Latest Events in South Hadley(December Updated)

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

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, November 12 at 7 PM as Janis Hubschman talks about her debut story collection, Take Me With You Next Time. She will be joined in conversation by Celia Jeffries. About the BookJanis Hubschman's debut collection Take Me With You Next Time runs the gamut of emotion with characters who confront crises of infidelity, addiction, death, and dementia. These stories feature women held captive by heartbreak, misguided desire, and bewildering grief, who grapple with past choices and must make new ones. They search for answers from psychics, hypnotists, old lovers, Charles Darwin, and the stars— until, at last, they discover they already possess the courage and insight they seek. With impeccable sentences and unerring, exquisite details, Hubschman's fearless, lucid writing unlocks the worlds of her characters to reveal the human needs and longings we recognize as our own. In Wild Quaker Parrot a sneaky green parrot who may or may not be a reincarnated old boyfriend forces a painter to confront her reckless teenage self. In After the Party a fired golf pro unable to reconcile her husband's infidelity, follows in Ted Kennedy's scandalous footsteps on Chappaquiddick. Morally complex and often wryly funny, Take Me With You Next Time showcases the unpredictable ways smart, resilient women persevere to transcend troublesome events and difficult emotions. About the AuthorJanis Hubschman has published dozens of stories in literary magazines that include Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Southern Humanities Review, and West Branch. Her stories have won Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award and a first-place award from Glimmer Train. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Glimmer Train Bulletin, and New York Runner. She was the recipient of a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Fiction Scholarship and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband in New Jersey and currently teaches fiction writing at Montclair State University. Take Me With You Next Time is her first book.Janis Hubschman has published dozens of stories in literary magazines that include Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Saturday Evening Post, Southern Humanities Review, and West Branch. Her stories have won Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award and a first-place award from Glimmer Train. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Glimmer Train Bulletin, and New York Runner. She was the recipient of a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Fiction Scholarship and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband in New Jersey and currently teaches fiction writing at Montclair State University. Take Me With You Next Time is her first book. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Wednesday November 13 at 7 PM as Laura Tillman talks about her James Beard Award-winning book, The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García. About the BookWinner of the 2024 James Beard Foundation's Award for Literary Writing A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 • An NPR 2023 Books We Love Pick A chef’s gripping quest to reconcile his childhood experiences as a migrant farmworker with the rarefied world of fine dining. Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, Máximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes. Mexico City–based journalist Laura Tillman spent five years immersively reporting on Lalo’s story: from Máximo’s kitchen to the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubai’s first high-end Mexican restaurant, to Lalo’s hometown of San José de las Pilas. What emerges is a moving portrait of Lalo’s struggle to find authenticity in an industry built on the very inequalities that drove his family to leave their home, and of the artistic process as Lalo calls on the experiences of his life to create transcendent cuisine. The Migrant Chef offers an unforgettable window into a family’s border-eclipsing dreams, Mexico’s culinary heritage, and the making of a chef. About the AuthorLaura Tillman is a journalist and the author of The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García (W.W. Norton, 2023), which won the 2024 James Beard Award for Literary Writing, and The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City (Scribner, 2016). She began her career as a newspaper reporter at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2007, before moving to Mexico City in 2014. Her work, which focuses principally on migration, justice, and food, has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Nation. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in International Studies and Goucher College with an MFA in Nonfiction Writing. She recently moved to Connecticut to join the staff of the CT Mirror, where she covers mental health, addiction, disability services, food insecurity, and children's issues. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, November 19 at 7 PM as Luis Jaramillo talks about his new novel, The Witches of El Paso. He will be joined in conversation by Heather Abel. About the BookA lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this richly imagined and empowering story of motherhood, magic, and legacy in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda. If you call to the witches, they will come. 1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price. In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed. “Sexy, smart, and soulful, Luis Jaramillo’s The Witches of El Paso pulls us across borders and time to get to the essence of what it means for families to survive this beautiful, fractured world” (Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk). About the AuthorLuis Jaramillo is the author of The Witches of El Paso and the award-winning short story collection, The Doctor’s Wife. His writing has appeared in LitHub, BOMB Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School. He received an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and an MFA from The New School. About Heather AbelHeather Abel’s debut novel, THE OPTIMISTIC DECADE, was published in May, 2018. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and the online Paris Review among other places. She worked as a reporter and editor for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and High Country News, during which time she talked to gold miners, fossil hounds, Native American environmental activists, and really bored teens in rural Utah. She received an MFA in fiction writing from the New School University, and she’s taught writing at the New School, UMass Amherst, and Smith College. Raised in Santa Monica, she now lives in Northampton, MA with her husband and two daughters, and she dreams of the Colorado high desert. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Friday, November 29 at 4 PM as he talks about his new cookbook, The Hungry Ghost Bread Book: An Offbeat Bakery's Guide to Crafting Sourdough Loaves, Flatbreads, Crackers, Scones, and More. About the BookWhat does it mean to take on the practice of bread? Jonathan Stevens, co-owner of Hungry Ghost Bread in Northampton, Massachusetts, has pondered this question over thirty years of baking sourdough bread. Baking is a ritual that demands attention, physical proximity, close observation, and continual adjustment. It begets sustenance, fosters community, and connects us with a 10,000-year-old craft. The Hungry Ghost Bread Book is a window onto one baker's artisan approach to sourdough bread--the culmination of his time in the tide of dough. Sourdough, declares Stevens, is not a style of bread. It is bread. The sourdough starter--the microbial community used to inoculate bread dough--transforms flour into something truly digestible by humans, unlocking the nutrients that are otherwise inaccessible. Stevens's unique approach to working with sourdough can be summed up by three tenets, each of which begins with more. More hydration, more fermentation, and more heat in the oven. Inside these pages, you'll find tools, techniques, insights, short-cuts, ingredients, warnings, and a handful of haikus. You'll find instructions for creating and nurturing your own sourdough starter, as well as formulas for a variety of loaves, flatbreads, crackers, folds, scones, bagels, and more, including: Eight-Grain BreadFig & Sage BreadPotato-Thyme FougasseSesame-Spelt CrackersRosemary Walnut SconesThe results are quite fantastic: bread that bites back, heels worth chewing on, and scraps worth toasting. A return to real Wonder. About Jonathan StevensJonathan Stevens has been a bread baker for over thirty years, starting out as a stay-at-home dad, a bouncy-seat up on the counter right next to the dough. A cottage business next, with a backyard oven and a Volvo full of crumbs delivering loaves to local CSA’s. In 2004, he and Cheryl Maffie sold hundreds of “bread futures” to finance their retail shop in Northampton: Hungry Ghost Bread...Which has garnered plenty accolades in the past 20 years, including six James Beard Award nominations, as well as coverage in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Saveur Magazine and Taste. Jonathan has taught baking workshops at The Kneading Conference in Maine, classes at Holyoke Community College, and appeared on Mark Dyck’s Rise Up baking podcast. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Tuesday, December 3 at 7 PM as Megan Tady talks about her new novel, Bluebird Day. She will be joined in conversation by Anna Hogeland. About the BookIn this hilarious, heartwarming tale, mother-daughter skiing champs face the bumps in their own relationship when an avalanche in a Swiss village forces them together. Alpine skiing G.O.A.T. Claudine Potts and her daughter, Wylie, have been bred for gold medal glory. They're skiing their way to fame, but this gilded future is cut short when a fall forces Claudine's retirement and Wylie's debilitating anxiety sends her off the slopes. With the collapse of their ski careers, their relationship falters and now it's been years since Wylie and Claudine have even spoken. They live on opposite coasts, pursuing different passions, until a chance opportunity to pair up in a European fitness competition drives them back together. Can this duo survive snow-buried regrets and family secrets and have the happy reunion they're hoping for? Set in a dreamy Swiss village with a colorful cast of characters, Bluebird Day will make readers laugh and swoon, as Claudine and Wylie slalom through the complicated terrain of lost ambition, past mistakes, and mother-daughter love. About the AuthorMegan Tady, a journalist and editor, is the author of Super Bloom. She founded Word-Lift, a communication consulting and copywriting firm. Originally from Nebraska, she now lives in New England with her husband and two children. About Anna HogelandAnna Hogeland is the author of The Long Answer (Riverhead Books). She’s a psychotherapist in private practice, with a master of social work degree from Smith College School for Social Work and a master of fine arts degree from the University of California, Irvine. Her essays have appeared in Literary Hub, Big Issue, iNews, Gloss Magazine, Romper and elsewhere. The Long Answer is her first novel and has been translated into seven languages. She lives in western Massachusetts. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

About the BookA masterly crafted and haunting tale of survival, longing, and empathy, set during the Spanish Civil War. In late 1936, eighteen-year-old Isidro Elejalde leaves his Basque village in Northern Spain, spurred to join the fight to preserve his country's democracy from the insurrectionists by the rousing words of a political essayist. Months earlier, Spanish generals launched a military coup to overthrow Spain's newly elected left-wing government. They assumed the population would welcome the coup, but throughout the country people like Isidro remained loyal to the ideals of democracy, and the Spanish Civil War began in bloody earnest. In Bilbao, Mariana raises her two young children while, with her writing, she decries the fascist-backed coup attempt and their German and Italian allies, imploring the world to support democracy. As the Nationalist forces assault the country, Mariana and Isidro's lives intersect fleetingly, yet in meaningful and lasting ways. Through a chorus of voices--a female soldier in an all-male battalion, a reluctant conscript recently emigrated from Cuba, a young girl whose parents have abandoned her in order to fight against the fascists, among others--we follow Isidro and Mariana as they struggle to maintain their humanity in a country determined to tear itself apart. Julian Zabalbeascoa is a fierce and assured new talent, and What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is a remarkable feat of research and imagination, as well as a transcendent literary accomplishment. About the AuthorJulian Zabalbeascoa’s debut novel What We Tried to Bury Grows Here will be published this fall by Two Dollar Radio. Among other journals, his stories have been published in American Short Fiction, Boulevard, The Common, Copper Nickel, Electric Literature, The Florida Review, The Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, One Story, Ploughshares, Ploughshares Solos, and Shenandoah. His interviews and reviews have appeared in The Believer, Electric Literature, The Millions, and Salamander. A dual citizen of Spain and the US, he was born and raised in California’s Central Valley. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing in Madrid from the University of New Orleans and taught at various institutions throughout California before moving to Boston, where he now teaches in the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He leads annual study abroad programs to Belfast, Donostia-San Sebastian, Havana, Madrid, Paris, and Seville. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite

Join us on Thursday, December 5 at 7 PM as Weike Wang presents her new novel, Rental House. This is the December pick of the Odyssey First Editions Club. About the BookFrom the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife. Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together? With her “wry, wise, and simply spectacular” style (People) and “hilarious deadpan that recalls Gish Jen and Nora Ephron” (O, The Oprah Magazine), Weike Wang offers a portrait of family that is equally witty, incisive, and tender. About the AuthorWeike Wang is a graduate of Harvard University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry and her doctorate in public health. She received her MFA from Boston University. Her fiction has been published in literary magazines, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, and Ploughshares, which also named Chemistry the winner of its John C. Zacharis Award. A “5 Under 35” honoree of the National Book Foundation, Weike currently lives in New York City. Information Source: Odyssey Bookshop | eventbrite