Book of the Week #4

MacCullough's Women by Kathleen Ferrari (Nashua, NH: Roskerry Press, 2011)

Kathleen Ferrari lives in New Hampshire and has just published this, her first novel in a planned series set in the fictional city of Lynton, NH. She has previously published essays in The Boston Globe and in the Northern New England Review. She also writes a blog on her website.
On Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 11am Ms. Ferrari will be at Toadstool Bookshop, Milford reading from and signing MacCullough's Women.

"How well do I really know my husband?”  When Drew MacCullough dies suddenly in a place he is not supposed to be, this is one of the questions that his widow, Franny, asks herself. In her search for answers, she enlists the help of Drew’s oldest friend and attorney, Neil Malone who is caught between helping her find the answers to her questions while at the same time protecting the memory of his friend." (from the publisher)

Book of the Week #3

Winter Light: Photographs by Fletcher Manley (Lancaster, NH: Fletcher Manley Imaging, 2010)

Photographer and Lancaster resident Fletcher Manley has gathered an exquisite collection of images for this book.  They are black and white photographs he made between 1967 and 2010 and they capture the magical qualities of snow in scenes from around the world. Many of the images include skiers, Powder-8's is a particularly striking skiing image, but city-scapes and country woods are also included.

"Growing up among hills and mountains helped shape my appreciation of the vertical landscape. Winter held a particular fascination with its low, glancing light, long shadows, and crisp accentuated textures, where snow sculpted and redefined familiar forms. So, it was not so much as a mountaineer, but more a rambler among the peaks and valleys, that I came to frame light and shadows, shapes and forms inherent in the mountain landscape." --Fletcher Manley

Book Events Sampler

Wednesday, 1/18/2012

• Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Alter in the World will be speaking at Red River Theatre at 6pm, hosted by Gibson's and St. Paul's School. 
• Poetry Society of New Hampshire, will meet at 7pm at Gibson's.
  Strictly Open Mic: so bring your villanelles, your sonatelles, sonnets, triolets, haiku or couplets, anything 19 lines or less. Bring a number of poems to share, yours or someone else’s.

Thursday, 1/19/2012

• Tom Fiztgerald, author of Poor Richard's Lament will be at Gibson's at 7pm
• Toadstool Bookshop, Keene will host Local Authors Night beginning at 7pm.
  Featuring some of the areas best writers sharing their latest books. Scheduled to appear are Linda French, author of The Lilac Room, Karren Hoyt, author of Prayers From the Heart, Prayers from the Mind: A Collection of Modern Prayers, D.C. Legendre, author of Clams in Cups: Legends of the Heart, and Melissa Mannon, author of The Unofficial Family Archivist. They will read from and discuss their books and take questions from the audience. Come support local authors and find out about great new books written in our region.

Saturday, 1/21/2012

• Jane Roy Brown will be autographing and discussing One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place at Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough at 11am.

Book of the Week #2

Poor Richard's Lament: A Most Timely Tale by Tom Fitzgerald (Brookline, NH: Hobblebush Books, 2012)

Hobblebush, a NH based publisher, doesn't usually publish fiction. The foreword that Benjamin Franklin scholar Michael Zuckerman wrote convinced them to take a look at the manuscript and the extraordinary work of author Tom Fitzgerald convinced them that this book needed to be brought to as wide an audience as possible. From the West Wing of the White House to the “Celestial Trial” of Ben Franklin, to the slums of Philadelphia, Poor Richard’s Lament takes us on a whirlwind tour of time and space.

"But the beauty of this book is not just in its verbal pyrotechnics, ravishing though they are. It is, still more, in the constant breath of humane inspiration that guides a steady succession of searing, soaring triumphs of communion and caritas. Fitzgerald is that rarest of birds: a great writer and a great soul. He has summoned from unfathomable depths of despair an imagining of the greatest of Americans that is not only better than the original but also worthy of his own remarkable spirit." (Foreword, p. xiv)

Author Tom Fitzgerald will be at Gibson's for a reading and book signing on Thursday, January 19, 2012 beginning at 7pm. 

Book of the Week #1

The Talk Funny Girl: A Novel by Roland Merullo (NY: Crown Publishers, 2011)

Anita Shreve called this "One of the best novels I have ever read. A book for the ages." Set in a made-up version of rural New Hampshire this novel tells the story of Marjorie, a girl whose family is so isolated from society that they speak their own dialect and who are sinking deeper into economic ruin and the world of a sadistic cult leader.

"I am a grown woman now, married and raising children, and happy enough most of the time. Underneath that happiness, though, showing its face every now and again, is a part of me still connected to a time when I was a girl living with her parents in the New Hampshire hills. That girl was not treated well, and when anyone is hurt like that--especially a child--the hurt burrows down inside and makes a kind of museum there, with images of the bad times displayed on every wall. Some people try to forget the museum exists and keep their mind occupied with drink or drugs or food, or by staying busy with work, or they chase one kind of excitement after another, while the memories fester there in the dark. I understand all that, and I don't lay a judgement, as we used to say, over any of it. Some people use their own hurt as an excuse for hurting others, or for soaking in self-pity, or for a sharp anger that knifes up through the surface whenever something reminds them of what happened long ago. Some people spend thier lives trying never to do what was done to them." (p.1)