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The Odyssey Bookshop
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Event Archives, 2008

2008  January February March April May June

January

Both the Odyssey Bookshop’s Daytime AND Open Fiction Book Groups will discuss Thomas Mullen’s The Last Town on Earth. The year is 1918. America is fighting a war on foreign soil that has divided the nation. Meanwhile, rumors of the spread of the deadliest epidemic ever are causing panic on the home front. The uninfected town of Commonwealth, Washington, votes to quarantine itself, and two young friends are asked to guard the town entrance and keep strangers out. One day, a starving, cold—and seemingly ill—soldier comes out of the woods begging for sanctuary, and the two guards are confronted with an agonizing moral dilemma. So begins The Last Town on Earth . . .The month’s selection is 20% off.

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss A Confidential Source by Jan Brogan. It started as a quiet night at the local convenience store until Hallie witnessed the brutal shooting of the owner. Determined to prove she can still get the big scoop, Hallie investigates the crime…and soon realizes it was more than a stickup gone bad. Aided by a roguish prosecutor and a talk-show radio host, she follows a trail that begins with petty gambling and ends with a dark conspiracy in dangerously high places. Now Hallie is on the hunt for a crucial piece of evidence-one that any reporter would die for…and desperate criminals will kill for. The month’s selection is 20% off.

“Kristin . . . is in full bloom with her latest book, Kristin Knits, which explodes with her signature bold color ways. Kristin Nicholas is multifaceted, bright-hued, on the move, and simple in her complexity — a true kaleidoscope of talents.” — Interweave Knits, Winter 2007

Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College

English Department

It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir. After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman—a rising star in the foreign ministry—to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic. “Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world.” – Publishers Weekly (starred  review) Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College English Department

Kyra is an architect, involved in a project to design a new city. Andreas, a theater director, is staging an innovative production of the opera Tosca. Both have come through political upheaval and personal loss. Neither wants to fall in love. Yet when she asks him, “What is the opposite of losing?” and he says, “Finding,” it galvanizes a powerful attraction, and they risk opening themselves to love once again. When their love affair leads to a shocking betrayal, Kyra’s fierce determination to see under the surface, to know what was true and real, brings her to Greta, a remarkable therapist. As the therapy itself repeats the themes of love and loss, Kyra challenges its structure, and the struggle that ensues between the two women opens the way to a larger understanding. Passionate and revolutionary, Kyra is an exquisitely written love story, imbued with gentle humor. This is an extraordinary first novel by one of the most brilliant writers of our time. “A triumph. Carol Gilligan has always dazzled and moved us with her brilliant mind, visionary wisdom, and compassionate heart. Now she gives us, as well, an irresistible novel about the power of history to hurt us, but the power of love to heal these wounds and redeem us. She is amazing.” –Catharine R. Stimpson, author of The Culture Wars Continue Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Psychology and Education Department

February

Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, A Golden Age is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith and unexpected heroism. In the chaos of this era, everyone—from student protesters to the country’s leaders, from rickshaw’wallahs to the army’s soldiers—must make choices. And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana, a young widowed mother of two, will be forced to face a heartbreaking dilemma.

“Compelling…Anam is cracking open secrets, personal and political, to let the healing begin.” — O Magazine 

Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Alumni Association

Part love story, part murder mystery, set on the cusp of the Second World War, Russell Banks’s sharp-witted and deeply engaging new novel raises dangerous questions about class, politics, art, love, and madness—and explores what happens when two powerful personalities, trapped at opposite ends of a social divide, begin to break the rules. Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondack wilderness to the skies above war-torn Spain and Fascist Germany, The Reserve is a clever, incisive, and passionately romantic novel of suspense that adds a new dimension to this acclaimed author’s extraordinary repertoire. 

“This is a vividly imagined book. It has the romantic atmosphere of those great 1930s tales in film and prose. The Reserve is a pleasure well worth savoring.” - Scott Turow, Publisher’s Weekly

COME MAKE YOUR OWN VALENTINES!

Valentine’s Day is a week away, and Lily wants to surprise Mommy with the perfect heart-shaped Valentine. As the days go by and Valentine’s Day approaches, Lily has made seven different hearts—one for each day of the week—but which one will be just right for Mommy? Young readers will enjoy learning the days of the week, as well as the special tradition of creating handmade Valentines. The sweet, simple text and adorable illustrations celebrate the special mother-daughter bond.

“[Lily] is a salute to creativity, ingenuity and thinking outside the box; it will have all parents cheering her efforts and hoping that their own child takes a page from her book.” – Kirkus Reviews

The Odyssey Open Fiction Book Group welcomes Geraldine Brooks to a discussion of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, March. From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, Mr. March, and crafted a story “filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man” (Sue Monk Kidd). The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries.

“[The book’s] heart is clearly in the right place…rich in stirring and meaningful detail.” – The New York Times Book Review.

Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College English Dept.

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos. It’s been 20 years since three teenagers were killed and their abused bodies were left in public parks. The case was never solved, but the two lead detectives in the investigation have pursued very different paths during the last two decades. Now they are reunited by a new murder. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

The Odyssey Bookshop’s NEW Daytime Fiction Book Group will discuss Geraldine Brook’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, March. From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, Mr. March, and crafted a story “filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man” (Sue Monk Kidd). The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

Odyssey Bookseller and children’s buyer, Rebecca Fabian, reads from her favorite children’s picture books.

