Powell’s is excited to resume in-person author events at our City of Books and Cedar Hills Crossing locations.
We’re continuing to offer virtual events featuring authors from around the world. Please read our lineup of upcoming events carefully, to see whether the event you’d like to attend will be online or at one of our store locations.
Missed one of our virtual events? Watch them all on our YouTube channel.
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Monday, April 18 @ 5pm (PT)
In his deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break. The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press) is a return and a forging forth all at once. Vuong will be joined in conversation by Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror.
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Monday, April 18 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
When his father falls ill, Andrés, a professor of public health, returns to his suburban hometown to tend to his father’s recovery. Reevaluating his rocky marriage in the wake of his husband’s infidelity and with little else to do, he decides to attend his 20-year high school reunion, where he runs into the long-lost characters of his youth. Jeremy, his first love, is now married with two children after having been incarcerated and recovering from addiction. Paul, who Andrés has long suspected of having killed a man in a homophobic attack, is now an Evangelical minister and father of five. And Simone, Andrés’s best friend, is in a psychiatric institution following a diagnosis of schizophrenia. During this short stay, Andrés confronts these relationships, the death of his brother, and the many sacrifices his parents made to offer him a better life. A debut novel about the essential nature of community in maintaining one’s own health, Alejandro Varela’s The Town of Babylon (Astra House) is an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity, a call to reevaluate the ties of societal bonds and the systems in which they are forged. Varela will be joined in conversation by Justin Taylor, author of Riding with the Ghost.
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Tuesday, April 19 @ 5pm (PT)
Do we need bookstores in the 21st century? If so, what makes a good one? In his beautifully written book, In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton), Jeff Deutsch — director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world — pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he also predicts — perhaps audaciously — a future in which the bookstore not only endures, but realizes its highest aspirations. In exploring why good bookstores matter, Deutsch draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller, but also his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading, not as a means to a living, but as an essential part of a meaningful life. Central among Deutsch's arguments for the necessity of bookstores is the incalculable value of browsing — since, when we are deep in the act of looking at the shelves, we move through space as though we are inside the mind itself, immersed in self-reflection. In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores, but rather an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities that are lucky enough to have them. Deutsch will be joined in conversation by Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can’t Sleep and Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give.
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Tuesday, April 19 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon 500 years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Edwin St. Andrew is 18 years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal — an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe. A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility (Knopf) is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment. Mandel will be joined in conversation by Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise.
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Wednesday, April 20 @ 5pm (PT)
In his provocative, timely, and painstakingly researched new book, Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth (Amistad), Clyde W. Ford, the award-winning author of Think Black, tells the story of how Black labor helped to create and sustain the wealth of the white one percent throughout American history. Ford uses the lives of individual Black men and women as a lens to explore the role they have played in creating American institutions of power and wealth — in agriculture, politics, jurisprudence, law enforcement, culture, medicine, financial services, and many other fields — while not being allowed to fully participate or share in the rewards. Today, activists have taken the struggle for racial equity and justice to the streets. Of Blood and Sweat goes back through time to excavate the roots of this struggle, from pre-colonial Africa through post-Civil War America. As Ford reveals, in tracing the history of almost any major American institution of power and wealth, you’ll find it was created by Black Americans, or created to control them. Of Blood and Sweat is a compelling look at the past that holds broad implications for present-day calls for racial equity, racial justice, and the abolishment of systemic racism, and offers invaluable insight into our understanding of Black history and the story of America.
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Wednesday, April 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From the coauthor of The World Only Spins Forward comes the first intellectual and cultural history of Method acting — an ebullient story of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood. On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia’s crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself, and emerged with an answer. How his “system” remade itself into the Method and forever transformed American theater and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told. Now, critic and theater director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports readers from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles, from The Seagull to A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull. He traces how a cohort of American theater makers — including feuding mavericks Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg — refashioned Stanislavski’s ideas and shaped generations of actors, enabling Hollywood to become the global dream factory it is today. Some performers the Method would uplift; others it would destroy. Long after its midcentury heyday, it lives on as one of the most influential — and misunderstood — ideas in American culture. Studded with marquee names — from Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Elia Kazan, to James Baldwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Dustin Hoffman — The Method (Bloomsbury) is a spirited history of ideas and a must-read for any fan of Broadway or American film. Butler will be joined in conversation by Justin Taylor, author of Riding with the Ghost.
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Thursday, April 21 @ 5pm (PT)
Chloe Caldwell’s period has often felt inconvenient, uncomfortable, or even painful. It’s only once she’s in her thirties, as she’s falling in love with Tony, a musician and single dad, that its effects on her mood start to dominate her life. Spurred by the intensity and seriousness of her new relationship, it strikes her: her outbursts of anxiety and rage match her hormonal cycle. Compelled to understand the truth of what’s happening to her, Caldwell documents attitudes toward menstruation among her peers and family, reads Reddit threads about PMS, attends a conference called Break the Cycle, and learns about premenstrual dysphoric disorder, PMDD, which helps her name what she’s been going through. For Caldwell, author of I'll Tell You in Person, healing isn’t about finding a single cure. It means reflecting on underlying patterns in her life: her feelings about her queer identity and writing persona in the context of a heterosexual relationship; how her parents’ divorce contributed to her issues with trust; and what it means to blend a family. The Red Zone (Soft Skull) is a candid, revelatory memoir for anyone grappling with controversial medical diagnoses and labels of all kinds. It’s about coming to terms with the fact that — along with proper treatment — self-acceptance, self-compassion, and transcending shame are the ultimate keys to relief. It’s also about love: how challenging it can be, how it reveals your weaknesses and wounds, and how, if you allow it, it will push you to grow and change. Caldwell will be joined in conversation by Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble and Poser.
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Thursday, April 21 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
As a firstborn son of a master craftsman, Henri Blanchard is expected to inherit the family barrel organ workshop, but he would prefer to make bobbin lace like his best friend, Aimée. In an effort to put his misgivings aside and prove himself a worthy heir, he attempts dramatic feats that draw derision from the townsfolk and finally land him in jail, accused of murder. Threatened with the hangman's noose, he is forced to flee the cozy village of Mireville — and discover a world beyond that may be big enough for even the rarest bird to find a nest. Suspenseful and heartwarming by turns, Laura Stanfill's debut, Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary (Lanternfish Press), is a whimsical journey full of friendship, adventure, and self-discovery.
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Friday, April 22 @ 5pm (PT)
Ordinary Equality: The Fearless Women and Queer People Who Shaped the U.S. Constitution and the Equal Rights Amendment (Gibbs Smith) digs into the fascinating and little-known history of the ERA and the lives of the incredible — and often overlooked — women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution for more than 200 years. Based on author Kate Kelly’s acclaimed podcast of the same name, Ordinary Equality recounts a story centuries in the making. From before the Constitution was even drafted to the modern day, she examines how and why constitutional equality for women and Americans of all marginalized genders has been systematically undermined for the past 100-plus years, and then calls us all to join the current movement to put it back on the table and get it across the finish line. Kelly provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the ERA for feminists of all ages, and this engaging, illustrated look at history, law, and activism is sure to inspire many to continue the fight. Kelly will be joined in conversation by Congressman Jamie Raskin, author of Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.
