Boswell's annotated bestseller lists for the week ending June 17, 2017, plus the Journal Sentinel TapBooks page

Here's what's on this week's Boswell bestseller lists.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Leavers, by Lisa Ko
2. Lonesome Lies Before Us, by Don Lee
3. The Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz
4. Anything Is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout
5. Camino Island, by John Grisham
6. Testimony, by Scott Turow (tickets still available Sun 6/25, 2 pm, at the JCC)
7. Edgar and Lucy, by Victor Lodato (event Tue 7/25, 7 pm, at Boswell)
8. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
9. The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry
10. A French Wedding, by Hannah Tunnicliffe

A breakout from Harper is Anthony Horowitz's The Magpie Murders. Horowitz, whose known both for kids series, including the Alex Rider novels, and writing new Sherlock Holmes and James Bond adventures, hit both the Indie Next list and the national bestseller lists with this novel. Ken Favell of Oconomowoc's Books and Company has the Indie Bound quote: "We're treated to two mysteries for the price of one: One set in a peaceful village in England during the 1950s with the one and only Detective Atticus Pund taking the case, and the other set in contemporary times with a book editor who becomes an amateur sleuth. Horowitz pays tribute to the golden age of British crime with references to mysteries created by the likes of Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. How many hidden gems can you come up with?"

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken
2. Helping Children Succeed, by Paul Tough
3. Theft by Finding, by David Sedaris
4. Hunger, by Roxane Gay
5. Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance
6. Coach Wooden and Me, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
7. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
8. Raising Human Beings, by Ross W. Greene
9. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie
10. Churchill and Orwell, by Thomas E. Ricks

Roxane Gay's Hunger was finally released to a lot of attention. Originally scheduled for 2016, the wait was worth it. The Atlantic's Adrienne Greene writes: "Hunger is about weight gained and lost and gained—at her heaviest Gay weighed 577 pounds. It’s also about so much more: the body she built to shield herself from the contempt of men and her own sense of shame, her complex relationship with parents who took great interest in solving her weight “problem,” and what it has meant for her to be highly visible and yet feel unseen." If it does as well as Difficult Women, her recent short story collection, expect to see Gay's presence on the list for weeks to come.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Arrow the Dark Archer, by John Barrowman and Carole E Barrowman
2. World Without End, by John Barrowman and Carole E Barrowman
3. Pestiferous Questions, by Margaret Rozga
4. Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly
5. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
6. The Thing Itself, by Adam Roberts
7. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8. Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett
9. The Light of Paris, by Eleanor Brown
10. The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The SF Book Club's July pick is The Thing Itself, by Adam Roberts. This Victor Gollancz book is recently imported into the United States through parent company Hachette, and is about two people in an Antarctic research station who find they are not alone, but to say this is to oversimplify the novel, according to Julian Baggini at The Guardian: "This main narrative alternates with other chapters involving different characters and stories, each written in a completely different style, including Joycean stream of conscious, 17th-century vernacular, and a pastiche of Thomas de Quincey." For folks who like a good philosophical novel, Baggini adds: "Roberts offers a mystical reading of Kant that has some parallels with recurrent ideas in Indian philosophy. We live trapped in the world of appearances, unable to touch the thing in itself." Should be a great discussion on Monday, July 10, 7 pm.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. 30 Days to the Cotaught Classroom, by Paula Kluth and Julie Causton
2. If At Birth You Don't Succeed, by Zach Anner
3. Empowering Students with Hidden Disabilities, by Margo Vreeberg Izzo and LeDerick Horne
4. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
5. How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough
6. Lost at School, by Ross W. Greene
7. The Close Encounters Man, by Mark O'Connell
8. No Is Not Enough, by Naomi Klein
9. The Educator's Handbook for Inclusive School Practices, by Julie Causton
10. The Principal's Handbook for Leading Inclusive Schools, by Julie Causton

Can you tell we were at two different educator conferences for four days?

The breakout book (and actually, the only nonconference book on this list besides Evicted) here is Naomi Klein's No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, from Chicago's Haymarket Books. John Semley in Canada's Globe and Mail notes that Klein does not think the correct response to Trump is other billionaires taking him on, like "two towering behemoths clobbering each other with pointy-edged briefcases full of money, while way down below, normal, everyday people dash around in a blind panic, watching helplessly as their homes, places of business and their very livelihoods are pitilessly stomped on." Semley notes the book, in the end, is optimistic.

Books for Kids:
1. Hollow Earth, by John Barrowman and Carole E Barrowman
2. Bone Quill, by John Barrowman and Carole E Barrowman
3. Book of Beasts, by John Barrowman and Carole E Barrowman
4. The Conjuror, by John Barrowman and Carole E Barrowman
5. The Watson Go to Birmingham, by Christopher Paul Curtis
6. The Jacket, by Andrew Clements
7. Felita, by Nicholasa Mohr
8. The Dark Prophecy V2 (The Trials of Apollo), by Rick Riordan
9. She Persisted, by Chelsea Clinton with illustrations by Alexandra Boiger
10. Dog Man Unleashed V2, by Dav Pilkey

Chelsea Clinton's new picture book, She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World, is #1 on The New York Times bestseller list for picture books. Ella Ceron in TeenVogue explains the book's title: "In March, Chelsea Clinton announced her next book, She Persisted, which tells abridged stories of 13 'girls and women who didn't take no for answer.' If that title strikes you as familiar, it should: In February, Senator Mitch McConnell used the term "Nevertheless, she persisted" as an indictment against Senator Elizabeth Warren when she refused to be silenced and read Coretta Scott King's 1986 letter regarding now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Facebook Live outside the Senate doors. The phrase went viral, though not in the way McConnell intended it. #ShePersisted quickly became a trending hashtag, and people across social media used it as an opportunity to highlight the way women have persisted to change the world for the better."

And here's what's happening on Journal Sentinel's TapBooks page.

First up is Jim Higgins on the new memoir from Sherman Alexie about life with his mom, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: "Writer, poet, filmmaker and performer, Alexie is best known for his acclaimed and occasionally banned classic The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, which won the National Book Award for young people's literature in 2007. His new memoir mixes short prose chapters with related poems. In both modes, he's compulsively readable, a literary writer with the guts of a stand-up comedian."

