Friday Short Post--Seafaring Books Celebrate the Release of "The Rathbones" and Janice Clark's Visit to Boswell on August 28.

It started with a rec: "Hold this book to your ear and hear the sea. In Janice Clark's The Rathbones, exquisite prose unfolds with the ebb and flow of the ocean. Each detail rendered therein is as delicate and precise as the thinnest line in a scrimshaw design. You discover the story of the Rathbone family as the youngest Rathbone child does: in fits and starts, in hearsay, in rumor, in gut instinct. Nothing is as it seems: this family has secrets deeper than the ocean. Clark has carved a sharp narrative, elevated with splendidly rendered nautical diction, and will spear you through the heart with it in one stroke. This is a book you'll pine for long after you've returned from its far shores, six-generations wiser, in love with Mercy and the sea."
--Mel Morrow

And that inspired another display. Stacie just finished our searfaring display to promote Janice Clark's novel. I also just learned that Mel also wrote a rec for Babayaga, so August appears to be her month. As the author lives in the Chicago area, we asked the publisher if she'd be amenable to coming up for an appareance. We wound up pairing her with Amy Gail Hansen, another Chicagoan. Hansen's novel is The Butterfly Sister. Both are featured on the August Indie Next list and their recs are right next to each other. It's fate!

Janice Clark is coming to Boswell on Wednesday, August 28, 7 pm. 

Stacie even gave us a checklisted of suggested titles:

She Rises, by Kate Worsley
We, the Drowned, by Carsten Jensen
God Carlos, by Anthony Winkler
Archipelago by Monique Roffey
Frenchman's Creek, by Daphne Du Maurier
Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana

Gift items:
Lighthouse puzzle
Moby Dick journal
Fish leather bank
Hemingway finger puppet magnet

Publishers Weekly starred their review: "A teenager comes of age and grapples with the heavy burdens of family secrets against the backdrop of the 19th-century New England whaling industry in this beautifully written, playful, and intricate debut novel."