The Vermont hill country is the stark, vivid setting for this entertaining and gripping tale of bold determination. Lillian, a young woman, refuses to back down in the face of threats from a potentially lethal local villain. Her boyfriend has fled the state in fear, and local law enforcement can do nothing to protect her: Lillian resolved not only to stand her ground, but also to fight back. A pair of unlikely allies – Lester, a crafty old-timer, and Nate, a powerful but naïve youth – join her cause, understanding that there’s no point in taking up the challenge unless you’re willing to “go through.” In Go With Me, a kind of Greek chorus, - wry, witty, digressive: obsessively, amusingly reminiscent; skeptical, opinionated, and not always entirely sober – immeasurably enriches the telling of the story as they follow the threesome’s progress on their dangerous, suspenseful quest.

“Go With Me is a terrifying and darkly funny mystery ride through the cold and foreboding New England woods. In prose as sharp and cold as winter stars, Castle Freeman has rendered an unforgettable place and people carried on a story that won’t let you go, first word to last. His D. B., Coop, and Whizzer are characters I don't think I will ever forget.” — Bret Lott

For any homeowner who enjoys decorating the inside of the home, this book teaches outdoor landscaping using the same principles of open sight lines, flow, color, space, light, imagination, and a bit of whimsy.  Illustrated throughout in full color, Inside Out features lush photos, landscape design schematics, line drawings, and paintings to fully explore how to create outdoor beauty and harmony around your home.

“Flipping through this beautifully photographed book is enough to motivate readers to rethink their walkways, plantings, decks, patios, walls and fences. What's more, his down-to-earth writing style makes this a guide that can be read cover to cover, instead of merely referenced.” – Jessica Damiano, Newsday

Women’s Experimental Cinema provides lively introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde women filmmakers, some of whom worked as early as the 1950s and many of whom are still working today. In each essay in this collection, a leading film scholar considers a single filmmaker, supplying biographical information, analyzing various influences on her work, examining the development of her corpus, and interpreting a significant number of individual films. The essays rescue the work of critically neglected but influential women filmmakers for teaching, further study, and, hopefully, restoration and preservation. Just as importantly, they enrich the understanding of feminism in cinema and expand the terrain of film history, particularly the history of the American avant-garde.

“Women’s Experimental Cinema is an invaluable resource for students and devotees of experimental cinema and feminist film, fields defined by remarkable films and a dearth of critical attention. It brings to light the social and political roots and cultural impact of women’s experimental film, and the specific female, feminine, and feminist practices of an exceptional group of women artists.”—Alexandra Juhasz, editor of Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video

Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Film Studies and Gender Studies Department

More than ninety years after his death, Jacob Riis maintains a stubbornly persistent hold on the American imagination. Remembered as a pioneering photographer, he was the first to document the state of New York’s slums, publicizing in haunting photographs the plight of the urban poor at the height of European immigration to the city. But Riis confessed to being “no good at all as a photographer” and in recent years has been disparaged for racist views and political opportunism.
In Rediscovering Jacob Riis, Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom address the complex legacy of the pioneering social reformer. In a work of highly original scholarship, they reclaim Riis from the art camp, relocating him in the field of social and cultural history. Their provocative new book reveals Riis to be an inspired self-promoter who, although neither an original thinker nor a serious photographer, nevertheless framed the discussion of urban poverty in terms still relevant today. Extensively illustrated with Riis’s images, Rediscovering Jacob Riis is revisionist history at its best, as appealing to photographers, journalists, and social historians as it is to the general reader

Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College

History Department

From the bestselling author of She’s Not There comes another buoyant, unforgettable memoir—I’m Looking Through You is about growing up in a haunted house...and making peace with the ghosts that dwell in our hearts. For Jennifer Boylan, creaking stairs, fleeting images in the mirror, and the remote whisper of human voices were everyday events in the Pennsylvania house in which she grew up in the 1970s. But these weren’t the only specters beneath the roof of the mansion known as the “Coffin House.” Jenny herself—born James—lived in a haunted body, and both her mysterious, diffident father and her wild, unpredictable sister would soon become ghosts to Jenny as well. With wit and eloquence, Boylan shows us how love, forgiveness, and humor help us find peace—with our ghosts, with our loved ones, and with the uncanny boundaries, real and imagined, between men and women.

“Jenny Boylan’s I’m Looking Through You ranks right up there with Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life as one of the finest literary memoirs of the last several decades. Like these, it’s a haunting revelation of the human heart...—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls

Cosponsored by the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center

While researching Alexander Graham Bell at MIT’s Dibner Institute, Seth Shulman scrutinized Bell’s journals and within them he found the smoking gun, a hint of deeply buried historical intrigue. Delving further, Shulman unearthed the surprising story behind the invention of the telephone: a tale of romance, corruption, and unchecked ambition. Bell furtively—and illegally—copied part of Elisha Gray’s invention in the race to secure what would become the most valuable U.S. patent ever issued. And afterward, as Bell’s device led to the world’s largest monopoly, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, he hid his invention’s illicit beginnings. In The Telephone Gambit, Shulman challenges the reputation of an icon of invention, rocks the foundation of a corporate behemoth, and offers a probing meditation on how little we know about our own history. “Following a trail of clues discovered in Alexander Graham Bell's journals, Seth Shulman’s The Telephone Gambit masterfully breathes life into a long-forgotten controversy: Who really invented the telephone?” – Entertainment Weekly

