BOOK GROUP NEWSLETTER
MAY 2021
I took an unscheduled vacation at the end of March. Where in the world did I go during this crazy Covid time? Hooterville? Mayberry?  Riverdale? Winterfell? Actually I was in the hospital fighting a nasty allergic reaction to Bactrim. And as I recovered at my friends Ann and Joel's house, Ann and my friend Becky decided to fight off the King sized dust bunnies and give my apartment a deep cleaning. They took their buckets and cleaners and dusters and mops and trudged up the stairs at Grand Avenue and began to create a major miracle. Becky calls it Swedish Death Cleaning. Interesting name for it.  (She can't imagine why a man needs 25 pairs of underwear and 18 pairs of jeans. Or why I kept 20-year-old pills in my medicine cabinet.)  

When I felt better I joined the crew. Ann made a list of things she wanted me to accomplish in the days ahead. At the top of the list was a task that made my knees shake and my pulse quicken: GET RID OF YOUR BOXES OF BOOKS. Aggghh! Like a knife through my Reader's Brain! What was Ann thinking? I only have 25 boxes of galleys and finished copies. Doesn't everybody? Now that a month has passed my apartment is looking quite spiffy. And I've donated a few boxes of books to my library. But the majority of boxes are still there. Looks like I'm going to have to do the Marie Kondo thing and open each box, touch every book, and decide if I love it enough to keep it. It's going to be a very long summer! Oof! 

I'd like to thank my good friend Chloe and the other booksellers for creating the April newsletter while I was enjoying room service and a private room.  

I've picked some interesting books for you this month. Three are new in paperback and one in hardcover. I hope you enjoy them. 


Happy Reading!
Ken
kenbksco@gmail.com
by Alex George

In Alex George's third novel he creates a group of fascinating and heartfelt characters whose stories are told over the course of a hot summer day in 1927 Paris. Into the lives of these extraordinary people drift some Parisian notables like Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Josephine Baker. As Alex says, "the book is divided into four distinct but intertwining narratives. Marcel Proust appears as a minor character, but the title of his masterwork, In Search of Lost Time, could be taken as an overarching theme of the book. The four stories weave the past with the present as each of the principle characters desperately seeks something they have lost. Some find what they're looking for; others do not. But all are driven by a fierce yearning." Author Melanie Benjamin says, "Alex George writes movingly of human connection, lost and found. His vivid portrayal of lives intersecting in early twentieth-century Paris will delight you with its lyricism and touch you with its humanity." A perfect novel for reading groups that enjoy historical fiction. 
by Beatriz Williams

Beatriz Williams tweaks the story of Amelia Earhart to give us this entertaining tale of aviatrix Irene Foster and photojournalist Janey Everett who discovers her on a small Hawaiian island several years after her mysterious disappearance during a 1937 round-the-world flight. Janey is writing a book about Sam Mallory, Irene's first co-pilot and love of her life. For fear of her true identity being exposed, Irene reluctantly begins telling Janey about her amazing life as one of the world's most famous pilots. In the Author's Note Williams says, "This book isn't intended as a veiled biography of Amelia Earhart, and certainly not as a theory regarding her famous disappearance over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. But Earhart's story has fascinated me since I was a girl, and a few years ago I posed myself a certain "What If?" that eventually reimagined and grew into Her Last Flight.  As a result, Irene Foster can best be described as a composite character, borrowing certain physical and biographical details from Earhart but also from some of the other extraordinary women and men at the frontiers of aviation."
by Claire Lombardo

It was such a treat to welcome Claire Lombardo to our store when this novel made its debut in 2019. She was such a great guest and many of us found it hard to believe that this was her first novel. Set in Oak Park, a prosperous suburb of Chicago, the book follows the highs and lows of the Sorensons, a family full of long buried secrets. Marilyn Connolly and David Sorensen met in the 1970s and fell in love. By 2016 their four radically different daughters are in a state of unrest... Each daughter has a love/hate relationship with their siblings and wonder if they'll ever find the sort of love their parents have. In this excellent novel Lombardo explores the triumphs and burdens of love, the fraught tethers of parenthood and sisterhood, and the baffling mixture of affection, abhorrence, resistance and submission we feel for those closest to us. Madeline Miller, author of Circe, says "Lombardo's impressive debut is a gripping and poignant ode to a messy, loving family in all its glory. She juggles a huge cast of characters with seeming effortlessness bringing each to life with humor, vividness, and acute psychological insight."
by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Greenidge's absorbing novel is a story about one young Black girl's attempt to find a place where she can be fully, and only, herself. Libertie Simpson, a free born Black girl growing up in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, knows that her mother, a practicing physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie will go to medical school and then practice alongside her. But when Libertie goes to Cunningham College in Ohio she discovers that she loves music more than science. She feels stifled by her mother's choices and is hungry for something else. She is also constantly reminded that unlike her mother, who can pass, Libertie has skin that is too dark. But when a young man from Haiti enters her life and proposes, she believes she will be his equal when they marry and travel to the island. Will she finally find a place for herself? Jacqueline Woodson calls the book, "One of the most thoughtful and amazingly beautiful books I've read all year. Katilyn Greenidge is a master storyteller." Author Brandon Taylor says that the book is "a glorious, piercing song for the ages--fierce, brilliant, and utterly free."  
BOOKS & COMPANY BOOK GROUPS
Open to the Public

BOOK GROUPS ARE RESCHEDULED
AS VIRTUAL MEETINGS VIA ZOOM

CHECK WWW.BOOKSCO.COM FOR UPDATES
AND REGISTRATION LINKS!
Wednesday, May 26th
1:00 p.m.
by Rachel Joyce
ZOOM Meeting


Wednesday, June 23rd
1:00 p.m.
by Ann Napolitano
ZOOM Meeting
Registration coming soon
Sunday, May 30th
3:00 p.m.
by Miles Harvey
ZOOM MEETING


Sunday, July 25th
3:00 p.m.
by Casey Cep
ZOOM MEETING
Registration coming soon
Wednesday, May 19th
6:30 p.m.
by Adam Silvera
Zoom Meeting


Wednesday, June 16th
6:30 p.m.
by Katharine McGee
Zoom Meeting
Registration coming soon
Tuesday, May 25th
6:00 p.m.
by S.A. Lechuk
ZOOM Meeting
UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS!


KATHLEEN ERNST
Thursday, May 27th
7:00 p.m.
Via Zoom
We are very excited to announce our virtual event with author Kathleen Ernst, for the eleventh(!) book in the Chloe Ellefson mystery series, The Weaver's Revenge!  

MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD
in conversation with
Daniel Goldin & Lisa Baudoin
Tuesday, June 8th
2:00 p.m.
via Zoom
Join us for the June Readings From Oconomowaukee featuring Boswell Books' Daniel Goldin and Books & Company's Lisa Baudoin in conversation with Maggie Shipstead for her new novel Great Circle, an unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost--Great Circle spans Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles.

MIKE GAYLE
in Conversation with
Daniel Goldin & Lisa Baudoin
Thursday, July 22nd
2:00 p.m.
Via ZOOM
Please join us for our July Readings From Oconomowaukee event, featuring author Mike Gayle in conversation with Boswell Book Store's Daniel Goldin and Books & Company's Lisa Baudoin for Gayle's new novel All The Lonely People, a warm and funny novel about a widower in Australia who makes it seem as though his retirement is the time of his life, but in reality it is far from it. When his daughter makes plans to come to visit, he has to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out.