Book of the Week (5/19/2025)

Written in Granite: Monadnock Poems & Stories by Sebastian Lockwood (Independently published, 2024)

Written in Granite, has fourteen poems and four stories. Folded in with the text are a series of paintings and photographs that reflect the themes of the poems and stories. Many of the poems are woven into the short stories. The stories are set in 1862 in the Fox Tavern at Hancock Inn, New Hampshire. Three of the stories feature three famous women, two of whom knew each other. Emily Dickinson, as The Woman in White in, Rooks & Indian Pudding and Helen Hunt Jackson in The Woman with an Owl On Her Head knew each other well and were powerful friends. Fly Rod Crosby was an extraordinary sportswoman and fellow sharpshooter with Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Storyteller and podcaster Sebastian Lockwood tells the great epics: Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Caesar, Beowulf and Monkey. His studies in Classics and Anthropology at Boston University and Cambridge University in the UK laid the foundation for bringing these great tales into performance. Lockwood’s performances are designed to take complex texts and make them accessible and exciting for audiences from 5 to 95. Lockwood has tutored and taught classes in higher education for 25 years. Lockwood launched two storytelling podcasts in 2022: Blowing Up Stumps- tales from New and Old England (with Maine storyteller Matt Gile), and Monkey- the Journey to the West.  He now concentrates on performance, podcasting, workshops, and audiobook narration. Lockwood lives under Crotched Mountain in a 1792 house with his wife, jazz singer and LUX Lifestyle founder, Nanette Perrotte.

Book of the Week (5/12/2025)

Interdiction by Michael Davidow (Independently published, 2025)

A veteran cop in a small New Hampshire town shoots and kills a college student in a traffic stop gone awry. The ensuing investigation presents a tale of drug dealing, gunplay, and justifiable homicide. The lawyers are in control. The police are waiting and watching. The sole civilian witness to this killing is under indictment herself and silent regarding what she saw. The state's most powerful politicians line up behind their officer. Only one thing stands between him and exoneration: another cop from another small town who begins to question what happened that night.

His past has called him to his own separate truth.

That revelation is the story of INTERDICTION.

About the author:

Michael Davidow was born in Boston and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan School of Law. After working in both Boston and Washington, D.C., he returned to New Hampshire, where he practices criminal defense. He and his wife Catherine have one son.

Book of the Week (5/5/2025)

Rolling Hills and the Lost Key of Peachtree Palace by Michaela Horan (Self-published, 2021)

Hattie Hills is far from a picture perfect princess. But then again, nothing about her rule so far has been picture perfect. Forced to take over her parents' kingdom at seven because of their disappearances, Hattie is stuck in a role that not everyone is happy she's had to take on. But at the age of sixteen, Hattie begins to wonder if maybe there's more to the mystery of how her parents disappeared. They left her with only a book, a book Hattie soon realizes is much more than an ordinary collection of legends. When things start appearing, and more people vanish, Hattie and her friends are faced with the terrifying fact that something is coming to destroy their kingdom unless they're brave enough to stop it. A young princess desperate for answers. A lonely guard determined to forget her past. A best friend with unwavering loyalty. A clever assistant with a keen eye for knowledge. Their adventures will leave lives at stake, new powers discovered, and almost nothing as it seems. Michaela Horan's debut novel will have you guessing at who you can really trust, and just how far is too far to discover the truth about a perfect kingdom. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Michaela Horan is the author of two books in the “Rolling Hills” series, including "Rolling Hills and the Lost Key of Peachtree Palace" as well as her newest book, “Rolling Hills and the Sword of Alvara”. Michaela is a recent graduate of Londonderry High School in NH. Besides writing novels, she also enjoys creating music.

3 on a Theme: Home

Home at Night by Paula Munier

Free to a Good Home by David F. Lambert

Go Home by Terry Farish

Book of the Week (4/28/2025)

Tales of a Not So Tiny House by Chloe Barcelou & Brandon Batchelder (Rizzoli, 2025)

Visually lush, this is the story of the lavish custom steampunk caravan in the wilds of New England that became a dark cottagecore TikTok sensation.

If you take a fortuitous wrong turn in the primeval mountains of New Hampshire, you'll stumble across this 300-square-foot handmade home. A bewitching mix of fairy tale cottage, steamer trunk, and pirate ship, it is built by Chloe and Brandon almost entirely from their recycled film sets, thrift, flea market, and junkyard finds. Originally featured on HGTV’s Tiny House, Big Living, it went on to garner international attention in print and online, going viral multiple times.