In the wake of a wildly disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, where her hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mom, Vi, still lives. Willie expects to be able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for generations, but the monster’s death changes the fabric of the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Even further, Willie learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father has all been a lie: he wasn’t the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town.  As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for the truth about her lineage, she discovers that the secrets of her family run deep. Through letters, editorials, and journal entries, the dead rise up to tell their sides of the story as dark mysteries come to light, past and present blur, old stories are finally put to rest, and the shocking truth about more than one monster is revealed. “The Monsters of Templeton is a bold and beautiful hybrid of a book . . . Lauren Groff is an exciting young novelist, gifted with an elegant prose style and a narrative ambition as deep and as serious as the human mysteries she sets out to explore.”—Lorrie Moore

In Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, artist and author James Gurney escorts readers— adults and children alike— to the wondrous lost island of Dinotopia, an enthralling world of art, science, exploration, and invention in which humans and dinosaurs live peacefully together. In the spirit of Marco Polo and Gulliver's Travels, Journey to Chandara recounts the adventures of explorer Arthur Denison and dinosaur Bix through the exotic eastern realm of Dinotopia. “With lush settings reminiscent of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, colorful characters cast from Norman Rockwell, and vivacious dinosaurs conjured from the spirit of Charles Knight, Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara is a window into this modern master’s mind.” —Tony DiTerlizzi, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide

A Plausible Light is the final achievement of poet, Paul Smyth, whose writing fuses a strong melodic line with intense feeling, experience and insight. In the words of Richard Wilbur, “Paul Smyth had an easy mastery of verse forms, a vivid narrative gift, a good acquaintance with fact and natural process, and a rare capacity for confronting what is painful in life.” This collection, published in February by El Léon Literary Arts Press, consists of fifty-eight poems gathered by their author, with Barry Moser’s portrait of the poet as a frontispiece. Smyth died in 2006 just after completing the edits to this masterful collection. “I have known Paul Smyth’s poems for thirty years. They have always filled my mind ‘With roses, with the hush of a million crisp petals,’ to use his own words. His poetry is, by turns, of the earth, of human frailty and beauty, and of the Empyrean. It is also accessible—the sort of poetry that folks who think they don’t like poetry will.” —Barry Moser, Illustrator

From the bestselling author of She’s Not There comes another buoyant, unforgettable memoir—I’m Looking Through You is about growing up in a haunted house...and making peace with the ghosts that dwell in our hearts. For Jennifer Boylan, creaking stairs, fleeting images in the mirror, and the remote whisper of human voices were everyday events in the Pennsylvania house in which she grew up in the 1970s. But these weren’t the only specters beneath the roof of the mansion known as the “Coffin House.” Jenny herself—born James—lived in a haunted body, and both her mysterious, diffident father and her wild, unpredictable sister would soon become ghosts to Jenny as well. With wit and eloquence, Boylan shows us how love, forgiveness, and humor help us find peace—with our ghosts, with our loved ones, and with the uncanny boundaries, real and imagined, between men and women. “Jenny Boylan’s I’m Looking Through You ranks right up there with Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life as one of the finest literary memoirs of the last several decades. Like these, it’s a haunting revelation of the human heart...—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls Cosponsored by the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center

The Vermont hill country is the stark, vivid setting for this entertaining and gripping tale of bold determination. Lillian, a young woman, refuses to back down in the face of threats from a potentially lethal local villain. Her boyfriend has fled the state in fear, and local law enforcement can do nothing to protect her. Lillian resolves not only to stand her ground, but also to fight back. A pair of unlikely allies – Lester, a crafty old-timer, and Nate, a powerful but naïve youth – join her cause, understanding that there’s no point in taking up the challenge unless you’re willing to “go through.” In Go With Me, a kind of Greek chorus, - wry, witty, digressive: obsessively, amusingly reminiscent; skeptical, opinionated, and not always entirely sober – immeasurably enriches the telling of the story as they follow the threesome’s progress on their dangerous, suspenseful quest. “Go With Me is a terrifying and darkly funny mystery ride through the cold and foreboding New England woods. In prose as sharp and cold as winter stars, Castle Freeman has rendered an unforgettable place carried on a story that won’t let you go, first word to last. His D. B., Coop, and Whizzer are characters I don’t think I will ever forget.” — Bret Lott

March 11 • Tuesday • 7 pm

What’s That Job is a directory of more than fifty cool careers that explains, in detail, what each job really entails -- and then tells you what you need to do to actually get it. Each chapter is based on insider knowledge gleaned from interviews with the cream of the crop in their fields--experts like Kate Spade on fashion design; Nicola Kraus, The Nanny Diaries, on being an author; Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine, and Eli Roth, Hostel, on directing films… and many more. By the end of each chapter, you’ll know exactly what each career is, whether you want to pursue it, and exactly what it’s going to take to get it.

“My 20-and-30-something career coaching clients will love this guide. David Rosen concisely summarizes the key elements of these fascinating jobs in a fun and useful style.” – Julie Jansen, author of I Don’t Know What I Want, but I Know It’s Not This

March 12 • Wednesday • 7:30 pm

The New York Times best-selling author and America’s funniest activist gives the lowdown on how to put up--not shut up--in the fight for our future. Hightower, the country’s #1 populist, has picked up some useful advice over the years, from “never eat at a café featuring ‘bargain kebobs’” to “never hit a man with glasses; hit him with something much heavier.” As he and his longtime co-conspirator Susan DeMarco have rambled through grassroots America, however, they’ve also come up with more serious words of wisdom to share here, namely: question authority, trust your values, seek alternatives, break away, stand up for your beliefs, and swim against the current!

