Book of the Week (12/25/2023)

The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore, illustrated by Tomie dePaola (Holiday House, 1980)

What better book to feature this week than this classic that turned 200 years on December 23, perfectly illustrated by New Hampshire author/illustrator Tomie dePaola!

With warm colors and cozy art, award-winning artist Tomie dePaola brings the beloved holiday poem to life. Detailed decorations and family portraits hang on the walls of a turn of the 19th century New England home as the family sleeps, snuggled into cozy geometric quilts—until the clatter of little hooves on the roof wakes them.

Rosy-cheeked St. Nicholas appears, filling the stockings with dolls and blocks, toy animals and candy canes, before taking off over the snow-capped hills in his sleigh. Framed by borders inspired by traditional New England quilts, the warm illustrations are full of cheerful details kids will love to pore over. --Publisher's blurb

A Visit from St. Nicholas, more commonly known as The Night Before Christmas and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas is a poem that was first published anonymously under the title Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas in the Troy, New York Sentinel on December 23, 1823 and later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore.

Book of the Week (12/18/2023)

Joseph Seavey Hall (1818-1899): Pioneer of Mountain Tourism by Annie Gibavic (Bondcliff Books, 2023)

Bartlett, New Hampshire, native Joseph Seavey Hall, an early promoter of tourism in the White Mountains, was a mountaineer, a road builder, an adventurer, and a great story teller. Living in a day and age when travel was never easy, Hall’s entrepreneurial spirit took him all across the United States, from Mount Washington in New Hampshire to Mount Diablo in California; to Vermont’s unspoiled Northeast Kingdom; and from clearing land for a new settlement in Frankfort, Michigan, to the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the Civil War. Told through the correspondence of his third wife, Calista Fay Hall, (Aunt Kitty), and his nieces Alice Hall Walter and Mabel Hall Walter, Joseph Seavey Pioneer of Mountain Tourism, chronicles the fascinating coast-to-coast story of his long and industrious life. --Publisher's blurb

Book of the Week (12/11/2023)

GATHER: 100 Seasonal Recipes that Bring People Together by Chris Viaud (Cider Mill Press, 2023)

From James Beard nominee and Top Chef contestant Chef Chris Viaud comes GATHER, featuring recipes that not only bring friends and family together but keep them at the table.

To Chef Chris Viaud, food is a shared language that allows us to communicate with complete strangers, create lasting memories with friends and family, and get in touch with ourselves. It is the best way to nourish and expand a community. GATHER is a celebration of food’s magical capacity to connect and transform. Featuring 100 recipes that focus on the innovative, accessible, and seasonal cuisine that earned Viaud a James Beard nomination and wowed the judges on Top Chef, this cookbook is centered around the incredible potential in gatherings of all sizes.

Easy to assemble and satisfying to serve, this repertoire is made for the heart of your home. Foster a deeper appreciation for every aspect of a meal, from those who cultivated the ingredients to the ones who sit beside us at the table. Feel good about what you put on your plate with GATHER. --Publisher's blurb

About the author: Chef Chris Viaud, a James Beard nominated chef, most recently known for competing on Season 18 of Top Chef, is the Chef/Owner of the Greenleaf and Ansanm restaurants in Milford, New Hampshire.

Book of the Week (12/4/2023)

1623: Pilgrims, Pipe Dreams, Politics & the Founding of New Hampshire by J. Dennis Robinson (Harbortown Press, 2023)

Shrouded in myth, mystery, and misinformation, the true story of New Hampshire's founding family has never been fully told–until now. Why do we know so little about David and Amias Thompson of Plymouth, England? And why is what we think we know so often wrong? Barely three years after the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts, a wholly different plan for America was in play. Popular journalist J. Dennis Robinson exhumes the facts and connects the dots to reveal a forgotten journey that will challenge your perception of how New England was born. -- Publisher's blurb

From the Author: 

"This project started almost 50 years ago when I bumped into a 1623 note in the journal of Pilgrim leader Edward Winslow. A "Scotchman" named David Thompson, Winslow wrote, had recently set up a fishing and trading outpost at what would later become the tiny seacoast of New Hampshire. The Mayflower survivors were starving and sent military leader Miles Standish to find food. Thompson delivered a shallop full of live-saving codfish to the Separatists, after which the Plymouth Colony offered prayers of thanksgiving. The idea that the first European settler at what would become New Hampshire "saved" the Pilgrims intrigued me. Why hadn't I heard of this guy and his wife Amias and their son John who had settled at what is now Odiorne State Park in the town of Rye? 
 
