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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
Sun Noon - 5:00
Open 24/7 online at:
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Upcoming Events
We welcome Doris Kearns Goodwin with
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Marcella Pixley presents Freak
We welcome Michael Goodwin, coordinator of CCHS's "Rivers & Revolutions" program, as profiled by Katrina Fried in American Teacher: Heroes in the Classroom
Harvard professor Lawrence Buell presents The Dream of the Great American Novel
We welcome Susan Minot with Thirty Girls
Sarah Brannen and Melissa Stewart present Feathers, a nonfiction book for young readers
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Greetings from Main Street!
The next visitor in our Fall Author Series is Andre Dubus III with his book of four linked novellas, Dirty Love. See the complete list of events in our left sidebar; as always, if you're unable to attend an event, but would like a signed copy of the featured book, please call or email us to arrange personalization. 
When you're in the bookshop, be sure to take a look at our Music section - from Bach to Bruce, legends and history of classical, jazz, country, and rock-n-roll - browse this bookcase to find the volumes that will make your heart and mind sing!
This week's newsletter highlights a much anticipated novel, essays from a favorite author; two paperback picks - collected Louise Glück and an early Jane Gardam (back in print!); also, a short video clip of noted author/illustrator reading from and discussion our children's picture book selection.
Additions to our Signed Books Gallery include works from Martin W. Sandler, Amy Tan, and Ann Patchett.
Our community window spotlights the Concord Children's Center and their upcoming Open House programs at three locations.
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 -
Sunday, November 17 at 3pm
Andre Dubus III presents Dirty Love
In this heartbreakingly beautiful book of disillusioned intimacy and persistent yearning, beloved and celebrated author Andre Dubus III explores the bottomless needs and stubborn weaknesses of people seeking gratification in food and sex, work and love.
In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty"- tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy.
Slivered by happiness and discontent, aging and death, but also persistent hope and forgiveness, these beautifully wrought narratives express extraordinary tenderness toward human beings, our vulnerable hearts and bodies, our fulfilling and unfulfilling lives alone and with others.
Andre Dubus III is the author of The Garden of Last Days, House of Sand and Fog (a finalist for the National Book Award), and Townie, winner of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His writing has received many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. He lives with his family north of Boston.
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Upcoming event -
Sunday, November 24 at 3pm
Doris Kearns Goodwin presents The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
After Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin wields her magic on another larger-than-life president, and another momentous and raucous American time period as she brings Theodore Roosevelt, the muckraking journalists, and the Progressive Era to life.
Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. With the help of the "muckraking" press, Roosevelt had wielded the Bully Pulpit to challenge and triumph over abusive monopolies, political bosses, and corrupting money brokers. Roosevelt led a revolution that he bequeathed to Taft only to see it compromised as Taft surrendered to money men and big business. The rupture between the two led Roosevelt to run against Taft for president, an ultimately futile race that resulted in the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the diminishment of Theodore Roosevelt's progressive wing of the Republican Party.
The Bully Pulpit describes a time in our history that enlightened and changed the country, ushered in the modern age, and produced some unforgettable men and women.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and an oft-seen political commentator. She is the author of biographies of several U.S. Presidents, including Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995, Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir, and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which was made into the movie Lincoln.
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New novel from best-selling
author of The Joy Luck Club -
signed editions!
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
Amy Tan's latest novel: a sweeping, evocative epic of two women's intertwined fates and their search for identity, from the lavish parlors of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese village.
Spanning fifty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement resurrects lost worlds: from the moment when China's imperial dynasty collapsed and a Republic arose and foreign trade became the lifeblood of Shanghai, to the inner workings of courtesan houses and the lives of the foreign "Shanghailanders" living in the International Settlement, both erased by WWII. It is also a deeply evocative narrative of family secrets, the legacy of trauma, and the profound connections between mothers and daughters, which returns readers to the compelling territory Amy Tan so expertly mapped in The Joy Luck Club. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humor, she conjures a story of the inheritance of love, its mysteries and senses and its illusions and truths.
Signed First Editions of The Valley of Amazement are on our shelves!
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Ann Patchett's portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett's novels have been feats of imagination - from the tale of an opera singer held hostage inside a vice presidential mansion (Bel Canto), to a forgotten tribe along the banks of the Amazon river (State of Wonder) - she has created entire worlds for the reader to inhabit. Now, with her new book, she puts fiction aside and invites us into the very real world of her own life.
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is both wide-ranging and deeply personal, overflowing with close observation and emotional wisdom. Stretching from her tumultuous childhood, from a disastrous early marriage and a later happy one, she charts the hard work and joy of writing, and the unexpected thrill of opening a bookstore. Patchett shares stories of the people, places, ideals, and art to which she has remained indelibly committed.
Brimming with thoughtful advice and emotional wisdom, this collection brings into focus the large experiences and small moments that have shaped her as a daughter, wife, writer, and friend. An irresistible blend of literature and memoir, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a unique examination of the heart, mind, and soul of one of our most revered and gifted writers.
Ann Patchett is the author of six novels and two books of nonfiction. She is the winner of the PEN/ Faulkner Award, England's Orange Prize, and the Book Sense Book of the Year. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee.
Signed First Editions of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage are on our shelves!
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Jane Gardam's first novel, back in print from Europa Editions (paperback)
A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam
"I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal having had a violent experience at the age of nine"
Jessica Vye's 'violent experience' colors her schooldays and her reaction to the world around her - a confining world of Order Marks, wartime restrictions, viyella dresses, nicely-restrained essays and dusty tea shops.
For Jessica she has been told that she is 'beyond all possible doubt,' a born writer. With her inability to conform, her absolute compulsion to tell the truth and her dedication to accurately noting her experiences, she knows this anyway.
But what she doesn't know is that the experiences that sustain and enrich her burgeoning talent will one day lead to a new - and entirely unexpected - reality.
Jane Gardam is the only author to have twice been awarded Britain's prestigious Costa (formerly Whitbread) Award for Best Novel. She was also a Booker prize finalist. Her novel The Man in the Wooden Hat was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize and Old Filth was a finalist for the Orange Prize and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives in the south of England near the sea.
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The collected works of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück -
now in paperback
Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Glück
With each successive book, Louise Glück's drive to leave behind what came before has grown more fierce, the force of her gaze fixed on what has yet to be imagined. She invented a form to accommodate this need, the book-length sequence of poems. The reiterated yet endlessly transfigured elements in this landscape -Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain - persistently emerge and reappear with the dark energy of the inevitable, shot through with the bright aspect of things new-made.
To read all of these books together in Poems 1962-2012 is to understand the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.
Louise Glück is the author of eleven books of poems and a collection of essays. Her many awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches at Yale University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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New in our Signed Books Gallery
The Letters of John F. Kennedy by Martin W. Sandler
A full events space greeted Martin Sandler when he came to speak with us on his new book, The Letters of John F. Kennedy.
Mr. Sandler impressed and entertained us with anecdotes and quotes from the letters.
His presentation was lively, and the audience continued the conversation with thoughtful questions.
Signed editions of The Letters of John F. Kennedy are in the bookshop.
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The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
See the article near the top of this newsletter for more about this new novel from Amy Tan - almost a decade in the making!
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Kids pick: Tomi Ungerer's
homage to Ireland
Fog Island by Tomi Ungerer
 | | Tomi Ungerer, Fog Island click the "play" button above to hear Tomi Ungerer read from and discuss Fog Island (2 minutes) |
An imaginative tale of mystery and fear of the unknown by one of the world's most acclaimed children's books authors.
No one has ever returned from the mysterious Fog Island, but when Finn and Cara get castaway on its murky shores, they discover things are not quite as they expect... Will anyone ever believe them?
Tomi Ungerer, born in Strasbourg in 1931, landed in New York in 1956 with $60 in his pocket and with a suitcase full of drawings. Overnight he became a star as a caricaturist, illustrator and children's book author and published more than 80 books in ten years. As a graphic artist he created advertising campaigns for Willy Brandt and The New York Times. In 1998, Tomi Ungerer was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration and has become an internationally renowned artist. He now divides his time between Strasbourg and Ireland.
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In our window
Concord Children's Center Open House
Saturday, November 16, 9:30am - 11:30am
The Concord Children's Center will hold an Open House for you to learn more about their full- and part-time early education and care programs.
The three locations will host Open Houses on Saturday, November 16, 9:30am - 11:30am. Visit the Centers, meet the staff, and learn more about their programs. West Concord (1300 Main Street) - infants, toddlers, pre-school and after school Emerson (134 ORNAC, across from Emerson Hospital) - infants and toddlers Ripley (120 Meriam Road, near Concord Center) - infants, toddlers, pre-school and after school
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