“Thank God for Jim Hightower. Instead of leaving us stewing in anger and despair, he rallies us with stories of our own history and of our own neighbors, inspiring us to take charge of our own democratice destiny. And he leaves us laughing and thinking at the same time.” - Studs Terkel

Cosponsored by the Weissman Center at Mount Holyoke College, the Pioneer Valley AFL-CIO and Massachusetts Jobs with Justice

In the tradition of towering biographies that tell us as much about America as they do about their subject, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by educator/historian Paula J. Giddings is a sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader - Ida B. Wells - embroiled in the struggle against lynching: a practice that not only imperiled the lives of black men and women--but also a nation based on law and driven by race. “Long after we close this text, it will not be easy to dismiss or forget what we saw. Giddings’ carefully crafted portrait of Wells is likely to stay with us even longer, perhaps for a lifetime.” – Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Ms. Magazine. Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College African –American and African Studies Department

March 17 • Monday • 7 pm

The Odyssey Open Fiction Book Group will discuss Martyrs’ Crossing by Amy Wilentz. From an award-winning journalist, a gripping first novel follows a Palestinian mother and a young Israeli guard through the very heart of the world's most volatile conflict--the crisis in the Middle East. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

Help Your Child or Teen Get Back on Track: What Parents and Professionals Can Do for Childhood Emotional and Behavioral Problems.

Help Your Child or Teen Get Back on Track offers specific self-help interventions and a wide-ranging, practical discussion of the types of professional help available for a child or adolescent with emotional and behavioral problems. Essential reading for parents who are worried about a child or adolescent with emotional and behavioral problems, this book is also a useful resource for social workers, psychologists, school counselors, pediatricians, and adult psychiatrists.  “Written by a gifted therapist in a jargon-free, reader-friendly, non-judgmental style, it is easy to envision this work as an invaluable tool, treasured by parents, teachers and coaches who aspire to instill mental as well as physical health in the children they care for and about.” – Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle

From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of Samson, Monster, 1959 is an extraordinary tale of 1950s America--flawed, conflicted, and poised to enter the most culturally upended decade of the century. The United States government has been testing the long-term effects of high-level radiation on a few select islands in the South Pacific. Their efforts have produced killer plants, mole people, and a forty-foot creature named K. “Maine’s achievement is to revisit an American myth with fresh eyes, creating an affecting parable for troubled times.” – O Magazine

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Book discussions: March 24, 6:30 pm, South Hadley Public Library

March 27, 6:30 pm, Gaylord Memorial Library

March 25, 1 pm: Screening of the movie, Molly

March 25, 7 pm: Licensed Educational Psychologist Kathleen Salomone discusses working with children with autism spectrum disorders

March 26, 6:30: Detective McClair Mailhott discusses crime scene investigation

March 29, 3 pm: Local writer, John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye, talks about growing up with Asperger’s Syndrome.

For Children: Come Solve a Mystery! Try out finger printing, pH testing, drawing composite sketches and more! Pre-registration required. For ages 9-12

March 22, 11-12:30, South Hadley Public Library

March 29, 11-12:30, Gaylord Memorial Library

For more information, please visit our website www.shadleyreads.org

April

April 3 • Thursday • 4:15 pm

Dwight Hall, Room 101, Mount Holyoke College

Atina Grossman

Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Europe

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. Jews, Germans, and Allies draws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives.

April 3 • Thursday • 7 pm

Lauren Groff

The Monsters of Templeton

In the wake of a wildly disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, where her hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mom, Vi, still lives. Willie learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father has all been a lie: he wasn’t the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town.  As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for the truth about her lineage, she discovers that the secrets of her family run deep. Through letters, editorials, and journal entries, the dead rise up to tell their sides of the story as dark mysteries come to light, past and present blur, old stories are finally put to rest, and the shocking truth about more than one monster is revealed. “The Monsters of Templeton is a bold and beautiful hybrid of a book . . . Lauren Groff is an exciting young novelist, gifted with an elegant prose style and a narrative ambition as deep and as serious as the human mysteries she sets out to explore.”—Lorrie Moore

April 4 • Friday • 7 pm

Women and Writing: Women Who Take Risks and Break the Rules

Novelists Margaret Cezair-Thompson (The Pirate’s Daughter), Deborah Noyes (Angel and Apostle), and Pamela Thompson (Every Past Thing), discuss their latest novels and the female characters they’ve created – women who break the rules.

Children’s Story Time

April 5 • Saturday • 10:30 AM

April 9 • Wednesday • 10:30 AM

April 19 • Saturday • 10:30 AM

April 23 • Wednesday • 10:30 AM

Odyssey Bookseller and children’s buyer, Rebecca Fabian, reads from her favorite children’s picture books.

