Thank you to the wonderful readers and fascinating authors who participated in our Summer 2011 Author Series!

It was truly an extraordinary experience to bring hundreds of booklovers together to interact with the authors they loved initially on the page, and then in person. The energy in the room was invigorating; the enthusiasm left customers and staff alike reminiscing for months.

We are looking forward to next summer - click  to sign up for notification as dates and authors are announced. In the meantime, catch any titles you may have missed below, come visit us over the winter, and remember that signed copies make great gifts and we are happy to ship!

Thank you, always, for your support of our independent bookstore.

Past Literary Luncheon Authors

	Summer 2011 Authors
	Lisa See    Dreams of Joy    Dreams of Joy is a continuation of the story that began in Shanghai Girls finds a devastated Joy fleeing to China to search for her real father while her mother, Pearl, desperately pursues her, a dual quest marked by their encounters with the nation's intolerant Communist culture.
	Nancy Thayer    Heat Wave    After her husband's sudden death from a heart attack, Carley finds herself in a difficult financial situation and decides to turn their historic Nantucket house into a bed-and-breakfast, but events during a late summer heat wave change the lives of Carley and her family.    Unerringly perceptive, superbly written, every page packed with the warmth and compassionate wisdom that have become Nancy Thayer’s trademark, Heat Wave tells the moving story of a woman who, after her seemingly perfect life unravels, must find the strength to live and love again.
	Dawn Tripp    Game of Secrets    Half a century after her father's disappearance is compounded by rumors that he was murdered, Jane Weld struggles with her daughter's romance with the son of her father's mistress, a situation that escalates throughout the course of a Scrabble game of unspoken words and secrets.
	Kitty Pilgrim    The Explorer's Code    A first novel by an award-winning CNN journalist finds prominent oceanographer Cordelia Stapleton teaming up with archaeologist John Sinclair to find a deed she inherited that is also being sought by a consortium of underworld criminals, a quest that results in a high-stakes chase through some of the world's most sophisticated regions.
	Jennifer Egan    A Visit From the Goon Squad       * Winner of the Pulitzer Prize *National Bestseller *National Book Critics Circle Award Winner *PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist   Working side-by-side for a record label, former punk rocker Bennie Salazar and the passionate Sasha hide illicit secrets from one another while interacting with a motley assortment of equally troubled people from 1970s San Francisco to the post-war future.
	Molly Birnbaum    Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way    Combining expert advice and science, the author, an aspiring chef robbed of her sense of smell after a debilitating car accident, chronicles her epic quest, from a pioneering New Jersey flavor lab to perfume school in the South of France, to understand and overcome her condition and rediscover the joy of smell.
	Daphne Kalotay    Russian Winter    Former Bolshoi ballerina, Nina Revskaya, auctions off her jewelry collection and becomes overwhelmed by memories of her homeland, the friends she left behind amidst Stalinist aggression and the dark secret that brought her to a new life in Boston.
	Lisa Genova    Left Neglected       The best-selling author of Still Alice presents the story of a woman in her 30s who suffers a traumatic brain injury in a car accident that leaves her unable to perceive left-side information, a disability that prompts her struggle to recover and heal an estrangement.
	Andre Dubus III    Townie: A Memoir    The author of House of Sand and Fog describes his childhood in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime and his weekly visits with his father, an eminent author who taught on a college campus.   An unforgettable book, Townie is a riveting and profound meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love.  The acclaimed novelist reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy him-until he was saved by writing.
	Mitchell Zuckoff    Lost in Shangri-La    Special Guest Attending: Mary Hanlon, a childhood friend of WAC volunteer survivor Margaret Hastings.    In 1945, a sightseeing trip over "Shangri-La" turned deadly when the plane crashed, leaving only three survivors who, battling for their survival, were caught between man-eating headhunters and the enemy Japanese, in this real-life adventure drawn from personal interviews, declassified Army documents and personal photos and mementos.
	Geraldine Brooks    Caleb's Crossing    Once again, Geraldine Brooks takes a remarkable shard of history and brings it to vivid life. In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual scaffold, Brooks has created a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure.    Forging a deep friendship with a Wampanoag chieftain's son on the Great Harbor settlement where her minister father is working to convert the tribe, Bethia follows his subsequent ivy league education and efforts to bridge cultures among the colonial elite. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March.
	Adam Haslett    Union Haslett    From the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist You Are Not A Stranger Here, a stunning, masterful portrait of our modern gilded age.   At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between a retired history teacher, Charlotte Graves—who has suddenly begun to hear her two dogs speaking to her in the voices of Cotton Mather and Malcolm X—and an ambitious young banker, Doug Fanning, who is building an ostentatious mansion on what was once Charlotte’s family land. Drawn into the conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled high-school student who stirs powerful emotions in both of them.
	Nina Sankovitch    Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading    Torn apart by grief after losing her sister, the author, a 46-year-old mother of four, turned to literature for comfort, devoting herself to reading one book a day for a year, which brought much needed joy, healing and wisdom into her life.   In her beloved purple chair, she rediscovered the magic of such writers as Toni Morrison, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ian McEwan, Edith Wharton, and, of course, Leo Tolstoy. Through the connections Nina made with books and authors (and even other readers), her life changed profoundly, and in unexpected ways. Reading, it turns out, can be the ultimate therapy.
	Summer 2010 Authors
	Maggie Pouncey    Perfect Reader    In the aftermath of her famous academic father's death, Flora Dempsey quits her big-city magazine job and returns to her childhood home, where she discovers a cache of love poems written by her father to an unknown girlfriend. A first novel.
	Dwayne Raymond    Mornings with Mailer    The young man who worked as Norman Mailer's personal assistant during the last five years of the author's life offers an intimate, revealing memoir that recasts the literary lion in a new light, not as combative and verbose as his legend dictated, but rather as a temperate man who taught his assistant how to navigate his own personal challenges.
	Lynne Kiele Bonasia    Summer Shift    While trying to run the Cape Cod clam bar she owns, 44-year-old widow Mary Hopkins must rely on her diverse and dependable staff to weather the sudden death of a young waitress, her beloved great aunt's struggle with Alzheimer's and Mary's own sense that life is passing her by. By the author of Some Assembly Required.
	Claire Cook    Seven Year Switch    After the re-emergence of her husband and the introduction of a new love interest in her life, Jill Murray uses a Costa Rican vacation to figure out what his best for her and her 10-year-old daughter and whether she truly wants to live a man-free life for the rest of her days. By the author of Must Love Dogs.
	Corinne Demas      The Writing Circle       A richly engaging tale of love, betrayal, and literature: the story of six members of an elite writing circle who share much more than their works-in-progress.The Writing Circle will appeal to anyone who has ever imagined being a writer or wondered what it is like to be one, with a compelling cast of characters who are passionate, ambitious, flawed, and unpredictable.
	Linda Greenlaw       Seaworthy A Swordfish Captain Returns to the Sea      A sequel to the best-selling The Hungry Ocean picks up 10 years after the events of The Perfect Storm and recounts how the financially strapped author accepted a job captaining a swordfishing boat, a voyage marked by the challenges of the vessel's poor condition, bad weather and an inadvertent arrest.
	Richard Russo       That Old Cape Magic    That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
	Heidi Jon Schmidt      The House on Oyster Creek     Charlotte Tradescome moves her work-obsessed husband and three-year-old daughter from Manhattan to a newly-inherited property on Cape Cod, where she is dismissed by the locals as a "washashore" and makes a connection with an open-hearted oyster farmer.
	Carol McCleary    The Alchemy of Murder    At the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, reporter Nellie Bly teams up with the likes of Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde and Louis Pasteur to find the connection between a series of killings and an epidemic that is wiping out Parisians by the thousands. Historical mystery that made the top 5 shortlist for Europe's highest mystery CrimeFest Prize.
	Holly LeCraw    The Swimming Pool    Seven years after the end of an affair with a married man culminated in the unsolved murder of his wife, Marcella Atkinson struggles with guilt and the decimation of her own family life before a chance discovery leads her into an emotionally charged relationship with her former lover's son.
	Jennifer Weiner    Fly Away Home      A latest work by the author of Best Friends Forever and Good In Bed finds a politician's wife retreating with her grown daughters to a Connecticut beach house after a painful public betrayal, an escape marked by new beginnings and her younger daughter's pregnancy.    From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family of women who seek refuge in an old beach house.
	Summer 2009 Authors
	Lisa Genova    Still Alice    Feeling at the top of her game when she is suddenly diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease, Harvard psychologist Alice Howland struggles to find meaning and purpose in her life as her concept of self gradually slips away.
	Katherine Howe    The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane    Forced to set aside her Ph.D. research in order to help the settling of her late grandmother's abandoned home, Connie Goodwin discovers a hidden key among her grandmother's possessions that is linked to a darker chapter in Salem witch trial history.
	Beth Teitell    Drinking Problems at the Fountain of Youth    A whimsical assessment of today's youth-obsessed culture outlines the ridiculous side of everything from facial fitness coaches and high-priced skin serums to anti-aging gummi bears and cover models who never grow old.