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Friday, April 22 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
95 percent of the millions of American men and women who go to prison eventually get out. What happens to them? There's Arnoldo, who came of age inside a maximum security penitentiary, now free after 19 years. Trevor and Catherine, who spent half of their young lives behind bars for terrible crimes committed when they were kids. Dave, inside the walls for 34 years, now about to reenter an unrecognizable world. Vicki, a five-time loser who had cycled in and out of prison for more than a third of her life. They are simultaneously joyful and overwhelmed at the prospect of freedom. Anxious, confused, sometimes terrified, and often ill-prepared to face the challenges of the free world, all are intent on reclaiming and remaking their lives. What is the road they must travel from caged to free? How do they navigate their way home? A gripping and empathetic work of immersion reportage, Free: Two Years, Six Lives, and the Long Journey Home (Sourcebooks) reveals what awaits them and the hundreds of thousands of others who are released from prison every year: the first rush of freedom followed quickly by institutionalized obstacles and logistical roadblocks, grinding bureaucracies, lack of resources, societal stigmas and damning self-perceptions, the sometimes-overwhelming psychological challenges. Veteran reporter Lauren Kessler, both clear-eyed and compassionate, follows six people whose diverse stories paint an intimate portrait of struggle, persistence, and resilience. The truth — the many truths — about life after lockup is more interesting, more nuanced, and both more troubling and more deeply triumphant than we know. Kessler will be joined in conversation by Sterling Cunio, two-time PEN Prison Writing Award winner and one of the six people profiled in the book.
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Monday, April 25 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Groundhog Day meets Ling Ma’s Severance in Adrienne Celt’s End of the World House (Simon & Schuster), a thought-provoking comedic novel about two young women trying to save their friendship as the world collapses around them. Bertie and Kate have been best friends since high school. Bertie is a semi-failed cartoonist, working for a prominent Silicon Valley tech firm. Her job depresses her, but not as much as the fact that Kate has recently decided to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. When Bertie’s attempts to make Kate stay fail, she suggests the next-best thing: a trip to Paris that will hopefully distract the duo from their upcoming separation. The vacation is also a sort of last hurrah, coming during a ceasefire in a series of escalating world conflicts. One night in Paris, they meet a strange man in a bar who offers them a private tour of the Louvre. The women find themselves alone in the museum, where nothing is quite as it seems. Caught up in a day that keeps repeating itself, Bertie and Kate are eventually separated, and Bertie is faced with a mystery that threatens to derail everything. In order to make her way back to Kate, Bertie has to figure out how much control she has over her future — and her past — and how to survive an apocalypse when the world keeps refusing to end. Celt will be joined in conversation by Meaghan O’Connell, author of And Now We Have Everything.
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Tuesday, April 26 @ 5pm (PT)
From Booker Prize winner Marlon James, author of National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf, comes the second book in his Dark Star trilogy. In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King (Riverhead), Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It's also the story of a century-long feud — seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch — that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. Aesi's power is considerable — and deadly. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own. Both a brilliant narrative device — seeing the story told in Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of an adversary and a woman — as well as a fascinating battle between different versions of empire, Moon Witch, Spider King delves into Sogolon's world as she fights to tell her own story. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap. James will be joined in conversation by Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal and The Unfamiliar Garden.
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Tuesday, April 26 @ 5pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Good Eats: The Final Years (Abrams) is the long-anticipated fourth and final volume in the bestselling Good Eats series of cookbooks, drawing on two reboots of the beloved television show by the inimitable Alton Brown — Good Eats Reloaded and Good Eats: The Return. With more than 175 new and improved recipes for everything from chicken parm to bibimbap and cold brew to corn dogs, accompanied by mouthwatering original photography, The Final Years is the most sumptuous and satisfying of the Good Eats books yet. Brown’s surefire recipes are temptation enough: the headnotes, tips, and sidebars that support them make each recipe a journey into culinary technique, flavor exploration, and edible history. Striking photography showcases finished dishes and highlights key ingredients, and handwritten notes on the pages capture Brown’s unique mix of madcap and methodical. The distinctive high-energy and information-intensive dynamic of Good Eats comes to life on every page, making this a must-have cookbook for die-hard fans and newcomers alike.
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Tuesday, April 26 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink and “writer of singular spark and delight” (Elizabeth Gilbert), comes Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives (Atria), a poignant and powerful new memoir-in-essays that tackles the big questions of life, death, and existential fear with humor and hope. A lifelong worrier, Philpott always kept an eye out for danger, a habit that only intensified when she became a parent. But she looked on the bright side, too, believing that as long as she cared enough, she could keep her loved ones safe. Then, in the dark of one quiet, pre-dawn morning, she woke abruptly to a terrible sound — and found her teenage son unconscious on the floor. In the aftermath of a crisis that darkened her signature sunny spirit, she wondered: If this happened, what else could happen? And how do any of us keep going when we can’t know for sure what’s coming next? Leave it to the writer whose critically acclaimed debut had us “laughing and crying on the same page” (NPR) to illuminate what it means to move through life with a soul made of equal parts anxiety and optimism (and while she’s at it, to ponder the mysteries of backyard turtles and the challenges of spatchcocking a turkey). Hailed by The Washington Post as “Nora Ephron, Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, and Laurie Colwin all rolled into one,” Philpott returns in her distinctive voice to explore our protective instincts, the ways we continue to grow up long after we’re grown, and the limits — both tragic and hilarious — of the human body and mind. Philpott will be joined in conversation by Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State.
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Wednesday, April 27 @ 5pm (PT)
In a genre-defying book hailed as “exquisite” (The New York Times) and “spectacular” (The Times Literary Supplement), bestselling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings (New York Review of Books) weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own — works that pondered the nature of narrative itself: Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler’s Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul; François Fénelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey, The Adventures of Telemachus — a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for a hundred years — resulted in his banishment; and the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn’s struggle to write two of his own books — a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father — that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life. Mendelsohn will be joined in conversation by Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies.
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Wednesday, April 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
"Addictive and headlong" (Lauren Groff), A Tiny Upward Shove (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is inspired by debut novelist Melissa Chadburn's Filipino heritage and its folklore, as it traces the too-short life of a young, cast-off woman transformed by death into an agent of justice — or mercy. Marina Salles's life does not end the day she wakes up dead. Instead, in the course of a moment, she is transformed into the stuff of myth, the stuff of her grandmother's old Filipino stories — an aswang, a creature of mystery and vengeance. She spent her time on earth on the margins; shot like a pinball through a childhood of loss, she was a veteran of Child Protective Services and a survivor, but always reacting, watching from a distance, understanding very little of her own life, let alone the lives of others. Death brings her into the hearts and minds of those she has known — even her killer — as she accesses their memories and sees anew the meaning of her own. In her nine days as an aswang, while she considers whether to exact vengeance on her killer, she also traces back, finally able to see what led these two lost souls to a crushingly inevitable conclusion. In A Tiny Upward Shove, Chadburn charts the heartbreaking journeys of two of society's castoffs as they make their way to each other and their roles as criminal and victim. What does it mean to be on the brink? When are those moments that change not only our lives but our very selves? And how, in this impossible world, full of cruelty and negligence, can we rouse ourselves toward mercy? Chadburn will be joined in conversation by Vanessa Veselka, author of The Great Offshore Grounds and Zazen.
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Thursday, April 28 @ 5pm (PT)
What makes puzzles — jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus — so satisfying? Be it the formation of new cerebral pathways, their close link to insight and humor, or their community-building properties, they’re among the fundamental elements that make us human. Convinced that puzzles have made him a better person, A. J. Jacobs — author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All, master of immersion journalism, and nightly crossworder — set out to determine their myriad benefits. And maybe, in the process, solve the puzzle of our very existence. Well, almost. In The Puzzler (Crown), Jacobs meets the most zealous devotees, enters (sometimes with his family in tow) any puzzle competition that will have him, unpacks the history of the most popular puzzles, and aims to solve the most impossible head-scratchers, from a mutant Rubik’s Cube, to the hardest corn maze in America, to the most sadistic jigsaw. Chock-full of unforgettable adventures and original examples from around the world, The Puzzler will open readers’ eyes to the power of flexible thinking and concentration. Whether you’re puzzle obsessed or puzzle hesitant, you’ll walk away with real problem-solving strategies and pathways toward becoming a better thinker and decision maker — for these are certainly puzzling times. Jacobs will be joined in conversation by David Kwong, magician, puzzle creator, and author of Spellbound.
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Thursday, April 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From Jennifer Egan comes a "sibling novel" to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad — an electrifying, deeply moving work about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private. Egan’s The Candy House (Scribner) opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own Your Unconscious" — that allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others — has seduced multitudes. But not everyone. In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption. In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. Egan takes to stunning new heights her "deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology-driven, image-saturated culture" (Vogue). The Candy House delivers an absolutely extraordinary combination of fierce, exhilarating intelligence and heart.
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Thursday, April 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
It’s 1974. Title IX has passed two years ago, but Louisa’s high school still refuses to fund an all-girls’ basketball team. After hearing Gloria Steinem speak, Louisa learns an important lesson: “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Now what can she do but stand up and fight back? When Louisa asks her principal to start a girls’ team, she’s soon viciously targeted by male coaches at her school, lied to by the school board, and dismissed as “out of line” as she fights for a fair chance to be an athlete. Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s No Stopping Us Now (Three Rooms Press) is a YA tale about finding one’s own voice through the joys of sports, love, and the power of sisterhood. Based on the author's true story, it is a compelling examination of the courage it takes to stand up for what’s right.
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Friday, April 29 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Sage Caplin is taking her Portland coffee cart on the road to a sustainable music festival, but murder is an unwanted special guest… At Campathon, an annual eco-friendly festival held on a farm outside of Portland, fans celebrate the Pacific Northwest's music scene in quintessential PDX style — with gourmet food carts, reusable utensils… and lots of coffee. How else to get through three days of nonstop entertainment? Sage has scored a coveted place for her Ground Rules coffee cart thanks to her newish boyfriend, Bax, who's friendly with Maya, one of the musicians performing. The festivities begin with a stream of customers, friends, and acquaintances stopping by for Ground Rules' world-class blends, expertly brewed by Sage and her newest barista. But there are tensions between Maya and her former bandmates, who are on the cusp of making it big, and with Ian, the band's manager. When Sage stumbles upon Ian's dead body in the nearby woods — his hand still clutching one of her coffee mugs — it's clear that someone's grudge boiled over into murder. Can Sage work out who's responsible before another innocent life fades out, and the curtain falls on Campathon, and maybe her own future, for good? The second Ground Rules Mystery from Emmeline Duncan, Double Shot Death (Kensington) is a modern, fresh-voiced, and witty cozy featuring a sleuth who can make a perfect cup of coffee! Duncan will be joined in conversation by Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga.
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Saturday, April 30 @ 2pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
A blizzard is coming to Hazelwood Elementary! It's snowing, and there's excitement in the air because the school day might end early. Students and teachers alike are looking forward to seeing what happens! Meanwhile, Abdi is distracted and worried because his brother is having surgery. He's supposed to go home with Henry, but they miss the bus and end up having an unexpected adventure with Mr. Wolf! Snow Day (Graphix) is the new installment in Eisner Award-winning creator Aron Nels Steinke’s Mr. Wolf's Class graphic novel series.
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Monday, May 2 @ 5pm (PT)
When 16-year-old Cindra Zoeller is sent to a reform camp in Montana after being involved in an armed robbery, she is thrust into a world of mountains and cowboys and prayers and miscreants and people from all walks of life like she’s never seen in suburban Massachusetts. At Camp Challenge, she becomes transfixed by Lucky, a camp employee of mysterious origin — an origin of constant speculation — and the chemistry between them is instant and profound. The pair escape together into the wilderness to create an idyllic life far from the reach of the law, living off their resounding love, Lucky’s vast knowledge of the wilderness, and a little help from some friends. But they can run from the outside world for only so long, and the consequences of their naïve fantasy of a future together — and circumstances shaped by skin color — will keep them apart for decades. Cindra gets trapped in a relationship, safely if stultifyingly suburban, where she is both cosseted and controlled by a man who claims to be her rescuer. But for Cindra, there will never be another Lucky, and she dreams of one day finding him, the only man she’s ever fully trusted, her soulmate. Page-turning, full of vivid characters, delicious suspense, and ultimately joy, Lucky Turtle (Algonquin) is a big-hearted, deeply engrossing love story from Bill Roorbach, author of Life Among Giants, one of our most entertaining and perceptive writers. Roorbach will be joined in conversation by Nina de Gramont, author of The Christie Affair and The Last September.
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Monday, May 2 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz's beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found (Random House), she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery — from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love. Three very different American families form the heart of Lost & Found: the one that made Schulz's father, a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee; the one that made her partner, an equally brilliant farmer's daughter and devout Christian; and the one she herself makes through marriage. But Schulz is also attentive to other, more universal kinds of conjunction: how private happiness can coexist with global catastrophe, how we get irritated with those we adore, how love and loss are themselves unavoidably inseparable. The resulting book is part memoir, part guidebook to living in a world that is simultaneously full of wonder and joy and wretchedness and suffering — a world that always demands both our gratitude and our grief. A staff writer at The New Yorker and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Schulz writes with curiosity, tenderness, erudition, and wit about our finite yet infinitely complicated lives. Crafted with the emotional clarity of C. S. Lewis and the intellectual force of Susan Sontag, Lost & Found is an uncommon book about common experiences. Schulz will be joined in conversation by Karen Russell, author of Orange World and Other Stories and Swamplandia!.
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Tuesday, May 3 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
What will the fracturing of the United States look like? After the Revolution (AK Press) is a powerful debut novel from Robert Evans — based on his investigative reporting from international conflict zones and on increasingly polarized domestic struggles — and an edge-of-your-seat answer to that question. In the year 2070, 20 years after a civil war and societal collapse of the "old" United States, extremist militias battle in the crumbling Republic of Texas. As the violence spreads like wildfire and threatens the Free City of Austin, three unlikely allies will have to work together in an act of resistance to stop the advance of the forces of the white Christian ethnostate known as the "Heavenly Kingdom." Our three protagonists include Manny, a fixer who shuttles journalists in and out of war zones and provides footage for outside news agencies. Sasha is a teenage woman who joins the Heavenly Kingdom before she discovers the ugly truths behind their movement. Finally, we have Roland: a US Army vet kitted out with cyberware (including blood that heals major trauma wounds and a brain that can handle enough LSD to kill an elephant), tormented by broken memories, and 12,000 career kills under his belt. In the not-so-distant world Evans conjures, we find advanced technology, a gender-expansive culture, and a roving Burning Man-like city fueled by hedonistic excess. After the Revolution is a chronicle of serendipitous alliances in a dystopia that's right around the corner.
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Tuesday, May 3 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. But as adults their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real-estate lawyer, in a house two blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last 15 years. Sam hasn’t spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew. I’ll Be You (Random House) shows Janelle Brown, author of Pretty Things, at the top of her game: a story packed with surprising revelations and sharp insights about the choices that define our families and our lives — and could just as easily destroy them.
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Wednesday, May 4 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
For a decade, The Golden State Killer stalked and murdered Californians in the dead of night, leaving entire communities afraid to turn out the lights. The sadistic predator disappeared in 1986, hiding in plain sight for the next 30 years in middle class suburbia. In 1994, when cold case investigator Paul Holes came across the old file, he swore he would unmask the Golden State Killer and finally give these families some closure. Twenty-four years later, Holes fulfilled that promise, identifying a 73-year-old former cop named Joseph J. DeAngelo. Headlines blasted from the U.S. to Europe: one of America’s most prolific serial killers was in custody. That case launched Holes's career into the stratosphere, turning him into an icon in the true crime world with television shows like The DNA of Murder With Paul Holes and America's Most Wanted, and with the podcast Jensen and Holes: The Murder Squad. Everyone knows Paul Holes, the gifted crime solver with a big heart and charming smile who finally caught the Golden State Killer. But until now, no one has known the man behind it all, the person beneath the flashy cases and brilliant investigations. In Unmasked (Celadon), Holes takes us through his memories of a storied career and provides an insider account of some of the most notorious cases in contemporary American history, including the hunt for the Golden State Killer, Laci Peterson's murder, and Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping. Unmasked is also a revelatory profile of a complex man and what makes him tick: the drive to find closure for victims and their loved ones, the inability to walk away from a challenge — even at the expense of his own happiness. Holes will be joined in conversation by Emmy Award-winning actress Yeardley Smith and Detectives Dan and Dave from the Small Town Dicks podcast.
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Wednesday, May 4 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Ash Davidson’s Damnation Spring (Scribner) is a stunning novel about love, work, and marriage that asks how far one family and one community will go to protect their future. Colleen and Rich Gundersen are raising their young son, Chub, on the rugged California coast. It’s 1977, and life in this Pacific Northwest logging town isn’t what it used to be. For generations, the community has lived and breathed timber; now that way of life is threatened. Colleen is an amateur midwife. Rich is a tree-topper. It’s a dangerous job that requires him to scale trees hundreds of feet tall — a job that both his father and grandfather died doing. Colleen and Rich want a better life for their son — and they take steps to assure their future. Rich secretly spends their savings on a swath of ancient redwoods. But when Colleen, grieving the loss of a recent pregnancy and desperate to have a second child, challenges the logging company’s use of the herbicides she believes are responsible for the many miscarriages in the community, Colleen and Rich find themselves on opposite sides of a budding conflict. As tensions in the town rise, they threaten the very thing the Gundersens are trying to protect: their family. Told in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, Damnation Spring is an intimate, compassionate portrait of a family whose bonds are tested and a community clinging to a vanishing way of life. An extraordinary story of the transcendent, enduring power of love — between husband and wife, mother and child, and longtime neighbors. An essential novel for our times. Davidson will be joined in conversation by Deborah E. Kennedy, author of Tornado Weather.
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Thursday, May 5 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Douglas Stuart’s first novel, Shuggie Bain — winner of the 2020 Booker Prize — is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. Now he returns with Young Mungo (Grove Press), his extraordinary second novel. Both a page-turner and literary tour de force, it is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving, highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men. Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars — Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic — and they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother, Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future. Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much. Stuart will be joined in conversation by Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise.
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Monday, May 9 @ 5pm (PT)
Gregory D. Smithers’s Reclaiming Two-Spirits (Beacon) decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe, or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person. Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism’s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Smithers shows, the colonizers failed — and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century. Smithers will be joined in conversation by Raven E. Heavy Runner, one of the many Two-Spirit voices in the western United States and author of Reclaiming Two-Spirits’s foreword.
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Tuesday, May 10 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In her groundbreaking book, award-winning cultural anthropologist Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans who go to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own death. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying — a legal option now available to one in five Americans. Drawing on five years of research on the frontlines of assisted dying, Hannig unearths the uniquely personal narratives masked by a polarized national debate. Among them are Ken, an irreverent 90-year-old blues musician who invites his family to his death, dons his best clothes, and goes out singing; Derianna, a retired nurse and midwife who treks through Oregon and Washington to guide dying patients across life's threshold; and Bruce, a scrappy activist with Parkinson's disease who fights to expand access to the law, not knowing he would soon, in an unexpected twist of fate, become eligible himself. Lyrical and lucid, sensitive but never sentimental, The Day I Die (Sourcebooks) tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine. Meticulously researched and compassionately rendered, Hannig’s book exposes the tight legal restrictions, frustrating barriers to access, and corrosive cultural stigma that can undermine someone's quest for an assisted death — and why they persist in achieving the departure they desire. The Day I Die will transform the way we think about agency and closure in the face of death. Its colorful characters remind us what we all stand to gain when we confront the hard — and yet ultimately liberating — truth of our mortality. Hannig will be joined in conversation by Peg Sandeen, the Executive Director of Death With Dignity National Center.
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Wednesday, May 11 @ 12pm (PT)
From the author of Annihilation comes a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things. The security consultant “Jane Smith” receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, was a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spiral beyond her control. Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina’s footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As Jane desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out — for her and possibly for the world. Hummingbird Salamander (Picador) is Jeff VanderMeer at his dazzling, cinematic best, wrapping profound questions about climate change, identity, and the world we inhabit into a tightly plotted tale full of unexpected twists. VanderMeer will be joined in conversation by Hank Green, author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor.
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Wednesday, May 11 @ 5pm (PT)
In Maya MacGregor’s queer contemporary YA mystery, The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester (Astra Young Readers), a nonbinary teen with autism realizes they must not only solve a 30-year-old mystery but also face the demons lurking in their past in order to live a satisfying life. Now, as Sam's own 19th birthday approaches, their recent near-death experience haunts them. Sam's life seems to be on the upswing after meeting several new friends and a potential love interest in Shep, their next-door neighbor. Yet the past keeps roaring back — in Sam's memories and in the form of a 30-year-old suspicious death that took place in Sam's new home. Sam can't resist trying to find out more. When Sam starts receiving threatening notes, they know they're on the path to uncovering a murderer. But are they also approaching their own end? A girl's quest to save a forest kingdom is intertwined with her exploration of identity in Every Bird a Prince (Henry Holt), a gorgeous middle-grade contemporary fantasy by Jenn Reese, author of A Game of Fox & Squirrels. The only time Eren Evers feels like herself is when she's on her bike, racing through the deep woods. Until she rescues a strange, magical bird, who reveals a shocking secret: their forest kingdom is under attack by an ancient foe — the vile Frostfangs — and the birds need Eren's help to survive. When her own mother starts behaving oddly, Eren realizes that the Frostfangs — with their insidious whispers — are now hunting outside the woods. In order to save her mom, defend an entire kingdom, and keep the friendships she holds dearest, Eren will need to do something utterly terrifying: be brave enough to embrace her innermost truths, no matter the cost. MacGregor and Reese will be joined in conversation by Rebecca Mahoney, author of The Valley and the Flood.
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Wednesday, May 11 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Hollow Fires (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) is a powerful, gripping YA novel about the insidious nature of racism, the terrible costs of unearthing hidden truths, and the undeniable power of hope, by Samira Ahmed, author of Love, Hate & Other Filters. Safiya Mirza dreams of becoming a journalist. And one thing she’s learned as editor of her school newspaper is that a journalist’s job is to find the facts and not let personal biases affect the story. But all that changes the day she finds the body of a murdered boy. Jawad Ali was 14 years old when he built a cosplay jetpack that a teacher mistook for a bomb. A jetpack that got him arrested, labeled a terrorist — and eventually killed. But he’s more than a dead body, and more than “Bomb Boy.” He was a person with a life worth remembering. Driven by Jawad’s haunting voice guiding her throughout her investigation, Ahmed seeks to tell the whole truth about the murdered boy and those who killed him because of their hate-based beliefs. Hollow Fires uses an innovative format and lyrical prose to expose the evil that exists in front of us, and the silent complicity of the privileged who create alternative facts to bend the truth to their liking. Ahmed will be joined in conversation by Margot Wood, author of Fresh.
