Past Events
April
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About My People Redux
In My People Redux, Angela Trudell Vasquez creates in vivid images and musical language a world where children “cycle, talk, sing—” run, dangle from tree limbs, hunt, peer, trample, and search. In their joyful activity they realize, “This is where my power / started flowing.” It is not a trouble-free world. Children played in the DDT- laced cornfields; refugees are turned away at the border. Sometimes a person “crawls to the finish line.” But it is also a world where “Everybody is somebody’s child” and there are people “who will throw open their doors/ and let them in, let them in.” It is also a world where “pen can tap into my brain, // reveal what is hiding, // not to court friends or foes, // but to keep from disappearing. In these compelling poems, Vasquez welcomes us to recover with her what the great grandfather knew, “the original place of green grace.” –Margaret Rozga, author of Holding My Selves Together, New & Selected Poems and 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate
About Angela Vasquez
Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez is a poet, writer, editor, publisher, and activist. She is the current City of Madison Poet Laureate (2020-2024) and the first Latina to hold the position. Angie received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017. Recently, her poems have appeared in The Slow Down, Yellow Medicine Review, Poem-a-Day, About Place Journal and in several anthologies.She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly Fellow while at Drake University. In 2018 she was a finalist for the New Women’s Voices series and her book, In Light, Always Light, her third collection of poetry, was published by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review with Millissa Kingbird, and co-edited a collection of poetry with Margaret Rozga, then 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, entitled Through This Door, that was released in late 2020 through her small press Art Night Books. Finishing Line Press published her fourth collection of poetry, My People Redux, in January 2022. Active nationally too, she has read poems, been a panelist, and presented at Split This Rock and AWP. In the summer of 2021 she became a Macondo Fellow or a Macondista. Current Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, she helps select the state poet laureate. (angietrudellvasquez.com & artnightbooks.com)
About Holding My Selves Together
In Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems, her fifth volume of poetry, Margaret Rozga brings together some of her best-loved poems about Milwaukee's fair housing marches and her concern for issues of peace and social justice, with new poems that identify with Alice in Wonderland and imagine new Alice adventures. New poems also grapple with issues of recent political turmoil and pandemic-induced uncertainty. These deeply written poems find in language the glue that may hold our selves together.
About Margaret Rozga
Wisconsin Poet Laureate Dr. Margaret Rozga is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee at Waukesha. Her poems and essays reflect her ongoing concern for social justice issues. Her first book, 200 Nights and One Day presents the story of Milwaukee’s open housing marches. She was a participant in those marches and has coordinated events commemorating their 20th, 40th and 50th anniversaries. She married civil rights leader Father James Groppi in 1976. Their three children, now all adults, continue to live in Wisconsin.
Rozga has published four additional collections of poems, most recently Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems(Cornerstone Press 2021). As Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2019-2020, Rozga and Madison Poet Laureate Angie Trudell Vasquez co-edited a poetry anthology, Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems. This anthology includes work by the nine Wisconsin Poets Laureate and the wonderfully diverse voices of Black, Latinx and white poets from throughout the state.
Rozga’s current work-in-progress is Restoring Prairie, a volume of poems inspired by her 2021 term as Artist in Residence at the UWM at Waukesha Field Station.
Time: 11:00a CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
This epic poem tells the legendary tale of Steve "Stick" Vizage, a young boy who loves to express himself—and not always pleasantly—by making faces. Stick learns about the consequences when he comes face to face with his babysitter, the imposing Madame Mugg, who warns him that his facial features could freeze in place, given a certain situation. Adventure ensues as she decides to teach him an important lesson about manners, mannerisms, and treating others with respect. Come along for the ride of a lifetime with The Isle of Stuck Faces, a book for kids and adults of all ages with maturity issues.
About the author
Brooke Saucier has been molding and twisting the English language to suit his needs—prose, poetry, puns, Dad jokes—for most of his life. Born and raised in Memphis, Brooke ventured north for his education at the University of Illinois, where he acquired his first of many winter coats. He has been cold ever since, with a three-decade stop in Chicago and Evanston as a precursor to his settling with his wife, cat, and two dogs in Madison, Wisconsin, where he found a closet large enough for his collection of coats and jackets, which are suited for many climes. Over the years, Brooke has held many titles—banker, membership director, distiller, brand ambassador, preschool teacher, property manager—but his absolute favorite is used only by his amazing daughter, Julia: Dad
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Detective Susan Ford notices a missed call on her phone from a number she doesn't recognize, and when Madison García, a woman with past ties to the town of Monticello, New York, is found stabbed to death the next morning, Susan realizes that Madison was the one who had called her. But why?
Susan teams up with her father, retired Detective Will Ford, to find the killer, and their investigation soon threatens to uncover the García family's secrets—an inheritance, accidental death, money laundering, extramarital affairs, and family rivalries, just to name a few—and they don't appreciate the Fords digging into their business.
As the investigation twists and turns, the Fords discover that Madison was planning to confess to a long-kept secret, but someone brutally silenced her. Everyone she knew is a suspect. Anyone could be her killer.
About Marcy McCreary
Marcy McCreary is the author of The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon, a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion 2022 Finalist in Best Investigative category. After graduating from George Washington University with a B.A. in American literature and political science, she pursued a career in the marketing field, holding executive positions in marketing communications and sales at various magazine publishing companies and content marketing agencies. She has two daughters and two stepdaughters who live in Brooklyn, NY, Nashville, TN, Madison WI, Seattle, WA. She lives in Hull, MA with her husband, Lew, and black lab, Chloe.
About Nick Chiarkas
Nick Chiarkas grew up in the Al Smith housing projects in the Two Bridges neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Nick became a writer, with a few stops along the way: a U.S. Army Paratrooper (101st Airborne Division); a New York City Police Officer; the Deputy Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; the Deputy Chief Counsel and Research Director for the President’s Commission on Organized Crime; and the Director of the Wisconsin State Public Defender Agency. On the way he picked up a Doctorate from Columbia University; a Law Degree from Temple University; and was a Pickett Fellow at Harvard.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
THE DEVIL’S ELEMENT: PHOSPHORUS AND A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE is an insightful exploration of one of earth’s most significant and dangerous natural resources. Since it was first refined from human urine in a seventeenth-century alchemist’s laboratory, phosphorus has been used to help burn down entire cities as well as to create the modern chemical fertilizers that have allowed the global population to nearly quadruple in the past hundred years. With a journalist’s ability to translate meticulous research into a thrilling story, Egan brings phosphorus’s checkered history to life. Today, with phosphorus at the center of an increasingly dire environmental disaster poisoning freshwater sources all over the globe, its history has taken on renewed significance. Egan convincingly makes the case that we can no longer afford to be ignorant of our phosphorous use and the damage it is causing.
About the author
Dan Egan is the Brico Fund Journalist in Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death and Life of The Great Lakes. From 2002 to 2021, he covered the Great Lakes as a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communication Award; Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award; AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award; and J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Dan lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and children.
Time: 11:00a CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
There are big things and little things in the world, and everything in between. Caldecott Medal winner and #1 New York Times bestseller Kevin Henkes encourages young readers to be curious about the world around them in this timeless, beautifully illustrated, and masterful picture book. The World and Everything in It belongs in every child’s library, and illuminates key social and emotional concepts such as belonging, self-awareness, and community.
In the world, there are little animals, tiny flowers, and things so small you can’t see them. In the world, there are giant waves, a large sun, and things so big you can’t wrap your hands around them. There are big things and little things in the world. And everything in between—including you!
A masterful picture book from Caldecott Medal winner and #1 New York Times bestseller Kevin Henkes, The World and Everything in It explores concepts such as curiosity, self-awareness, belonging, and size. Combining a precise, evocative, and lovely text with exquisite illustrations, Kevin Henkes deftly captures the wonders and mysteries of the world for any reader just beginning to wonder about how they fit in.
A brilliant picture book to spend time with, discuss, and think about, The World and Everything in It is an excellent choice for social and emotional development as well as a lovely book to give to readers of any age.
About the author
“I’ve been writing and illustrating children’s books for thirty years. It’s the only real job I’ve ever had.
When my work is going well, it’s transformative. I feel as if I’ve been removed from ordinary time and am living in some parallel universe, a world of grace and wonder.
Books are often the first exposure to art that children have. Keeping that in mind urges me to make the very best books possible. I know how important the books from my childhood were (and are) to me. Without them, I might not be a writer and artist today.
Sometimes I’ll hear from a parent about how a book of mine has insinuated itself into the heart of his or her child, or how a phrase from one of my books has become part of the family’s daily jargon. I love that. But most of all, I love sitting alone in a quiet room drawing and painting and writing. I love my job.”