April 8 • Tuesday • 11 am

April 21 • Monday • 7 pm

The Odyssey Bookshop’s Daytime Fiction Book Group and Open Fiction Book Group will discuss Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard. Based on the true story of one of the last recorded lynchings in America, this haunting debut novel will resonate among readers for its perfectly etched characters and its brilliant portrayal of the South. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

April 8 • Tuesday • 7 pm

Suzanne Strempek Shea

Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith

When Pope John Paul II died, Shea recognized in his mourners a faith-filled passion that she wanted to recapture. She set out on a yearlong road trip to visit a different church every Sunday for a year--a journey that would take her through the broad spectrum of contemporary Christianity lived in this country, from her New England home to the West Coast. “I can think of no better companion on a spiritual journey than Strempek Shea. In Sundays in America, with her trademark humor and grace, she shows us churches across the United States, pointing out the subtleties and details that we would otherwise have missed.” —Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle: A Novel

April 9 • Wednesday • 7 pm

Rebecca Flowers

Nice to Come Home To

A funny, entertaining novel of love and family for our times: a single woman who fears she’s lost her chance at a family of her own, begins to accumulate an ad hoc one around her. In the tradition of Elinor Lipman or Marisa de los Santos (Love Walked In), Flowers delivers a smart, witty, appealing story of love, family, and community that breaks the mold of the conventional love story—and will have readers cheering. “Rebecca Flowers’ novel is a lovely, funny story about the saving graces of surrogate families and unexpected love. The narrator, Pru, has such a self-effacing, irreverent sense of humor that I couldn’t help but root for her all the way.” –Lolly Winston, best-selling author of Good Grief and Happiness Sold Separately

April 10 • Thursday • 7 pm

Mary Jo Salter

A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems

Here are some superb new poems from one of the major poets of her generation, along with a selection of the best from Mary Jo Salter’s previous award-winning collections. In Mary Jo Salter’s poetry we have a unique blend of domestic drama and the grittier wider world. A Phone Call to the Future is a powerful reminder and a ringing confirmation of Mary Jo Salter’s remarkable gifts. “The best of Salter’s elegant formalist poems are driven by a compulsion to confront the inexplicable.” – Editor’s Choice, New York Times Book Review. Cosponsored by the Mount Holyoke College English Department

April 12 • Saturday • 2 pm

Fancy Nancy Tea Party

Odyssey Kids! welcomes children of all ages to a Fancy Nancy tea party celebrating Jane O’Connor’s high-spirited Fancy Nancy. Games, crafts, a story-time, and snacks will be provided to all youngsters. Children are encouraged to dress in their fanciest clothes and sashay in!

April 14 • Monday • 7 pm

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss Blindfold Game by Dana Stabenow. A CIA analyst traces the sale of black market plutonium, realizing that a terrorist attack is under way on a valuable American target. He also sees that the Coast Guard cutter his estranged wife serves on is sailing right into the attack and the heart of an international crisis in this nail-biting New York Times bestseller. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

April 15 • Tuesday • 7 pm

Brian Hall

Fall of Frost

A fascinating and exquisitely written novel about the art and life of Robert Frost, arguably America’s most well-known poet. Frost, as both man and artist, was toughened by a hard life. Told in short chapters, each of which presents an emblematic incident with intensity and immediacy, Hall’s novel deftly weaves together the earlier parts of Frost’s life with his final year, 1962, when, at age 88, he made a visit to Russia and met with Khrushchev. “Hall gets deep into Frost’s head, an approach that brings a startling immediacy to a complex figure many know only as the author of classics like The Road Not Taken.” – Publisher’s Weekly

April 16 • Wednesday • 7 pm

Jack O’Connell

The Resurrectionist

Part classic noir thriller, part mind-bending fantasy, The Resurrectionist is a wild ride into a territory where nothing is as it appears. It is the story of Sweeney, a druggist by trade, and his son, Danny, the victim of an accident that has left him in a persistent coma. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the fortress-like Peck Clinic, whose doctors claim to have "resurrected" two patients who were lost in the void. What Sweeney comes to realize, though, is that the real cure to his son’s condition may lie in Limbo, a fantasy comic book world into which his son had been drawn at the time of his accident.  “This will be the novel that garners Jack O’Connell widespread sales and critical acclaim. The Resurrectionist—a brilliantly tuned, mesmerizing labyrinth of a quasi-real world as only a master artist could draw it—will jazz you, floor you, grab you, and shake you and leave you hung out to dry in that world. A brilliant break-through novel.” —James Ellroy

April 17 • Thursday • 7 pm

John Marks

Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind

From a veteran journalist and former 60 Minutes producer comes an intimate portrait of evangelicals, one of the most influential forces in America today, and the story of how this lapsed believer came to terms with his faith. Born again at age sixteen, John Marks later abandoned his faith. In Reasons to Believe he attempts to cross a deep cultural barrier to understand those who now condemn his way of life. He grapples with the message that millions of evangelicals attempt to deliver to their fellow citizens every day and speaks at length with missionaries, political activists, theologians, Christian musicians, and filmmakers—the rich and powerful, the poor and broken, and the pastors who have turned small congregations into mega-churches. “What makes this book most compelling are the ways in which Marks allows his interviewees to engage him as a potential convert. He is so sympathetic to them that until the very last page it is uncertain whether he will decide to abandon his secular life.” – Publisher’s Weekly

April 19 • Saturday• 2-5 pm

The Odyssey Bookshop’s New “Crafternoon”

featuring Amanda Blake Soule at 3 pm

The Odyssey Bookshop’s introduces its new monthly “crafternoon,” an afternoon in which adults are invited to bring their current projects and share ideas. Each month The Odyssey Bookshop will either feature a new author in the field or focus on an upcoming craft within the industry. The store will also introduce its new “Bag Share” program, which began in March 2007 as an experiment in sustainability at The Old Creamery Grocery in Cummington, MA. Volunteers sew and donate reusable bags for shoppers to borrow and return to either The Odyssey or other Bag Share locations. Customers who do not have a current project at hand are encouraged to come and make bags for the program. Materials for Bag Share will be available at the Odyssey.

Amanda Blake Soule is the author of The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections. Her talk at the Odyssey will focus on bringing families closer together through projects and crafts.

The monthly Shakespeare discussion group, led by UMASS English professor Arthur F. Kinney, will discuss Measure for Measure. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

April 22 • Tuesday • 7 pm

Rosalie Winard

Wild Birds of the American Wetlands

For over a decade, photographer Rosalie Winard has traveled the country by foot, canoe, airboat, and ATV, taking pictures of large birds of the wetlands from Florida to California, Louisiana to North Dakota. Her intimate portraits—tethered to an ethereal palette of white, gray, and black—are alight with Winard’s passion for the avian world and its endangered terrain. Alternately meditative and exhilarating, abstract and literal, they capture the birds’ remarkable habits and prehistoric forms, as well as their ineffable elegance and humor. Wild Birds of the American Wetlands is a monumental and breathtaking study of some of the country’s most beautiful birds. “Rosalie Winard cares about what she photographs. She understands the relationship between habitat and human encroachment and what we stand to lose if we don’t stop and marvel at these avian primitives. She has captured something ancient and time-sensitive in her stunning black-and-white photography.” --Sebastio and Lelia Salgado, Founders, Instituto Terra

April 26• Saturday • 11 am

James Gurney

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara

In Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, artist and author James Gurney escorts readers— adults and children alike— to the wondrous lost island of Dinotopia, an enthralling world of art, science, exploration, and invention in which humans and dinosaurs live peacefully together. In the spirit of Marco Polo and Gulliver’s Travels, Journey to Chandara recounts the adventures of explorer Arthur Denison and dinosaur Bix through the exotic eastern realm of Dinotopia. “With lush settings reminiscent of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, colorful characters cast from Norman Rockwell, and vivacious dinosaurs conjured from the spirit of Charles Knight, Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara is a window into this modern master’s mind.” —Tony DiTerlizzi, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide

April 29• Tuesday • 7 pm

Barbara Zurer Pearson

Raising a Bilingual Child

If you would like your children to experience the benefits of becoming bilingual, but you aren’t sure how to teach them a second language, then Raising a Bilingual Child is the perfect step-by-step guide for you. Raising a Bilingual Child provides parents with information, encouragement, and practical advice for creating a positive bilingual environment. It offers both an overview of why parents should raise their children to speak more than one language and detailed steps parents can take to integrate two languages into their child’s daily routine. “A timely and well-written book! . . . [It] helps parents prepare their children for the future [. . .].” —J. Kevin Nugent, Professor, Child and Family Studies, University of Massachusetts–Amherst

April 30 • Wednesday • 7 pm

Meredith Hall

Without a Map: A Memoir

Meredith Hall’s moving memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. “Nostalgic for the good old days of Norman Rockwell America? Without a Map may forever change the way you look at small-town life. Meredith Hall’s memoir is a sobering portrayal of how punitive her close-knit New Hampshire community was in 1965 when, at the age of 16, she became pregnant in the course of a casual summer romance…”– Francine Prose, O Magazine

Also Look for the Odyssey Bookshop at these Community Events

Paul Polak, Out of Poverty. April 1, 7:30 p.m. Gamble Auditorium, Mount Holyoke College

Rosemary Bray, Unafraid of the Dark. April 7, 7 pm, The New York Room, Mary Wooley Hall, Mount Holyoke College

Glascock Poetry Competition, April 18-19, Mount Holyoke College

Michael Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. April 23, 7 pm, Alumni Hall, Elms College

May

It is 1946, and Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband’s Mississippi Delta farm—a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family’s struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura’s brother-in-law, returns haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.

“Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still.” – Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible

Casey’s years at Princeton gave her many things, ‘but no job and a number of bad habits.’ Casey’s parents, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold on to their culture and their identity. After graduation, Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As she navigates Manhattan, we see her life culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots. Inspired by 19th century novels such as Vanity Fair, Min Jin Lee examines maintaining identity within changing communities in what is her remarkably assured debut.

“Min Jin Lee has won the praise of literary critics...the book is a true page-turner, with a compelling plot involving the universal clash of cultures, adultery and class distinction.” – Chicago Sun-Times

Odyssey Bookseller and children’s buyer, Rebecca Fabian, reads from her favorite children’s picture books.

Children and parents and are invited to our new kids’ “krafternoon.” Parents can introduce their children to their own crafts, or you can work together on old favorites. The Odyssey will also introduce children to “artist trading cards.” Make your own special drawing and trade them with friends. Kids will also be encouraged to decorate the bag share bags made at our adult “crafternoons.”

Based on the author's fieldwork in Zhejiang, this book explores the emergence and success of rural enterprises.

Three great trends will define the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century: The rise of new economic dynamos like China and India, with voracious appetites for energy and other raw materials; the reluctance of the mature industrial powers, to abandon their privileged status atop the resource-consumption pyramid; and the gradual depletion of many of the world's vital resources. How these three trends interact will largely determine the shape of the future world order. 

“If you want to understand the future of international relations, worry less about ideology and more about oil reserves. Michael Klare’s superb new book explains the trends that will lead us into a series of dangerous traps.” — Bill McKibben, author The Bill McKibben Reader

After covering a brutal war that claimed four million lives, journalist Bryan Mealer takes readers on a harrowing two-thousand-mile journey through Congo, where gun-toting militia still rape and kill with impunity. Amid burned-out battlefields, the dark corners of the forests, and the high savanna, where thousands have been massacred and quickly forgotten, Mealer searches for signs that Africa’s most troubled nation will soon rise from ruin.