The more I dug into the story over the decades, the more fascinating it became. Thompson, in fact, was an apothecary (pharmacist) from Plymouth, England. He was born in London, it appears, not Scotland. He was deeply connected to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, a hugely influential figure in the first 40 years of New England history.  Gorges, like Thompson and almost all other very early settlers to the region were Anglicans, loyal to the king and effectively enemies of the pious Pilgrims who had escaped to a new world. (This was before 20,000 Puritans immigrated to Massachusetts starting in 1630.)

My research led to the Wessagusset Massacre. In 1623 when, fearing an attack, Miles Standish and his tiny militia assassinated seven Native warriors at what was supposed to be a peaceful meeting. That event, rarely mentioned, had a profound effect on the region at the time.  

And what about English lawyer and colonist, Thomas Morton, who was exiled and left to die at the Isles of Shoals by Standish? Who remembers Robert Gorges, the first "Governor" of New England? More digging. Explorer Christopher Levett, fisherman Phineas Pratt, and merchant Samuel Maverick all wrote about meeting David Thompson in his Piscataqua home near what is now Portsmouth, New Hampshire. So why is he forgotten today?

Why did the Thompsons pack up after only three years and move to an island in Boston Harbor? How did David die so soon after the move? What happened to his wife Amias? And what about the imaginary claim that two brothers named Hilton also founded a New Hampshire settlement in 1623? By the way, who ever mentions that Portsmouth was founded in 1630 because Gorges and John Mason ("the father of New Hampshire") thought the Piscataqua River was the Northwest Passage to the Orient--or at least to the fur-trading nexus at Lake Champlain. It wasn't. Why don't we teach young people that the first two Granite State settlements at Little Harbor and Strawberry Bank (yes, that is spelled correctly) were financial flops? 

It took decades, but with a dozen history books and over 3,000 published articles under my belt, I finally got back to David and Amias Thompson. With NH's 400th anniversary looming, I asked  myself--what the heck are we celebrating? So I pulled together enough puzzle pieces to attempt the first-ever true story of the founding days of the "Live Free or Die" state. This is an "indie" book because it had to be. Not even the state website or Wikipedia get the facts straight.
And let's remember that while The Council for New England was handing out grants to land they had never seen and didn't own, Indigenous Peoples had been here for 12,000 years. There are no footnotes here (sorry purists). I'm writing for general readers who are curious about the actual New England backstory rather than the usual myths and legends. But you will find a hefty 13-page bibliography at the end of the book. Enjoy." --JDR

 

 

Book of the Week (11/27/2023)

At the Lepidopterist’s House by Chelsea Woodard (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2023)

AT THE LEPIDOPTERIST'S HOUSE invites the reader to explore natural and mythic landscapes, examine the interiors of marriage and the domestic, and consider the bodies of animals as vessels of memory and imagination. At times through the lens of scientific observation or artistic rendering, at others through lived experience, the speakers of these poems face separation from places and people, gathering real and remembered artifacts as a means of better understanding our tumultuous world. This collection is a meditation on the ways one can lose and reimagine home, on what it means to love and to grieve, to find freedom and lightness among the weight of the material and the human. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Chelsea Woodard is also the author of the collections Vellum (Able Muse Press, 2014) and Solitary Bee (Measure Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Southwest Review, 32 Poems, River Styx, Blackbird, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and a residency at Vermont Studio Center. Woodard teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

Book of the Week (11/20/2023)

Dickens In Boston by Eric Stanway (Independently Published, 2023)

When Charles Dickens first visited Boston in 1842, he was less than impressed with his American cousins, and the feeling was mutual. Now, 25 years later, he has returned, bringing with him all the charm and joy of the Christmas Season. Join us, now, as we visit the Hub in that chilly yuletide of 1867, when a nation wearied by war embraced all the happiness Christmas can bestow. Come back, smell the roasting potatoes and chestnuts, listen to tinny carols cranked out by an old hurdy-gurdy, bathe in the scent of a thousand evergreen wreaths, and feel the tangible excitement that must have gripped the city in the knowledge that the Great Man had returned.
Drawn from contemporary newspapers and accounts, and lavishly illustrated with engravings and period photographs, Dickens in Boston is sure to enthrall anyone who loves Dickens, Boston, history, and the Spirit of Christmas itself. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Eric Stanway is a prolific self-published author and freelance reporter. He contributes regularly to the Nashua Telegraph, Yankee Magazine, Monadnock Living Magazine and the Rindge and Fitzwilliam historical societies' publications. Eric is the former magazine editor, website support and page designer and production (advertising) designer for the Cabinet Press, Milford, New Hampshire. He served as features and editorial page editor, design editor and graphic artist of the Sentinel & Enterprise.

Join Eric at Toadstool Bookshop in Keene, NH on Saturday, November 25, 2023 at 11:00 am where he will present his newest release!

Book of the Week (11/13/2023)

How to Share with a Bear by Eric Pinder (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)

The perfect thing to do on a chilly day is to make a blanket cave. But, of course, a comfy cave never stays empty for too long...What's a boy to do when a bear takes over his cave? Try to distract him with a trail of blueberries? Some honey? A nice long back scratch?

How to Share with a Bear is a story about how although it's not always easy, sharing with a sibling can make things even more fun! -- Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Eric Pinder still wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. In the meantime, you can often find him riding his bike or hanging out with bears in New Hampshire. Eric’s books for children include "If All the Animals Came Inside" and "How to Share with a Bear", and he also has written several books about mountains and weather for adults.

A lifelong interest in science and nature led Eric to work for seven years atop the snowy, windswept summit of Mount Washington, the “Home of the World’s Worst Weather.” His experiences there inspired his first book for children, "Cat in the Clouds". After leaving the mountain, he taught for many years at a small arts college in the woods: Chester College of New England.

Eric also has taught creative writing at the New Hampshire Institute of Art and other colleges, and today he often visits schools and libraries to share stories about the writing life, books, and animals. He holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Book of the Week (11/6/2023)

Stone Church Meeting House: Stories From the Early Years of Music Making on the Hill by Laura Pope, editor (MindStir Media, 2023)

THE MAKING OF A LEGENDARY MUSIC ROOM

In 1970, three young men with dreams to open a coffeehouse chanced upon a fire-damaged stone building atop Newmarket, New Hampshire's Zion Hill, a few miles from the state university. They repaired it, pulled together bits and bobs to furnish it and opened the doors to the Stone Church in December of that year.

Their instincts and timing couldn't have been better. A few weeks after opening, they began their Sunday Hoots, featuring a free roast beef dinner and beer for musicians, an irresistible draw for established and emerging performers from near and far that resulted in a weekly, day and night of non-stop, live music. More than 50 years later, the music magic continues.

This collection of stories from founders, owners and performers samples a small slice of history dating to the music room's first 25 years, starting with the first wave of acoustic folk, bluegrass, and blues acts, to heralded singer-songwriters, a second wave of acoustic performers and a diverse groundswell of 80s and 90s bands.-- Publisher's blurb

Book of the Week (10/30/2023)

The Watchman's Keep by Alfred M. Struthers (Third Floor Books, 2022)

At age 12, Nathan Cole is the keeper of the Hammond bookcase, a curious relic filled with unsolved mysteries, passed down through his family for five generations. Designed as a force for good, he now understands the crucial role he plays in preserving its legacy. But when a matching bookcase is recovered from the Covin, a centuries-old criminal network specializing in stolen works of art, Nathan is pulled into a dangerous game of cat and mouse by those who would use the twin bookcase for the secrets it contains – each a blueprint to untold riches. Aided by his best friend Gina McDermott, Nathan goes in search of the Covin mastermind known only as the Watchman, a phantom who operates solely in the shadows and with sinister intent. With dark forces closing in, and his life hanging in the balance, Nathan finds himself in a race against time to solve the riddle of The Watchman’s Keep. -- Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Alfred M. Struthers lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. In addition to crafting books that inspire, entertain and make a difference in the lives of readers young and old, he is a singer/songwriter, woodworker, and avid collector of fossils that line the streambeds around Cooperstown, New York.