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
When my eyes creaked open and tried to find focus, I didn’t know where I was. The room was dim, my wrists were tied to the bed rail, and the dull ache of a needle in my hand throbbed through the fog. Motionless and silent, I lay staring at the ceiling until everything started coming back to me—the hallucinations, my teeth were melting, the menacing trolls teetering around the bedroom; uncontrollable shaking while my wife, Robin, helped me take a shower; and the catatonic ride to the emergency department of Meriter Hospital. After being ushered into an exam room, my memory was a void until this silent, dim awakening moment.
Alcohol withdrawal can kill you, and I would have been a statistic had I not made it to the ER. I drank almost every day for nearly two decades and an obscene amount for a few years leading to this point. This is my story. Now twenty-nine years sober, I’m one of the lucky ones who lived to fight another day. Join me as I chronicle my journey through coming of age, rock and roll debauchery, a downward spiral into the depths of substance abuse, and then like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, the joy and accomplishments in my ongoing recovery.
If I can help encourage just one of those among you who are struggling or someone you love to see that it’s possible to make the change, to find your way out of that rabbit hole of alcoholism, and feel how beautiful life can be above ground, it will all have been worth it.
About the author
Michael Massey is a composer, singer, songwriter, pianist, performer and producer who has a story to tell. He has written or collaborated on over 350 rock, pop, country and instrumental songs as well as the score for the full length, Dracula, Rock Ballet. He has 5 critically acclaimed solo albums including Pop Album of the year 2006 and Unique Albums of the Year 2014 and 2018 at the Madison Area Music Awards. Michael has also won Instrumentalist; Piano at the same awards 2009, 2019 and 2020 as well as numerous ADDY, TELLY and WAVE awards for excellence in original music for advertising.
Musical accomplishments include five solo albums released to critical and popular acclaim. The first is an instrumental piano album, “Be Careful How You Say Pianist”, second, twelve fully produced pop songs in “Attack of the Delicious”, which won Pop Album of the Year 2006 at the Madison Area Music Awards, third, “The Present” which is piano arrangements of traditional Christmas pieces, fourth, the soundtrack to Dracula, A Rock Ballet, recorded live with a 7 piece band at the Overture Center in Madison Wisconsin and garnered Unique Album of the Year honors at the 2014 MAMA’s and most recently, “Naked”, 13 songs stripped to minimal production and the Unique Album of the Year winner at the 2018 MAMA’s.
Three other records, “Rainy River,” a five song EP by Massey, Ripp and Magellan, “Gifted At The Hula” by Americana band, “stop the clock,” the ten song 2019 release by rock band “Chaser” find Michael intimately involved with production, writing and performing.
Michael has recently published a memoir with an emphasis on recovery from alcoholism and life beyond substance abuse. He is performing with chanteuse Francie Phelps, with the dueling piano show, Piano Fondue, solo piano bar and vocals and keys with the rock band Chaser.
While maintaining a busy performance schedule, Michael is also known for his ability to write in virtually any musical genre including scoring, post, long form, theater, radio spots and television commercials. Clients for radio and television commercials include New Balance, Oscar Mayer, United Way, Jones Dairy Farm, Metra Chicago, Badgerland Financial, Summit Credit Union, Mercury Marine, UW Hospital and Clinics, Culver’s and many more.
Other accomplishments include original scores for short films, a score produced with Jack Letourneau for the computer animated feature, “Time, Space” for the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and a score for the University of Michigan Alumni, broadcast at the “Big House” in Ann Arbor. Michael is currently co-writing a sexy musical theatrical production with actor, writer, producer/director Suzan Kurry.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
Join us for an evening with Bent Paddle Press Poets!
About B.J. Best
B.J. Best is a poet, writer, interactive fiction creator, game designer, artist, and musician. He has published seven collections of poetry, most recently “Everything about Breathing” from Bent Paddle Press. He teaches at Carroll University in Waukesha.
About In Everything about Breathing
In Everything about Breathing, B.J. Best transmutes the quotidian into the extraordinary through the lens of everyday weather. Here, thunderstorms record in the studio, gas stations explode into love, and lawn mowers and puddles might whisper prayers. Through deft imagery and figurative language, Best asks how holiness thrums beneath the daily cycles of our lives.
About Thomas Erickson
Thomas J. Erickson grew up in Kohler, Wisconsin. He received a B.A. in English Composition from Beloit College and a law degree from Marquette University. He is an attorney in Milwaukee where he is a member of the Hartford Avenue Poets. HIs most recent book of poetry is “Cutting the Dusk in Half” (Bent Paddle Press, 2022).
About Cutting the Dusk in Half
“Cutting the Dusk in Half” is full of crisp little stories: courtroom stories, travelling stories, love stories, dog stories and even an incantation to the Gods. One is called “True Stories,” but I suspect they all are that (with room for a little poetic truth stretching, of course). Erickson is candid, philosophical and down-to-earth. He weaves his signature dry humor throughout, knowing exactly how to end a poem with a perfect punch.
About Mark Kraushaar
Mark Kraushaar’s work has been included in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and Yale Reviewwas well as the web site Poetry Dailyand Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and has been a recipient of Poetry Northwest’s Richard Hugo Award. A full-length collection “Falling Brick Kills Local Man” was published by University of Wisconsin Press as the winner of the 2009 Felix Pollak Prize. His collection, “The Uncertainty Principle” (Waywiser Press), was chosen by James Fenton as winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize. His newest work is “The Ring Toss Lady Breaks a Five (Bent Paddle Press).
About The Ring Toss Lady Breaks a Five
As the poet Alan Shapiro put it, Kraushaar’s work “is the best counterargument to the specious claim that narrative poetry is either old fashioned, ‘linear’ or predictably ‘conventional.’ His poems have all the excitement and complexity of life as we live it now, together with a depth of speculation that is positively stunning in the light it casts on the intimate nooks and crannies of social experience that all of encounter but either fail to notice or find words for.”
About Richard Merelman
Richard Merelman is Professor of Political Science, (Emeritus) University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published four volumes of poetry including “Sensorium” (Bent Paddle Press) and “A Door Opens” (Fireweed, 2020), which received an Outstanding Achievement Award in 2021 from the Wisconsin Library Association.
About Sensorium
In “Sensorium,” Merelman finds a way into the human condition with storied, deeply layered poetry. Merelman cares about his poems the way an expert woodsmith does his cabinets. He is an adept wordsmith and exquisite craftsman and polishes his works till they shine.
March
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Alabama governor George Wallace ran for president four times between 1964 and 1976. In the Badger State, his campaigns fueled a debate over constitutional principles and values. Wallace weaponized states’ rights, arguing that the federal government should stay out of school segregation, promote law and order, restrict forced busing and reduce burdensome taxation. White working-class Wisconsinites armed themselves with Wallace’s rhetoric, pushing back on changes that threatened the status quo. Civil rights activists and the Black community in Wisconsin armed themselves with a different constitutional principle, equal protection, to push for strong federal protection of their civil rights. This clash of ideals nearly became literal as protests and counterprotests erupted until gradually diminishing as Wallace’s political fortunes waned. Historian Ben Hubing reveals the tensions that embroiled Wisconsinites as Wallace took his struggle north of the Mason-Dixon line.
About the author
Historian Ben Hubing, a high school educator and educational consultant, has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the James Madison Foundation Fellowship and the Herb Kohl Teaching Fellowship. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a master's in teaching from Cardinal Stritch University. He also earned a master's in history at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, with a focus on intersections of civil rights, politics and constitutional history. Hubing lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin, with his wife, Nickie, and their three children.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Everyone learns to accept life’s twists and turns as they live out the daily rituals of their lives. But what happens when an event completely alters one’s understanding of everything about the world in which they live, including who they are? Forbidden Roots brings the audience into the author’s inner most thoughts as he sees his foundation swept away with a simple slip of the tongue at the age of 41 while attending a large family gathering with his children and wife. This gripping true story about suddenly being unexpectedly thrust into the world of adoption explores the expected and the unexpected as the author seeks to understand his new identity and re-frame his past.
Things like this aren’t supposed to happen, but they do. From being dealt with the unexpected to dealing out the unexpected, ride along with the author on his journey of twists, turns and bomb shells.
About the author
Fred Nicora has followed a path of unexplained restlessness ignited by undisclosed triggers in his efforts to find the right fit for his own identity and seek truth in his life. Careers explored on his journey include health care administration, architecture, business consulting, teaching, and his own entrepreneurial endeavors including a startup fitness-based company and now authoring his story of being thrust into the adoption triangle.
Fred holds a B.S. in Business Administration, an M.S. in Management Technology, a master’s in architecture and a secondary lifetime Teaching license via a master’s program. Following a traumatic life altering event, Fred struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, eventually finding sobriety and his need for spiritual, mental, and physical health.
A father of three grown children, Fred currently lives and maintains a small hobby farm in Southeastern Wisconsin.
*Due to winter weather, Storytime with Lisl Detlefen has been rescheduled to Saturday, April 22 at 11:00 AM*
Time: 11:00a CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Grab your boots--it's time to explore life on a farm! In joyful verse, follow a diverse cast of farming families as they work and play in boots, all year long. Whether it's springtime puddle-splashing, riding at the summer fair, or herding sheep into the barn in winter, there's a type of boot for every kind of weather and activity.