Then there's Mike Fischer, who compares the opening of balli Kaur Jaswal's Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows to Pride and Prejudice: "As with Austen’s breakthrough book, Jaswal’s novel – her third – unfolds in England. This time, though, the community under the microscope is composed of Sikhs, in which both young women and older widows are no more expected to have their own needs and desires than were the Bennet sisters residing in Austen’s Hertfordshire." In the end, Fischer says the book has potential but perhaps veers away from its strengths (that's me paraphrasing). Read and decide.

Carole Barrowman's summer vacation reading offers five new thrillers:

--Unsub, by Meg Gardiner, for folks who like Val McDermid’s serial killer novels

--The Marsh King's Daughter, by Karen Dionne, for fans of William Kent Krueger’s wilderness mysteries

--The Silent Corner, by Dean Koontz, if your taste runs to Karen Slaughter’s Atlanta mysteries

--Death on Nantucket, by Francine Mathews, if Anne Cleeves’ Shetland novels is your thing

--Afterlife, by Marcus Sakey, for connoisseurs of Stephen King's The Stand. If you're wondering, there are still tickets to Stephen and Owen King in conversation on September 30 at the Riverside. At least on June 18 in the morning.

What starts out as a Chicago spree killer chase turns into something very different when an FBI agent becomes one of the killer's victims. Of Sakey's latest, Barrowman writes: "His world-building is epic and the community of characters Brody connects with are fully realized and compelling. It's amazing what a skillful writer with a 'sense of theater' and brilliant imagination can do."

It's time for our event with Don Lee: a little more about "Lonesome Lies Before Us."

I've been reading Don Lee for over 15 years, since a copy of the short story collection Yellow was put in my hands. I skipped Country of Origin, as I wasn't reading thrillers at the time, but I came back to him with Wrack and Ruin, which turned out to be my favorite book of the year it came out.

Then I read The Collective. Once again, a very different book, but with his strong voice coming through. I called it Lee's college novel. It's a rite of passage for many writers. Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot comes to mind. 

And now it's Lonesome Lies Before Us. And while I think that he never writes the same book twice, in a way, Lonesome is a companion book to Wrack. For one thing, they both take place in Rosarita Bay, that fictional representation of Half Moon Bay. And for another, they are both about artists, Lyndon Song is a sculptor, while Yadin Park is a musician.

And what a musician he is - stage fright, a little stocky, Ménière's disease, and oh yes, probably Korean. I say probably because there are only hints of his cultural identity: a meal, and well, that last name. 

I love so many things about Lonesome Lies Before Us, most notably the characters. There is so much yearning in the novel, and I don't really mean that in a leering, cheating sort of way, though at the heart of the story is a bit of a love triangle between Yadin, Jeanne (his girlfriend, a hotel cleaner whose dad owns the carpet installing business Yadin works for) and Mallory (who sold out when Yadin ran out on her, and now might be his ticket back to recording) . No, it's a yearning that captures what is true from what might have been, and the intense and sometimes improbably ability to change paths.

But I think my love for his writing has gone beyond explanation. If you ask a trained critic why they love a sculpture, you'll get a very detailed answer, maybe an essay or event a book. But if you ask me, I would probably say, I just love it. It just does everything right for me. And if you want that sort of feeling, or the chance at that sort of feeling, you should read it too. 

The Mark Athitakis Washington Post review wrote: "If Lonesome Lies Before Us isn’t the best American novel of the year, it’s one of the most American American novels. It’s intensely concerned with the civic institutions that shape everyday lives, and with who’s affected when they disappear. That’s too much weight for the average country song to bear, but Lee’s novel carries it just fine." (Will Johnson is at right)

From Jim Higgins in the Journal Sentinel: "Lee's novel shares some of the character of alt-country music, low-key and trafficking in folks who will never be gold-card members. Deftly, he finds gentle comedy in the town's tiny Unitarian Universalist congregation while also respecting the impulses that brought them together. (And thank you, sir, for informing me about the prison-cassette industry.)"

Yes, it really was the best special-guest-star showing of the Unitarian Society since Michelle Hunevan's Jamesland. I should have remembered to use that.

So now it's the day of our event and Lee will be here with musican Will Johnson. I worked so hard to make this happen and now I'm panicking that I didn't work hard enough.

Oh, and while there's really no connection with Wrack and Ruin that I found, there is a little wink.  I hoped to spot at least one character in the new book from the old, but it turned out the character in question is not a person. There's a golf resort now in Rosarita Bay, and that's got to be Lyndon Song's old Brussels sprout farm, right? Guess what? It's not doing too well. Ha!

Oh, this blog post is a blithering mess, but I have to get ready for the event. Hope some of you come, and that even more of you are there in spirit. 

Mystery/Thriller Update: Haylen Beck (Stuart Neville), Cara Black, Scott Turow, Benjamin Percy, Augustus Rose, Stephen Mack Jones, Danny Gardner, Murder + Mayhem

Here's what's going on in the world of mysteries and thrillers in Milwaukee.

Thursday, June 21, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Haylen Beck, author of Here and Gone, and Cara Black, author of Murder in Saint Germain, in conversation with Jon Jordan of Crimespree Magazine.

Who doesn't love Cara Black? Her Aimee Leduc mysteries are Francophile's dream, starting with Murder in the Marais. The series is moving through the arrondisements, so I guess we're getting close to the end of the series. Why not ask Black at the event?  Her newest has Private investigator Leduc is accosted by Suzanne Lesage, A Brigade Criminelle agent on an elite counterterrorism squad. Just back from hunting down dangerous wwar criminals in the former Yugoslavia, she's convinced that she's being stalked by a ghost, a Servian warlord her team took down.She's suffering from PTSD and her boss things she's imagining things?

You'll notice that the Bosnian War is a popular theme for fiction this year.

Cara Black has previously appeared at Boswell and she's a popular author at Murder + Mayhem Milwaukee, which this year is taking place at the Irish Cultural Center on Saturday, November 4. More on that below.