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Friday, May 13 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In 1870 a 26-year-old Paiute, Sarah Winnemucca, wrote to an army officer requesting that Paiutes be given a chance to settle and farm their ancestral land. The eloquence of her letter was such that it made its way into Harper's Weekly. Ten years later, as her people languished in confinement as a result of the Bannock War, she convinced Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz to grant the requests in her letter and free the Paiutes as well. Schurz's decision unleashed furious opposition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, cattlemen, and settlers. A campaign of disinformation by government officials followed, sweeping truth aside and falsely branding Paiute chief Egan as instigator and leader of the Indian forces. The campaign succeeded in its mission to overturn Schurz's decision. To this day, histories of the war appear to be unanimous in their mistaken claim that Egan led his Paiutes into war. Indian agents' betrayal of the people they were paid to protect saddled Paiutes with responsibility for a war that most opposed and that led to U.S. misappropriation of their land, their only source of life's necessities. With neither land nor reservation, Paiutes were driven more deeply into poverty and disease than any other Natives of that era. In his new book, Northern Paiutes of the Malheur: High Desert Reckoning in Oregon Country (Bison Books), David H. Wilson Jr. pulls back the curtain to reveal what government officials hid — exposing the full jarring injustice and, after 140 years, recounting the Paiutes's true and proud history for the first time. Wilson will be joined in conversation by Nancy Egan, Northern Paiute and great-great-great-granddaughter of Paiute Chief Egan, and Richard Meeker, co-owner of Willamette Week and founder of Willamette Week’s Give!Guide.
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Friday, May 13 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Holly Black makes her stunning adult debut with Book of Night (Tor), a modern dark fantasy of betrayals, cabals, and a dissolute thief of shadows, in the vein of Neil Gaiman and Erin Morgenstern. Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn't pick, a book she couldn't steal, or a bad decision she wouldn't make. She's spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie Hall. Now, she's trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but getting out isn't easy. Bartending at a dive, she's still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that Charlie's shadowless, and possibly soulless, boyfriend has been hiding things from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she's up against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world — all trying to steal a secret that will give them vast and terrible power. Black will be joined in conversation by Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga.
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Tuesday, May 17 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending 23 days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend. Over the years, Put lived to please Ma and make her proud, hustling to repay her life debt by becoming the consummate good Cambodian daughter, working steadfastly by Ma’s side in the berry fields each summer and eventually building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. But Put's adoration and efforts are no match for Ma's expectations. When she comes out to Ma in her twenties, it's just a phase. When she fails to bring home a Khmer boyfriend, it's because she's not trying hard enough. When, at the age of 40, Put tells Ma she is finally getting married — to a woman — it breaks their bond in two. In her startling memoir, Ma and Me (MCD), Reang explores the long legacy of inherited trauma and the crushing weight of cultural and filial duty. With rare clarity and lyric wisdom, Ma and Me is a stunning, deeply moving memoir about love, debt, and duty. Reang will be joined in conversation by Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise.
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Tuesday, May 17 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Christopher Moore returns to the mean streets of San Francisco in Razzmatazz (Willam Morrow), the outrageous follow-up to his madcap novel, Noir. San Francisco, 1947. Bartender Sammy “Two Toes” Tiffin and the rest of the Cookie’s Coffee Irregulars — a ragtag bunch of working mugs last seen in Noir — are on the hustle: they’re trying to open a driving school for Chinatown residents; shanghai an abusive Swedish stevedore; get Mable, the local madam, and her girls to a Christmas party at the State Hospital without alerting the overzealous head of the S.F.P.D. vice squad; all while Sammy’s girlfriend, Stilton (a.k.a. the Cheese), and her “Wendy the Welder” gal pals are using their wartime shipbuilding skills on a secret project that might be attracting the attention of some government Men in Black. And, oh yeah, someone is murdering the city’s drag kings and club owner Jimmy Vasco is sure she’s next on the list and wants Sammy to find the killer. Meanwhile, Eddie “Moo Shoes” Shu has been summoned by his Uncle Ho to help save his opium den from Squid Kid Tang, a vicious gangster who is determined to retrieve a priceless relic: an ancient statue of the powerful Rain Dragon that Ho stole from one of the fighting tongs forty years earlier. And if Eddie blows it, he just might call down the wrath of that powerful magical creature on all of Fog City. Strap yourselves in for a bit of the old razzmatazz, ladies and gentlemen. It’s Christopher Moore time.
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Wednesday, May 18 @ 5pm (PT)
From Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat, comes a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and courage that tells the story of the special Japanese American Army unit that overcame brutal odds in Europe; their families, incarcerated back home; and a young man who refused to surrender his constitutional rights, even if it meant imprisonment. They came from across the continent and Hawaii. Their parents taught them to embrace both their Japanese heritage and the ways of America. They faced bigotry, yet they believed in their bright futures as American citizens. But within days of Pearl Harbor, the FBI was ransacking their houses and locking up their fathers. And within months many would themselves be living behind barbed wire. Facing the Mountain (Penguin) is an unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe. Based on Brown's extensive interviews with the families of the protagonists as well as deep archival research, it portrays the kaleidoscopic journey of four Japanese-American families and their sons, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. But this is more than a war story. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to shutter the businesses, surrender their homes, and submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of a brave young man, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best — striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring. Brown will be joined in conversation by Tom Ikeda, former executive director of Densho and author of Facing the Mountain’s foreword.
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Wednesday, May 18 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
The COVID-19 pandemic shed fresh light on a long-overlooked truth: mothering is among the only essential work humans do. In response to the increasing weight placed on mothers and caregivers — and the lack of a social safety net to support them — Angela Garbes, author of Like a Mother, found herself pondering a vital question: How, under our current circumstances that leave us lonely, exhausted, and financially strained, might we demand more from American family life? In Essential Labor (Harper Wave), Garbes explores assumptions about care, work, and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is, and can be. A first-generation Filipino-American, Garbes shares the perspective of her family's complicated relationship to care work, placing mothering in a global context — the invisible economic engine that has been historically demanded of women of color. Garbes contends that while the labor of raising children is devalued in America, the act of mothering offers the radical potential to create a more equitable society. In Essential Labor, Garbes reframes the physically and mentally draining work of meeting a child's bodily and emotional needs as opportunities to find meaning, to nurture a deeper sense of self, pleasure, and belonging. This is highly skilled labor, work that impacts society at its most foundational level. Part galvanizing manifesto, part poignant narrative, Essential Labor is a beautifully rendered reflection on care that reminds us of the irrefutable power and beauty of mothering. Garbes will be joined in conversation by Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State.
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Thursday, May 19 @ 5pm (PT)
Gabriela Alemán is known for her spirited and sardonic take on the fatefully interconnected — and often highly compromised — forces at work in present-day South America, and particularly in Ecuador. In her new collection of eight hugely entertaining short stories, Family Album (City Lights), Alemán teases tropes of hardboiled detective fiction, satire, and adventure narratives to recast the discussion of national identity. A muddy brew of pop-culture and pop-folklore yields intriguing, lesser-known episodes of contemporary Ecuadorian history, along with a rich cast of unforgettable characters whose intimate stories open up onto a vista of Ecuador’s place on the world stage. From a pair of deep-sea divers using Robinson Crusoe’s map of a shipwreck to locate sunken treasure in the Galápagos Archipelago, to a night with the husband of Ecuador’s most infamous expat, Lorena Bobbit, this series of cracked “family portraits” provides a cast of picaresque heroes and anti-heroes in stories that sneak up on a reader before they know what’s happened: they’ve learned a great deal about a country whose more well-known exports — soccer, coffee, and cocoa — mask an intriguing national story that’s ripe for the telling. Family Album is Alemán’s rollicking follow-up to her acclaimed English-language debut, Poso Wells. Alemán will be joined in conversation by Rodrigo Fuentes, author of Trout, Belly Up.
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Thursday, May 19 @ 6pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
This Will Not Pass (Simon & Schuster) is the authoritative account of an 18-month crisis in American democracy that will be seared into the country’s political memory for decades to come. With stunning, in-the-room detail, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns show how both our political parties confronted a series of national traumas, including the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the political brinksmanship of President Biden’s first year in the White House. From Donald Trump’s assault on the 2020 election and his ongoing campaign of vengeance against his fellow Republicans, to the behind-the-scenes story of Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate and his bitter struggles to unite the Democratic Party, This Will Not Pass exposes the degree to which the two-party system has been strained to the point of disintegration. More than at any time in recent history, the long-established traditions and institutions of American politics are under siege as a set of aging political leaders struggle to hold together a changing country. Martin and Burns break news on most every page, drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before-seen documents and recordings from the highest levels of government. Their book asks the vitally important (and disturbing) question: can American democracy, as we know it, ever work again? Martin and Burns will be joined in conversation by Governor Kate Brown.
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Tuesday, May 24 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
A powerful movement is happening in farming today — farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change. For one woman, that's meant learning her tribe's history to help bring back the buffalo. For another, it's meant preserving forest purchased by her great-great-uncle, among the first wave of African Americans to buy land. Others are rejecting monoculture to grow corn, beans, and squash the way farmers in Mexico have done for centuries. Still others are rotating crops for the native cuisines of those who fled the "American wars" in Southeast Asia. In Healing Grounds (Island Press), Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors' methods of growing food — techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle. This, Carlisle shows, is the true regenerative agriculture — not merely a set of technical tricks for storing CO2 in the ground, but a holistic approach that values diversity in both plants and people. Cultivating this kind of regenerative farming will require reckoning with our nation's agricultural history — a history marked by discrimination and displacement. And it will ultimately require dismantling power structures that have blocked many farmers of color from owning land or building wealth. The task is great, but so is its promise. By coming together to restore these farmlands, we can not only heal our planet, we can heal our communities and ourselves. Carlisle will be joined in conversation by Latrice Tatsey (In-niisk-ka-mah-kii), ecologist and advocate for tribally-directed bison restoration.
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Friday, May 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In The Night Always Comes (Harper Perennial), Willy Vlautin explores the impact of trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives in a scorching novel that captures the plight of a young woman pushed to the edge as she fights to secure a stable future for herself and her family. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, Lynette diligently works to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother, Kenny. Portland’s housing prices have nearly quadrupled in 15 years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it’s their last best chance to own a home — and obtain the security they’ve never had. While she has enough for the down payment, she needs her mother to cover the rest of the asking price. But a week before they’re set to sign the loan papers, her mother reneges on her promise, pushing Lynette to her limits to find the money they need. Set over two days and two nights, Vlautin’s The Night Always Comes follows Lynette’s frantic search — an odyssey of hope and anguish that will bring her face-to-face with greedy rich men and ambitious hustlers, those benefiting and those left behind by a city in the throes of a transformative boom. As her desperation builds and her pleas for help go unanswered, Lynette makes a dangerous choice that sets her on a precarious, frenzied spiral. In trying to save her family’s future, she is plunged into the darkness of her past and forced to confront the reality of her life.
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Tuesday, May 31 @ 5pm (PT)
From Ann Leary, author of The Good House, comes the story of two friends, raised in the same orphanage, whose loyalty is put to the ultimate test when they meet years later at a controversial institution — one as an employee; the other, an inmate. It’s 1927 and 18-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She’s immediately in awe of her employer — brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist, she was an outspoken crusader for women’s suffrage. Now, at age 40, Dr. Vogel runs one of the largest and most self-sufficient public asylums for women in the country. Mary deeply admires how dedicated the doctor is to the poor and vulnerable women under her care. Soon after she’s hired, Mary learns that a girl from her childhood orphanage is one of the inmates. Mary remembers Lillian as a beautiful free spirit with a sometimes-tempestuous side. Could she be mentally disabled? When Lillian begs Mary to help her escape, alleging the asylum is not what it seems, Mary is faced with a terrible choice. Should she trust her troubled friend with whom she shares a dark childhood secret? Mary’s decision triggers a hair-raising sequence of events with life-altering consequences for all. Inspired by a true story about the author’s grandmother, The Foundling (Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books) offers a rare look at a shocking chapter of American history. Leary will be joined in conversation by Lee Woodruff, author of In an Instant.
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Wednesday, June 1 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In a career in public office spanning five decades, Mark Odom Hatfield (1922–2011) never lost an election. First elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1950, he retired from political office in 1997 after serving as Oregon state senator, secretary of state, governor, and as United States senator for five terms. He was arguably the state’s most important politician, but his brand of liberal-to-moderate Republicanism has long since vanished from the political stage. Historian Richard W. Etulain’s Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon Statesman (University of Oklahoma Press) tells Hatfield’s story — as an Oregonian, a politician, and a man of practical vision, deep convictions, and far-reaching consequence in the civic life of the state and the nation. The private life, the public figure, the man of faith and family, of an older West and the new: Etulain’s biography captures Mark Hatfield in full, as a major western politician of the twentieth century.
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Saturday, June 4 @ 2pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask — or not — was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky (Little, Brown) opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine. As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter. In Happy-Go-Lucky, Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.
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Monday, June 6 @ 5pm (PT)
Metropolis (Algonquin) — the masterful new novel of psychological suspense from B. A. Shapiro, author of The Art Forger — follows a cast of unforgettable characters whose lives intersect when a harrowing accident occurs at the Metropolis Storage Warehouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But was it really an accident? Was it suicide? A murder? Six mysterious characters, who rent units in, or are connected to, the self-storage facility, must now reevaluate their lives. These characters have a variety of backgrounds: they are different races; they practice different religions; they're young and they're not so young; they are rich, poor, and somewhere in the middle. As they dip in and out of one another's lives, fight circumstances that are within and also beyond their control, and try to discover the details of the accident, Shapiro both dismantles the myth of the American dream and builds tension to an exciting climax. For readers of Janelle Brown, Lucy Foley, Megan Abbott, and Laura Lippman, Metropolis is an original, spellbinding, and moving story of what we hang on to, what we might need to let go, and how unexpected events can lead us to discover our truest selves. Shapiro will be joined in conversation by Tim Johnston, author of Descent and The Current.
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Tuesday, June 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Saul doesn't get why he's misunderstood. At his high-tech day job, he hides in the bathroom writing a novel about his dead grandfather and wonders why his boss wants to fire him. He tells his almost ex-wife about a blind date and wonders why she slams the door in his face. He aches with worry for his seven-year-old son, who seems happier living with his mom and her new man. When the blind date becomes a complicated relationship, and Saul’s blunders at work threaten the survival of the company, Saul has to wake up and confront his fears. Yuvi Zalkow’s I Only Cry with Emoticons (Red Hen) is a quirky comedy that reveals the cost of being disconnected — even when we're using a dozen apps on our devices to communicate — and an awkward man's search for real connections, on and offline. Zalkow will be joined in conversation by Joanna Rose, author of A Small Crowd of Strangers.
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Tuesday, June 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Disgraced Navy SEAL Finn is on the run. A wanted man since he jumped ship from the USS Abraham Lincoln, he’s sought for questioning in connection to war crimes committed in Yemen by a rogue element in his SEAL team. But his memory of that night — as well as the true fate of his mentor and only friend, Lieutenant Kennedy — is a gaping hole. Finn learns that three members of his team have been quietly redeployed to Iceland, which is a puzzle in itself; the tiny island nation is famous for being one of the most peaceful, crime-free places on the planet. His mission is simple: track down the three corrupt SEALs and find out what really happened that night in Yemen. But two problems stand in his way. On his first night in town a young woman mysteriously drowns — and a local detective suspects his involvement. What’s worse, a SEAL-turned-contract-killer with skills equal to his own has been hired to make sure he never gets the answers he’s looking for. And he’s followed Finn all the way to the icy north. Cold Fear (Bantam) is the riveting follow-up to Steel Fear from combat-decorated Navy SEAL Brandon Webb (co-written with John David Mann).
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Wednesday, June 8 @ 6pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
David Duchovny’s The Reservoir (Akashic) follows an unexceptional man in an exceptional time. We see our present-day pandemic world and New York City through the eyes of a former Wall Street veteran, Ridley, as he, in his enforced quarantined solitude, looks back upon his life. He examines his wins, his failures, the gnawing questions — his career, his divorce, his estranged daughter — and wonders what it all means and who he really is. Sitting and brooding night after night, gazing out his huge picture window high above the Central Park Reservoir, Ridley spots a flashing light in an apartment across the park as if a lonely quarantined person is signaling him in Morse code. His determination to find out who this mystery woman is, this fellow quarantine damsel in distress trapped in her own Fifth Avenue tower, leads him on an epic quest that will ultimately tempt him with either delusional madness or the fulfillment of his own mythic fate. Is he a dying man going mad or an everyman metamorphosing into a hero? Or both? We accompany Ridley as he leaves the safety of his apartment window to save the Fifth Avenue femme fatale and descends into a dangerous, increasingly surreal world of global conspiracies, madness, and sickness of this viral time; beyond that, into the enduring mysteries of love and fatherhood; and deeper still, into the bedrock mystery of life itself. As Ridley's actions grow more and more uncharacteristic, he realizes the key to all the mysteries of now, and even all of history, seem to lie deep beneath the freezing waters of the reservoir. The Reservoir is a twisted rom-com for our distanced time, when the merest touch could kill and conspiracy theories propagate like viruses — a contemporary union of Death in Venice, Rear Window, and The Plague. Duchovny will be joined in conversation by Kristi Turnquist, TV critic and pop culture reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive.com.
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Wednesday, June 8 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Dale Scott’s career as a professional baseball umpire spanned nearly 40 years, including 33 in the Major Leagues, from 1985 to 2017. He worked exactly a thousand games behind the plate, calling balls and strikes at the pinnacle of his profession, working in every Major League Baseball stadium, and interacting with dozens of other top-flight umpires, colorful managers, and hundreds of players, from future Hall of Famers to one-game wonders. Scott has enough stories about his career on the field to fill a dozen books, and there are plenty of those stories here. He’s not interested in settling scores, but throughout his book he’s honest about managers and players, some of whom weren’t always perfect gentlemen. But what makes Scott’s The Umpire Is Out (University of Nebraska Press) truly different is his unique perspective as the only umpire in the history of professional baseball to come out as gay during his career. Granted, that was after decades of remaining in the closet, and Scott writes vividly and movingly about having to “play the game”: maintaining a facade of straightness while privately becoming his true self and building a lasting relationship with his future husband. He navigated this obstacle course at a time when his MLB career was just taking off — and when North America was consumed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Scott’s story isn’t only about his leading a sort of double life, then opening himself up to the world and discovering a new generosity of spirit. It’s also a baseball story, filled with insights and memorable anecdotes that come so naturally from someone who spent decades among the world’s greatest baseball players, managers, and games. Scott’s story is fascinating both for his umpiring career and for his being a pioneer for LGBTQ people within baseball and across sports. Scott will be joined in conversation by The Umpire Is Out’s coauthor, Rob Neyer.
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Thursday, June 9 @ 5pm (PT)
In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all. Though the women start out wary of one another, judging each other’s stories, gradually they begin to realize that they may have more in common than they supposed… What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them to rescue each other? Dark, edgy, and wickedly funny, Maria Adelmann’s debut, How to Be Eaten (Little, Brown), takes our coziest, most beloved childhood stories, exposes them as anti-feminist nightmares, and transforms them into a new kind of myth for grown-up women. Adelmann will be joined in conversation by Steve Almond, author of All the Secrets of the World. This event is presented in partnership with Rediscovered Books (Boise).
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Friday, June 10 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Explore the artistry of Japanese tea from cultivation to cup in Stories of Japanese Tea (Princeton Architectural Press), a comprehensive illustrated guide to the tea industry from Zach Mangan, founder of Kettl, a New York City- and Fukuoka, Japan-based tea and teaware company. Stories of Japanese Tea includes Japanese growers, their craft of tea-making, and how the tradition of tea has had an influence on cuisine, art, and health. Mangan’s visual exploration of one of the world's most popular beverages tells the stories of tea and tea-making in Japan: how it is grown, harvested, and processed, as well as how it is prepared and enjoyed. Through interviews with tea growers, information on health benefits from Dr. Andrew Weil, and amazing recipes from Japanese chefs and mixologists, including Michelin-starred chef Hayashi Hirohisa and pastry chef Yoshie Shirakawa, you will discover all there is to know about Japanese tea. Mangan will be joined in conversation by Jim Meehan, author of The PDT Cocktail Book and Meehan’s Bartender Manual.
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Tuesday, June 14 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
One night in New York City's Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And… another. Nothing is quite what it seems as the city becomes awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What would normally pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger as the recently engaged Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship, but the fact that both her best friend and her former boss, a magazine editor turned mystical guru, might have an unhealthy investment in the outcome. Memories of the past swirl and converge in ways both comic and eerie, as Lola is forced to decide if she will surrender herself to the conspiring of one very contemporary cult. Hilariously insightful and delightfully suspenseful, Cult Classic (MCD) is an original: a masterfully crafted tale of love, memory, morality, and mind control, as well as a fresh foray into the philosophy of romance. Is it possible to have a happy ending in an age when the past is ever at your fingertips and sanity is for sale? With her gimlet eye, Sloane Crosley, author of I Was Told There'd Be Cake, spins a wry literary fantasy that is equal parts page-turner and poignant portrayal of alienation. Crosley will be joined in conversation by Chuck Klosterman, author of The Nineties and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.
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Wednesday, June 15 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Generation X was born between the legions of Baby Boomers and Millennials, and was all but written off as cynical, sarcastic slackers. Yet, Gen X's impact on culture and society is undeniable. In her revealing and provocative essay collection, Kids in America (Santa Fe Writers Project), Liz Prato reveals a generation deeply affected by terrorism, racial inequality, rape culture, and mental illness in an era when none of these issues were openly discussed. Examined through the lens of her high school and family, Prato reveals a small, forgotten cohort shaped as much by Sixteen Candles and Beverly Hills, 90210, as it was by the Rodney King riots and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Prato is unflinching in asking hard questions of her peers about what behavior was then acceptable or overlooked, and how we reconcile those sins today. Kids in America illuminates a generation that is often cited, but rarely examined beyond the gloss of nostalgia. Prato will be joined in conversation by Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Book of Joan.
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Thursday, June 16 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Body Grammar (Vintage) is a coming-of-age queer love story set in the glamorous but grueling world of international modeling — and a radiant debut by a talented new writer. By the time Lou turns 18, modeling agents across Portland have scouted her for her striking androgynous look. Lou has no interest in fashion or being in the spotlight. She prefers to take photographs, especially of Ivy, her close friend and secret crush. But when a hike ends in a tragic accident, Lou finds herself lost and ridden with guilt. Determined to find a purpose, Lou moves to New York and steps into the dizzying world of international fashion shows, haute couture, and editorial shoots. It's a whirlwind of learning how to walk and how to command a body she's never felt at ease in. But in the limelight, Lou begins to fear that she's losing her identity — as an individual, as an artist, and as a person still in love with the girl she left behind. A sharply observed and intimate story of grief and healing, doubt and self-acceptance set against the hyper-image-conscious industry of modeling and high fashion, Jules Ohman’s Body Grammar shines with the anxieties of finding your place in the world and the heartbreaking beauty of pursuing love. Ohman will be joined in conversation by Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light.