About the author
Lisl H. Detlefsen is the author of a growing number of picture books. Her first, TIME FOR CRANBERRIES (Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press, illustrated by Jed Henry) was a Junior Library Guild selection, a 2016 Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People (K–2), and the 2017 Wisconsin Ag in the Classroom Book of the Year.
IF YOU HAD A JETPACK (Penguin Random House/Knopf, illustrated by Linzie Hunter) was a Spring 2018 Kids’ Indie Next pick, an ALA LITA 2019 Excellence in Children’s and Young Adult Science Fiction Notable Picture Book and listed on the 2019 Edition of the Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year.
Other titles include RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE (Feeding Minds Press, illustrated by Renée Kurilla), which was named the 2019 American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture’s Book of the Year, and 1, 2, 3, JUMP!, a humorous book about swimming lessons (Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press, illustrated by Madeline Valentine).
Her most recent titles include CATKWONDO (Capstone, illustrated by Erin Hunting), in which Kitten persistently practices taekwondo, and ON THE GO AWESOME, a picture book for the vehicle-obsessed (Penguin Random House/Knopf, illustrated by Robert Neubecker) which is a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year choice for kids under five.
Lisl has more books on the way, including FARM BOOTS (March 2023, Feeding Minds Press, illustrated by Renée Kurilla), a lyrical celebration of work and play on a variety of farms throughout the four seasons, and AT THE END OF THE DAY (Spring 2024, Knopf, illustrated by Lynnor Bontigao), a free-verse story about how even in a day filled with frustration, there's always the promise of tomorrow.
Lisl lives on a family-owned cranberry marsh near Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin with her husband, two sons, and two cats. When not in her office or on the marsh, you can find Lisl on the web at www.lislhdbooks.com, on Twitter and Instagram @lislhd, or on Facebook @lislhdbooks. She is represented by agent Jennifer Mattson of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About Tripping the Light Ekphrastic and Other Inspirations
Poet Ronnie Hess is also an accomplished ballroom dancer, art connoisseur, journalist, and cook, so it makes sense that her chapbook springing from the visual arts in our lives should be titled Tripping the Light Ekphrastic and Other Inspirations. Emerging from these poems crafted in a variety of forms is a trenchant commentary on our culture and history. Expect to meet a knowledgeable mind, warm heart, inventive imagination, and an expressive twist!
-Robin Chapman, author of The Only Home We Know and Panic Season
About Ronnie Hess
Ronnie Hess is a poet, essayist, editor, award-winning journalist, and the author of five poetry chapbooks and two culinary travel guides (on France and Portugal, Ginkgo Press). Born and raised in New York City, she now lives in Madison, WI. She has served on the Boards of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and The Friends of Lorine Niedecker. For more information, visit www.ronniehess.com.
About Outside the Frame
Outside the Frame, a new and selected collection of Marilyn Taylor's accomplished, witty, and poignant poems, offers readers a wild ride through life in Aunt Eudora's Harlequin romances, crickets' chorales, Shostakovich's 5th Symphony, the demands of aging, and even a notice from the Sweet Chariot Funeral Parlor. Her voice is so upbeat that we almost forget she's talking about how short our time is here, and her verbal high jinks are so much fun we nearly fail to notice the formidable formal skill at play in her villanelles, sestinas, rondeaus, and signature crowns of sonnets. Read it twice—once for her company through life, once just to marvel at her maker's skill!
—Robin Chapman, author of The Only Home We Know
About Marilyn L Taylor
Marilyn Taylor is the former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin (2009-2010) and the city of Milwaukee (2004-2005).
Marilyn was raised in Whitefish Bay, went to West High School in Madison, but lived for 40 years in Milwaukee, where she taught poetry for the English Department and the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Following the death of her husband Allen in 2012, she moved to Madison, where she continue to write, teach, and spend time hobnobbing with some of the extraordinary poets who also call Wisconsin home. She lives with her poet-husband Dave Scheler, and is also fortunate enough to have a brilliant son (Reed), an equally brilliant daughter-in-law (Jessica), and two splendid grandsons: Max, age 7, and Finn, 4.
Time: 6:30p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
A compelling narrative of the trials and triumphs of tennis champion Althea Gibson, a key figure in the integration of American sports and, for a time, one of the most famous women in the world.
From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her twelve Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career, Althea Gibson became the most famous black sportswoman of the mid-twentieth century. In her unprecedented athletic career, she was the first African American to win titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. In this comprehensive biography, Ashley Brown narrates the public career and private struggles of Althea Gibson (1927-2003). Based on extensive archival work and oral histories, Serving Herself sets Gibson's life and choices against the backdrop of the Great Migration, Jim Crow racism, the integration of American sports, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and second wave feminism. Throughout her life Gibson continuously negotiated the expectations of her supporters and adversaries, including her patrons in the black-led American Tennis Association, the white-led United States Lawn Tennis Association, and the media, particularly the Black press and community's expectations that she selflessly serve as a representative of her race.
A riveting life and times portrait, Serving Herself offers a revealing look at the rise and fall of a fiercely independent trailblazer who satisfied her own needs and simultaneously set a pathbreaking course for Black athletes.
About the author
Ashley Brown is the Allan H. Selig Chair in the History of Sport and Society and Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an expert on sport history, women’s history, and African American history.
Time: 2:00 pm
Where: Lenz Auditorium, 120 Oak Street, Pardeeville, WI, USA (Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognizable to you? For Thea Demetriou, the answer is both simple and agonizing: you keep loving him somehow.
Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the drug-fueled murder of his girlfriend, Belinda. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanizes the community to rally against him to protest in her daughter’s memory. The media paints Stefan as a symbol of white privilege and indifferent justice. Neighbors, employers, even some members of Thea's own family turn away.
Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her son. At times, he is still the sweet boy he has always been; at others, he is a young man tormented by guilt and almost broken by his time in prison. But as his efforts to make amends meet escalating resistance and threats, Thea suspects more forces are at play than just community outrage. And if there is so much she never knew about her own son, what other secrets has she yet to uncover—especially about the night Belinda died?
About the author
Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 22 novels for adults and teenagers, and the recipient of Great Britain’s Talkabout prize, The Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, and named to the short list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, with more than 3 million copies in print in 34 languages. It was later adapted into a major feature film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her novel Still Summer has also been adapted for a film still in production. She has also an essay collection, The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship, drawn from her newspaper column syndicated by Tribune Media. Mitchard’s essays also have been published in magazines worldwide, widely anthologized, and incorporated into school curricula. She served on the Fiction jury for the 2003 National Book Awards, and was editor-in-chief of Merit Press, a Young Adult imprint under the aegis of Simon and Schuster.
A Chicago native, Mitchard grew up the daughter of a plumber and a hardware store clerk who met as rodeo riders. She is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and a DeWitt Clinton Readers Digest Fellow at the Macdowell Colony. She has taught in MFA program for Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Miami University of Ohio and Western New England University and was speechwriter for Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala during the first days of the Clinton administration and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An avid Italian cook, she lives on Cape Cod with her husband and their nine children. Her newest novel, The Good Son, a story about two women, one whose son was convicted of murdering the other’s daughter, is out from Mira/HarperCollins.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Barriques on Monroe St
We will be reading The Other Merlin by Robyn Schneider!
About the book
Channeling the modern humor of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, bestselling author Robyn Schneider creates a Camelot that becomes the ultimate teen rom-com hotspot in this ultra-fresh take on the Arthurian legend.
Welcome to the great kingdom of Camelot! Prince Arthur’s a depressed botanist who would rather marry a library than a princess, Lancelot’s been demoted to castle guard after a terrible lie, and Emry Merlin has arrived at the castle disguised as her twin brother since girls can’t practice magic.
Life at court is full of scandals, lies, and backstabbing courtiers, so what’s a casually bisexual teen wizard masquerading as a boy to do? Other than fall for the handsome prince, stir up trouble with the foppish Lord Gawain, and offend the prissy Princess Guinevere.
When the truth comes out with disastrous consequences, Emry has to decide whether she'll risk everything for the boy she loves, or give up her potential to become the greatest wizard Camelot has ever known.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
In this no-holds-barred, provocative book, Terri Laxton Brooks tells a story that often remains hidden— that of a successful professional who has many friends and family and yet all her life has struggled with a loneliness she’s never revealed to anyone.
Terri thinks her feelings of isolation will end with her marriage to her childhood sweetheart and their move from a farm town to the city of Chicago. But once the sheen of newlywed passion wears off, her husband, by nature reticent, grows even more emotionally distant. In her new job as a reporter for a Chicago paper, Terri hides her loneliness under a flurry of bylines and deadlines. But she can’t shake a feeling she’s had since childhood—of failure to connect, not just as a wife but also as a daughter, friend, and colleague—and soon she and her husband separate. Adrift, Terri contemplates suicide. Could a move to different city, to a fresh start, solve her problem?