“Gorgeous, heartbreaking, and redemptive. Mealer has given us a story of a people and a land nearer to our hearts than we know. An immensely honest job of reporting, wonderfully told by a writer who feels as much as he sees.” — Robert Kurson, author of Shadow Divers

In January 1945, near the end of the second World War, a small group of people begin the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine, to reach the British and American lines. Among the group is Anna, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats, her lover, Callum, a Scottish prisoner of war, and, a twenty-six-year old Wehrmacht corporal, who the pair know as Manfred–who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a Jew from Germany who managed to escape a train bound for Auschwitz. As they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war. Their flight will test both Anna’s and Callum’s love, as well as their friendship with Manfred–assuming any of them even survive.

“Careful research and an unflinching eye. . . Bohjalian’s well-chosen descriptions capture the anguish of a tragic era and the dehumanizing desolation wrought by war.” -- Publisher’s Weekly

In her funny and wistful new book, Reeve Lindbergh contemplates entering a new stage in life, turning sixty, the period her mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, once described as “the youth of old age.” It is a time of life, she writes, that produces some unexpected surprises. Age brings loss, but also love; disaster, but also delight. Forward from Here is a brave book, a reflective book, a funny book -- a book that will charm and fascinate anyone on the journey from middle age to the uncertain future that lies ahead.

“Reeve’s essays are suffused with a sly, gentle humor…” — Publisher’s Weekly

Saturday May 10th is

* Must be enrolled in the Odyssey’s Teacher Discount Program to participate

The Odyssey Bookshop’s Daytime Fiction Book Group and Open Fiction Book Group will discuss Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate. From the acclaimed author of The Fall of Rome comes a bold, breakout novel about the lives of three generations of African-American women, linked across time by the pull of desire and the transformative power of the movies. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss Bad Blood by Linda Fairstein. New York Times best-selling author Fairstein delivers her finest thriller to date--a riveting fusion of gritty authenticity, urban intrigue, and courtroom drama, starring the intrepid Alex Cooper. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

Ares, age 12, lives with his mother and his younger brother in a trailer at the edge of the Salton Sea. It is a desolate, forgotten place, whose inhabitants thrive amidst seemingly impossible circumstances. Where birds fly by day across the desert sky, by night government fighter planes and helicopters make training runs using live ammunition, and an anonymous dead body floats in from the sea. These events inspire Ares, on the cusp of his adolescence, to enact elaborate fantasies of mortal combat. His brother, Malcolm, age 7, is mentally handicapped, and Ares’ struggle with the burden of responsibility -- to himself and to others -- draws him into a world of drugs, violence, and sex that he is not prepared for, launching him into a very personal battle for his own identity, one that has a lethal outcome.

“Marisa Silver’s The God of War is a novel of great metaphorical depth and beauty. It stays with you like a lesson well and truly learned.” -- Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

In a voice more powerful and compassionate than ever before, New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Strout binds together thirteen rich, luminous narratives into a book with the heft of a novel, through the presence of one larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge.

“Impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout.” – Publisher’s Weekly

Gary Hirshberg calls on individuals to realize their power to effect change in the marketplace – “the power of one” – while proving that environmental commitment makes for a healthier planet and a healthier bottom line. Drawing from his 25 years’ experience developing Stonyfield Farm, as well as the examples of like-minded companies, Hirshberg presents stunning evidence that business not only can save the planet, but is able to deliver higher growth and superior profits as well.  

“Gary Hirshberg has done a masterful job telling the stories of cutting-edge companies that have found a way to increase profits and environmental sustainability at the same time.” — Ben Cohen, former CEO, Ben & Jerrys 

The monthly Shakespeare discussion group, led by UMASS English professor Arthur F. Kinney, will discuss As You Like It. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

Ask one of our employees for entry details.

It seems like mutual good luck for Abigail and Dara when they meet at St. Andrews University and, despite their differences, become fast friends. Years later they remain an unlikely pair. Abigail, an actress who confidently uses her charms both on- and offstage, believes herself immune to love. Dara throws herself into romantic relationships with frightening intensity. Yet now each seems to have found "true love"—Abigail with her academic boyfriend, Sean, and Dara with a tall, violinist named Edward. But soon after Dara moves into Abigail’s downstairs apartment, trouble threatens both relationships, and their friendship.

“I loved this book. The House on Fortune Street pulled me in and kept me rapt from start to finish. Margot Livesey is writing at her very best.” – Ann Patchett, author of Run and Bel Canto

A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling. Brilliant, daring, and demonstrating, The Boat is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.

“An accomplished debut…” - Publisher’s Weekly

All men have mothers is a hard truth that Maisie Grey has learned the hard way. When she finally gets rid of her mama’s-boy husband and settles down with her teenage son, she’s still stuck with her irascible mother-in-law, a woman who never liked her, criticized her every step of the way, and yet, as Tommy's grandmother, refuses to exit the family stage gracefully. But along comes September, with her piercings, and stay-out-all-night attitude, completely unsuitable for Maisie’s teenage son. When September’s mother kicks her out, Maisie is forced to take a look at what it means to be a wife, a friend, and a nonjudgmental mother.

“Quirky characters keep this drama of relationships in their many forms interesting. A quick and satisfying read.” — Library Journal

and Elizabeth Young and Anthony Lee

Lev Beniov, is small, smart, and insecure Jewish virgin, too young for the army, who spends his nights working as a volunteer firefighter. When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of a death sentence, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous request: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible.

The extraordinary Resistance movement of the Italian people in the Second World War is brought to life in a captivating, deeply moving story of a mother’s search for her son, by the author of the widely acclaimed A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies. The mother’s journey across a war-devastated Italy is operatic in its scope and intensity. Ellen Cooney has drawn on her heritage as a third-generation Italian-American to invoke not only a country in crisis but also its literature, its moods, and, most of all, its music. This is a tale told with lyrical grace and an effervescent comic spirit to match the wine that nourishes them all--Lambrusco.

Odyssey Bookseller and children’s buyer, Rebecca Fabian, reads from her favorite children’s picture books.

In 2002, Ann Hood’s five-year-old daughter Grace died suddenly from a virulent form of strep throat. Stunned and devastated, the family searched for comfort in a time when none seemed possible. Hood—an accomplished novelist—was unable to read or write. She could only reflect on her lost daughter—“the way she looked splashing in the bathtub ... the way we sang ‘Eight Days a Week.’” One day, a friend suggested she learn to knit. Knitting soothed her and gave her something to do. Eventually, she began to read and write again. A semblance of normalcy returned, but grief, in ever new and different forms, still held the family. What they could not know was that comfort would come, and in surprising ways. Hood traces her descent into grief and reveals how she found comfort and hope again—a journey to recovery that culminates with a newly adopted daughter.

While parked at a gas station, Rhonda sees something so incongruously surreal that at first she hardly recognizes it as a crime in progress. She watches, unmoving, as someone dressed in a rabbit costume kidnaps a young girl. Devastated over having done nothing, Rhonda joins the investigation. But the closer she comes to identifying the abductor, the nearer she gets to the troubling truth about another missing child: her best friend, Lizzy, who vanished years before. From the author of the acclaimed Promise Not to Tell comes a chilling and mesmerizing tale of shattered innocence, guilt, and ultimate redemption.

From the critically acclaimed author of Rules of the Wild, comes a story of friendship, human frailty, and war--and the role of outsiders in a country where they do not belong. Maria Galante--rule-abiding, shy, a perfectionist--and larger-than-life journalist Imo Glass are on assignment in Afghanistan: Imo to interview girls who’ve attempted suicide rather than be married off to older men, Maria to photograph them. But in a culture in which women shroud their faces and suicide is a grave taboo, to photograph these women is to dishonor--and perhaps endanger--them. Maria and Imo must find their way among spies, arms dealers, and mercenaries, and through the back alleys of Kabul and into Pashtun villages, where the fragility of life stands out in bold relief. Stunningly evocative and richly observed, The End of Manners is a story of friendship and loyalty, of the transformative power of journeying outside oneself into the wider world.

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss The Watchman by Robert Crais. Joe Pike -- the ex-cop, ex-Marine, ex-mercenary from Robert Craiss superb Elvis Cole novels -- headlines the explosive action of this page-turning New York Times bestseller: the follow-up to the stunningly successful The Two Minute Rule. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

This annual event includes short “flash readings” by local authors, book recommendations from Odyssey staff and publisher representatives, tasty snacks, and wonderful raffle prizes, as well as opportunities to hear from other book groups and, if you’re interested, to join a new one. Books purchased at the event will be discounted 20%. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged.

When Daniel Robb set out to rebuild a family sailboat that had been deteriorating for years, he couldn’t have anticipated what he was getting into. Although Robb was a skilled carpenter, boat building (and boat repair) required a specialized set of skills. And this wasn’t just any boat; it was a Herreshoff 12 1/2, a classic wooden sailboat. Built especially for the coastal waters of New England, this little sloop had sailed for years out of the author’s boyhood home in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, before being relegated to a quiet corner of a yard, no longer the focus of the family’s summer. Restoring the sailboat was both an act of respect and an homage to a place and a way of life that are in jeopardy of disappearing.

In 2003, Minister Donna Schaper wrote an op-ed for The New York Times detailing her rejection from the Coral Gables Garden Club. It seems that the ladies of the club thought she’d bring inappropriate people into the club (meaning gays and blacks). Because of this piece, Minister Schaper was invited to join other clubs around the country. Minister Schaper argues that gardening is a way to sustain activism. It’s a ritual for radicals — urbans, nomads, and for anybody who is sufficiently angry.

In the second book about the Penderwicks, the sisters are home on Gardam Street and ready for an adventure!  But the adventure they get isn’t quite what they had in mind.  Mr. Penderwick’s sister has decided it’s time for him to start dating—and the girls know that can only mean one thing: disaster. Enter the Save Daddy Plan—a plot so brilliant, so bold, so funny, that only the Penderwick girls could have come up with it.  It’s high jinks, big laughs, and loads of family warmth as the Penderwicks triumphantly return!

The Open Fiction Book Group will discuss A Little Love Story by Roland Merullo. One year after the death of his fiancée, Jake sees a beautiful woman hop in her car and proceed to back into his beloved truck. Three days later he calls her and an accident becomes dinner--and dinner quickly becomes a romance. However, Janet is not without her own complications. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl.  Something dark and secretive that could not be named.  Betrayal after shocking betrayal ensued, and Augusten’s childhood was over. With A Wolf at the Table, Augusten Burroughs makes a quantum leap into untapped emotional terrain: the radical pendulum swing between love and hate, the unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son. It’s a memoir of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope.