Saturday, January 13, 2018

Working overtime! Nick Petrie on Tuesday, Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings on Wednesday, Chloe Benjamin on Thursday, Geoffrey Carter on Friday, and Benjamin Ludwig next Tuesday

I think our friend Margaret P. said it best. Boswell is working overtime this coming week! That's why we're getting out the event blog early.

Tuesday, January 16, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Nick Petrie, author of Light It Up, in conversation with Bonnie North

Nick Petrie’s third Peter Ash thriller launches at Boswell, with the award-winning writer in conversation with Bonnie North, cohost and producer of 89.7 WUWM’s Lake Effect. This event is cosponsored by Crimespree magazine.

Jim Higgins reviews Light It Up in the Journal Sentinel: "In Light It Up, Whitefish Bay writer Petrie drops series hero Peter Ash into Denver's world of marijuana manufacturing. By the time the gun battles, harrowing high-speed escapes and lethal hand-to-hand fights are over, Petrie's hero may be ready for a long soak in a vat of medical THC." Also in the Journal Sentinel, Carole E. Barrowman named Petrie's second novel, Burning Bright, one of her top ten of 2017.

Publishers Weekly writes: "The final hand-to-hand battle between Peter and the psychotic villain, involving a variety of guns, axes, and even a hammer, is a violent piece de resistance. Petrie is a master of orchestrating convincing mayhem."

About the author: Nick Petrie’s debut The Drifter won both the ITW Thriller award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel, and was a finalist for the Edgar and the Hammett awards. More on Petrie and Light it Up in a prior Boswell and Books post.

Wednesday, January 17, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings, author of Zenith, in conversation with Tiernan Bertrand-Essington (The BookTuber)

It started as an ebook. That hit #1 on The New York Times bestseller list. Now it's a book and the first printing has already disappeared. That we had trouble getting additional stock bodes well for Zenith's release on Tuesday. Here's a story in Publishers Weekly about how the book came together.

More about the book! Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her glass starship, Marauder, however, she’s just Andi, their friend and fearless leader. But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder’s all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation - and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi’s past. Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two.

Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their ship - or just as easily start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.

About the authors: When Sasha Alsberg is not writing or obsessing over Scotland, she is making YouTube videos on her channel, Abookutopia, which has had more than 36 million views. Lindsey Cummings is also the author of The Murder Complex duology and The Balance Keepers trilogy. And don't forget, first ten preorders who buy the book get an Essie nail polish package.

Thursday, January 18, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists, in conversation with Boswell’s Daniel Goldin

January is starting out with a bang! We've been excited about The Immortalists for months, and it's so exciting that the book's time is already here. Add to our many bookseller raves this one from Boswellian Jenny Chou: "The Immortalists slowly ripped pieces of my heart away leaving me as wrung out as I’ve ever been after finishing a novel. So OF COURSE you all have to read it for the emotions Chloe Benjamin conjures up, the brilliant narrative structure, the writing so beautiful you will literally read some sentences twice, and the moments that will make you gasp out loud in surprise. What’s it about? Four siblings visit a fortune teller and each learns the exact day he or she will die. This information haunts them over the course of their lives, particularly after the death of the youngest, Simon. His death struck me the hardest because I could see it coming, knew how it would end for him, and I read on, helpless. The story come to a satisfying conclusion when the oldest, Varya, examines what it means not to simply exist, but to LIVE!"

Here's Moira Macdonald in The Seattle Times: "Benjamin, whose previous novel was the Edna Ferber Fiction Award-winning The Anatomy of Dreams, slips into each of the characters’ heads and lets us live there for a while, writing in a delicate third-person voice that knows everyone’s secrets. There are moments as taut as a thriller, where time disappears as you turn pages; and passages of quiet compassion, as the characters reflect on the bonds of siblinghood, on the idea of home, on how those we have lost can still manage — miraculously and mysteriously — to stay with us, in ways that we can’t always explain."

You can read more about The Immortalists in our sweeping Boswell and Books post!

About the author: Chloe Benjamin is the author of the novel The Anatomy of Dreams, which received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers and was longlisted for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. At right is Benjamin receiving her award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. I'm there too! #sowemeetagain

Friday, January 19, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Geoffrey Carter, author of The P. S. Wars

Longtime educator Geoffrey Carter offers a fictional indictment against the corporate takeover of public schools in his first novel. The story pits the faculty and students of Custer High against EduNet, a private operator. And leading the charge for Custer is Dave Bell, a veteran teacher, who vows to protect the integrity of public schools from being compromised.

As is the case for many privatization battles, whether the bounty is schools, prisons, roads, or other government services, the community is forced to take sides. The story brings to life many of the challenges that public schools are now facing. And while not every privatization story has a villain that is quite as ruthless as EduNet, it could, with a few tweaks, be pulled from a today’s headlines.

About the author: Geoff Carter grew up attending public schools Milwaukee area, graduated from UW-Madison with a degree in Communication Arts, and has a PhD in English. He has been teaching English in Milwaukee Public Schools for 28 years in both traditional and non-traditional settings, working almost exclusively with at-risk students, and is an active member of MTEA, the local teachers’ union.

Tuesday, January 23, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Benjamin Ludwig, author of Ginny Moon

Meet Ginny Moon. She's mostly your average teenager: she plays flute in the school band, has weekly basketball practice and reads Robert Frost poems for English class. But Ginny is autistic. What's important to her might seem a bit…different: starting every day with exactly nine grapes for breakfast, singing along to Michael Jackson, taking care of her baby doll…and crafting a secret plan of escape.

Ginny has been in foster care for years and for the first time in her life she has found her forever home. After being traumatically taken from her abusive birth mother and moved around to different homes, she is finally in a place where she'll be safe and protected, with a family who will love and nurture her. This is exactly the kind of home that all foster kids are hoping for. But Ginny has other plans.

Told in an extraordinary and wholly original voice, Ginny Moon, just named one of the ten best books of the year by Library Journal, is at once quirky, charming, heartbreaking, suspenseful and poignant.

About the author: A former English teacher and new-teacher mentor, Benjamin Ludwig holds an MAT in English education and an MFA in creative writing. His novella, Sourdough, was the recipient of the 2013 Clay Reynolds Prize for the Novella. Ludwig’s inspiration for Ginny Moon came from his own daughter, and the stories of other parents whom Ludwig met while attending Special Olympics basketball games.

More event info here!

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