A Little More About the Anita Shreve Novel "Stella Bain" and The Case of the Secret Sequel.

Remember when Karen Joy Fowler came for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves? There was a secret twist in the book, and I wasn't sure whether to tell folks the revelation or not. It turned out that the author and publisher struggled with the twist as well. On one hand, it was a unique experience to have that revelation thrown at you about a third of the way through the reading. On the other hand, it was really hard to promote the book without being able to give it away.

In the end, the publisher decided on the reveal, and we didn't get that aha moment. I was sympathetic with the publisher--I couldn't figure out how to get someone interested in the book without the reveal. But those surprises can really be fun. I've always said that one of the joys of reading Andrew Sean Greer's The Story of a Marriage is how the novel plays with your assumptions about what your reading, and several times you are thrown for a loop.

So that was a bit of my quandary when discussing Stella Bain. Shreve has done that structural aha before. While I really liked the ending of The Last Time They Met, I know at least one person who threw the book across the room. And that's another great thing about physical books; your e-reader might not survive impact.

As you heard from previous posts, Stella Bain is about a woman in World War I who is found on the battlefield with shrapnel wounds. She really doesn't know who she is. She has skills as a nurse and also driving the war wounded off the field. We also know that she has some desire to visit the admiralty, but we don't know why. She's plagued by symptoms of shell shock, or what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. As Karen Campbell noted in the Boston Globe, this was a rare diagnosis in women, who were normally labeled with "hysteria."

Stella meets a doctor who tries to help her unlock her past with talk therapy. Though a surgeon, he's a nascent Freudian, and does eventually get his degree. And once she figures out who she is, she tries to reclaim her past in the United States.

So here's the thing. If you're a loyal Anita Shreve reader and you've got a good memory, you'll realize that the book is a secret sequel to another novel. It's a heroine who never really got to tell her own story, and being that she struggled with amnesia in this novel, she still seems to have an uphill battle. But for folks who read this other book, it's rewarding for her to get her due, and also for several wrongs to be righted.

I really took Shreve's cue from this, after seeing how she talked about the book at the event, which is why I waited until post-event to write this blog post. She acknowledges the connection to the other book, but she didn't reveal what it is. And now that I've started telling folks this hook, I've found Stella Bain easier to sell (two yesterday). But what I highly recommend is that you don't try to learn the secret except through reading the book. It's really too much fun to put two and two together.

Another interesting thing about Stella Bain is that it's been a lab experiment in that old selling point, the sequel with the caveat that you don't have to read the other book first. We actually tested the book on a customer, who wound up liking the book, and didn't catch the connection to the other story. Honestly, I wouldn't have caught it either, except for the over-the-top name of one of the other characters in the narrative led me to a search engine.

Jane too noted that the book worked on its own, and was reminded of Rebecca West. I think it was smart for Little, Brown to give the book a cover treatment that feels very British to me. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see this as the jacket of an Anita Brookner novel. Then again, Brookner probably wouldn't have a trial scene.

If you can get to hear Shreve's talk on why this novel took a little longer, go out of your way to find her in person or at least on video. She's normally a fast writer, but Stella Bain, it turns out, had multiple major revisions to get it to work just right.

I was looking at my collection of Shreve novels, and while I actually think she might have visited at Milwaukee at least five times, I went to at least four of her appearances. Of late, I've been forgetting to get books signed, but I was better when I was younger.

Here's another little aside. It looks like her new novel is the first to get a different title in the UK. They are going with The Lives of Stella Bain, which also seems to be the German title, translated of course. Interestingly enough, if you poke around, you can find an alternate cover of Stella Bain that keeps to the paperback series cover that Little, Brown has been using. Well what do you know? It is for the upcoming paperback in April 2014. I like this look, but I'm glad that they've gone back to using a more unique cover treatment for the cloth editions.

As Seen on Downer Avenue--The Breadsmith Specials, Black Friday Promotion at Via, Welcome to Nehring's Sendik.

1. Via Downer has a Black Friday offer. If you show your receipt from a Downer Avenue business, you get 20% off your food bill the Friday after Thanksgiving. I am partial to the garlic sauce pizzas myself, but you decide what's best for you.

2. Breadsmith finally has a printed daily special menu. I've been asking for this since 2009.

Monday: flax seed, freedom bread, honey oat bran, multigrain, pretzel bread, and raising cinnamon.

Tuesday: Austrian pumpernickel, cranberry walnut, granola (my very favorite), rosemary muligrain sandwich.

Wednesday: English muffin, honey sunflower whole wheat, multigrain, raisin cinnamon.

Thursday: marathon multigrain, raisin walnut, rosemary garlic ciabatta

Friday: honey challah, honey raisin pecan, multigrain, power bread, vanilla egg challah.

Saturday: farmer's wheat, Greek olive ciabatta, raisin cinnamon, raisin cinnamon walnut

Sunday: honey raisin pecan, multigrain.

As I mentioned, I like granola bread the best, though I am also partial to flax, honey oat, sunflower, marathon, and farmer's. I'd buy pretzel and English muffin more, but it doesn't go over that well with the rest of the household.

3. Welcome to Nehring's Sendiks, which has taken over the north-end Downer Avenue anchor. We're already seeing major upgrades. We wish them all the best in their newly added location.

4. Don't forget that Festive Friday is December 6, from 4-8 pm. We'll have apples and cider from Ela Orchards. Come by and say hello to Edwin, whom you probably haven't seen since the farmer's markets ended.

New Titles in Nonfiction on JFK, Bach, Fosse, Bernstein, and Israel.

The hot title this week turns out to be My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (Spiegel and Grau), by Ari Shavit. Perhaps it's because it's coming in between two events focused on a Jewish audience (Nina Edelman last Sunday and Alisa Solomon on Thursday), but it could also be a daily New York Times review from Dwight Garner, as well as the front page of The New York Times Book Review this Sunday. Oh, and the book was also in Thomas Friedman's op-ed column. Almost immediately, all our copies were pre-sold or on hold. Shavit is an Israeli journalist who writes a column for Haaretz. The book is a personal narrative history of Israel, starting with Shavit's great grandfather, a British Zionist who first came to the area in 1897.

The 50th anniversary (though that sounds a bit two upbeat for this somber memory) of JFK's assassination is November 22, and there are enough books on the subject for us to have put together a table of key titles. One of the higher profile releases is End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Morrow), by James Swanson, author of Manhunt. I'm not sure I'd agree that this minute-by-minute account of the day is told for the first time in decades, but we know Swanson is an excellent storyteller. Here's an excerpt from the New York Post on how Jackie Kennedy shaped her husband's legacy.

Moving from politics to the arts, I spotted The Leonard Bernstein Letters (Yale), edited by Nigel Simone. I'm waiting for a major figure to have their collected emails in book form. Bernstein's correspondence stops in 1984 so that's not an issue. As the publisher notes, the galaxy of correspondents (I'm going to use that phrase one day) includes Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Bette Davis,Thornton Wilder, and yes, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (see, there was a link here). Can you imagine a time when you might write to someone once a week? Now of course we send folks emails or texts or tweets every few minutes it seems. Joseph Horowitz in The Wall Street Journal calls the collection "an invaluable resource" though the critic also finds reading the book a discomfiting experience.

If we're going to talk theater, we can't ignore Sam Wasson's Fosse (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a 700-page behemoth from the author of Fifth Avenue, 5.A.M: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at TIffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman. Hey, I read that! I should note that the size includes over 100 pages of notes and index. Bob Fosse's Broadway legacy includes The Pajama Game, Cabaret, Pippin, All That Jazz, and Chicago, is the only person ever to win Oscar, Emmy, and Tony awards in the same year. Ethan Mordden called Fosse "fascinating and exhaustive in The Wall Street Journal. I recall watching All That Jazz with my sister Merrill, who coincidentally, is currently reading this book.

Bernstein straddled the musical worlds of classical and Broadway, while Bach was never really known for his show tunes. In Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (Knopf), John Eliot Gardiner tells the story of one of our great composers. His premise--how did such sublime work come fromsuch an ordinary person, as opposed to Fosse, for example, who was the definition of "tortured." Gardner, one of the world's leading composers, uses contemporary Bach scholarship to explain, as the publisher notes, how he worked, how his music is constructed, how it achieves its effects, and what it can tell us about Bach the man. Nick Romeo in The Christian Science Monitor notes that Gardiner offers "a nuanced account of the constellation of personal, musical, religious, and cultural forces that shaped Bach's astonishing body of compositions."

This Week's Event Post--Anita Shreve, Peter Lerangis, Eben Alexander, Stephen Jimenez, and Alisa Solomon.

It's our last jam-packed event week of 2013. It's a great slate of authors, so I hope you find something to mark on your calendar. To make sure I get out this post in a timely manner, I often rely on publisher copy or variations there of. In our variations, sometimes we get a plot point wrong in our description, though I have to say that for this week, I've read three of the five featured titles (Shreve, Jimenez, and Solomon).

Monday, November 18, 7 pm, at Boswell: Anita Shreve, author of Stella Bain.

We are thrilled to be welcoming back Anita Shreve, who of course you all know is one of the official ribbon cutters of Boswell, back in 2009. She visited with Mameve Medwed and Elinor Lipman for her novel, Testimony.

Her new novel has a link to that novel, as the story hinges a bit on a courtroom battle. But Stella Bain also harkens back to another Shreve novel. So far it seems the critics are not giving away the secret, so I'm going to go along with the plan. All I'll say is that Shreve fans will half a revelation about halfway through the story.

Here's the setup. An American woman is found with shrapnel wounds on the battlefield of Marles, France, during World War I. She's been working as a nurse, but she's also able to fill in as a driver, bringing wounded back from the battlefield. Her memories have been completely wiped out, though she has a strange desire to somehow reach the admiralty in London.

What is she running from? Or to? And can August Bridge help her heal her wounds enough to finish her story. And yes, that's a hint!

And don't forget about our rec from Jane Glaser: "Wounded and shell shocked on the World War I battlefields of France, Stella Bain's journey from amnesia to self discovery begins with a happenstance encounter in the London garden of a doctor and his wife. Lily and Anthony care for Stella as her remembrances gradually emerge and the connection with a mysterious woman named Etna Bliss Van Tassel begins. In this well written story of psychological drama and historical fiction, readers are given, through the voice of Stella, an often ignored portrait of how profoundly women who served as nurses and ambulance drivers suffered the horrors of the wartime experience. Written with insight and compassion I was intrigued by this plot twisting story of loss, memory, love and the limits of forgiveness."

Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of 17 novels: Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, Fortune's Rocks, The Last Time They Met, Sea Glass, All He Ever Wanted, Light on Snow, A Wedding in December, Body Surfing, Testimony, A Change in Altitude, Rescue, and now Stella Bain. Four of her novels have been collected in The Fortune's Rocks omnibus. The Weight of Water was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and The Pilot's Wife was an Oprah Book Club selection.

Tuesday, November 19, 4 pm, at the Shorewood Public Library: Peter Lerangis, author of Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon:

Percy Jackson meets Indiana Jones in this bestselling epic adventure series, the first installment of which was praised by Rick Riordan as “a high-octane mix of modern adventure and ancient secrets….Young readers will love this story. I can't wait to see what's next in the Seven Wonders series!"

Jack McKinley and his race are on a mission to find the Loculi that have been hidden in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In Lost in Babylon, Jack travels to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, where he discovers a world out of time and is faced with a dilemma unlike any he'd ever imagined.

Peter Lerangis is the author of more than one hundred and sixty books, including several in the 39 Clues series. These books have sold more than five million copies and been translated into thirty different languages.

The Shorewood Public Library is located at 3920 N. Murray Avenue, just south of Capitol Drive. For more information, contact the library at (414) 847-2670.

Tuesday, November 19, 7 pm, at Boswell: Eben Alexander, author of Proof of Heaven, on tour for the Deluxe Edition with DVD.

Near-death experiences, or NDEs, are controversial. Thousands of people have had them, but many in the scientific community have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those people. A highly trained neurosurgeon who had operated on thousands of brains in the course of his career, Alexander knew that what people of faith call the “soul” is really a product of brain chemistry. NDEs, he would have been the first to explain, might feel real to the people having them, but in truth they are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.

Then came the day when Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by an extremely rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut down completely. For seven days Alexander lay in a hospital bed in a deep coma. Then, as his doctors weighed the possibility of stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.

Alexander’s recovery is by all accounts a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.

Eben Alexander, M.D., has been an academic neurosurgeon for the last twenty-five years, including fifteen years at the Brigham and Women's, the Children's Hospitals, and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

This event is free and open to the public, though we may close doors if we reach capacity. If you are interested in attending, I would consider arriving by 6:30 pm.

Wednesday, November 20, 7 pm, at Boswell: Stephen Jimenez, author of The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.

Stephen Jimenez is an award-winning journalist, writer and producer. He was a 2012 Norman Mailer Nonfiction Fellow and has written and produced programs for ABC News 20/20, Dan Rather Reports, Nova, Fox, Court TV and others. His accolades include the Writers Guild of America Award, the Mongerson Award for Investigative Reporting, an Emmy, and fellowships at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. A graduate of Georgetown University, he has taught screenwriting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and other colleges. He lives in New York and Santa Fe.

Late on the night of October 6, 1998, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard left a bar in Laramie, Wyoming with two alleged “strangers,” Aaron McKin­ney and Russell Henderson. Eighteen hours later, Matthew was found tied to a log fence on the outskirts of town, unconscious and barely alive. He had been pistol-whipped so severely that the mountain biker who discovered his battered frame mistook him for a Halloween scarecrow. Overnight, a politically expedient myth took the place of important facts. By the time Matthew died a few days later, his name was synonymous with anti-gay hate.

The Book of Matt has definitely been controversial, which is one of the reasons why I read the book before scheduling the event. More on a previous Boswell and Books blog post.

Here's Jimenez talking to Rachel Martin on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered: "I certainly did not write the book to make the case that it wasn't a hate crime. I wrote the book so that I could examine the complex set of circumstances, the entanglements that existed behind this crime. Hatred is something that is a background to so much of our lives today. It exists in so many forms. Could there have been some form of hatred that was in play that night? Absolutely. But the point of the book is to say, what was the web of factors that played out here?"

Thursday, November 21, 7 pm, at Boswell: Alisa Solomon, author of Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof

In the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has had an astonishing global impact. Beloved by audiences the world over, performed from rural high schools to grand state theaters, Fiddler is a supremely potent cultural landmark. Now, in a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America.

It is first a story of the theater, as Solomon follows Tevye from his humble appearance on the New York Yiddish stage, through his adoption by leftist dramatists as a symbol of oppression, to his Broadway debut in one of the last big book musicals, and to his ultimate destination—a major Hollywood picture. And it is a cultural story, of a show that spoke to the deepest conflicts and desires the world over: the fraying of tradition, generational tension, the loss of roots. Audiences everywhere found in Fiddler immediate resonance and a usable past—whether in Warsaw, where the musical unlocked the taboo subject of Jewish history, or in Tokyo, where the producer asked how Americans could understand a play that is “so Japanese.”

I'm not the only fan of this book. Mike Fischer raved about it in Sunday's Journal Sentinel. His take: "Solomon's story of how a dedicated white teacher and his nonwhite students forged their own Anatevka — amid the hate-filled assailants who tried to destroy it — is first-rate journalism. It's also a stirring testament to why theater matters — making it a microcosm of this thrilling, must-read book."

More on the Boswell and Books blog.

Alisa Solomon teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program. A theater critic and general reporter for The Village Voice from 1983 to 2004, she has also contributed to The New York Times, The Nation, Tablet, The Forward, and other publications. Her first book, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender, won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies at UWM, as well as the Harry and Rose Samson Family Milwaukee JCC.

Next Tuesday, November (editor's note: we corrected the month) 26, we're hosting The Grinch from 4-6 pm. It's a launch for the 25 Days of Grinchmas, where you can grow your heart three sizes. Take a picture with the Grinch, and of course we'll have activities too.

What Sold at Boswell This Week, Including Links, Insights, and the Journal Sentinel's Interview with Anita Shreve.

We start with an interview with Anita Shreve by Jim Higgins in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Ms. Shreve is visiting Boswell tomorrow, November 18, 7 pm, and Stella Bain places #4 on this week's hardcover fiction bestseller list. "I think it would be fair to say (WWI) is the most romantic of all wars, of our immediate history. I use the word Romantic in its largest sense. Young men went into it with this highly idealized notion of what the war would be like, a quiet battle and a cricket match and then home free. What happened was slaughter en masse." Read the rest of the article here.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Valley of Amazement, by Amy Tan
2. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
3. Dog Songs, by Mary Oliver
4. Stella Bain, by Anita Shreve
5. The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton

Was it only two years ago that I was whining about the lack of high-profile non-genre novels written by women for the holiday season? After two years of solid releases, I must stand corrected. We have an all-female sweep of the top five. #6 was John Grisham's Sycamore Row. And one more thing on Stella Bain--Terry Miller Shannon says in the Book Reporter website: "Master storyteller Anita Shreve spins a spell-binding web of a tale, guaranteed to snare her readers into turning pages until three in the morning."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Good Stock, by Sanford D'Amato (at Boswell 12/17, 7pm)
2. Monsters, by Rich Cohen
3. It's All a Kind of Magic, by Rick Dodgson
4. Driven, by Donald Driver
5. The Bully Pulpit, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Rich and Rick show up in the top five, based on events at the store this week. Of Monsters, Rick Kogan in the Chicago Tribune calls the author a wonderful writer. Cohen wanted the book to be "about the Bears, but also about the ecstasy of winning and what it means to be a fan."

Paperback Fiction:
1. Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
2. Dear Life, by Alice Munro
3. Gnarly Wounds, by Jayson Iwen
4. The Dinner, by Herman Koch
5. Road Film, by Ernest Loesser

Iwen and Loesser teamed up for an event with another Wisconsin alum, their publisher of Emergency Press. Former Milwaukeean Iwen is still in Wisconsin, but as an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin-Superior, he's about as far from Milwaukee as you can be and still be in the state. I'm not sure why Beautiful Ruins seems to have started climbing in sales again. It doesn't seem to be following the national lists, where the book is now charting below Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Finally, here's the Bookslut review for Herman Koch's The Dinner. Bookslut's Managing Editor was yet another of our visitors this week, Charles Blackstone, author of Vintage Attraction. Here's a link to Blackstone's press, along with a photo of a dog friend browsing both Vintage Attractions and Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings. We're just about to confirm Wolitzer for the paperback tour of this novel, with a visit likely next April.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Milwaukee at Water's Edge, by Tom Pilarzyk
2. Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh
3. Far from the Tree, by Andrew Solomon
4. My Life with the Green and Gold, by Jessie Garcia
5. Food Rules, by Michael Pollan with illustrations by Maira Kalman

One might not expect a book like Andrew Solomon's Far from the Tree to do so well in paperback (it just feels like a hardcover sale) but everything changes when there is someone aggressively recommending the book and we've got that in Hannah. Nathan Heller's New Yorker review said that Solomon is "fascinated by the paradoxes of procreation: how do you nurture a child who may be unlike anything you’ve encountered before?"

Books for Kids:
1. The Desperate Adventures of Zeno and Alya, by Jane Kelley
2. Hard Luck, by Jeff Kinney
3. The Girl Behind the Glass, by Jane Kelley
4. Nature Girl, by Jane Kelley
5. The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak

Jane Kelley came back to town for her new book, The Desperate Adventures of Zeno and Alya, visiting not just the Weyenberg Library, but two area schools. Sales continue for Jeff Kinney's latest Wimpy Kid novel, and sales build for The Book Thief, due to open soon at the Downer Theatre.

