PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR OF ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel By Anthony Doerr

Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.

FROM TWO-TIME NEWBERY MEDALIST AND LOCAL WRITER KATE DICAMILLO

The Beatryce Prophecy By Kate DiCamillo

In a time of war, a mysterious child appears at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Gentle Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, coated in dirt and blood, and holding fast to the ear of Answelica the goat. As the monk nurses Beatryce to health, he uncovers her dangerous secret, one that imperils them all—for the king of the land seeks just such a girl, and Brother Edik, who penned the prophecy himself, knows why.

AN UNPRECEDENTED BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIEW INTO THE LIFE OF ANTHONY BOURDAIN FROM THE PEOPLE WHO KNEW HIM BEST

Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography By Laurie Woolever

When Anthony Bourdain died in June 2018, fans around the globe came together to celebrate the life of an inimitable man who had dedicated his life to traveling nearly everywhere (and eating nearly everything), shedding light on the lives and stories of others. His impact was outsized and his legacy has only grown since his death.

Now, for the first time, we have been granted a look into Bourdain’s life through the stories and recollections of his closest friends and colleagues. Laurie Woolever, Bourdain’s longtime assistant and confidante, interviewed nearly a hundred of the people who shared Tony’s orbit—from members of his kitchen crews to his writing, publishing, and television partners, to his daughter and his closest friends—in order to piece together a remarkably full, vivid, and nuanced vision of Tony’s life and work. 

THE STORY OF A MIDWESTERN FAMILY AT A PIVOTAL MOMENT OF MORAL CRISIS

It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless—unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 5TH

A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020) By David Sedaris

If it’s navel-gazing you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his observations turn outward: a fight between two men on a bus, a fight between two men on the street, pedestrians being whacked over the head or gathering to watch as a man considers leap­ing to his death. There’s a dirty joke shared at a book signing, then a dirtier one told at a dinner party—lots of jokes here. Plenty of laughs.

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 5TH

Such Color: New and Selected Poems By Tracy K. Smith

Such Color collects the best poems from Smith’s award-winning books and culminates in thirty pages of brilliant, excoriating new poems. These new works confront America’s historical and contemporary racism and injustices, while they also rise toward the registers of the ecstatic, the rapturous, and the sacred—urging us toward love as a resistance to everything that impedes it. This magnificent retrospective affirms Smith’s place as one of the twenty-first century’s most treasured poets.

HARDCOVER EDITIONS AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY THROUGH INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES

The Every By Dave Eggers

When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet’s dominant e-commerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous–and, oddly enough, most beloved–monopoly ever known: the Every.

Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Kavakian, they look for the company’s weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does anyone want what Delaney is fighting to save? Does humanity truly want to be free?

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 5TH

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed By Helene Tursten

Just when things have finally cooled down for 88-year-old Maud after the disturbing discovery of a dead body in her apartment in Gothenburg, a couple of detectives return to her doorstep. Though Maud dodges their questions with the skill of an Olympic gymnast a fifth of her age, she wonders if suspicion has fallen on her, little old lady that she is. The truth is, ever since Maud was a girl, death has seemed to follow her.

*Includes cookie recipes*

“Dead Dad Jokes”

Ollie Schminkey

“Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed (Nearly) Everything I Know”

Tom Rademacher

Add a copy of “Raising Ollie" to your cart and your ticket is free

Monday, October 18th, 2021 |6:00pm CST

"A 21st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic" Edited By Elayne Clift

and John Krumberger

Add a copy of "21st Century Plague" to your cart and your ticket is free

Sarah Stonich presents: "Reeling: A Novel"

Add a copy of "Reeling: A Novel" to your cart and your ticket is free

"Blah, Blah, Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo"

Presented by Dan Hill and Howard Moskowitz

Add a copy of "Blah, Blah, Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo" to your cart and your ticket is free

Go to NextChapterBooksellers.com/event for a full schedule of author visits, signings, and readings.

Outside the Margins: A Speculative Fiction Book Club discusses Little Eyes: A Novel, by Samanta Schweblin

-Tuesday, October 5th, 2021 - 6:00pm to 7:00pm

They've infiltrated homes in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of in Sierra Leone, town squares in Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Indiana. They're everywhere. They're here. They're us. They're not pets, or ghosts, or robots. They're real people, but how can a person living in Berlin walk freely through the living room of someone in Sydney? How can someone in Bangkok have breakfast with your children in Buenos Aires, without your knowing? Especially when these people are completely anonymous, unknown, unfindable.

Next Chapter Book Club discusses Red Pill, by Hari Kunzru -Sunday, October 31, 2021 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm

After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches Blue Lives, a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life. He soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all.

Wannsee is full of ghosts: Across the lake, the narrator can see the villa where the Nazis planned the Final Solution, and in his walks he passes the grave of the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist, who killed himself after deciding that "no happiness was possible here on earth." At a party, he meets the charismatic Anton, creator of Blue Lives, and the narrator begins to believe that the two of them are engaged in a cosmic battle. Anton is "red-pilling" his viewers--turning them toward an ugly, alt-rightish worldview, he thinks, as he starts to wonder if he is losing his mind.

1. Come in the store and browse. Talk to a bookseller or peruse the shelves, as you prefer. We love when you wear a mask.