The book takes readers on a journey through Chloe and Brandon’s story of building and decorating their home, which they have completely redesigned in the last few years. Like the house, every inch of this richly ornate book is packed with innovative ideas for small space living, including foldable sections of the house used as “his and hers” wings with custom-built wardrobes, desks, chairs, and vanity; a bathroom with a composting toilet and folding sink; even a guest bed. Chloe and Brandon share the joys of day-to-day small-space living: creating storage in every nook and cranny, baking pies in the tiny kitchen from fruit they’ve gathered; climbing into the dramatically curtained bed loft by candlelight.

Sumptuously designed and illustrated, this book is a wildly original take on small-space living. --Publisher's blurb

About the authors:

Partners in life and in business, Chloe Barcelou and Brandon Batchelder design and build props and sets for short and feature films, along with commercial and editorial photography as well as residential and commercial interior design. Chloe is also the fashion editor of New Hampshire Magazine.

Book of the Week (4/21/2025)

Tying My Shoes by Stephen Redic (Covenant Books, 2023)

Tying my Shoes is a collection of poems covering a wide spectrum of experiences occurring over the last twelve years. It comments on love and hate and old and new traditions and provides the reader with a unique perspective on life around them. It will make you laugh, cry, and question the world's problems with new insights. The variety of styles and voices found in the poems gives each one a unique flavor while highlighting the writers' versatility and storytelling abilities.

Whether the reader finds themselves absorbed by the descriptive quality of his ekphrastic poetry or plunged into a moment of first-person history or laughing out loud at some native New England wit, there is something here for everyone. Even if you never liked poetry before, these poems for the common man will give you a new appreciation and delight in what poetry can be. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Stephen Redic is a retired writer, humorist, public speaker and teacher living in Candia, New Hampshire. Born in Concord, New Hampshire, and raised in Caribou, Maine, Stephen is a true New England product. An avid sports fan, historian, musician, and writer, Stephen maintains an active lifestyle and considers himself extremely blessed, having met every President since Eisenhower, beaten cancer twice, and having six great-grandchildren.

Book of the Week (4/14/2025)

EMU BLIS, BUMS LIE, BLUE-ISM by Michael Brosnan (Broadstone Books, 2024)

In his dazzling new collection poet Michael Brosnan literally and figuratively deconstructs the "sublime" in every way imaginable.

"This world of us --

it seems only capable of revealing hints of care

in slant rhymes and odd enjambments.

And I'm wondering why we don't cry more,

knowing there's so little we

control."

In this profound volume of experimental poetry, Michael Brosnan exhibits exquisite control as he employs (and invents) tools of verse language (far beyond mere "odd enjambments") to interrogate - and deconstruct, literally - the word sublime, in all of its senses. "Excellence? Grandeur? Beauty? Inspiring unavoidable awe?" No mere exercise in linguistics, however, his enterprise provides the opportunity to consider no less than the entirety of human existence in the face of "the nagging matter of / the coming Sixth Extinction -- hurried along / by superciliousness and / human hunger for what cannot be obtained." "I want to find less in meaninglessness," he declares; "I want to know if knowing can save us from ourselves," and this book is the record of his search for that answer and hope. Many sublime companions (real and imaginary) are along for the ride - Mozart, Coltrane, Jimmy Page, Moby-Dick, Dr. Philosophy - while erasures of Wordworth poems frame and intersperse the work (an act of distillation that serves as a model for the book as a whole); and the titles of a library's worth of books whispering from their shelves attests to his extensive reading. Impossible to describe in brief, it must be read to experience the sweep of Brosnan's vision and venture. As for the payoff: in the end he is after "a small wave of contentment" as expressed in the craft of "Origami" - "Today, I'm seeking new possibilities / in a small illusion with unambiguous lines. // Look, world, look. / Our story is in tatters. // Here's a 'dove' for you to hold. / I give it in peace. Make it fly." In the closing Wordsworth erasure, an old man rises and hoists up his load, a fitting image for the service Brosnan performs for us in undertaking this poetry and philosophical enquiry. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Poet, writer, and editor Michael Brosnan was born and raised in Port Washington, New York. He earned a BA from Boston College and an MA from the University of New Hampshire’s writing program. Brosnan is author of the poetry collections EMU BLIS, BUMS LIE, BLUE-ISM (Broadstone Books, 2024), Adrift (Grayson Books, 2023), and The Sovereignty of the Accidental (Harbor Mountain Press, 2017). Brosnan’s poems have been published in many literary magazines. For over two decades, he served as the editor of an award-winning magazine on education and writes often on the topic. He lives in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Join the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, along with Michael Brosnan at Gibson's Bookstore on Wed., May 21, 2025 from 4:30- 6 pm. Michael will be the headliner, followed by an open mic.