In a busy week, Jim Higgins also reviews a new work by Jennifer Michael Hecht. Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It is an argument against despair suicides from a secular point of view, looking at classic historical cases, and arguing "that a suicide harms multiple other people, so deciding to live helps those same people. The suicide also deprives both the world and her future self of life and of her potential effect on others and the world."

Carole E. Barrowman reviews fellow Scottish writers Morag Joss, whose new novel is Our Picnics in the Sun, and Frank T. Muir, whose latest is Tooth for a Tooth. The former is about a couple after the wife has had a debilitating stroke. Barrowman compares Joss favorably with Kate Atkinson.  Muir's mystery is the second in a series featuring a St. Andrews detective. Andy Gilchrist finds the remains of a woman's body that's been untouched for thirty years, just as he's mourning the death of his wife.

And finally, Mr. Higgins spoke to Thomas Cahill, in conjunction with his recent visit to Milwaukee for his Heretics and Heroes. He notes "Thomas Cahill brings together two kinds of people who may not seem to have that much in common: Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, and Reformation leaders, notably Martin Luther. But the Reformation and Renaissance come out of the same source: the Italian rediscovery of the classical Greco-Roman heritage."

Addendum: also in the print edition but late to the Journal Sentinel website was Mike Fischer's rave of  Wonder of Wonders, Alisa Solomon's history of Fiddler on the Roof. "In more than 30 years of reading, writing and thinking about theater as an actor, critic and fan, I've never read a book on the subject that taught or moved me as much — reflecting Solomon's ability to weave gobs of meticulous research into a compelling, beautifully written story about the musical she persuasively argues has seeped into our culture like no other, before or since."

Saturday Gift Post--Ornamentapalooza.

All this panicking about a late Thanksgiving and mixed retail messages led us to set the store for Christmas a bit earlier. We have two trees up and snowflakes hung, though we still haven't gotten our front window together. But one of the reasons the trees are up is that we have ornaments to sell and even though many of our ornaments look nice in baskets, they generally look even better on trees.

When I started buying nonbook (or gift items) for Boswell, I really didn't know that Christmas ornaments would become a big part of our mix. But Amie and Jason both spurred me on, based on Schwartz sales (which I had not even paid attention to) and with a good first year, we've increased our assortment every year since. I think we are now at our peak, not because we couldn't sell more, but just because I'm not sure how much more display space I want to allocate.

I try to buy an assortment of price points, and look for ornaments that fill various niches. Some of our lines are design based, others have a fair trade appeal, and at least two of our lines are made in the United States. We've got wooden ornaments made in a Wisconsin studio and metal ornaments from a workshop in Rhode Island, both of which are celebrating their second year at Boswell.  I originally picked them both up at the temporary booths at the Chicago gift show.

From the Minneapolis gift show, I picked up a new fair trade line, predominantly felted, which replaced a South American line that either disappeared, or forgot to recontact us. Sales on that line were spotty (do you remember the ceramic bells and owls?) so I let it go. I tried one traditional line for a couple of years, but I wasn't thrilled with the sell through, and they cut back on product from my favorite designers. Similarly one of the core lines that I carried over from Schwartz, whose core business is tableware, seems to revamped a bit, cutting their ornament assortment, and getting out of the "fox and friends" winter home goods, which were a big hit with customers.

I keep tweaking our assortment.  After playing with glass ornaments, I decided we have to be particularly careful with anything fragile. We had a good amount of breakage on our icicle assortment and the porcelain cranes had to be handled with great care. '

We have one particularly fancy line, Roost, and that's the only line that isn't completely on the floor. Anne and I are going to reset the tables and get their fabric trees, brush squirrels, and a couple of other things on display. I noticed we have two bowls of wooden crosses (not from Roost), so that can be consolidated. Last year we blew through these crosses, by the way, so we went back and got more.

My favorite thing from Roost are these very silly foxes and mice. In the catalog, they were posed as if the animals could actually stand up, but it turns out that they have to be hung, or else I'd need special stands. No matter, as they look equally cute in a basket.

The heart of our assortment was first shopped for its bookends, but it turns out the bookend business is tough going, even in a bookstore. I'll talk about that in another post. I had some success with their home goods, but this year I narrowed our focus to ornaments. This line doesn't really seem to have much penetration in our area until you get to Whitefish Bay.

I like these nutcracker ornaments, though I am always a little wary of that motif, since one particular discounter seems to go aggressively into silly Nutcracker variations. The nubby deers are also nice, though I'm usually not a fan of something with a foam base. One year we had these beautiful and rather expensive feather trees, but at their core, they were paper cones, and the equivalent ornaments were foam based. Beautiful yes, but they felt cheap to the touch.

This is just a small assortment of what we have to offer. Altogether we have close to 200 different ornaments in stock. If you come a week before Christmas, don't expect the same variety.

I promise we won't start playing Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving.

It's Like You Went to the Woman's Club Lunch. A Roundup of Kids' Books from Jane (and One from Me).

Since we've opened, I've been speaking at a November luncheon at the Woman's Club of Wisconsin. We first jointly did the program with Next Chapter; previous to that, representatives from Harry W. Schwartz did the talk, though not me. I've done it alone sometimes, with another bookseller to sell books, but this year I teamed up with Boswellian Jane for the program.  I thought I'd offer a couple of highlights from the presentation of books for young readers.

Our friend Pat sets it up each year and we always sit at her table. One of her friends is Mary Kay, who now is at a school in Greendale, but many years ago, was a fellow bookseller, having worked at the Schwartz Bookshop in Brookfield and the Schwartz Book Nook in Whitefish Bay. There are usually some other family faces around. It's not like the Woman's Club is in another county; it's just about two miles away on Kilbourn Avenue.

I learned that Jane is a big fan of J. Hamilton Ray's Squirrels on Skis. I didn't even know they were still doing new "I Can Read" books, which I mostly associate with Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman. Why have squirrels invaded this particular town? Can reporter Sally Sue Breeze get to the bottom of the story? Between Pascal Lemaitre's antic illustrations and Jane's enthusiasm, it's hard not to be enthusiastic about this adventure, and the fact that there are lessons to be learned is a bonus, though don't tell that to your kids.

There aren't always great picks for kids in nonfiction, but I think we're particularly rich with bounty this year. The Animal Book, from Steve Jenkins, is a nice collection of facts, stories, and illustrations, and Jenkins is no slouch in illustration, having won a Caldecot Honor for What Do You Do with a Tail Like That?  The package reminds me a bit of the David Macaulay books like The Way Things Work, and coincidentally (or not), it's the same publisher.

If you want to ooh and ahh, you probably should take a peek at Maps, the beautiful oversized children's atlas from Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski. Pick a country and you'll find intricate illustrations including not just the geography, but famous buildings, iconic animals and plants, cultural events, and more. This is a book that screams "I won't be around in mid-December when you want me. Buy me now!"

In the "told ya so" department, Brian Floca is picking up accolades for Locomotive, that terrific picture book about building the trans-continental railroad. Teacher spotted this gem--our school events went incredibly well, but our public event, while enthusiastic, should have been bigger, especially because his presentation was great.

Artists, graphic designers, teachers, librarians, train enthusiasts--the market for this book goes well beyond kids. We've just spotted the title on The New York Times Best Illustrated Books for Children 2013.

Another author who visited Boswell last year has a new picture book. Patricia MacLachlan wrote and Steven Kellogg illustrated Snowflakes Fall, inspired by the children of the Sandy Hook school shooting. It's a lovely story about the world of snowflakes, and of course how each one is different, and how each child is different, with starred reviews from Booklist and School Library Journal. Here's a trailer about the book, including interviews with both MacLachlan and Kellogg.


"No two the same, all beautiful."