	Gina Barreca    It's Not That I'm Bitter...Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World    Presents a series of humorous essays to express the author's viewpoint on women's issues, ranging from cougars and finding the right bra to the state of modern feminism and women in politics.
	Jennifer Haigh    The Condition    Devastated by their daughter's diagnosis with Turner's syndrome, a genetic disorder that prevents her from physically aging past childhood, the McKotches find her difficulties further challenged years later when, well into her thirties but still resembling a young girl, their daughter falls in love.
	Anne LeClaire    Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence    The author of The Lavender Hour and Entering Normal describes her transforming experiences with the spiritual practice of silence, in a contemplative guide that that explains how silence can enable participants to become more aware and compassionate.
	MaryAnn McFadden    So Happy Together    After raising her daughter and caring for her aging parents for many years, history teacher Claire Noble finds her forthcoming nuptials and ambition to become a photographer compromised by their problems
	Jennifer Weiner    Best Friends Forever    Addie Downs and Valerie Adler were close until a betrayal during their teen years drove them apart; but twenty years later, a terrified Val shows up at Addie's doorstep wearing a bloody coat, pushing them both into a wild adventure where they must rely on one another again, in a novel by a best-selling author.
	Awista Ayub    However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home    Describes how the Afghan-born author flourished throughout her upbringing in America thanks to organized athletics, her founding of the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange for Afghan girls after the fall of the Taliban, and the personal stories of eight young soccer players.
	Jamie Cat Callan    French Women Don't Sleep Alone: Pleasureable Secrets to Finding Love    Presents advice for American women on adding sensuality and a little spice to every stage of love, based on the behavior and customs of French women.
	Lynne Griffin    Life Without Summer    A tale told in alternating voices follows the experiences of bereaved mother Tessa who is swept up by an increasingly bleak search for answers after her beloved four-year-old daughter is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and her grief counselor, Celia, whose efforts to help Tessa are marked by painful family memories.
	Nancy Thayer    Summer House    Follows the lives, loves, and fortunes of three generations of headstrong women as they convene at their Nantucket homestead where they are forced to come to terms with their life choices and the meaning of family.
	Summer 2008 Authors
	Alice Hoffman    The Third Angel    Follows the lives of three women in love with the wrong men--Madeleine Heller, attracted to her sister's fiance; Frieda Lewis, the muse to an ill-fated rock star; and Bryn Evans, engaged to be married but secretly obsessed with her ex-husband.
	Ann Hood    Comfort: A Journey Through Grief    The author of The Knitting Circle documents her family's journey of grief after the sudden death of her five-year-old daughter after a virulent illness, a process during which she learned how to knit and experienced comfort in unexpected ways.
	Sara Young    My Enemy's Cradle    Hiding out from the Nazis with her Dutch relatives, Cyrla, a half-Jewish girl, is confronted by a terrifying choice between certain discovery in her cousin's home and taking her pregnant cousin Anneke's place in the Lebensborn, a maternity home for Aryan girls.
	Elin Hilderbrand    A Summer Affair    Reluctantly agreeing to organize a children's benefit at which a rock-star ex-lover is performing, Claire Danner Crispin finds her efforts complicated by her clashes with a fellow organizer, her best friend's catering mishaps, and a new relationship.
	Jennifer Weiner    Certain Girls    A sequel to Good in Bed takes place thirteen years later and finds a no-longer-famous Cannie writing science fiction under a pen name, raising her teenage daughter, and considering her husband Peter's request to have Cannie's flamboyant sister provide surrogate services so that they can have a second child.
	Michael Tonello    Bringing Home the Birkin    A whimsical account of the author's five-year travels throughout the world in search of hard-to-obtain genuine handbags that he would subsequently sell on the Internet for a lucrative profit describes the events that led to his accidental career and his related encounters with celebrity and danger.
	Brunonia Barry    The Lace Reader    Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations. Now the disappearance of two women is bringing Towner back home to Salem—and is bringing to light the shocking truth about the death of her twin sister.
	Joan Anderson    The Second Journey: The Road Back to Yourself    Describes the melee of family and professional responsibilities that threw the lifestyle consultant author's own life into chaos, documenting the intervention staged by her friends and family members that convinced her to take the same advice she gives to her clients. By the author of A Year by the Sea.
	Nellie Hermann    The Cure for Grief    Deeply bonded to her three older brothers and in awe of her father's experiences as a Holocaust survivor, young Ruby is shocked when her eldest brother is abruptly taken away to a hospital, where he changes into a person she barely recognizes.