So I mentioned that Black is in conversation with Haylen Beck. So who is Haylen Beck? It turns out that he is Stuart Neville, the popular mystery writer of The Ghosts of Belfast series, who has also appeared at Boswell. When we realized that Beck and Black were in town the same week, we begged for them to be in conversation together, and since they already know each other (Mr. Neville has been published by Black, publisher, Soho Press), we knew that they would have a great time, and so would you.

Here and Gone begins with a mother fleeing through Arizona with her kids in tow, trying to escape an abusive marriage. When she’s pulled over by an unsettling local sheriff, things soon go awry and she is taken into custody. Only when she gets to the station, her kids are gone. And then the cops start saying they never saw any kids with her, that if they’re gone than she must have done something to them. Meanwhile, halfway across the country, a man hears the frenzied news reports about the missing kids, which are eerily similar to events in his own past. As the clock ticks down on the search for the lost children, he too is drawn into the desperate fight for their return.

Beck/Neville is getting raves from your favorite mystery/thriller writers, including Lee Child, Harlan Coben, and Ruth Ware who offered: "An almost unbearably tense nail-biter of a novel. Cancel all your plans and settle in for the ride."

Sunday, June 25, 2 pm, at the Harry and Rose Samson Jewish Community Center, 6255 N Santa Monica Blvd: A ticketed afternoon with Scott Turow, author of Testimony, in conversation with Mitch Teich, executive producer of Milwaukee Public Radio's Lake Effect.

At the age of fifty, former prosecutor Bill ten Boom has walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his law career, his wife, Kindle County, even his country. Still, when he is tapped by the International Criminal Court--an organization charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity--he feels drawn to what will become the most elusive case of his career. Over ten years ago, in the apocalyptic chaos following the Bosnian war, an entire Roma refugee camp vanished. Now for the first time, a witness has stepped forward: Ferko Rincic claims that armed men marched the camp's Gypsy residents to a cave in the middle of the night--and then with a hand grenade set off an avalanche, burying 400 people alive. Only Ferko survived.

Boom's task is to examine Ferko's claims and determinine who might have massacred the Roma. His investigation takes him from the International Criminal Court's base in Holland to the cities and villages of Bosnia and secret meetings in Washington, DC, as Boom sorts through a host of suspects, ranging from Serb paramilitaries, to organized crime gangs, to the US government itself, while also maneuvering among the alliances and treacheries of those connected to the case: Layton Merriwell, a disgraced US major general desperate to salvage his reputation; Sergeant Major Atilla Doby,a vital cog in American military operations near the camp at the time of the Roma's disappearance; Laza Kajevic, the brutal former leader of the Bosnian Serbs; Esma Czarni, Ferko's alluring barrister; and of course, Ferko himself, on whose testimony the entire case rests-and who may know more than he's telling.

Here's a great review from Boswellian Todd Wellman: "A refreshingly international narrative reminds the reader that we are all connected in so many similarities: We all hope, desire, obfuscate, and more. But it also reminds us that some people take these connections beyond regular human interaction and twist the links of humanity to achieve nefarious ends. In this courtroom and investigation drama, the chase doesn't rule; it's seeking out the truth about mistreatment of people in wartime that rolls the plot on. Namely, the questions "Did a whole village of Roma get wiped out? And if so, by whom?" lead Bill ten Boom and company into waters hardly anyone wants them wading in. While some people just want our heroes to give up, others don't want our heroes to survive their unwelcome dip at all."

Tickets are $30, and include a copy of Testimony. A Boswell gift card option is available. The JCC is located just north and east of Bayshore Town Center.

Thursday, August 10, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Benjamin Percy, author of The Dark Net

The Dark Net is real. An anonymous and often criminal arena that exists in the secret far reaches of the Web, some use it to manage Bitcoins, pirate movies and music, or traffic in drugs and stolen goods. And now an ancient darkness is gathering there as well. This force is threatening to spread virally into the real world unless it can be stopped by members of a ragtag crew: a 12-year-old girl, a technophobic journalist, a child evangelist suffering from inner demons, and a hacker with a cause. But they have no idea what the Dark Net really contains.

From Boswell's Sharon Nagel: "In Percy’s latest, dark forces are gathering to take over the world unless an unlikely group of folks can stop them. The Dark Net is the criminal underbelly of the Internet. Most people know nothing about it, but it is used by a select few for nefarious purposes such as human and drug trafficking. Hannah, a twelve-year old blind girl, her Luddite aunt Lena, a reporter, and Mike, a former child evangelist who runs a homeless shelter, are the unlikely heroes who must stand against the demons of the Dark Net. Fast-paced and exciting, you won’t be able to stop reading this cyber thriller until you find out what happens."

Yes, I usually call Percy's work horror, but dark thriller is probably more palatable to a lot of retailers. Plus based on a few of the books we were featuring last year, Percy's The Dark Net would be at home at Murder + Mayhem.

Just added!
Tuesday, August 22, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Augustus Rose, author of The Readymade Thief.

Betrayed by her family after taking the fall for a friend, Lee finds refuge in a cooperative of runaways holed up in an abandoned building they call the Crystal Castle. But the facade of the Castle conceals a far more sinister agenda, one hatched by a society of fanatical men set on decoding a series of powerful secrets hidden in plain sight. And they believe Lee holds the key to it all. Aided by Tomi, a young hacker and artist with whom she has struck a wary alliance, Lee escapes into the unmapped corners of the city--empty aquariums, deserted motels, patrolled museums, and even the homes of vacationing families. But the deeper she goes underground, the more tightly she finds herself bound in the strange web she's trying to elude. Desperate and out of options, Lee steps from the shadows to face who is after her--and why.

From Boswell's Jason Kennedy: "Augustus Rose melds together a lot of information and story methods. He does it with amazing skill pulling on secret societies, hacking, art theft, conspiracies, drugs, and so much more. This plot moves, it does not slow down, it will drag you along with it to the conclusion, which will have you gasping for breath. Such a brilliant journey."

The book is an Indies Introduce Title for Summer-Fall 2017

Just added! A preview Murder + Mayhem event.
Friday, November 3, 7 pm, at Boswell, in conversation:
Stephen Mack Jones, author of August Snow
and Danny Gardner, author of A Negro and an Ofay.