Terri’s decision to transplant herself to New York City forces her hand in a way she never imagined: it plunges her into a loneliness so total that out of desperation she grabs the key to her own salvation— ; love of interviewing, researching, hearing people’s stories. After starting therapy, her curiosity leads her into four years of soul-searching conversations with America’s leading psychologists and psychiatrists about how to cope with loneliness, why it is a normal and necessary stage of healthy growth, and how to stop resisting it. She explores with growing understanding intimate details of her dreams, her past traumas, and her role in her own loneliness—and learns not only how to live comfortably with that loneliness but how to use it to her advantage.
About the author
Terri Laxton Brooks was born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, at that time a one-square-mile town surrounded by cornfields. She majored in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent her Junior Year Abroad at the Université d’Aix-en-Provence. Terri wrote for the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times and is a founding member of the National Writers Union. She was a professor at the Department of Journalism at NYU where she also became department chair and was the dean of the college of communications at Penn State. Of all that she is grateful for, her most treasured is her son, who continues to make her a kinder, better person. She currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin.
We will be reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich!
About the book
In this stunning novel, Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story: a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors.
The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, to the dead, to the reader, and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading “with murderous attention,” must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
The Sentence begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.
5:00-7:00p
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Time: 7:00p CT
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the Panel
Same focus, different results. Four mystery authors writing novels with antique dealers as their main characters discuss subgenres and voice: what makes us different and why it’s important not to compare yourself to other authors.
CORDY ABBOTT
Proud baby boomer and dog mom Cordy Abbott is the author of the Old Town Antiques Mystery series. She, her husband, and their Standard Schnauzer have lived in Alexandria, Virginia, for over two decades. Because she enjoys everything about the city, she can’t wait to share it with readers, even a fictionalized version. When not writing, Cordy enjoys characteristic baby-boomer pursuits: golf, traveling, and volunteering for good causes, like the American Association of University Women of Alexandria and the Delaware River and Bay Lighthouse Foundation. She has a post-graduate certificate in Antiquities Theft and Art Crime. Fans can find her at www.CordyAbbott.com.
DEAD MEN DON’T DECORATE is the first in a new series.
Roberto Fratelli, proprietor of the antiques store Waited4You, is the meanest man in Marthasville, Virginia. So when he puts the business up for sale, the other merchants in town are overjoyed. And now the business has a prospective buyer: local resident and the newly elected mayor's mom, Camille Benson, who’s thrilled at the prospect of getting into the antiques business. During a celebration in honor of Camille’s new venture, her best friend, Opal, tells her about finding a letter, purportedly from Sally Fairfax to George Washington, dated 1756, hidden under a chair in the shop. When they return to retrieve the cache, they find Roberto’s lifeless body on the floor and no letter. If she doesn’t find the killer, she could lose everything, but if she does find him, she could become history.
CONNIE BERRY
Connie Berry writes the award-winning and best-selling Kate Hamilton Mystery series, set in the UK and featuring an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. Connie was raised by antiques dealers who instilled in her a passion for history, fine art, and travel. During college she attended St. Clare’s, Oxford, where she fell under the spell of the British Isles. Besides reading and writing mysteries, Connie loves foreign travel, cute animals, and all things British. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and The Crime Writers’ Association UK. She lives in Ohio with her husband and adorable dog, Emmie. You can find her at www.connieberry.com.
THE SHADOW OF MEMORY is the fourth in the Kate Hamilton series.
As Kate Hamilton contemplates her future with DI Tom Mallory, she is also helping her colleague Ivor Tweedy organize an auction in a village on the Suffolk coast. Netherfield Sanatorium, an abandoned Victorian insane asylum, is being converted into luxury flats, and Kate and Ivor have been asked to auction off a fine collection of antiques, including a 15th-century paintingattributed to the Dutch master Jan Van Eyck. But when retired criminal inspector Will Parker is found dead, Kate suspects the halls of the sanatorium housed much more than priceless art.
Kate is surprised to learn that Will Parker was her friend Vivian Bunn’s first boyfriend. They met in 1963 at a seaside holiday camp when, along with three other teens, they explored an abandoned house where two years earlier a local doctor and his wife had died under bizarre circumstances. Now, when a second member of the childhood gang dies unexpectedly—and then a third—it becomes clear the teens discovered more in the house than they realized.
What was the deadly truth they unwittingly found? When Kate makes a shocking connection between a sixty-year-old murder and the long-buried secrets of the sanatorium, she understands that time is running out for Vivian—and anyone connected to her.
TRISH ESDEN
Trish Esden loves museums, gardens, wilderness, dogs, and birds, in various orders depending on the day. She lives in northern Vermont where she deals antiques with her husband, a profession she’s been involved with since her teens. Don’t ask what her favorite type of antique is. She loves hunting for old bottles and rusty barn junk as much as she enjoys fine art and furnishings. Trish is the author of the Scandal Mountain Antiques Mystery series which explores the secretive and adrenaline-charged underbelly of the antique and art world. You can find her at https://trishesden.com.
THE ART OF THE DECOY is the first in the Scandal Mountain series.
It should have been a simple appraisal. If it weren’t for the thief.
After her mother is sent to prison for art forgery, Edie Brown returns to Northern Vermont to rebuild her family’s fine art and antiques business. She’s certain she can do it now that her mother’s gone. After all, butting heads with her mom over bad business practices was what drove Edie away three years ago, including a screwup that landed Edie on probation for selling stolen property.
When Edie scores a job appraising a waterfowl decoy collection at a hoarder’s farmhouse, she’s determined to take advantage of the situation to rebuild the business’s tarnished reputation and dwindling coffers. In lieu of payment, Edie intends to cherry-pick an exceptional decoy carved by the client’s renowned Quebecoise folk artist ancestors. Only the tables turn when the collection vanishes.
Accused of the theft, Edie’s terrified that the fallout will destroy the business and land her in prison next to her mom. She convinces the client to give her five days to find and return the decoys before calling the authorities. Desperate, she digs into the underbelly of the local antiques and art world. When Edie uncovers a possible link between the decoy theft and a deadly robbery at a Quebec museum, she longs to ask her ex-probation officer, and ex-lover, for help. But she suspects his recent interest in rekindling their romance may hide a darker motive.
With the help of her eccentric uncle Tuck and Kala, their enigmatic new employee, Edie must risk all she holds dear to expose the thieves and recover the decoys before the FBI’s Art Crime Team or the ruthless thieves themselves catch up with her.
TRACY GARDNER
Tracy Gardner is an Edgar Award nominated mystery and women's fiction author. Her latest mystery novel, PERIL AT PENNINGTON MANOR, is the second in the series that began with RUBY RED HERRING, a Mary Higgins Clark Edgar Award finalist and a New York Public Library Best 100 of 2021 book. She also penned Hallmark Publishing's first cozy mystery series, the Shepherd Sisters Mysteries.
Tracy also writes women's and book club fiction as Jess Sinclair, with SECRETS WE KEPT, an emotional family drama surrounding two rival families in a coastal fishing village as a recently widowed fisherman's daughter and the rival son work to discover the truth about her mother's unexplained death.
A Detroit native and mother of three, Tracy is a daughter of two teachers who works as a nurse when not writing. She lives with her husband and best friend of thirty years and a menagerie of spoiled rescue dogs and cats. You can find her at www.tracygardnerbeno.com.
PERIL AT PENNINGTON MANOR is the second in the Avery Ayers Antiques Mysteries.
Thanks to Aunt Midge’s unlikely friendship with Nicholas Pennington, the Duke of Valle Charme, Avery Ayers and her associates at Antiques and Artifacts Appraised head off to their most glamorous assignment yet—cataloguing and appraising the contents of a castle-like mansion on the Hudson River. But regal splendor becomes a backdrop to mayhem when A precious Viktor Petrova timepiece disappears—and housekeeper Suzanne Vick plummets from a parapet to her death.
Avery, her dad, William, and colleagues Micah Abbott and Sir Robert Lane soon learn that Suzanne’s predecessor also met with an untimely end. Further, the housekeeper’s suspicious demise coincides with Avery’s discovery that many of the Duke’s most priceless heirlooms have been replaced by fakes. Detective Art Smith lends his expertise, but the suspect list encompasses the Duke’s entire retinue—including his family. Could the killer be someone intimately familiar with the Pennington estate, such as caretaker couple Ira and Lynn Hoffman, the Pennington’s chauffeur, Roderick, or even one of the heirs to the Pennington fortune?
Then the duke himself is injured in an inexplicable riding accident, and the clock swiftly ticks toward a reckoning with a cold-blooded killer. A criminal mastermind is making a desperate bid for ill-gotten riches… can Avery bring the culprit to justice before her time is up?