Book of the Week (10/23/2023)

Earth Retrograde: Book II of the First Planets by R.W.W. Greene (Angry Robot, 2023)

Becoming the planet's most (in)famous human has not changed Brooklyn Lamontagne one bit, but the time has come for him to choose where his allegiances really lie.

The United Nations is working to get everyone off Earth by the deadline – set by the planet’s true owners, the aliens known as the First. It’s a task made somewhat easier by a mysterious virus that rendered at least fifty percent of humanity unable to have children. Meanwhile, the USA and the USSR have set their sights on Mars, claiming half a planet each.

Brooklyn Lamontagne doesn’t remember saving the world eight years ago, but he’s been paying for it ever since. The conquered Earth governments don’t trust him, the Average Joe can’t make up their mind, but they all agree that Brooklyn should stay in space. Now, he’s just about covering his bills with junk-food runs to Venus and transporting horny honeymooners to Tycho aboard his aging spaceship, the Victory.

When a pal asks for a ride to Mars, Brooklyn lands in a solar system’s worth of espionage, backroom alliances, ancient treasures and secret plots while encountering a navigation system that just wants to be loved… --Publisher's blurb

Join NH author R.W.W. Greene at Gibson's Bookstore on Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 6:30 pm where he'll discuss his newest book!

Book of the Week (10/16/2023)

Malice Aforethought: A True Story of the Shocking Double Crime That Horrified Nineteenth-Century New England by Avree Kelly Clark (Novanglian Press, 2023)

In the summer of 1874, a beloved schoolteacher mysteriously goes missing upon closing up school. After a frantic search, the young woman is discovered horribly mutilated in the woods, and authorities question everyone in the small railroad village of St. Albans, Vermont. With the case turning cold, news arrives of an eerily similar crime committed in peaceful Pembroke, New Hampshire, in the autumn of 1875. This one, even more gruesome. Everyone questions whether the two beauties were intended victims or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Amid mounting fear, dedicated detectives and a persistent populace will stop at nothing to ensure the murderous fiend is brought to justice.For the first time, the true crime story that has inspired dozens of podcasts and blogposts is now a gripping novel called Malice Aforethought, and the author shares an exciting theory never before explored.--Publisher's blurb

About the Author: 

"Malice Aforethought" is Avree Kelly Clark's debut novel. Avree's love of history, forensics, and research came together in writing this historical crime fiction she describes as Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" meets Margaret Atwood's "Alias Grace". Avree is a New Hampshire native who graduated from Pembroke Academy in 2005. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband of fifteen years and their cat, Aloysius.

Book of the Week (10/9/2023)

Paint, Sweat, and Tears: 150 Days on the Appalachian Trail by Carolyn Matthews-Daut (MindStir Media, 2023)

Hike, sketch, repeat. This illustrated journal chronicles the incredible journey of one woman as she hikes every single step of the 2,193-mile Appalachian Trail.

With a combination of vivid sketches and engaging storytelling, this book describes the full range of experiences that epitomize long-distance hiking. Through rainy shelters, sweeping views, food, flowers, and towns along the way this book captures both the extraordinary and mundane aspects of the Appalachian Trail. More than just a travelogue, this intimate portrait of Carolyn Matthews-Daut's journey tells a story of self-discovery and perseverance through the physical and mental challenges of a five-month backpacking adventure.

Through it all, the author's artistic talents shine in her beautifully rendered sketches, which bring to life the stunning landscapes and unique characters that she encounters along the way. This is a must-read for anyone who loves hiking, the outdoors, and the transformative power of travel. --Publisher's blurb

Join NH author Carolyn Matthews-Daut at Toadstool Bookshop in Keene on Sunday, October 22, 2023 at 11 am where she will be presenting and signing her new book!

Book of the Week (10/2/2023)

The Japanese Box and Other Stories by Jennifer Ann Gordon (Bowker, 2023)

NH author Jennifer Ann Gordon's newest release is a collection of short stories contemplating horror, grief, and trauma.