On Jones's debut: Tough, smart, and struggling to stay alive, August Snow is the embodiment of Detroit. The son of an African-American father and a Mexican-American mother, August grew up in the city's Mexicantown and joined the police force only to be drummed out by a conspiracy of corrupt cops and politicians. But August fought back; he took on the city and got himself a $12 million wrongful dismissal settlement that left him low on friends. He has just returned to the house he grew up in after a year away, and quickly learns he has many scores to settle. It's not long before he's summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estates home of business magnate Eleanore Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank. But detective work is no longer August's beat, and he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide, which August isn't buying for a minute.

On Gardner's debut: In 1952, after a year on the run, disgraced Chicago Police Officer Elliot Caprice wakes up in a jailhouse in St. Louis. His friends from his hometown secure his release and he returns to find the family farm in foreclosure and the man who raised him dying in a flophouse. Desperate for money, he accepts a straight job as a process server and eventually crosses paths with a powerful family from Chicago's North Shore. A captain of industry is dead, the key to his estate disappeared with the chauffeur, and soon Elliot is in up to his neck. The mixed-race son of Illinois farm country must return to the Windy City with the Chicago Police on his heels and the Syndicate at his throat. Good thing he's had a lifetime of playing both sides to the middle.

Yes, we're talking five months away, but hey, it's never too early to plan. Plus maybe this is the year you'll come to Milwaukee for Murder + Mayhem. A good amount of attendees come in from out of town, and if you're a mystery fan, why wouldn't you? Ace Atkins! Megan Abbott! Lou Berney (who had to bow out last year)! And dozens more. Panels, intervies and lots of schmoozing.

Admission is $40, plus tax. Register here.

We're on the verge of booking another great mystery writer at Boswell. I don't want to jinx it. Sign up for our email newsletter or bookmark our upcoming events page.

Eventastic: Lilsa Ko, Margaret Rozga, Mark O'Connell, Don Lee with Will Johnson, Lous V. Clark

Monday, June 12, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers.

Lisa Ko's fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, Apogee Journal, and The Asian Pacific American Journal. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and Blue Mountain Center.

Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It's a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past.

Boswellian Caroline Froh adores The Leavers and has this to offer, “Deming Guo’s first six years of life were spent with his immigrant mother in New York, then China with a grandfather he’s never met, and America again. After his mother disappears from her job at a nail salon, Deming is adopted by two professors and dropped into what feels like an alien, all-white suburb upstate. This pattern of early upheaval sets Deming - now Daniel Wilkinson — on a path marked by difference and isolation. As Deming’s story unfolds, his mother’s side of the story gradually comes to light, filling in holes and ripping others open, until finally, side by side, their disparate journeys form one complete portrait of the resilience of the spirit. This is a heartbreaking, poignant, beautiful book that will stay with you for a long time.”

This event is cosponsored by OCA-Wisconsin. Celine Wong will be providing both Fuzhou-style and Chinese-American style appetizers.

Tuesday, June 13, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Margaret Rozga, author of Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems.

Margaret Rozga is a civil rights activist, poet, playwright, Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, and the author of Justice Freedom Herbs, Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad, and 200 Nights and One Day. She served as managing editor of the chapbook anthology Turn Up the Volume: Poems about the States of Wisconsin.

Pestiferous questions? Race, gender, class; American expansion, American exceptionalism; love: all these roil thinking and complicate responses. In the history of the United States, they peppered debates, caused rifts, and ignited conflicts. They shaped our history and national identity. They vex us today.

Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902) faced them all. The poems in this volume show her assuming some answers, struggling for others. Daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who saw the expansion of slavery as the key pestiferous question, Jessie Benton married against her father’s wishes. John Charles Frémont, the explorer, in 1856 the first Republican candidate for president and during the Civil War, briefly the commander of the western front for the Union.

Politically astute and insightful, disparaged as a woman who didn’t know her place, faithful to a difficult marriage, privileged, sometimes questioning privilege, a product of her times, and forward thinking, Jessie Benton Frémont the public figure emerges in these poems. The poems also do what poems do so well, turn to the wings to see her before and after she appears on the public stage.

Wednesday, June 14, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Mark O’Connell, author of The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs.

Mark O’Connell is a screenwriter, teacher, and blogger. He wrote episodes for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and has feature film projects with major studios, including Walt Disney, DreamWorks Animation, and Endless Entertainment Group. He is also the founder of the UFO blog High Strangeness. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, Monica, and teaches screenwriting at DePaul University in Chicago.

The wildly entertaining and eye-opening biography of J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who invented the concept of "Close Encounters" with alien life, inspired Steven Spielberg's blockbuster classic science fiction epic film, and made a nation want to believe in UFOs.

In June 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold looked out his cockpit window and saw a group of nine silvery crescents weaving between the peaks of the Cascade Mountains at an estimated 1,200 miles an hour. The media, the military, and the scientific community - led by J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer hired by the Air Force - debunked this and many other Unidentified Flying Object sightings reported across the country. But after years of denials, Hynek made a shocking pronouncement: UFOs are real.

Thirty years after his death, Hynek's agonizing transformation from skepticism to true believer remains one of the great misunderstood stories of science. In this definitive biography, Mark O'Connell reveals for the first time how Hynek's work both as a celebrated astronomer and as the U. S. Air Force's go-to UFO expert for nearly twenty years stretched the boundaries of modern science, laid the groundwork for acceptance of the possibility of UFOs, and was the basis of the hit film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With unprecedented access to Hynek's personal and professional files, O'Connell smashes conventional wisdom to reveal the intriguing man and scientist beneath the legend.

Thursday, June 15, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Don Lee, author of Lonesome Lies Before Us, in conversation with Will Johnson.

Don Lee is the author of the novel Lonesome Lies Before Us. He is also the author of the novel The Collective, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature from the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association; the novel Wrack and Ruin, which was a finalist for the Thurber Prize; the novel Country of Origin, which won an American Book Award, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and the story collection Yellow, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters  His stories have been published in The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, and GQ.