February
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: livestreaming on Crowdcast
About the book
A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them. In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.
About the author
Deborah Goodrich Royce’s thrillers examine puzzles of identity. Ruby Falls won the Zibby Award for Best Plot Twist in 2021 and Finding Mrs. Ford was hailed by Forbes, Book Riot, and Good Morning America’s “best of” lists in 2019. She began as an actress on All My Children and in multiple films, before transitioning to the role of story editor at Miramax Films, developing Emma and early versions of Chicago and A Wrinkle in Time. She serves on the governing and/or advisory boards of the American Film Institute, Greenwich International Film Festival, New York Botanical Garden, Greenwich Historical Society, the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, the Preservation Society of Newport, and the PRASAD Project. Deborah holds a bachelor’s degree in modern foreign languages and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Lake Erie College.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Get Me to The Abbey explores alcoholism and recovery through the eyes of a middle-aged Midwesterner. Lisa spends a month in treatment at a refurbished monastery with a cast of characters whose hijinks and camaraderie are instrumental to her spiritual healing. Mischief and college basketball relieve the weight of soul-baring testimony. After leaving The Abbey, Lisa adjusts to life without drinking and returns to work and cultivates support in her Alcoholics Anonymous community. She is reunited with her Abbey cohorts by a heartbreaking tragedy.
About the author
Lisa is a lifelong lover of words and dictionary peruser. Once she discovered reading, she devoured anything she could get her hands on from the TV Guide to the Encyclopedia. She has a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and worked in newspapers for five years, column-writing being her favorite part of the job. Following that, Lisa worked in a bookstore for eight years, a dream job until corporate standardization sucked the joyous essence out of the store. Reading dwindled during the drinking years but now she's back at it, perpetually in the middle of a book, any book.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
A fresh account of the US presidential rhetoric embodied in Cold War international travel.
Crowds swarm when US presidents travel abroad, though many never hear their voices. The presidential body, moving from one secured location to another, communicates as much or more to these audiences than the texts of their speeches. In The World is Our Stage, Allison M. Prasch considers how presidential appearances overseas broadcast American superiority during the Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival research, Prasch examines five foundational moments in the development of what she calls the “global rhetorical presidency:” Truman at Potsdam, Eisenhower’s “Goodwill Tours,” Kennedy in West Berlin, Nixon in the People’s Republic of China, and Reagan in Normandy. In each case, Prasch reveals how the president’s physical presence defined the boundaries of the “Free World” and elevated the United States as the central actor in Cold War geopolitics.
About Allison Prasch
Allison M. Prasch is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on the intersections of rhetorical theory and history, U.S. presidential rhetoric, foreign policy, and space/place. Her first book, The World is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War (University of Chicago Press, 2023), examines how U.S. presidents used their international travels to expand the reach of presidential power and extend the United States’ global influence. Her work has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Southern Communication Journal, and Women’s Studies in Communication. She is the recipient of a number of scholarly awards, including the 2022 Michael Pfau Outstanding Article Award from the Political Communication Division of the National Communication Association, the 2017 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from the National Communication Association, and the 2016 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Society for the History of Rhetoric. Her expert commentary has been featured in the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, C-SPAN, The Conversation, and Public News Service. She currently serves as the Membership Coordinator for the American Society for the History of Rhetoric and sits on the editorial boards of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and Voices of Democracy.
About David Canon
David T. Canon is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1987 and previously taught at Duke University. He is currently editor of the Election Law Journal and is affiliated with the Elections Research Center.
He also served as the Congress editor for Legislative Studies Quarterly and was a Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Debrecen, Hungary, in 2003-2004 and in Tübingen, Germany, in 2011-2012. His most recent research concerns election administration and election reform (with a continued interest in redistricting).
For February's meeting we will be reading The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths!
For February's YA Book Club we will be reading: Promise Boys by Nick Brooks!
About the book
The Hate U Give meets One of Us Is Lying in this trailblazing, blockbuster YA mystery about three teen boys of color who must investigate their principal’s murder to clear their own names—for fans of Angie Thomas, Jason Reynolds, and Karen McManus.
The Urban Promise Prep School vows to turn boys into men. As students, J.B., Ramón, and Trey are forced to follow the prestigious "program's" strict rules. Extreme discipline, they’ve been told, is what it takes to be college bound, to avoid the fates of many men in their neighborhoods. This, the Principal Moore Method, supposedly saves lives.
But when Moore ends up murdered and the cops come sniffing around, the trio emerges as the case's prime suspects. With all three maintaining their innocence, they must band together to track down the real killer before they are arrested. But is the true culprit hiding among them? This exquisitely taut thriller shines a glaring light on how the system too often condemns Black and Latinx teen boys to failure before they’ve even had a chance at success.
Time: 12:00p CT
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast
About the book
Lena has lived a long, quiet life on her farm in Wales, with her husband and child at her side. But as her end approaches, memories long buried begin to return. Of her childhood in 1930s Poland, when she was determined to become a doctor. Of the first days of her marriage, reluctant wife to an army officer. Of the birth of her daughter, whose arrival changed everything.
Memories less welcome return to her, too. Her Polish town, transformed overnight by the Soviets, and the war that doomed her family to the frigid work camps of the Siberian tundra. And buried in that blinding snow, amongst the darkness of survival, the most fragile memory of all: that of an unspeakably tender new love.
Exploring marriage, motherhood, and our incredible human capacity for cultivating hope in the darkest times, The Snow Hare is the story of a woman who dares to love and to dream in the face of impossible odds, and of the peace we each must make with our choices, even long after the years have gone by.
About Paula Lichtarowicz
Paula Lichtarowicz studied English Literature at Durham University and has a Masters in Psychology from the University of East London. She is the author of two previous novels and worked as a television producer in London for twenty years. She currently lives in York with her daughter and dog.
About Jennifer Chiaverini
Jennifer Chiaverini is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-two novels, including critically acclaimed historical fiction and the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series. In 2020, Chiaverini was awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association for her novel Resistance Women. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, she lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Persistence of Perception is a strange, powerful poetry collection with the soul of a live spoken word album. Each poem is a memory meal for the happy and heartbroken alike—they send you breathing through holographic meditations filled with haunting, humorous love and a little spiritual entertainment.
About the author
Nathan J. Reid is a songwriter, actor, and poet whose writing has appeared in Barstow & Grand, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Poetry Hall, The Orchards Poetry Journal, No More Can Fit Into the Evening: An Anthology of Diverse Voices, and other publications. He is a former board member of the Council for Wisconsin Writers, the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and the Eclectic Arts Ensemble Theatre Company. He is a former senior editor for the Wisconsin Review, former guest editor for Bramble Lit Magazine, creator and conférencier of the Constitutional Cabaret, and host of The Reid Radio Hour, an annual music and poetry show. His books, Thoughts on Tonight (2017) and Persistence of Perception (2020), were published by Finishing Line Press. Learn more about him at nathanjreid.com.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
A retired boxer sets out in search of her daughter, Shyloh, an addict living with mental illness on the streets of San Diego. In Fort Unicorn and the Duchess of Knothing, Nelson tries desperately to find – and save – her first-born, delving into the roots of mental illness, addiction, and the meaning of unconditional love.
This memoir is an unflinching witness of what it means to be homeless, mentally ill, and addicted in America - and to love someone who is all of those things. Fort Unicorn is, more than anything else, a vivid and tender portrait of people who are too often invisible to society.
About the author
Andrea Nelson lives and coaches boxing in Madison, Wisconsin. When she's not in the gym training her boxers, you can find Andrea out tending her gardens, chickens, and bees, or running the nearby trails. She shares life with her partner, James.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
A satirical novel with a severe critique of the destruction caused by modern corporate agriculture and large-scale meat production.
Early one November, portraits of the Chief Executives of three major midwestern meat-producing corporations and the governor of Iowa go missing. These incidents seem minor until the dead bodies of the three CEOs are discovered in the hog lots and chicken factories that they own. The governor remains alive but terrified. He immediately orders the state department of criminal investigation to drop all other duties to protect him. The job of investigating the thefts and murders falls to the small, understaffed, sheriff’s department. Initial suspects—a disgruntled young biology professor who has resigned to protest the state university’s support of large-scale meat production, the widows of the deceased who seem a bit too delighted to be rid of their husbands, and an 80-year-old army veteran who is valiantly fighting the proliferation of CAFOs in her township. The sheriff and his deputies are left with a single clue: an ancient pickup truck that belonged to Craven Snuggs, a fierce opponent of large-scale industrial agriculture, who died in a mysterious fire years earlier. The investigation takes a makeshift posse through the woods, prairies, and crop fields of Nachawinga County.
