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

Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples. At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.

Caught up in a terrifying war, facing choices of life and death, two Iraqi sisters take us into the hidden world of women’s lives under U.S. occupation. Through their powerful story of love and betrayal, interwoven with the stories of a Palestinian American women’s rights activist and a U.S. soldier, journalist Christina Asquith explores one of the great untold sagas of the Iraq war: the attempt to bring women’s rights to Iraq and the consequences for all those involved.

“Christina Asquith’s description of the wild incompetence–and dedication–of early American efforts in Iraq reads like a great novel but with the added weight of history. And her focus on women, both American and Iraqi, makes this book uniquely valuable among the many on this long war. Asquith is a fine writer and, clearly, a very brave reporter. She has filled in several crucial pieces of the Iraq puzzle, and done it beautifully.” —Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm

February 27  •  Saturday  •  11:00 am

Dr. Seuss Birthday Party!

It’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday, so come celebrate with games and a special story-time at the Odyssey Bookshop.

This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy.  With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl— and society’s ideas of race, class, and beauty. It is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.

“When I first envisioned the Bellwether Prize, I imagined all the best qualities of fiction; vivid language, compelling characters, and clear moral vision.  Novels just like this one, Heidi Durrow’s breathless telling of a tale we’ve never heard before.  Haunting and lovely, pitch-perfect, this book could not be more timely.” – Barbara Kingsolver

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

March 4  •   Thursday  •  7:00 pm

Jedediah Berry (The Manual of Detection) and Paul Tremblay (No Sleep Till Wonderland)

The Manual of Detection: Reminiscent of imaginative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges to Jasper Fforde yet dazzlingly original, The Manual of Detection marks the debut of a prodigious young talent. Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency located in an unnamed city always slick with rain. When Travis Sivart, the agency's most illustrious detective, is murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted and must embark on an utterly bizarre quest for the missing investigator that leads him into the darkest corners of his soaking, somnolent city.
“This debut novel weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka.” -- The New Yorker

No Sleep Till Wonderland: Mark Genevich is stuck in a rut: his narcolepsy isn’t improving, his private-detective business is barely scraping by, and his landlord mother is forcing him to attend group therapy sessions. Desperate for companionship, Mark goes on a two-day bender with a new acquaintance, Gus, who is slick and charismatic—and someone Mark knows very little about. When Gus asks Mark to protect a friend who is being stalked, Mark inexplicably finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation and soon becomes the target of the police, a sue-happy lawyer, and a violent local bouncer.
“Snappy prose, a brilliantly original detective and a cast of sharply drawn low lifes—Paul Tremblay mixes it up with style. In the end, No Sleep till Wonderland is much more than just a crime book—it’s all about the narrator’s unique take on the world. Thoroughly recommended.” – Simon Lewis, author of Bad Traffic

A stunning and lyrical Civil War thriller, Walking to Gatlinburg is a spellbinding story of survival, wilderness adventure, mystery, and love in the time of war. Morgan Kinneson is both hunter and hunted.  The sharp-shooting 17-year-old from Kingdom County, Vermont, is determined to track down his brother Pilgrim, a doctor who has gone missing from the Union Army.  But first Morgan must elude a group of murderous escaped convicts in pursuit of a mysterious stone that has fallen into his possession.
“We are in the hands of a skilled storyteller, and every word matters. A captivating story, and one that cries for a sequel.” – Kirkus, starred review

An astonishing novel that removes Emily Dickinson’s own mysterious mask and reveals the passions and heartbreak of America’s greatest poet. What if the old maid of Amherst wasn’t an old maid at all? Her older brother, Austin, spoke of Emily as his “wild sister.” Jerome Charyn, continuing his exploration of American history through fiction, has written a startling novel about Emily Dickinson in her own voice, with all its characteristic modulations that he learned from her letters and poems. Charyn has written an extraordinary adventure that will disturb and delight.

March 15  •  Monday  •  7:00 pm

The Odyssey Open Fiction Book Group will discuss The Outcast by Sadie Jones. Jones tells the story of a boy who refuses to accept the polite lies of a tightly knit community that rejects love in favor of appearances. Written with nail-biting suspense, The Outcast is an emotionally powerful testament to the powers of love and understanding. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

There are few gifts in life of greater value than the opportunity to earn a living doing what you love to do. One can hardly call such an activity work. Unfortunately, too few of us have been shown how to find out soul’s purpose, our own unique calling. The title, Why Not Do What You Love, is both a question and a compassionate exhortation to all those pondering how to make their life and work matter – certainly to themselves, and to those around them.

It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century, a moment that left a family and a nation mourning, one that many Americans recall as their first historical memory--the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Within seven weeks of the President's death, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched. Now historian Ellen Fitzpatrick has selected approximately 250 of these letters for inclusion in Letters to Jackie, a remarkable human record that perfectly preserves the heart-wrenching grief and soul searching of the nation in a time of crisis. Capturing the extraordinary eloquence of so-called ordinary Americans across generations, regions, race, political leanings, and religion--in messages written on elegant stationery, scraps of paper, in pencil, type, ink smudged by tears, and in barely legible handwriting--the letters capture what John F. Kennedy meant to the country, and how his death for some divided American history into Before and After.

“A terrific, original, and important work….Fitzpatrick provides a stunningly fresh look at the impact of JFK’s assassination on the American people.” — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Accomplished physician and researcher Dr. Lewis Cohen writes the untold story of two Massachusetts nurses, their struggles with end of life care, and how they were accused of murdering a patient. Captivating and powerful, No Good Deed explores what happens when decisions about end of life issues and the purpose of modern medicine move from the hospital to the courtroom to the church.

Eleven poets, including local poet Martin Espada, will be reading poems to raise funds and awareness about the current plight of the people, children especially, who suffering a collective political punishment in Gaza.  That evening, Moving Towards Home will be raising funds for the Middle East Children's Alliance (www.mecaforpeace.org). 

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%.

Based on extensive interviews with workers in four different industries, this book takes us behind the statistics of the economic collapse and into the lives of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet and support their families. Tom Juravich combines oral history with social and economic analysis to provide a vivid account of the multiple challenges presented in today’s workplaces.

“This is a beautifully written, compelling portrait of four groups of Massachusetts workers. Juravich convincingly argues that their plight is tied to corporate decision-making processes that—whatever their own internal logic—make no sense for the society they so deeply affect, and are often counterproductive in their impact on worker productivity and efficiency. . . . The author is a gifted interviewer and his narrative lifts up the voices of workers themselves.” -- Ruth Milkman, author of L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement