Monday, July 22, 7 pm, at Boswell:Cathleen Schine, author of Fin and Lady
It feels like I've been writing about this day for months, and I guess, in truth, I have, what with our email newsletter, several blogs, beloved entreaties. Ths is is my ilast chance to entreat you to come to see a charismatic author who has written a charming and surprisingly moving book about a makeshift family in 1960s New York.
1. The Miami Herald had an on-point review of Fin and Lady from Connie Ogle, which was reprinted in the Journal Sentinel. JS doesn't buy the web rights to their wire service reviews, so I've linked to it directly.
Ogle ogles the sweet sixties setting: "The real star of Fin and Lady is that romantic time and place, Greenwich Village in the 1960s, where the Chicken Kiev at the Russian Tea Room melts in your mouth, the sounds of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie waft from the windows..."
2. Anthony Domestico in The San Francisco Chronicle calls Schine's latest "an enchanting novel about enchanting things," though he didn't like the way the novel shifted in the end. I actually thought it was completely appropriate and gave the book a bit of gravitas. Plus I don't mind getting a little weepy. The story is recounted as a tale, after all, and tales play with your emotions.3. Since her new novel is particularly New Yorky, her column in The Daily Beast is about her favorite New York books. Sure, she includes The Age of Innocence, but how about Rex Stout's Some Buried Caesar?
4. I cannot get the ampersands to work on blogger of late. Has anyone else noted that? As you go back and forth from compose mode to HTML mode, the ampersand gets stuck in its html code "&" when you are in compose mode." It's a bummer, man.
5. Here's Schine at Politics and Prose, talking about dealing with an editor who didn't understand her sense of humor.
Tuesday, July 23, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Theron Humphry and Maddie, author and subject of Maddie on Things.
One of the things to know about Maddie and Things is that the book started out as a completely different project. Per his publisher, he decided to take a trip across America to meet, photograph and tell the story of one person each day. For company, he brought along his sweet-natured rescue Coonhound, Maddie. “I figured if Steinbeck had Charley by his side on his American travels, I needed a good dog next to me in my truck,” he said. 
While Theron pursued his ambitious plan, he also took photos of Maddie whose mellow nature and uncanny sense of balance made for surprising and captivating photos. Theron shared the resulting images via Instagram and Tumblr to the delight of a rapidly growing group of followers and media outlets like Good Morning America, Wired, Time, and People.And now he's traveling the country again, but this time Maddie is the star. The "National Geographic Traveler of the Year"is coming with Maddie to Boswell. Maddie has over a quarter of a million followers on social media, and several of them are Boswell booksellers. Here's a little more about Theron and Maddie on the Today Show web page. Thanks to the publisher for this additional picture.
Wednesday, July 24, 6:30 pm, at the Charles Allis Art Museum, 1800 N. Prospect Avenue:B.A. Shapiro, author of The Art Forger.
Admission to this event is $5, which will go directly to the Charles Allis.
On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there's more to this crime than meets the eye.
Claire makes her living reproducing famous works of art for a popular online retailer. Desperate to improve her situation, she lets herself be lured into a Faustian bargain with a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting—one of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the Gardner Museum—in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery.When the long-missing Degas painting—the one that had been hanging for one hundred years at the Gardner—is delivered to Claire's studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery. Claire's search for the truth about the painting's origins leads her into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life.
Shapiro's novel has become a major New York Times bestseller. Here are some of the reasons.
Kathryn Lang in The Boston Globe found the novel "inventive and entertaining" but called it misleading to be categorize The Art Forger as a literary thriller, but the newspaper later named it one of the best crime novels of the year.
Stephan Lee in Entertainment Weekly said "she's done meticulous research and has such interesting things to say about authenticity — in both art and love — that her novel The Art Forger becomes not just emotionally involving but addictive."
Here's more about the book from the trailer, which the publisher created for the hardcover edition.
Friday, July 26, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Barbara Mathias-Riegel, author of Curtain Calls.
With all the changes in publishing, many authors are utilizing new technologies in order to produce their creative works. One of these changes is the Espresso Machine—a digital device that prints and binds books, on demand—and only a handful of independent bookstores around the nation have one. At Politics and Prose in Washington D.C., they offer publishing services to area authors, and Barbara Mathias-Riegel is the first author we are hosting to have printed her work in this fashion.
Originally from Wisconsin, Mathias-Riegel’s first collection of short stories, Curtain Calls, explores the nuances of love, loss, aloneness and self-discovery. Men and women, young and old; they struggle with the tragic occurrences and unveiling of secrets that are part and parcel of life with our loved ones. While the characters in these twelve stories are often affected indirectly by what is happening to those they care about most, their own frailties and memories rise like ghosts, haunting them in ways that bring the darkness others are bearing, more directly into their own lives.
Preview Event for Next Monday, Monday, July 29, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Craig Wilson, author of A Little More Line: A Kite's Eye View of Wisconsin and Beyond.
A Little More Line is a new collection of aerial photography from the kite-flying photojournalist behind Hanging by a Thread, capturing unique perspectives in full-color. In addition to continuing to show Wisconsin in a fresh and magical way that only a kite can, A Little More Line also drifts across our state’s borders. Discover new ways of seeing places like the Milwaukee Art Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen, Door County, Apostle Islands, Chicago's Millenium Park, Michigan’s Mackinac Island, Iowa's Field of Dreams, Duluth's shipping harbor, and more.
“This new book is sure to make new converts as well as delight the many longtime fans of his remarkable art.” —Doug Moe, Wisconsin State Journal.
Hope to see you at an event this week.
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