About the author
Sandy Moffett, Emeritus Professor of Theatre at Grinnell College, joined the faculty in 1971 and continues to teach and direct plays on occasion, serving as utility infielder for his department. An ardent outdoorsman and conservationist, he spends most of his time restoring prairie on his small farm, writing songs and stories, playing guitar and mandolin in The Too Many String Band, and catering to the whims of his three grandchildren. His writing has appeared in The Wapsipinicon Almanac, Rootstalk, Saltwater Sportsman, The Abbey Review,and other publications. The Ghost of Craven Snuggs is his first novel.
January
Time: 7:00p
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
For five decades, as a singer, musician, songwriter, and producer, Tim O’Brien has ceaselessly explored the vast American musical landscape. While Appalachia and Ireland eventually became facets of the defining myth surrounding him and his music, he has digested a broad array of roots styles, reshaping them to his own purposes. Award-winning biographer Bobbie Malone and premier country music historian Bill C. Malone have teamed again, this time to chronicle O’Brien’s career and trace the ascent of Hot Rize and its broadening and enrichment of musical traditions.
At the beginning of that career, O’Brien moved from his native West Virginia to the Rocky Mountain West. In just a few years, he became the lead singer, mandolin and fiddle player, and principal songwriter of beloved 1980s bluegrass band Hot Rize. Seeking to move beyond bluegrass, he next went to Nashville. O’Brien’s success in navigating the shoals of America’s vast reservoir of folk musical expressions took him into the realm of what is now called Americana.
The core of Tim O’Brien’s virtuosity is his abiding and energetic pursuit of the next musical adventure. As a traveler, he has ranged widely in choosing the next instrument, song, style, fellow musicians, or venue. Written with O’Brien’s full cooperation and the input of family, friends, colleagues, and critics, Traveler provides the first complete, behind-the-scenes picture of a thoroughly American self-made musical genius—the boy who grew up listening to country artists at the WWVA Wheeling Jamboree and ended up charting a new course through American music.
About the authors
Emeritus Tulane University history professor, Bill C. Malone, grew up with country music in East Texas. His dissertation in American History from the University of Texas became the definitive history of country music, Country Music, USA. It celebrated its 50th anniversary in a completely revised edition in 2018, and served as the basis for the narrative in the Ken Burns Country Music series, in which he appeared.He and Bobbie coauthored Songwriting Sweethearts: The Boudleaux and Felice Bryant Story (2020), and his most recent book is Sing Me Back Home, an anthology of his previously published essays. After following Bobbie to Madison where he has hosted Back to the Country, a weekly WORT community radio program in Madison, Wisconsin for the past 24 years, the Malones returned to their home state of Texas and are now residing in San Antonio. You can still hear Bill on Back to the Country on the 4th Wednesdays of the month.
Bobbie Malone grew up in San Antonio, then lived in New Orleans, where she earned a PhD in American History from Tulane University. Her dissertation became Rabbi Max Heller: Reformer, Zionist, Southerner, 1860-1929. She moved to Madison in 1995 to direct the Office of School Services at the Wisconsin Historical Society, where she wrote and edited books for the state’s classrooms. After retiring, she wrote the biography of her favorite childhood author/illustrator, Lois Lenski: Storycatcher, which won the 2016 Indies Editor’s Choice Award in nonfiction, and Striding Lines: The Unique Story Quilts of Rumi O’Brien. Bill and Bobbie had such fun collaborating on Nashville’s Songwriting Sweethearts, that they immediately chose to work on Traveler: The Musical Odyssey of Tim O’Brien, published in the fall of 2022.
Our January YA Book Club will be a special event with the author! Join us at the store to meet Jamie Pacton!
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
The Radium Girls meets the enchanting world of Howl’s Moving Castle,The Vermilion Emporium is a story of timeless love. It’s about healing in a world shrouded with despair and discovering a spark of magic when you need it most.
On the morning Twain, a lonely boy with a knack for danger, discovers a strand of starlight on the cliffs outside of Severon, a mysterious curiosity shop appears in town. Meanwhile, Quinta, the ordinary daughter of an extraordinary circus performer, chases rumors of the shop, the Vermilion Emporium, desperate for a way to live up to her mother’s magical legacy.
When Quinta meets Twain outside of the Emporium, two things happen: One, Quinta is sure she’s infatuated with this starlight boy, who uses his charm to hide his scars. Two, they enter the store and discover a book that teaches them how to weave starlight into lace.
Soon, their lace catches the eye of the Casorina, the ruler of Severon. She commissions Quinta and Twain to make her a starlight dress and will reward them handsomely enough to make their dreams come true. However, they can’t sew a dress without more material, and the secret to starlight’s origins has been lost for decades. As Quinta and Twain search the Emporium for answers, though, they discover the secret might not have actually been lost—but destroyed. And likely, for good reason.
About the author
Jamie Pacton is an award-nominated young adult and middle grade author, who writes swoony, funny, magical books across genres. The Vermilion Emporium is her YA fantasy debut. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching college English, obsessively reading obscure history, hiking, baking, or playing video games. The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly is her Young Adult debut and her sophomore novel, Lucky Girl, released from Page Street in May 2021.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
No one can take Sofía’s place. Now that her best friend lives across the country, everything reminds Meena of her. She even spends the whole week saving up things to tell Sofía in their Saturday video chats.
But when Sofía gets busy with soccer friends, Meena decides to join a team of her own. Only it turns out softball is harder than she expects. So is getting along with Lin, her bossy teammate who doesn’t even like art!
It’s not like Meena wants to be friends or anything. She still has Sofía, doesn’t she? But can they stay close when they’re so far apart, or is it time to expand Team Meena?
About the author
Karla Manternach grew up in small-town Iowa, a grubby kid in tube socks who once stopped a parade by running in front of a fire truck for candy. When she was older, Karla detasseled corn, read Star Trek novels, and studied languages no one speaks anymore. Today, she lives with her family in small-town Wisconsin where she creates books for young readers and works as a freelance writer. She is the author of Meena Meets Her Match and the rest of the Meena Zee series.
Time: 7:00p
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast
About the book
How far will she go to catch the killer – and make her podcast a hit? Idealistic journalist Petra Kovach launches a true-crime podcast to investigate the murder of an alt-right YouTuber she loved like a little sister, despite their political differences. Petra's passionate quest for justice rockets her to the top of the podcasting charts, but her just-barely-legal tactics backfire and she loses everything: her job, her love, and her reputation. Now she must fight to get her life back – and catch the killer.
About the author
Matt Witten is a TV writer and novelist who has written for House, Pretty Little Liars, Law & Order, CSI: Miami, and several other shows. His six novels include The Necklace, which came out from Oceanview Publishing last year and has been optioned for film by Leonardo DiCaprio. Matt has won the Malice Domestic Award and been nominated for two Edgars and an Emmy. His latest novel is Killer Story, set in the world of true-crime podcasting. He is currently writing a Hallmark Mystery Movie and a pilot for NBC.
Time: 6:00p CT
Where: Garth's Brew Bar
For our January meeting we will be reading John Connolly's Every Dead Thing!
About the book
Tortured and brilliant private detective Charlie Parker stars in this thriller by New York Times bestselling author John Connolly.
Former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge. When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining: a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family—a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing.
Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on earth: the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man.
In the tradition of classic American detective fiction, Every Dead Thing is a tense, richly plotted thriller, filled with memorable characters and gripping action. It is also a profoundly moving novel, concerned with the nature of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. Lyrical and terrifying, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realized.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
His work as a forensic anthropologist inspired him to write The Sebastien Grey Novels. The first book in the series, The Comfort of Distance, was released in September 2020, followed by The Boxwood Torso (The Sebastien Grey Novels Book 2) and Where the Blood is Made (The Sebastien Grey Novels Book 3).
About the author
Ryburn Dobbs taught biological anthropology and forensic anthropology at several colleges throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and spent ten years as a forensic anthropologist, working dozens of death investigations. In addition to his anthropological pursuits, Ryburn also worked as an investigative analyst specializing in homicides and unsolved cases.
December
From 5:00-7:00 enjoy sip n' shop, with beverages courtesy of Dane Buy Local and live music performed by Jack Beyler.
November
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Andrea Potos' poems are permeated by an expansive sense of kinship. Blood family are precious, but equally intimate are luminary writers with whom she finds soul connections. Although most of these figures are physically absent, all are a vital presence in Potos' "rooms of thought." She recommends (and practices) not getting snagged in appearances but "look[ing] slant" to find what is enduring. This is what she calls "graz[ing] with your consciousness" to gather joy. This is no simplistic pursuit. Rather, she's in agreement with C.S. Lewis' insight that "joy is the serious business of heaven." Potos understands that it takes committed work to choose and own joy. These poems involve aging parents, cancer, dread, death, grief, funerals – the hard times that generate hard questions. But they also celebrate the sustaining "underpinnings of dailiness" – laundry, coffee, washing dishes, brushing hair, bird song, vegetables, floral dresses. As those who are now absent become valued mental companions, she discovers "a peace whisper[ing] to her...a different happiness unfolding." The gift of these poems is in how Potos thoughtfully weighs what is given and what is taken, how life both fulfills and disappoints, and determines to let joy keep her. "Breathing deeply is simple, and hope is the natural choice."
About the poet
Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections. She has received three Outstanding Achievement Awards in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association, the James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review, and the William Stafford Prize in Poetry. She loves more than anything travel, literary pilgrimages, cafes, books, dogs, her Greek heritage and her family.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
When Alison Townsend purchased her first house, in south-central Wisconsin, she put down roots where she never imagined settling. To understand how she came to live in the Midwest, she takes a journey through personal landscapes, considering the impact of geography at pivotal moments in her life, vividly illuminating the role of mourning, homesickness, and relocations.
With sparkling, lyrical prose, The Green Hour undulates effortlessly through time like a red-winged blackbird. Inspired by five beloved settings—eastern Pennsylvania, Vermont, California, western Oregon, and the spot atop the Wisconsin hill where she now resides—Townsend considers the role that place plays in shaping the self. She reveals the ways that a fresh perspective or new experience in any environment can incite wonder, build unexpected connections, and provide solace or salvation.
Mesmerizingly attentive to nature—its beauty, its fragility, and its redeeming powers—she asks what it means to live in community with wilderness and to allow our identities to be shaped by our interactions with it: our story as its story.
About Alison Townsend
Alison Townsend’s newest book is a nature-and-place-based memoir-in-essays, The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home. She is also the author of two books of poetry, The Blue Dress, and Persephone in America, which won the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. A collection of short prose, The Persistence of Rivers: An Essay on Moving Water, won the Jeanne Lieby Nonfiction Prize. Her poetry and essays appear widely, in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Parabola, The Southern Review, and Under the Sun, and have been recognized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays 2020.Her awards include a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award (for contributions to the literature of the Upper Midwest), and the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize. She’s had residencies at Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Spring Creek Project, and Write On, Door County. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she taught creative nonfiction. She and her climate-activist husband live on four acres of prairie and oak savanna in the Wisconsin farm country, the inspiration for The Green Hour.
About Marilyn Annucci
Marilyn Annucci is the author of The Arrows That Choose Us, winner of the 2018 Press 53 Poetry Book Award. She is on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she teaches a variety of writing courses. Find her at www.marilynannucci.com.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast
About the book
A snowmelt has sent floodwaters down to the fields of the Red River Valley, dragging the body of an unidentified Native woman into the town of Ada. The only evidence the medical examiner recovers is a torn piece of paper inside her bra: a hymnal written in English and Ojibwe.
Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, sometimes helps Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, on his investigations. Now she knows her search for justice for this anonymous victim will take her to the White Earth Reservation, a place she once called home.
When Cash happens upon two small graves in the yard of a rural, “speak-in-tongues kinda church,” Cash is pulled into the lives of the malevolent pastor and his troubled wife while yet another Native woman dies in a mysterious manner.
About Marcie R. Rendon
Marcie Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, a Pinckley Prize-winning author, playwright, poet, freelance writer, and a community arts activist. Rendon was awarded the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award for 2020. She is a speaker on Native issues, leadership, and writing. Her second novel in her Cash Blackbear mystery series, Girl Gone Missing, was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Rendon was recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by Minneapolis AARP and Pollen in 2018. She lives in Minneapolis.
About David Heska Wanbli Weiden
David Heska Wanbli Weiden is an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. He's a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Tin House Scholar, and the recipient of the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship. A lawyer and professor, he lives in Denver, Colorado, with his family.
Time: 11:00a
Where: Join the livestream
This event is in partnership with the following Bookstores: An Unlikely Story, Bank Square Books, Belmont Books, Books & Books, Brookline Booksmith, Book Cellar, BookHampton, Book Stall, The Bookworm, Inc., Boulder Bookstore, Browseabout Books, Copperfields, Doylestown Bookshop, Gibson's Bookstore, Harvard Bookstore, King's English Bookshop, Literati Bookstore, Main Point Books, Malaprops, Mystery to Me, Northshire, Novel., Oblong Books, Odyssey Bookshop, Parnassus, Porter Square Books, R.J. Julia, Raven Bookstore, Schuler Books, Third Place Books, Warwick's, Wellesley Books, Wesleyan R.J. Julia
Thrown into prison and fearing for both his personal future and his writing career, Anthony is the prime suspect and when a second theatre critic is found to have died in mysterious circumstances, the net closes in. Ever more desperate, he realizes that only one man can help him. But will Hawthorne take the call? With a cast of characters that all have a motive, The Twist of a Knife has distinct echoes of Agatha Christie, which will delight Anthony Horowitz fans and new readers alike.
One of the world’s most prolific and successful writers, Anthony Horowitz may have committed more (fictional) murders than any other living author, working across so many media, from books, to TV, film, plays and journalism. Several of his previous novels were instant New York Times bestsellers. His bestselling Alex Rider series for Young Adults has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. As a TV screenwriter he created both Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle’s War on PBS; other TV work includes Poirot and the widely acclaimed mini-series Collision and Injustice. His award-winning novel Magpie Murders has been adapted into a six-part miniseries that’s now on BritBox, written by Horowitz himself and staring Lesley Manville. It will be on PBS Masterpiece this fall 2022. He lives in London.
Horowitz will be in conversation with Shari Lapena, the author of six internationally bestselling thrillers, including The Couple Next Door and Not A Happy Family. All of her books have been NY Times and UK Sunday Times bestsellers; three have been Richard and Judy Book Club picks. Her books have been sold into 38 territories. She lives in Canada.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Barriques on Monroe Street
We will be reading The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas
About the book
As each new decade begins, Sol selects the ten most worthy semidioses to compete in The Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser will be sacrificed to refuel the Sun Stones, protecting the world for another ten years.
Teo, 17-year-old trans son of the goddess of birds, isn't worried about being chosen. The trials are only for Heroes, and he isn't one. But then, for the first time in over a century, Sol chooses semidioses who aren't established Heroes: Xio, the 13-year-old child of Mala Suerte, god of bad luck, and . . . Teo. Now they must compete in five mysterious trials, against opponents who are more powerful and better trained, for fame, glory, and their own survival.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
The poems of Geosmin (the scent of soil) are celebration of the startling and shimmering earth, praising creatures of soil, sky, and in-between. Ecologist, farmer, mother, and poet Catherine Young honors land and what it means to be human in this world. Her poems journey through earth, water, tree, and stone, the heartbreak and beauty of seasons across a rural year, and take a panoramic view of aging. Young paints a deep map of Wisconsin’s Driftless region while evoking a place found within regions of the heart.
About the poet
Catherine Young is a writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. She is author of the ecopoetry collection Geosmin (scent of soil) and the memoir Black Diamonds, Blue Flames forthcoming from Torrey House Press. Her writing has been published in the anthologies The Driftless Reader, Contours, Permanent Vacation II: Eighteen Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Imagination and Place: Cartography and is forthcoming in Essential Voices. Her work appears internationally and nationally in literary journals, including About Place Journal, Ascent, Minding Nature, Cold Mountain, River Heron, Fourth River, Hippocampus, and Midwest Review among others. Her poetry has been published as broadsides for Fermentation Fest Farm Art / D tour Passwords andMadison Metro Bus lines and with Wisconsin Poet Laureates, her poetry was recently commissioned for Mdw Fair Wisconfluence.
A nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays, Catherine Young worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother before completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She holds degrees in Environmental Science, Physical Geography, and Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Catherine leads writing workshops, and records the weekly WDRT radio Landward podcast.
Rooted in farm life, Catherine lives with her family in Wisconsin's Driftless Area where she is totally in love with meandering streams. She deeply believes in the use of story and art as tools for transforming the world, and she holds concern for water. For more information, writings and podcasts, please visit:
Time: 1:00p
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Is it possible to forget that you’ve committed a murder?
When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late 90s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost twenty years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her job—as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory.
One day her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. Cassie catches up with her high-achieving old friends from the Manor Park School—among them two politicians, a rock star, and a famous actress. But then, shockingly, one of them, Garfield Rice, is found dead in the school bathroom, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminent—and controversial—MP and the investigation is high profile, it’s headed by Cassie’s new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur, freshly promoted and newly arrived in London. The trouble is, Cassie can’t shake the feeling that one of them has killed again.
Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies? It’s in Cassie’s interest to skew the investigation so that it looks like it has nothing to do with Manor Park and she seems to be succeeding.
Until someone else from the reunion is found dead in Bleeding Heart Yard…
About the author
Elly Griffiths is the author of the Ruth Galloway and Magic Men mystery series, as well as the standalone novels THE STRANGER DIARIES, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and THE POSTSCRIPT MURDERS. She is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She lives in Brighton, England.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Garth's Brew Bar
We will be reading Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano
About the book
On her sixtieth birthday, Auntie Poldi retires to Sicily, intending to while away the rest of her days with good wine, a view of the sea, and few visitors. But Sicily isn’t quite the tranquil island she thought it would be, and something always seems to get in the way of her relaxation. When her handsome young handyman goes missing—and is discovered murdered—she can’t help but ask questions.
