Featured Events in South Hadley in October, 2024 (Continuously Updated)

Join us on Thursday, October 31 at 7 PM as poet Mosab Abu Toha presents his new collection, Forest of Noise. This is his first collection since the events of October 7 and the November pick of our First Editions Club. About the Book A powerful, capacious, and profound (Ocean Vuong) new collection of poems about life in Gaza by an award-winning Palestinian poet. Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed and destroyed his house, pulverizing a library he had painstakingly built for community use, he and his family fled for their safety. Not for the first time in their lives. Somehow, amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems. These are those poems. Uncannily clear, direct, and beautifully tuned, they form one of the most astonishing works of art wrested from wartime. Here are directives for what to do in an air raid; here are lyrics about the poet’s wife, singing to his children to distract them. Huddled in the dark, Abu Toha remembers his grandfather’s oranges, his daughter’s joy in eating them. Moving between glimpses of life in relative peacetime and absurdist poems about surviving in a barely livable occupation, Forest of Noise invites a wide audience into an experience that defies the imagination—even as it is watched live. Abu Toha's poems introduce readers to his extended family, some of them no longer with us. This is an urgent, extraordinary, and arrestingly whimsical book. Searing and beautiful, it brings us indelible art in a time of terrible suffering. About the AuthorMOSAB ABU TOHA is a Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Walcott Poetry Prize. Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which he hopes to rebuild. He recently won an Overseas Press Club Award for his “Letter from Gaza” columns for The New Yorker. He is currently living in Syracuse. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookFrom the award-winning and bestselling author of Feed comes a raucous and slyly funny adult fiction debut. Based on a bizarre but true quest to steal the mystical corpse of a long-dead saint, Nicked is a fantastical, genre-defying, and delightfully queer historical romp. Miracles, marvels, saints, sinners, love, plague, and treachery! M. T. Anderson has laid out a medieval feast of a novel, stuffed with everything I could have wished for. If I could canonize him for it, I would. But I’ll settle for shouting about how much I love this book. —Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love M. T. Anderson is one of our greatest and most precious voices. His books aren't just brilliantly witty and vastly entertaining, they're fixed stars of wisdom and sanity in our increasingly unhinged universe. When lost, I use them to steer by. —Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians Trilogy and The Bright Sword The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to serve the sick. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus. Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating” holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas are rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick, Tyun says. For the humble price of a small fortune, he will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,” will be his guide. What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides, and alongside even stranger bedfellows, to commit sacrilegious theft. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a swashbuckling saga, a medieval novel noir, a meditation on the miraculous, and a monastic meet-cute, filled with wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders. About the AuthorM. T. Anderson has written a wide variety of titles, including works of fantasy and satire for a range of ages. Anderson grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He was educated in English literature at Harvard University and Cambridge University, and went on to receive his MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. M. T. Anderson is the author of a number of celebrated books including the Thrilling Tales series, as well as The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1, The Pox Party, which won the National Book Award and a Printz Honor, and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves, which also won a Printz Honor. Feedwas a finalist for the National Book Award and won the L.A. Times Book Award for YA fiction in 2003 and was a finalist for the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award. M. T. Anderson currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookFrom the nationally bestselling author of the “powerful, heartbreaking” (Shelf Awareness) The Stationery Shop, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran. In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.” But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives. Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences. Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature “evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful” (Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light) prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transforms our lives. About the AuthorMarjan Kamali, born in Turkey to Iranian parents, spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. She is the 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award. She is the author of The Lion Women of Tehran, The Stationery Shop, and Together Tea. Marjan lives with her husband in the Boston area. They have two children. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, October 1 at 7 PM as Lev AC Rosen launches his new novel, Rough Pages, book number 3 in the Evander Mills series. He will be in conversation with Margot Douaihy. About the BookSet in atmospheric 1950s San Francisco, Rough Pages asks who is allowed to tell their own stories, and how far would you go to seek out the truth. Private Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy's closest friends, is now in danger. A search of Howard’s bookstore reveals that someone wanted to stop him and his co-owner, Dorothea Lamb, from sending out their next book. The evidence points not just to the Feds, but to the Mafia, who would be happy to use the subscriber list for blackmail. Andy has to maneuver through both the government and the criminal world, all while dealing with a nosy reporter who remembers him from his days as a police detective and wants to know why he’s no longer a cop. With his own secrets closing in on him, can Andy find the list before all the lives on it are at risk? Dive into the full Evander Mills series: Lavender House The Bell in the Fog Rough Pages About the AuthorLev AC Rosen writes books for people of all ages, including the Evander Mills series, which began with the Macavity Award winning Lavender House, and continues with The Bell in the Fog. His most recent young adult novels are Emmett, Lion’s Legacy, and Camp. Rosen’s books have been nominated for Anthony and Lambda Awards and have been selected for Best of lists from The Today Show, Amazon, Library Journal, Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, Forbes, and many others. He lives in NYC with his husband and a very small cat. About Margot DouaihyMargot Douaihy lives in Northampton, MA, and teaches creative writing at Emerson College. She is the author most recently of the crime novel Blessed Water, and of Scorched Grace, which was named a best book of 2023 by Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, BookPage, and Marie Claire, among others. She is also the author of the poetry collections Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Bhuchung D Sonam is a poet, writer, translator and publisher. His books include Songs from Dewachen, Songs of the Arrow and Yak Horns: Notes on Contemporary Tibetan Writing, Music and Film & Politics. He has edited Muses in Exile: An Anthology of Tibetan Poetry and has compiled and translated Burning the Sun’s Braids: New Poetry from Tibet. He is a founding member and editor of TibetWrites and its imprint Blackneck Books, which promotes and publishes the creative works of Tibetans. His writings are published in the Washington Post, Asahi Weekly, Journal of Indian Literature, HIMAL Southasian, Hindustan Times and Tibetan Review among others. In June 2022, he was awarded the Ostana Prize Youth Award in the category of ‘Writings in Mother Tongue' and was profiled in the New York Times for his literary contributions. He has attended Bangalore Poetry Festival, Sahityotsav 2023 – A Festival of Letters and Jaipur Literature Festival (2024). Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite