executed novel, disturbing and convincing" by the Boston Globe.
Now she brings us The Comfort of Lies, a compelling novel about three women caught in the aftermath of infidelity. 
Julliette Fay's first novel, Shelter Me, was a 2009 Massachusetts Book Award "Book of the Year;" her second novel, Deep Down True, was short-listed for the Women's Fiction award by the American Library Association.
She returns with The Shortest Way Home, a novel full of humor and hope for finding yourself where you least expected. This is another perfect serving of a slice of life!
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A study of Paul Klee's "Angels"
Paul Klee: The Angels
by Michael Baumgartner and Walter Benjamin
From German publisher Hatje Cantz comes a critical appraisal of Paul Klee's art - drawings, watercolors, gouaches, and paintings - devoted to the motif of the angel.
Paul Klee (1879-1940) began to experience the first symptoms of scleroderma - a systemic autoimmune disease - in 1933, although it was only diagnosed posthumously. His interest in angels arose while he was ill, and they became a dominant theme, particularly from 1938 on.
Klee's depictions of angels are among his most popular paintings. Perhaps one reason for their enduring popularity is that angels are trapped in human form; like us, they have flaws and weaknesses, can be playful, worried or even malicious. While these works reflect the fear of death as well as the fragility of the incurably ill, they are also imbued with the artist's quiet sagacity and whimsical humor.
With 138 reproductions in color and writings on Klee by Walter Benjamin among others, Paul Klee: The Angels sheds new light on individual works in the series, such as the iconic "Angelus Novus," which Benjamin purchased in 1921 - for the equivalent of about $30 - and which led him to formulate his notion of the "angel of history."
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Survival of an Antarctic explorer
Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by David Roberts
His two companions dead, food and supplies vanished in a crevasse, Douglas Mawson was still one hundred miles from camp.
On January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface.
Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling, and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the flesh beneath. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizably skeletal, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, "Which one are you?"
This thrilling and almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders. It is illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley's famous Antarctic photographs, many never before published in the United States.
Author David Roberts is the winner of the Prix Méditerrané and the grand prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival. He is the author of The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah. He lives in Massachusetts.
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Literary criticism with a wink
Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors by Andrew Shaffer
A wildly funny and illuminating history and analysis of the bad boys and girls of Western literature.
In Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, Andrew Shaffer explored the romantic failures of some of the great minds in history. Now, in Literary Rogues, he turns his unflinching eye and wit to explore our love-hate relationship with literature's most contrarian, drunken, vulgar, and just plain rude bad boys (and girls) in this very funny and shockingly true compendium of literary misbehavior.
Part nostalgia, part serious history of Western literary movements, and Literary Rogues is a wholly raucous celebration of oft-vilified writers and their work, brimming with interviews, research, and personality.
Andrew Shaffer is the author of Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love and, under the pen name Fanny Merkin, Fifty Shames of Earl Grey. His writing has appeared in such diverse publications as Mental Floss and Maxim. An Iowa native, Shaffer currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky, a magical land of horses and bourbon.
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The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis
"Theoharis brings all of her talents as a political scientist and historian of the civil rights movement to bear on this illuminating biography of the great Rosa Parks."
--Henry Louis Gates Jr.
This is the definitive political biography of Rosa Parks - examining her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement.
Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks's politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought - for more than a half a century - to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.
Author Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She received an AB in Afro-American studies from Harvard College and a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan. She is the author or coauthor of four books and articles on the black freedom struggle and the contemporary politics of race in the United States.
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New in our Signed Books Gallery
The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Montillo
The Lady and Her Monsters brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.
Montillo recounts how - at the intersection of the Romantic Age and the Industrial Revolution - Shelley's Victor Frankenstein was inspired by actual scientists of the period: curious and daring iconoclasts who were obsessed with the inner workings of the human body and how it might be reanimated after death.
With true-life tales of grave robbers, ghoulish experiments, and the ultimate in macabre research - human reanimation - The Lady and Her Monsters is a brilliant exploration of the creation of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's horror classic.
Signed copies are on our shelves!
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Reunion at Red Paint Bay by George Harrar
This book is going to have people talking - and, as a paperback original, it's perfect for book groups.
More than a conventional mystery or thriller, Reunion at Red Paint Bay is an exploration of the consequences of guilt, denial, and moral absolutism. George Harrar weaves a dramatic and suspenseful tale sure to spur readers into examining the limits of responsibility for one's actions.
Signed copies are waiting for you.
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Ghostman by Roger Hobbs
 Stunningly dark, hugely intelligent and thoroughly addictive, Ghostman announces the arrival of an exciting and highly distinctive novelist.
This is the story of a "ghostman" who goes by the name of "Jack." Jack is charged with making a botched robbery disappear, cleaning up the mess and leaving no trace.
Shortly into his task, Jack realizes there's more to this caper than meets the eye; the result is a 36-hour page-turning countdown.
Signed copies of Ghostman are here, ready to keep you on the edge of your seat.
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Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories
by Karen Russell
 As seen on the cover of this week's New York Times Sunday Book Review!
From the author of the New York Times best seller Swamplandia! - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - a magical new collection of stories that showcases her gifts at their inimitable best.
Karen Russell is one of today's most celebrated and vital writers - honored in The New Yorker's list of the twenty best writers under the age of forty, Granta's Best of Young American Novelists, and the National Book Foundation's five best writers under the age of thirty-five. Her wondrous new work displays a young writer of superlative originality and invention coming into the full range and scale of her powers.
Come on in (or call!) for a signed edition of Vampires in the Lemon Grove!
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In our window
Concord Public Schools "Geography Quest"
Students in Concord's three public elementary schools - Alcott, Thoreau, and Willard - are working on the 2013 Geography Quest.
This year's Lewis & Clark Quest retraces the pair's expedition across the country and looks at our land's geographic wonders.
The Geography Quest is an annual PTG-sponsored event designed to let families explore geography together while learning about history and how to use reference tools.
Geography Quest is fun!
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