Here's more about Johnson. Will Johnson is a prolific and much beloved indie singer-songwriter. The frontman for the bands Centro-matic and South San Gabriel, he has been recording mainly as a solo artist of late, and he has just released his fifth solo album, Hatteras Night, A Good Luck Charm. In addition, he has collaborated and performed with dozens of other acts, including Jason Isbell, Monsters of Folk, Jason Molina, and New Multitudes. When not on tour doing living-room shows and playing in clubs, he works on baseball-inspired paintings, which have been exhibited in solo and group art shows.

Drawn to the music of indie singer-songwriters like Will Johnson, who helped shape the lyrics in this book, Don Lee has written a novel that unforgettably captures America's deepest yearnings. Beautifully sad and laced with dark humor, Lonesome Lies Before Us is a profound, heartfelt romance, a soulful and memorable song.

Here’s what Proprietor Daniel has to say about Lonesome Lies Before Us: “Ever since his short story collection Yellow, I have been falling in love with his characters, pondering his philosophy about art and identity, and laughing at his sharp wit. In Lonesome Lies Before Us, his hero is Yadin Park, a musician who was on the verge of making it, despite his stage fright and not fitting the rock star mold, only to walk away. Now he’s installing carpet for a living in Rosarita Bay, Lee’s own Yoknapatawpha, when after years of being away from the business, with a left-brained girlfriend with big ideas (though she’s currently cleaning rooms in a fancy resort), inspiration hits him again. Only he is still the same insecure mess he ever was, and now he’s also got degenerative hearing loss. I still consider Wrack and Ruin one of the best novels I’ve read in my bookselling career, and in many ways, Lonesome Lies Before Us is a companion work and it’s such a great tightrope-walking, argumentative, heartbreaking, and inspiring novel, all at the same time.”

Monday, June 19, 7:00 pm, at Milwaukee Public Library’s Loos Room, 733 N Eighth St:
Louis V. Clark, author of How to Be an Indian in the 21st Century.

This event is cosponsored by the Milwaukee Public Library.

Louis V. Clark was born and raised on the Oneida Reservation in northeastern Wisconsin. Clark turned to poetry to continue the oral tradition of his tribe, the People of the Standing Stone. A member of the Iroquois Confederacy, his family is of the Bear clan. He received a Fellowship Award for his work from the Oneida Nation Arts Program and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Two Shoes was Clark’s first chapbook.

In deceptively simple prose and verse, Louis V. "Two Shoes" Clark III shares his life story, from childhood on the reservation, through school and the working world, and ultimately to, life as an elder, grandfather, and poet.

How to Be an Indian in the 21st Century explores Clark's deeply personal and profound take on a wide range of subjects, from schoolyard bullying to workplace racism to falling in love. Warm, plainspoken, and wryly funny, Clark's is a unique voice talking frankly about a culture's struggle to maintain its heritage. His poetic storytelling style matches the rhythm of the life he recounts what he calls, "the heartbeat of my nation."

Stephen King and Owen King in Conversation on Saturday, September 30, 8 pm, for "Sleeping Beauties." A Few of Your Questions Answered.

Exciting news!

Boswell Book Company presents an evening with Stephen King and Owen King, in conversation, at the Riverside Theater. Tickets are $32.50, not including tax and fees. There will be a special presale on Wednesday, June 14, 12 Noon, with sales to the general public starting Friday, June 16, 12 Noon. A limited number of tickets will be available on sale at the Riverside Theater box office on June 14 and 16 only. There is a limit of four tickets per order for this event.

We expect this event to sell out extremely quickly. Here is the link.

Each ticket guarantees entry to the event, as well as one hardcover edition of Sleeping Beauties. Please note that there will be no author signing at this event. But as a special bonus, up to 400 lucky attendees will randomly receive a pre-signed copy.

Here are a few questions you might have.

1. How can I take part in the pre-sale?
Check your Boswell or Pabst Theater Group email newsletter for details. You can also sign up for the Pabst Theater Group email newsletter.

2. How much time do I have to buy a ticket? 
Mr. King's events sell out within days. We spoke to another store that sold out in 15 minutes for the last tour. 15 minutes!

3. Can I buy books at the box office? 
A limited number of box office tickets will be set aside. The theater will hold enough tickets to cover the folks who are in line on both Wednesday, June 14 or Friday, June 16 at the Noon starting time. If you come at 1 pm, you will likely be out of luck, so if you can't be there by Noon, do not use this option.

4. I am an observerant Jew and celebrate Yom Kippur. Stephen King is my favorite author. What should I do?
We checked with a few of our customers and the Chabad website and noted that the Yom Kippur holiday ends at 7:15 pm. So we have a special later start time of 8 pm for this event.

5. Has either Mr. King done an event in Milwaukee? 
We've checked with a few experts and to our knowledge, the answer is no. If it happened, it was more than 30 years ago.

6. I can't make this date work. What do I do? 
I suggest planning an exciting vacation to one of the other cities where Stephen King and Owen King are in conversation. Pick the city you can drive (or fly) to and make sure you are getting reports from Stephen King's website.

7. Can I get a signed copy of Sleeping Beauties?
400 lucky attendees to the show will get a signed copy of Sleeping Beauties. Alas, we cannot take any additional signing request. There is no autograph session at this event.

8. I would love to know more about this book. Can you offer me some publisher copy? 
Yes, I can!

In this spectacular father/son collaboration, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place... The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women's prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously absorbing father/son collaboration between Stephen King and Owen King.

Here's another link to tickets.

Boswell's Annotated Bestseller Lists, week ending June 10, 2017, plus links to the Journal Sentinel TapBooks reviews

Here are our bestsellers for the week. Due to our event with Al Franken today at 1 pm, the store will be closed off to browsing between 12 noon and 3, and may not be open to the general public for part of that time.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Ministry of Utmost Hapiness, by Arundhati Roy
2. The Leavers, by Lisa Ko (event at Boswell Mon 6/12, 7 pm)
3. Camino Island, by John Grisham
4. The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry
5. The Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz
6. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
7. Do Not Become Alarmed, by Maile Meloy
8. Grief Cottage, by Gail Godwin
9. Beartown, by Fredrik Backman
10. Lonesome Lies Before Us, by Don Lee (event at Boswell Thu 6/15, 7 pm)

Scroll.in, which I have never heard of before, offers a link to reviews of Arundhati Roy's long-awaited novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happinessv. The Irish Times review, in particular, was characterized as hatchet job.