Soon there’s an investigation, a smoldering police inspector, a romantic entanglement, one false lead after another, a rooftop showdown, and finally, of course, Poldi herself, slightly tousled but still perfectly poised.
Time: 7:00p
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast
About the book
In the fourth book in the series, IN MYRTLE PERIL, intrepid and Irrepressible Myrtle Hardcastle returns to investigate the case of a missing heiress, an inquiry that runs aground when a murder in plain sight has no apparent victim.
Twelve-year-old Myrtle Hardcastle has never been one to sit by when there’s a mystery afoot, and with three solves under her belt, her father’s law books, and her mum’s microscope, she’s more than up to the case of the Snowcroft Family Fortune. Myrtle’s father, a lawyer, is asked to help discover the identity of a mysterious girl attempting to stake her claim to the fortune, but is the young woman truly Ethel Snowcroft, who is believed to have been lost at sea along with her parents? Or is she a con artist impersonating the lost heiress for personal gain? Mr. Hardcastle’s pursuit of the case takes a detour when he’s hospitalized for a tonsillectomy—only to witness a murder. Or does he!?
With no body at the scene, Myrtle and her governess, Miss Judson, fear the incident was a feverish delusion until a critical piece of evidence appears. But where’s the victim? And who at the hospital could be harboring murderous intent? Aided by Miss Judson and her talkative cat, Peony, Myrtle is determined to find the killer before her father becomes the next victim.
The perfect suspenseful and charming book for young readers and grown-up mystery fans alike, this fantastic fourth installment of the award-winning Myrtle Hardcastle Mystery series promises scandal and drama, Victorian rule-breaking, early forensics, sinister plots, and a packed cast full of delightful and eccentric friends and foes.
About the author
Elizabeth C. Bunce is the Edgar Award–winning author of Premeditated Myrtle and the Myrtle Hardcastle Mystery series, and several young adult historical fantasies, including A Curse Dark as Gold. She grew up on a steady diet of Sherlock Holmes, Trixie Belden, and Quincy, M.E., and always played the lead prosecutor in mock trial. She has never had a governess, and no one has ever accused her of being irrepressible, but a teacher did once call her “argumentative”—which was entirely untrue, and she can prove it. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and their cats. You can find her online at www.elizabethcbunce.com.
Time: 12:00p
Where: Mystery to Me
About the book
Bridey Kelly has come to Greenway House—the beloved holiday home of Agatha Christie—in disgrace. A terrible mistake at St. Prisca’s Hospital in London has led to her dismissal as a nurse trainee, and her only chance for redemption is a position in the countryside caring for children evacuated to safety from the Blitz.
Greenway is a beautiful home full of riddles: wondrous curios not to be touched, restrictions on rooms not to be entered, and a generous library, filled with books about murder. The biggest mystery might be the other nurse, Gigi, who is like no one Bridey has ever met. Chasing ten young children through the winding paths of the estate grounds might have soothed Bridey’s anxieties and grief—if Greenway were not situated so near the English Channel and the rising aggressions of the war.
When a body washes ashore near the estate, Bridey is horrified to realize this is not a victim of war, but of a brutal killing. As the local villagers look among themselves, Bridey and Gigi discover they each harbor dangerous secrets about what has led them to Greenway. With a mystery writer’s home as their unsettling backdrop, the young women must unravel the truth before their safe haven becomes a place of death . . .
About the author
Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar® Award-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers’ festival Midwest Mystery Conference (fka Murder and Mayhem in Chicago) and served as 2019-2020 national president of Sisters in Crime. She teaches creative writing for Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies.
About the book
Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.
Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.
Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.
She also knows she’s next.
About the author
Jess Lourey writes about secrets. She's the Amazon Charts bestselling Edgar, Agatha, and Lefty-nominated, Anthony and Thriller Award winning author of crime fiction, nonfiction, children's books, YA adventure, and magical realism. She is a retired professor of creative writing and sociology, a recipient of The Loft's Excellence in Teaching fellowship, a Psychology Today blogger, and a TEDx presenter (check out her TEDx Talk for the surprising inspiration behind her first published novel). When not leading women's writing retreats, reading, traveling, or fostering kittens, you can find her drafting her next story.
Time: 6:00p
Where: Mystery to Me (seats are limited, Get Tickets)
Livestream: Crowdcast (RSVP)
About the book
Every kid in America would love to work as a batboy for major league baseball, on the bench for an NBA team, or on the sidelines for an NFL team. Only one kid in America got to work in the dugout and inside the locker room for the Milwaukee Brewers, sit on the bench with the 1971 world champion Milwaukee Bucks, and work for the Green Bay Packers who won the first two Super Bowls. Pat McBride describes escaping from a dysfunctional home and finding mentors in the world of professional sports. In 7 years McBride met some of the most famous athletes, politicians and celebrities in the world, but most importantly worked his way into medical school. He became a nationally recognized professor and dean of a medical school, but more importantly, a father and husband of a stable and wonderful family. Come along and read the story of the luckiest kid in the world!
About the author
In his teens, McBride worked for the Milwaukee Bucks, Green Bay Packers, and the Milwaukee Brewers from 1970-76. He worked inside the locker rooms of all 3 professional sports teams, and at the age of 18, became the youngest Equipment Manager and Assistant Trainer in professional sports history when he was named to those positions by the world champion Milwaukee Bucks in1971. He also worked as a student Assistant Trainer for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.
Dr. McBride received his medical degree from University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UW SMPH) and master's degree in public health from the University of South Carolina (USC), where he also completed a family practice residency.
Dr. McBride is an emeritus professor in the UW SMPH Department of Medicine's section of cardiovascular medicine and the Department of Family Medicine. Dr. McBride directed the UW Hospital and Clinics' Preventive Cardiology program, and other clinical initiatives for people at risk for cardiovascular disease. He served as the UW SMPH Associate Dean for Students and the Associate Dean forFaculty.
McBride's experience encompasses the three broad areas of academic medicine: education, research and clinical care. His research focus is in preventive cardiology, cholesterol and hypertension treatment, and the quality of cardiovascular disease prevention. He served on many national guideline panels. Dr. McBride authored or co-authored more than 200 publications, over 25 book chapters, and 4 textbooks.
October
Time: 7:00p
Where: Livestreaming on Crowdcast
About the book
From the notorious Lizzie Borden to the innumerable, haunted rooms of Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion this offbeat, insightful, first-ever book of its kind from the brilliant guides behind “Boroughs of the Dead,” featured on NPR.org, The New York Times, and Jezebel, explores the history behind America’s female ghosts, the stereotypes, myths, and paranormal tales that swirl around them, what their stories reveal about us—and why they haunt us . . .
Sorrowful widows, vengeful jezebels, innocent maidens, wronged lovers, former slaves, even the occasional axe-murderess—America’s female ghosts differ widely in background, class, and circumstance. Yet one thing unites them: their ability to instill fascination and fear, long after their deaths. Here are the full stories behind some of the best-known among them, as well as the lesser-known—though no less powerful.
Tales whispered in darkness often divulge more about the teller than the subject. America’s most famous female ghosts, from from ‘Mrs. Spencer’ who haunted Joan Rivers’ New York apartment to Bridget Bishop, the first person executed during the Salem witchcraft trials, mirror each era’s fears and prejudices. Yet through urban legends and campfire stories, even ghosts like the nameless hard-working women lost in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire —achieve a measure of power and agency in death, in ways unavailable to them as living women.
Riveting for skeptics and believers alike, with humor, curiosity, and expertise, A Haunted History of Invisible Women offers a unique lens on the significant role these ghostly legends play both within the spook-seeking corners of our minds and in the consciousness of a nation.
About Leanna Rene Hieber
Leanna Renee Hieber is an award-winning author and paranormal history expert. She’s appeared on film and television onshows including “Mysteries at the Museum” and “Beyond the Unknown.” She’s a three-time Prism Award-winner for herdebut novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, and a Daphne Du Maurier Award-finalist for Darker Still. Afterearning a BFA in Theatre Performance and a focus study in the Victorian Era, she spent many years in the professional regional theatre circuit, skills that serve her well as a speaker and a ghost tour guide for Boroughs of the Dead in New York. Leanna lives in New York, NY and can be found online at: LeannaReneeHieber.com
About Andrea Janes
Andrea Janes is the Founder and owner of Boroughs of the Dead, New York City's premier ghost tour company, which has been featured on NPR.org, The New York Times, Jezebel, TODAY, The Huffington Post, Gothamist, The TravelChannel, CondeNast Traveler, Mashable, and more. Andrea is also the author of the YA novel GLAMOUR and several short horror stories, and a fiction horror novel Boroughs of the Dead, (the inspiration for her company). Visit boroughsofthedead.com.