Short stories featured in the collection are:

Simulacrum is a dark comedic tale about college life, and love. It is the story of what happens when two sociopaths attend art exhibits, drink lemon vodka, and spar over everything and anything. Periods. Coloring books. Art. This is the story of our unnamed narrator…an origin story of a would-be, hopes to be, serial killer.

The Japanese Box is a story that blends memoir, creative nonfiction, and the horror of a coming-of-age story, and a coming of middle-aged story. Imagine growing up with a reflection that is often absent, and a Japanese box that is filled with things that should never have been there. Memories. Violence. The Japanese Box is a love letter to anxiety, trauma, grief, and longing. It is a story of a child becoming an adult, and all the ghosts and misfortunes that happen in order to survive.

The Lithium Moon: Simone is an artist by day, and an emotionally abused wife at night. She is a successful artist with a long history of schizoid effective disorder with bipolar tendencies. When her marriage goes from good to bad, she suffers her first miscarriage. The tragedy coincides with a wolf moon—Trauma and magic converge seem to converge in Simone’s head. This story explores sadness, illness, hallucinations, full moons, and the creative process.

What Stage of Grief is not a poem, or a song, but a dirge. Fantasy and facts, this poem walks a fine line between nightmares and memories. Grief stories and love stories. Dogs, and drama. Nightmares, and nevermore. -- Publisher's blurb

Join Jennifer Ann Gordon on Thursday, October 26th, 2023 at 6:30 pm at Gibson's Bookstore where she will be joining other New England horror authors on a Queer Horror Panel!

Book of the Week (9/25/2023)

The Yther Chronicles: Search for the Jester King by Ellwyn Hayslip IV (Writers Republic LLC, 2023)

A mysterious tablecloth becomes a portal to adventures beyond imagining, transporting three ordinary teenagers into Yther, the dimension of living dreams. Joining forces with fantastic fantasy creatures and acquiring incredible powers, Abby, Cayla, and Matt must travel through many wondrous realms in the chimeric dream world, confronting and battling terrifying nightmare monsters in their quest to defeat an evil wizard and restore power to Yther’s true king, who lies trapped in slumber at an unknown location. The quest will take all their courage, resourcefulness, and imagination, and the fate of all of Yther, and perhaps their own world as well, hangs in the balance. -- Publisher's blurb

Join NH author Ellwyn Hayslip IV when he visits Gibson's Bookstore on Tuesday, October 10, 2023 at 6:30 pm to talk about his new book!

Book of the Week (9/18/2023)

Nell & the Netherbeast by Adi Rule (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2023)

NH children's author Adi Rule is back with a funny and fantastical middle grade reader!

The Netherbeast, a slinking creature with an overwhelming stench, impossibly charms young Nell. Befriending this shapeshifter propels Nell into an unforgettable summer. A beast, a haunting, a fire, and a basement that should be avoided at all costs are just part of the adventures Nell didn’t ask for. This story is equal parts heart-pounding and heartwarming.

Twelve-year-old Nell Stoker loves animals. She’s been working toward becoming a junior volunteer at her local animal shelter for what feels like forever. But now it’s summertime, and her parents are making her go to her Aunt Jerry’s old bed and breakfast in Deer Valley with her older sister Lulu. When Nell crosses paths with the Netherbeast (a creature that is decidedly not a cat), his hijinks leave her wondering if she’s made a new best friend or if Netherbeast will destroy the whole B&B (not even by accident). It's up to Nell to help save her aunt's B&B and solve the mystery of what might be in the basement. Between the mysteries of Rose Cottage and the creepy Netherbeast—Nell is in for an unforgettable summer adventure.-- Publisher's blurb

Book of the Week (9/11/2023)

Lipstick on a Pig: A Memoir by Rebecca Butt (Bowker, 2023)

Candid and poignant, humorous and heart-wrenching, in nomadic fashion, the directionless Butt Family chaotically relocated throughout the city of Laconia, New Hampshire, like a ship, adrift and lost at sea without a captain.

Encumbered by night terrors, hauntings, and scraps of memories that spoke to a cruelty beyond her mother, Becky sneakily devoured her way into young adulthood and developed a crippling, yet all too comforting, binge-eating disorder.

Morbidly obese, visited often by a seething presence, and drowning under the smothering symptoms of childhood trauma, Becky is sure she’s the defective link in her broken family-until her ghost relative provides her a life jacket of hope that may just keep her afloat. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

As a young child, Rebecca escaped into books, and wrote happy stories accompanied by bright and cheerful pictures with houses, trees, flowers, and birds, that were a contradiction to her real-life circumstances. Her childhood love for reading and writing endured, and she eventually wrote and published her short stories and poetry in a literary journal in college. Lipstick on a Pig is her lengthiest writing endeavor. A licensed Speech Language Pathologist with a master’s degree in communication sciences and disorders, she is the Director of Special Education for a school district in New Hampshire, where she resides.

Join Rebecca Butt as she discusses and launches her new book, "Lipstick on a Pig" at Bookery Manchester on Sep. 24, 2023 from 10:30 am - 12:00 pm.

 

Book of the Week (9/4/2023)

The Boy Who Fell To Shore: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Thomas Thor Tangvald by Charles J. Doane (Latah Books, 2022) 

Born at sea aboard his father's hand-built sailboat and raised barefoot on her wood decks, Thomas Thor Tangvald's oceanic childhood was full of beauty and wonder-but was also scarred by horrific tragedies that left him an orphan. Cast ashore into regular contact with human society for the first time at age 15, this intellectually gifted and uniquely educated young man at first reveled in his new environment but ultimately was led by his trauma into spirals of addiction and broken relationships. Thomas hasn't been seen since he sailed away from French Guiana in 2014, and some believe he must still be alive.​

The Boy Who Fell To Shore is an insider's account of the Tangvald legend. Charles J. Doane, an accomplished bluewater sailor and longtime sailing journalist tracks Thomas and his father Peter (a renowned but controversial sailor and author) across thousands of ocean miles through intimate interviews, personal correspondence, documentary research, and first-hand experience of the tropical anchorages and passage routes they frequented. This biography is by turns inspiring, terrifying, beautiful, and infuriating as Doane deftly explores the great cost of living freely at the whim of wind and water. -- Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Charles J. Doane is an active bluewater sailor who has worked as a yachting journalist since 1986. He has logged nearly 100,000 miles sailing offshore, including seven transatlantic passages and a number of singlehanded passages between the West Indies and New England. He has cruised extensively on the U.S. East Coast, in the West Indies, in Spain and Portugal, and in West Africa. His racing credits include runs in the Newport-Bermuda Race, the Fastnet Race, and the Sydney-Hobart Race.

Though raised all over the world, in venues as various as Texas, Pakistan, and Thailand, he always spent summers on the coast of Maine growing up. He now lives with his family in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He is a graduate of Hampshire College and Boston College Law School.

Join Charles J. Doane at Toadstool Bookshop in Keene, NH on Saturday, September 9, 2023 at 2 pm where he'll discuss his latest book.

Book of the Week (8/28/2023)

Home at Night by Paula Munier (Minotaur Books, 2023) 

NH author Paula Munier returns with the fifth installment in her Mercy Carr mystery series!

Beware the blackbirds…

It’s Halloween in Vermont, winter is coming, and five humans, two dogs, and a cat are a crowd in Mercy Carr’s small cabin. She needs more room—and she knows just the place: Grackle Tree Farm, with thirty acres of woods and wetlands and a Victorian manor to die for. They say it’s haunted by the ghosts of missing children and lost poets and a murderer or two, but Mercy loves it anyway. Even when Elvis finds a dead body in the library.

There’s something about Grackle Tree Farm that people are willing to kill for—and Mercy needs to figure out what before they move in. A coded letter found on the victim points to a hidden treasure that may be worth a fortune—if it’s real. She and Captain Thrasher conduct a search of the old place—and end up at the wrong end of a Glock. A masked man shoots Thrasher, and she and Elvis must take him down before he murders them all. Under fire, she and Elvis manage to run the guy off, but not before they are wounded, leaving Thrasher fighting for his life in the hospital, Mercy on crutches, and Elvis on the mend.