Another high-profile release is John Grisham's Camino Island. He's also doing his first author tour in 25 years. Traditionally he signed copies for the few stores that hosted him when he self-published A Time to Kill. Here are the lucky stores.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
2. Theft by Finding, by David Sedaris
3. The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy
4. Al Franken, by Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken (ticketed signing, Sun 6/11, 1 pm)
5. Give a Girl a Knife, by Amy Thielen
6. Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg
7. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
8. Strengths Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath
9. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
10. The New Midwestern Table, by Amy Thielen

Ariel Levy's The Rules Do Not Apply was David Sedaris's recommended title at Wednesday's event. He's a huge fan of her work and she is accompanying him on select dates of his tour. I recently read her profile of Elizabeth Strout in The New Yorker.

From Ann Hulbert in The Atlantic: "A bold and bookish girl growing up in Westchester, New York, in a pre-9/11 world, she thrived throughout her 20s and into her 30s on “a compulsion to thrust myself toward adventure.” She had male and female lovers. She traveled to far-flung places. Her journalistic specialty was 'stories about women who are too much.' Levy counted herself among that undaunted company. She still qualifies, even after being buffeted by deep grief in marriage and pregnancy, and chastened to learn how much in life eludes control. Levy has the rare gift of seeing herself with fierce, unforgiving clarity. And she deploys prose to match, raw and agile. She plumbs the commotion deep within and takes the measure of her have-it-all generation."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Excellent Lombards, by Jane Hamilton
2. Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley (book club discussion Mon 8/7, 7 pm)
3. The Drifter V1, by Nick Petrie
4. The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn
5. The Dead Don't Bleed V1, by David Krugler
6. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
7. Burning Bright V2, by Nick Petrie
8. Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett
9. Enchanted Islands, by Allison Amend
10. Fathers Day, by Simon Van Booy (book club discussion Mon 7/10, 7 pm)

Jane Hamilton did an excellent job interviewing Sheryl Sandberg this past Monday, and we had a nice pop in sales for The Excellent Lombards as a result. It's a 1-2 punch for Grand Centeral, as our August book club selection, Before the Fall, was picked up by a number of folks who discussed Homegoing on Monday. I figured a smart thriller was just the thing for August.

I didn't know much about Kate Quinn's the Alice Network. The publisher sets up this historical novel: "Two women--a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947--are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption." Jean Zimmerman writes on the NPR blog: "At the heart of Quinn's telling is the true story of the covert Alice Network, through which courageous men and women infiltrated the German lines in rural France."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Think Skinny, Feel Fit, by Alejandro Chaban
2. Ruthless, by Ron Miscavige
3. Heretics!, by Steven Nadler and Ben Nadler
4. Creating Cultures of Thinking, by Ron Ritchhart
5. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
6. The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, by Thomas Fehring
7. Cream City Chronicles, by John Gurda
8. Dark Money, by Jane Mayer
9. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, by David Sedaris
10. How to Be an Indian in the 21st Century, by Louis V. Clark

It's an event driven list this week. Even The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee and the Engineers Who Created Them had its launch event at Historic Milwaukee last Tuesday. And probably John Gurda spoke somewhere!

Books for Kids:
1. Firefly Hollow, by Alison McGhee
2. Percy: Dog of Destiny, by Alison McGhee
3. Someday, by Alison McGhee
4. Maybe a Fox, by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee
5. Julia Gillian and the Art of Knowing, by Alison McGhee
6. Little Boy, by Alison McGhee
7. Bink and Gollie Two for One V2, by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee
8. Bink and Gollie Best Friends Forever V3, by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee
9. Bink and Gollie V1, by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee
10. Oh, the Places You'll Go, by Dr. Seuss

Alison McGhee spent the day at an area school and they obviously had a good time. At least Dr. Seuss cracked the top ten with Oh, the Places You'll Go. After all, we're thick into graduation season. But at age 27, we're hoping this book is at least graduating with advanced degrees.

Here are the book reviews from the TapBooks page.

From Jim Higgins comes an essay about Hunger, the new memoir from Roxane Gay. He writes: "Hunger is also a coming-of-age story, often a painful one, about a shy young woman coping with the aftershocks of her violation, grappling with her compulsive eating and its consequences, and discovering her voice as a writer. As a Haitian-American, she comes from a culture that prizes thinness, making her size a family issue. In pointed detail, she describes attending with her father an intake seminar for possible gastric bypass surgery, an experience that shook both of them. (Her account won't show up in the surgeon's press kit anytime soon!)"

We've had a lot of inquiries as to whether Gay is coming to Milwaukee. We're not on the tour but if you want to see here, why not hit up one of the great stores that are hosting her. Not sure if tickets are still available for the Chicago Humanities Festival event on June 19.

Chris Foran takes on Alan Alda's new memoir, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? I still remember working our Alda event back with Schwartz at Alverno College. I was working the parking lot, guiding folks to the theater and got to tell Alda where to go. Foran offers: "In 2009, Alda founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York. Combining academic research with theater training, the center has trained more than 7,000 scientists and doctors to communicate better. A lot of it centers on an appreciation of the power of empathy. Sharing stories of acting and improv exercises — including some he conducted at Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot, where he led a master class in 2013 — Alda shows how making a human connection is 'the bedrock of communicating.'"

I was particularly curious to read Mike Fischer's thoughts on Allegra Goodman's newest, as I also read it. You'll find my recommendation in an email going out next week. Here's what Fischer says: "Can Emily Dickinson compete with World of Warcraft? That’s among the intriguing questions raised by Allegra Goodman in The Chalk Artist, featuring a 23-year-old teacher trying to win the hearts and minds of her students in a high school that 'had a reputation for out of the box kids – those who were artistic, or autistic, those with learning differences, or special gifts, or both at once.'” Which wins out in the novel, gaming or poetry? You'll have to read the novel to find out.