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Monday, June 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
If you've ever expressed even the slightest bit of dissatisfaction with the current state of your life, you've inevitably gotten the response, "Have you tried meditation? Exercise? Joining a cult? Joining an exercise cult?" And a variety of other helpful suggestions. Madeleine Trebenski’s Do I Feel Better Yet?: Questionable Attempts at Self-Care and Existing in General (Chronicle Prism) explores these topics with intellectual essays like "I'm Moving to the Woods to Live in a Nightmare Shack" and instructional guides such as "Are You Hungry or Are You Just Horny?" If you learn anything from Trebenski’s book, it should be that a $72 artisanal hand-blown glass cup isn't going to change your life. Trebenski will be joined in conversation by Matthew Carroll, author of Can I Sit On Your Lap While You’re Pooping?.
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Monday, June 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Tracy Flick is back and, once again, the iconic protagonist of Tom Perrotta’s Election — and Reese Witherspoon’s character from the classic movie adaptation — is determined to take high school politics by storm. Tracy Flick is a hardworking assistant principal at a public high school in suburban New Jersey. Still ambitious but feeling a little stuck and underappreciated in midlife, Tracy gets a jolt of good news when the longtime principal, Jack Weede, abruptly announces his retirement, creating a rare opportunity for Tracy to ascend to the top job. Energized by the prospect of her long-overdue promotion, Tracy throws herself into her work with renewed zeal, determined to prove her worth to the students, faculty, and school board, while also managing her personal life — a ten-year-old daughter, a needy doctor boyfriend, and a burgeoning meditation practice. But nothing ever comes easily to Tracy Flick, no matter how diligent or qualified she happens to be. As she broods on the past, Tracy becomes aware of storm clouds brewing in the present. Is she really a shoo-in for the principal job? Is the superintendent plotting against her? Why is the school board president’s wife trying so hard to be her friend? And why can’t she ever get what she deserves? In classic Perrotta style, Tracy Flick Can’t Win (Scribner) is a sharp, darkly comic, and pitch-perfect reflection on our current moment. Flick fans and newcomers alike will love this compelling novel chronicling the second act of one of the most memorable characters of our time.
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Monday, June 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
In Nebula Award-winning author Sam J. Miller’s devastating debut short-fiction collection, Boys, Beasts & Men (Tachyon), queer infatuation, inevitable heartbreak, and brutal revenge seamlessly intertwine. Whether innocent, guilty, or not even human, the boys, beasts, and men roaming through Miller’s gorgeously crafted worlds can destroy readers, yet leave them wanting more. Despite his ability to control the ambient digital cloud, a foster teen falls for a clever con-man. Luring bullies to a quarry, a boy takes clearly enumerated revenge through unnatural powers of suggestion. In the aftermath of a shapeshifting alien invasion, a survivor fears that he brought something out of the Arctic to infect the rest of the world. A rebellious group of queer artists create a new identity that transcends even the anonymity of death. Miller, author of Blackfish City and The Art of Starving, shows his savage wit, unrelenting candor, and lush imagery in this essential career retrospective collection, taking his place alongside legends of the short-fiction form such as Carmen Maria Machado, Carson McCullers, and Jeff VanderMeer. Miller will be joined in conversation by Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga.
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Tuesday, June 28 @ 5pm (PT)
Jim Woodring has been chronicling the adventures of his cartoon everyman, Frank, for almost 30 years. These stories are a singular rarity in the comics form — both bone-chillingly physical in their depictions of Frank’s travails and profoundly metaphysical at the same time. Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat has the comics language been so exquisitely distilled into pure, revelatory aesthetic expression. One Beautiful Spring Day (Fantagraphics) combines three previously published volumes — Congress of the Animals, where Frank embarked upon a life-changing voyage of discovery; Fran, where he learned, then forgot, that things are not always what they seem; and Poochytown, in which Frank demonstrated his dizzying capacity for both nobility and ignominy — along with 100 dazzling new pages conceived and drawn by Woodring. The result is a seamless graphic narrative that forges a new and even more poignantly realized single story that takes readers deep into the hidden meanings of the previous stories and offers the most full, complete, astonishing exposition of Frank and his supercharged world to date. Frank’s curiosity and risk-taking mixed with a dose of, let’s face it, wanton recklessness, takes him on a series of terrifying peregrinations that often leave his soul and body shattered, and the reader in a state of creative exaltation. Suffice to say that if you are a friend to Frank, you will find One Beautiful Spring Day to be a thousand-course feast of agonizing bliss, soul-stirring mystery, and luminous depth. Woodring will be joined in conversation by Gary Groth, co-founder of The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books.
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Tuesday, June 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
In So Help Me Golf (Hachette), beloved author and golf aficionado Rick Reilly channels his insatiable curiosity, trademark sense of humor, and vast knowledge of the game in a treasure trove of original pieces about what the game has meant to him and to others. This is the book Reilly has been writing in the back of his head since he fell in love with the game of golf at eleven years old. He unpacks and explores all of the wonderful, maddening, heart-melting, heart-breaking, cool, and captivating things about golf that make the game so utterly addictive. We meet the PGA Tour player who robbed banks by night to pay his motel bills, the golf club maker who takes weekly psychedelic trips, and the caddy who kept his loop even after an 11-year prison stint. We learn how a man on his third heart nearly won the U.S. Open, how a Vietnam POW saved his life playing 18 holes a day in his tiny cell, and about the course that's absolutely free. Reilly expounds on all the great figures in the game, from Phil Mickelson to Bobby Jones to the simple reason Jack Nicklaus is better than Tiger Woods. He explains why we should stop hating Bryson DeChambeau unless we hate genius, the greatest upset in women’s golf history, and why Ernie Els throws away every ball that makes a birdie. Plus all the Greg Norman stories Reilly has never been able to tell before, and the great fun of being Jim Nantz. Connecting it all will be the story of Reilly’s own personal journey through the game, especially as it connects to his tumultuous relationship with his father, and how the two eventually reconciled through golf. This is Reilly’s valentine to golf, a cornucopia of stories that no golfer will want to be without.
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Wednesday, July 6 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From the author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes — for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous — as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places. We all live like we’re famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. In The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories (Harper), the riveting new collection of stories from Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy 21-year-old studying Latin in Rome during “the year of my reinvention” finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams. Funny, poignant, and redemptive, Walter’s collection of short fiction offers a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again “solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds” (Esquire).
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Thursday, July 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Victor Li is a man without a past. To his new employer, Mark, he’s just an anonymous hired hand to help with the dirty work. Together, they break into storage units that contain the possessions of the recently deported, pocketing whatever is worth selling. Only Victor and his sister, Jules, know that he’s a wanted man. Amid the backpacks and suitcases, Victor makes the find of a lifetime: a gem rare and valuable enough to change his fortunes in an instant. But selling it on the sly? Nearly impossible. Thankfully, its former owner, a woman named Song Fei, also left a book of cryptic notes — including the name of a gemstone dealer in Mexico City. When Victor and Mark cross the southern border, they quickly realize that this gem is wrapped up in a much larger scheme than they imagined. In Mexico City, shadowy international interests are jockeying for power, and they may need someone with Victor’s talents — the same ones that got him in trouble in the first place. On the heels of his knockout debut Beijing Payback, Daniel Nieh delivers Take No Names (Ecco), a white-knuckled and whip-smart thriller that races to an electrifying finish.
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