Now it’s up to Mercy and Troy and the dogs to track down the masked murderer in a county overflowing with leaf peepers, Halloween revelers, and treasure hunters and bring him to justice before he strikes again and the treasure is lost forever, along with the good name of Grackle Tree Farm….-- Publisher's blub

Book of the Week (8/21/2023)

Gifts from Prometheus by Thomas Fisher (Independently published, 2023) 

Amherst, NH author Thomas Fisher presents his powerful memoir about the discovery of a family secret and the ability to find a sense of belonging from this revelation.

There were Blueberry pie stains on the ceiling of our butterscotch-colored Dodge Dart when I was a boy. I suppose those pie stains would be the punchline of a joke in most families, but in ours, they were a warning.

Our home was not safe and would never be the refuge we wished or needed it to be.

My father vented alcoholic rage on our family, especially my beloved mother. Our home was an unpredictable, frightening place where love was routinely conflated with violence. Where all gifts - including food and the beds we slept in - were really loans that compounded hourly – even on paid balances.

As for those pie stains? They happened when my father smashed a heavy glass pie plate into my mother’s face as we drove along Route 128. Traumatic events like this were a regular part of my childhood, the memories of which left me emotionally isolated and adrift in adulthood.

If not for my grandfather William, I just might have given up on family and surrendered to the demons of my upbringing.

“Gifts from Prometheus” explores the social and family circumstances that drove my grandfather from Georgia to Boston in 1917, and the insidious— but no less powerful—forms of racism that forced him to pass for White in 1929 when he joined the Boston Police Department.

The two-year journey to understand my grandfather’s life led me to Georgia, historic railroad towns of the Piedmont Airline route, Augusta’s segregated “Golden Blocks,” Cypress swamps along the Savannah River, forlorn cemeteries, and the neighborhoods of my native Boston. Places that long ago were imprinted in my DNA, but now are forever installed in my memories.

The book helped me understand – now with a stakeholder’s perspective - the realities of race in America. It forced me to confront my childhood complicity in bigotry - and challenged half-truths we were taught about the righteousness of the North on matters of race.

Paradoxically, “Gifts from Prometheus” is a story about love. By discovering the unknown heroes in our family history --- people of character and honor – I finally came to understand the redemptive power of family. This knowledge helped me heal generational wounds and discover feelings of belonging, heritage, and gratitude - that I was so desperate for.

The book also revealed impossible-to-ignore coincidences and mysterious forces, that once I chose to heed them, urged me along to complete the book and find peace in my remaining years. --Publisher's blurb

Book of the Week (8/14/2023)

Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell by Sy Montgomery (Mariner Books, 2023)

National Book Award finalist for The Soul of an Octopus and New York Times bestseller Sy Montgomery turns her journalistic curiosity to the wonder and wisdom of our long-lived cohabitants—turtles—and through their stories of hope and rescue, reveals to us astonishing new perspectives on time and healing.

When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles recovering from injury and illness. Endangered by cars and highways, pollution and poachers, these turtles—with wounds so severe that even veterinarians would have dismissed them as fatal—are given a second chance at life. The League’s founders, Natasha and Alexxia, live by one motto: Never give up on a turtle.

But why turtles? What is it about them that inspires such devotion? Ancient and unhurried, long-lived and majestic, their lineage stretches back to the time of the dinosaurs. Some live to two hundred years, or longer. Others spend months buried under cold winter water. Montgomery turns to these little understood yet endlessly surprising creatures to probe the eternal question: How can we make peace with our time?

In pursuit of the answer, Sy and Matt immerse themselves in the delicate work of protecting turtle nests, incubating eggs, rescuing sea turtles, and releasing hatchlings to their homes in the wild. We follow the snapping turtle Fire Chief on his astonishing journey as he battles against injuries incurred by a truck.

Hopeful and optimistic, Of Time and Turtles is an antidote to the instability of our frenzied world. Elegantly blending science, memoir, philosophy, and drawing on cultures from across the globe, this compassionate portrait of injured turtles and their determined rescuers invites us all to slow down and slip into turtle time.-- Publisher's blurb

NH author Sy Montgomery returns to Gibson's Bookstore, with the illustrator of her new book, Matt Patterson, on Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 6:30 pm to share Of Time and Turtles!