And finally, in the print edition, is a review of Scott Turow's Testimony. He'll be at the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center on Sunday, June 25, 2 pm. Tickets are $30, including the book. Jocelyn McClurg, originally writing in USA Today, wrote that the book centers on the midlife crisis of Bill ten Boom, who takes a case at the Hague, investigating "the possible massacre of 400 gypsies in a refugee camp after the Bosnian war." She's not crazy about the sex scenes with Esma Czarini, the Russian legal advocate, but notes that "Testimony is a fun ride, an odd thing to say about a novel that casts new light on Bosnian war atrocities and sketchy American arms deals, as well as midlife crises among smart (but stupid) white guys.

Last-minute David Sedaris Details

Tonight is our David Sedaris event. Here are some things you should know.

1. We have been sold out since we announced the event back in March. That said, occasionally tickets have opened up due to cancellation. You never know if you check. Here's the ticket link.

2. The store is closed to the general public at 5:30 pm. We'll be open again tomorrow at 10. While the free part of the signing is going on (see below), we should be somewhat browsable.

3. After the event, Sedaris will be doing a free signing. We'll be giving out line letters to the signing starting at 4. Because the talk attendees will get first crack at the line letters, we'll be starting the free signing with letter "I." For those who don't want to stick around outside, we'll be announcing line progress on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Don't forget, you don't have to purchase a book from us for the signing part, and honestly, you don't have to purchase a book at all. You can bring a book from home, or have him sign a magazine article he's written.  That said, there are event guidelines. Please no photos or video at this event.

3. If you are a regular at Boswell, you may have noticed that our red plastic/metal chairs have slowly been falling apart. These originally were bought for the Bay View Schwartz store. Alas, the screws loosen and the seats crack. Whereas I think we once had 30 or so, we're now down to three. We needed to buy more chairs. And since our workhorse metal chairs are doing just fine, we decided to buy more of them.

4. After years of searching for chairs beyond black, red, gray, and tan, Hercules released a color burst series with 8 special colors. I thought it was a little odd that they have two shades of orange and what I perceive as two variations of purple, but no basic green or yellow, or navy, but hey, I figure they know what they are doing. I also think their teal is more of a turquoise. I decided not to go crazy and picked up two new shades, citron (yellow-green) and one of the oranges (marmalade, not coral). They seem to be available everywhere online, though I haven't found a bricks-and-mortar store carrying them. Sigh.

You can only imagine how exciting this is to me. After the Sedaris event, which is sort of its debut, we'll be using the new colors as our book club chairs, and we'll pull out the rest for big events.

5. You can purchase a signed copy of Theft by Finding too to pick up after the event. For this event, we require pre-purchase, whether it is signature only or personalized. Limited quantity available.

6. Can't make this event but wanted to see him? Sedaris will be back at the Riverside Theater on April 20, 2018. It never hurts to plan ahead.

Events: Sheryl Sandberg in conversation with Jane Hamilton at the Riverside Theater, philosopher Steven Nadler and artist Ben Nadler, Ron Miscavige at Greenfield Public LIbrary, David Sedaris signing following sold-out talk, Lori Rader Day's Mobcraft Mystery Tour (with Nick Petrie and David Krugler), Amy Thielen in conversation with Kyle Cherek, ticketed signing with Al Franken, novelist Lisa Ko

Monday, June 5, 7 pm, at the Riverside Theater, 116 W Wisconsin Ave:
A ticketed event with Sheryl Sandberg , co-author of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy .
Ms. Sandberg will be in conversation with Jane Hamilton.

Tickets are still available to tonight's event. Each attendee will get a signed copy of Option B. There is no autographing line for this event.

Here's a little more about Option B, which was written with Wharton professor and bestselling author Adam Grant. After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. Her friend Adam, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are steps people can take to recover and even rebound. Option B combines Sheryl's emotional insights and Adam's eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity. Sheryl will share what she and Adam learned together about helping others in crisis, developing compassion for ourselves, raising strong children, and creating resilient families, communities and workplaces. Many of these lessons can be applied to ordinary struggles, allowing us to build resilience for whatever lies ahead. They will discuss the capacity of the human spirit to persevere... and to rediscover joy.

Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook. In addition to Option B, Sandberg is also the international best-selling author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She chairs the board of the Sheryl Sandberg and Dave Goldberg Family Foundation.

Jane Hamilton lives, works, and writes in an orchard farmhouse in Wisconsin. Her latest novel, The Excellent Lombards, is now available in paperback.

Tuesday, June 6, 6:30 pm, at the Greenfield Public Library, 5310 W Layton Ave:
Ron Miscavige, author of Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me.


The father of the leader of the Church of Scientology, New York Times Bestselling author Ron Miscavige will visit Greenfield Public Library to discuss his personal story of participation and escape from the international group and highlight his son's involvement in the organization.

Due to the high expected turnout for this event, please note that space will be limited. Doors will open at 6:00PM. The Greenfield Public Library is located just east of the 60th St exit of I-894.

Tuesday, June 6, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Steven Nadler and Ben Nadler, co-authors of Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy.

Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy and Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include Spinoza: A Life, which won the Koret Jewish Book Award, and Rembrandt's Jews, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ben Nadler is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and an illustrator. Yes, they are related.

Heretics! is an entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority, sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death, to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world. With masterful storytelling and color illustrations, Heretics! offers a unique introduction to the birth of modern thought in an entertaining graphic novel format.

Contentious and controversial philosophers like Galileo, Descartes, and Newton fundamentally changed the way we look at the world, society, and ourselves, thus overturning everything from the idea that the Earth is the center of the cosmos to the notion that kings have a divine right to rule. More devoted to reason than to faith, these thinkers defended scandalous new views of nature, religion, politics, knowledge, and the human mind.

Wednesday, June 7, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
A signing after our sold-out ticketed event with David Sedaris, author of Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) 

The talk is sold out but the signing is free and open to the public. Anyone who has the desire to meet Mr. Sedaris can do so at Boswell on June 7, though admittedly by the time we get to everyone, it might be June 8. After the line is finished for the ticketed attendees, we'll start with everyone else. Will he sign Theft by Finding for you? Yes! Will he sign any of his backlist for you? Yes! Will he sign an anthology or magazine where he had a contribution? Yes! Will he say hello to you even if you don't want anything signed? Yes! We'll stay as long as it takes, and all you need is patience. Our suggestion? Bring something to read.