Stock Signing Stories, with John Searles, Nickolas Butler, and Patrick Ness.

A lot has changed in four years regarding author events. Borders and Next Chapter have closed, both of whom did a good amount of author events. We do more events in conjunction with Mystery One. And that has led to fewer stock signings, as it is less likely for an author with books at Boswell to be appearing someone else. Authors who go to Barnes and Noble or appear at the Pabst, Riverside, or Bartolotta Restaurants tend to be celebrities, who don't usually pop by to sign stock.

That's why it was doubly unusual when John Searles came by to sign his new novel, Help for the Haunted, and meet some booksellers. He had done a number of events in Chicago, and was already skirting the northern suburbs of Chicago, meaning he was only a little more than an hour away. Since he was traveling with our bookseller pal Dan, he was convinced that we were worth the detour.

Searles has been doing events around Chicago for his third novel, following Boy Still Missing and Strange but True. His new novel seems to lurk at the instersection of mystery, horror, and coming-of-age. A young girl is left orphaned by the murder of her demonologist parents. As the trial nears, it turns out that the person Sylvie thinks committed the crime may not be the killer.

The book has a number of recommendations from Jodi Picoult, Chris Bohjalian, and Sara Gruen, along with a starred Booklist review praising its "superlative storytelling." Marion Winik in Newsday offers that "Searles controls the plot with a sure hand and wraps up the situation on Butter Lane in a satisfying and believable way."

Patick Anderson in The Washington Post wrote I didn’t expect to enjoy this book as much as I did, given my disbelief in the supernatural. But Searles isn’t trying to convert anyone. Rather, he has crafted a strange, spooky world that is absolutely believable."

Jason had brought in the novel in display quantity, but we just haven't been able to yet sell a copy. After some bonding with booksellers (I think Searles chatted with about five of us), there were three of us who were intrigued enough to try reading it. My apologies for the blurry photo--I am having camera phone issues.

I can't say this always works, but it was interesting that just a few weeks before, St. Martin's sent Nickolas Butler on a bookstore tour for his forthcoming novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, which doesn't come out until March.

It's the story of four friends in a small Wisconsin town, who've gone in different directions since high school. One went off to Chicago to try his hand at business and finance. Another toured the country in the rodeo. A third stayed behind to farm. And the fourth tried to make it as a musician in New York. For various reasons, they've all returned home, and while several are still friends, there's some bad blood mixed in. One of the hooks in the story is that Lee the musician is sort of inspired by Wisconsin's current rock hero, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. 

Our rep Anne started recommending the book early on, and got immediate reads from both Nick and myself. After Butler's visit, I noticed two more booksellers reading Shotgun Lovesongs. If they are related, we can definitively say the visit worked.You can find my staff rec on the title link to our website.

While Ingram doesn't seem to have a new feed on the jacket, this second cover is now showing up on a competitor's website, but it still looks like a work in progress. I think someone might have thought the old jacket was too literal--it couldn't have been our bricks-and-mortar competitor, because they'll generally take a picture over a type jacket.*

One of the oddest requirements I'll get from publishers is that they want a certain amount of books in stock before they will authorize a stock signing. In one amusing turn of events, the publisher demanded an additional order, and then the author didn't show up. No call, no apology, no follow up at all. What was the point of that?


For other authors, we'll jump through any hoop we can just to say hello. Patrick Ness was in town for a school visit for his most recent novel for young adults, More Than This. And by young adult, most of my booksellers would agree that his audience stretches to retirement age. We asked for a stock signing, and invited some young adult librarians (and one baby) as well. Let's just say there was a lot of geeking out going on.

Well, we're happy to say that the stock signing went well enough that we're on the tour for his forthcoming adult novel, The Crane Wife, coming this January. We've already got a great read from Jen, and Hannah and Jannis have both moved the book to the top of their pile.

*Addendum. I've been going back and forth with our rep Anne over why we think the jacket is not on Ingram's website. She noted that the town scene is still on the jacket on Edelweiss, our online catalog. We'll keep you posted.