Attendees are allowed to bring books from home. Mr. Sedaris will sign (and personalize!) anything he has written, including magazine articles, but he will not sign any books penned by other writers. If you do not have a book, you may still enter the signing line if you’d just like to say hello to Mr. Sedaris. And lastly, Boswell will remain open until everyone has a chance to meet Mr. Sedaris.

Please note that there is no gift card option for the talk portion. And also note that as is always the case for David Sedaris events, we ask that there be no photos or video at this event. 

Here's Patton Oswalt in The New York Times Book Review on Theft by Finding: "It’s encouraging to read 25 years of David Sedaris’s diaries, and not just because he manages to defeat Bloat. It’s helpful to see that a voice as original, hilarious and sometimes as infuriating as his was put through the same Struggle and Starve meat grinder that most of us go through"

Thursday, June 8, at Mobcraft Brewery, 505 S 5th St in Walkers Point:
Mobcraft Mystery Tour, with Lori Rader Day, Nick Petrie, and David Krugler.

Join Mystery Writers of America Midwest authors Nick Petrie, David Krugler, and Lori Rader-Day for a tour of the Mobcraft Taproom and mystery panel event. Fun with friends with a beer in your hand! Tour is free; beer is cash bar. Save some dough for a signed book or two. Or three.

The tour starts at 7 pm. Space is limited. Please register here.

About Lori Rader-Day: Her new novel, The Day I Died, a gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother’s desperate search for two lost boys. Her debut mystery, The Black Hour, won the 2014 Anthony Award for Best First Novel and was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her second novel, Little Pretty Things, received a starred review from Booklist and was named a 2015 “most arresting crime novel” by Kirkus Reviews.

About Nick Petrie: The first novel of Whitefish Bay's Petrie, The Drifter, was a finalist for the Edgar Best First Novel Prize. Of his work, Lee Child wrote: "Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher, but Petrie’s Peter Ash is the real deal." His second novel, Burning Bright, was just released in paperback, and his third novel, Light It Up, is scheduled for publication in January 2018.

About David Krugler: His first novel, The Dead Don't Bleed, the story of a young naval intelligence officer who goes undercover to solve a murder and prevent the Soviets from stealing the secrets of America’s atomic bomb project, was recently released in paperback. In addition to his work as a novelist, David Krugler is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

Thursday, June 8, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Amy Thielen, author of Give a Girl a Knife: A Memoir, in conversation with Kyle Cherek.

Amy Thielen is the author of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook The New Midwestern Table and the host of Heartland Table on Food Network. A former New York City line cook, she now speaks and writes about home cooking for radio, television, and magazines, including Saveur, where she's a contributing editor. She lives in rural Park Rapids, Minnesota.

Before Amy Thielen frantically plated rings of truffled potatoes in some of New York City's finest kitchens, she grew up in a northern Minnesota town home to the nation's largest French fry factory, with a mother whose generous cooking dripped with tenderness, drama, and an overabundance of butter. Inspired by her grandmother's tales of cooking in the family farmhouse, Thielen moves north with her artist husband to a rustic, off-the-grid cabin deep in the woods. There, standing at the stove three times a day, she finds the seed of a growing food obsession that leads her to the sensory madhouse of New York's top haute cuisine brigades. But, like a magnet, the foods of her youth draw her back home, where she comes face to face with her past and a curious truth: that beneath every foie gras sauce lies a rural foundation of potatoes and onions.

Kyle Cherek is host of the Emmy-nominated television show Wisconsin Foodie, beginning its seventh season on PBS. Kyle has made regular appearances on The Travel Channel and Food Network, and is a frequent media contributor to Public Radio, NPR, and NBC. His widely-acclaimed video web series, Chef Talk with Kyle Cherek, features candid, forthright and often amusing conversations with some of America’s most engaging chefs.

Sunday, June 11, 1:00 pm at Boswell:
A ticketed signing with Al Franken, author of Al Franken, Giant of the Senate           
From Senator Al Franken - #1 bestselling author and beloved SNL alum - comes Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, the story of an award-winning comedian who decided to run for office and then discovered why award-winning comedians tend not to do that.

Tickets are $30.00 and include a copy of Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, and all taxes and fees. Senator Franken will personalize books on the signing line. There will be no posed photos at this event. Limited to 500 attendees. Other line restrictions may be in effect. Please note that there is no talk at this event and no early pick up option.

Monday, June 12, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers.

This event is cosponsored by OCA-Wisconsin. We will have light refreshments.

Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It's a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past.

Boswellian Caroline adores The Leavers and has this to offer, “Deming Guo’s first six years of life were spent with his immigrant mother in New York, then China with a grandfather he’s never met, and America again. After his mother disappears from her job at a nail salon, Deming is adopted by two professors and dropped into what feels like an alien, all-white suburb upstate. This pattern of early upheaval sets Deming - now Daniel Wilkinson - on a path marked by difference and isolation. As Deming’s story unfolds, his mother’s side of the story gradually comes to light, filling in holes and ripping others open, until finally, side by side, their disparate journeys form one complete portrait of the resilience of the spirit. This is a heartbreaking, poignant, beautiful book that will stay with you for a long time.” .

From Ann Patchett: “There was a time I would have called Lisa Ko’s novel beautifully written, ambitious, and moving, and all of that is true, but it’s more than that now: if you want to understand a forgotten and essential part of the world we live in, The Leavers is required reading.”

From Bustle: "Lisa Ko's The Leavers is the year's powerful debut you won't want to miss. The Leavers expertly weaves a tale of the conflicts between love and loyalty, personal identity and familial obligation, and the growing divide between freedom and social justice. An affecting novel that details the the gut-wrenching realities facing illegal immigrants and their families in modern America, Lisa Ko's debut is the 2017 fiction release you can't afford to miss.”

Read more about Ko's journey on NBC News.

Coming next week!

Tuesday, June 13, 7 pm, at Boswell: Poet Margaret Rozga, author of Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems.

Wednesday, June 14, 7 pm, at Boswell: Mark O'Connell, author of The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs.

Thursday, June 15, 7 pm, at Boswell: Don Lee, author of Lonesome Lies Before Us, in conversation with musician Will Johnson.

More upcoming event information on the Boswell website.