Get ready for an amazing week of events, starting with astronaut Scott Kelly and ending with children's lit great Kate DiCamillo (plus there's some good stuff in between too)

Monday, October 23, 7 pm, at UWM Student Union Wisconsin Room, 2200 E Kenwood Blvd.
A ticketed event with Scott Kelly, author of Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.

Boswell, the UWM Student Union, and the Manfred Olson Planetarium present an evening with Scott Kelly, the astronaut who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station, in conversation with Bonnie North of WUWM’s Lake Effect.

Tickets are $32 and include admission to the event, all taxes and ticket fees, and a signed copy of Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery. Tickets are available at kellymke.brownpapertickets.com. Advance ticket sales will end today at 2 pm. We cannot guarantee walkup tickets will be available.

Note that there is no signing line or meet-and-greet following this event.

Scott Kelly is a former military fighter pilot and test pilot, an engineer, a retired astronaut, and a retired U.S. Navy captain. A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS. In October 2015, he set the record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut. In addition to his new memoir Endurance, he is also the author of the new children's picture book My Journey to the Stars.

Read Jim Higgins's profile of Scott Kelly in the Journal Sentinel.




Two (count 'em) events Ronald H. Balson, author of Karolina’s Twins and The Trust.

#1: Tuesday, October 24, 3 pm, Balson at Ovation Chai Point, Rubenstein Pavilion, 1400 N Prospect. This event is free and open to the public. ID required.

Join us for an afternoon of book club picks with a focus on titles with Jewish authors and themes. Boswell’s Daniel Goldin will offer a number of suggestions, and following that, our featured author Ronald H. Balson will talk about Karolina’s Twins.

Ronald H. Balson's third novel featuring Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart, tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who searches for the children of a close friend who died in a concentration camp. In the tradition of his breakout first novel, Once We Were Brothers, Karolina's Twins was inspired by a true story.

#2: Tuesday, October 24, 7 pm, Balson at Boswell.

Beloved author Ronald H. Balson takes Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart in a new direction in this mystery featuring Detective Taggart, focusing on Liam Taggart and his family in Northern Ireland.

Boswell's Anne McMahon, Boswell's mystery reader-in-chief called The Trust one of her favorite books of the year. She writes: "Liam Taggart suddenly finds himself in the middle of tangled family relationships and troubled Irish history when an uncle he has not heard from in sixteen years dies and names him trustee of his estate. Liam returns to Northern Ireland from Chicago to carry out his duties and lands in the middle of a nightmare that threatens to engulf not only the Irish branch, but also Liam’s wife and infant son. The Trust is a suspenseful read that taught me a few things about Irish history as well!"

Tuesday, October 24, 6:30 pm, at River Room, 1218 13th Ave. Grafton:
A YA Pizza Party featuring Will Kostakis, author of The Sidekicks and Jen Lancaster, author of The Gatekeepers.

W J Niederkorn Library, Cedarburg Public Library, USS Liberty Memorial Public Library, and Boswell have come together to bring you two amazing writers for a YA Pizza party event! This event will take place at the River Room, in Grafton. This event is free; no registration is requested.

Australia's Will Kostakis has already received critical acclaim for his first two novels, having won the Gold Inky Award and been shortlisted for both the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the CBC Australia Book of the Year Award for The First Third. In his American debut, The Sidekicks, three boys are left to face the death of their best friend, Isaac. None of the boys know each other, but their relationship to Isaac starts to bring them all closer together as they struggle to deal with their grief.

Kostakis is appearing with Jen Lancaster, the bestselling author of comic novels and memoirs. From Bitter Is the New Black to The Tao of Martha, Jen has made a career out of documenting her attempts to shape up, grow up, and have it all—sometimes with disastrous results. Her YA debut, The Gatekeepers, sheds light on a little known problem in a beautiful area. Three students, each with their own struggles and issues, are shocked when a lovable football player takes his own life and the tragedy becomes a suicide cluster. With so many students facing their own demons, can they find a way to save each other—as well as themselves?

Wednesday, October 25, 7 pm, at Boswell:
John Hildebrand, author of A Northern Front: New and Selected Essays.

We're celebrating the paperback release (finally) of John Hildebrand's essay collection A Northern Front with a talk/reading at Boswell. Hildebrand's nonfiction has appeared in Harper's Audubon, and Sports Illustrated, and he is also the author of Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family and Reading the River: A Voyage Down the Yukon.

Hildebrand writes of landscapes in dispute: Native Alaskan groups are pitted against each other over oil development, Hmong emigrants jostle locals in a public hunting ground, farmers battle a formidable company town and city hall. Nature itself is also in flux as timber wolves and Sandhill cranes reclaim lost ground and a marine biologist gauges the effect of an invading species on previously undisturbed areas.

A Northern Front reflects the day-by-day disappearance of wild places and the ever-changing face of the American landscape. Hildebrand's characters are unforgettable, and his stories gracefully capture the spirit of all people who care deeply about the land.

Thursday, October 26, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Daniel Karpowitz, author of College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration.

This event is cosponsored by Milwaukee Turners, as part of their Mass Incarceration series, and Cardinal Stritch University.

From Daniel Karpowitz is the director of policy and academics for the Bard Prison Initiative and lecturer in law and the humanities at Bard College comes College in Prison, chronicling how Bard College has provided high-quality, liberal arts education to New York State prisoners. Drawing upon fifteen years of experience as a director of and teacher within the Bard Prison Initiative, Daniel Karpowitz tells the story of BPI's development from a small pilot project to a nationwide network.

The nationally renowned Bard Prison Initiative demonstrates how the liberal arts can alter the landscape inside prisons by expanding access to the transformative power of American higher education. American colleges and universities have made various efforts to provide prisoners with access to education. However, few of these outreach programs presume that incarcerated men and women can rise to the challenge of a truly rigorous college curriculum. The Bard Prison Initiative, however, is different. As this compelling new book reveals, BPI has fostered a remarkable transformation in the lives of thousands of prisoners.

Sunday, October 29, 2:00 pm, at Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 19805 W Capitol Dr in Brookfield:
A ticketed event with Kate DiCamillo, author of La La La: A Story of Hope.


The Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, Oconomowoc’s Books & Company, and Milwaukee’s Boswell Book Company present a very special event with Kate DiCamillo twice winner of the Newbery Medal.

Tickets are $22.00 and include admission to the event, all taxes and fees, and a copy of DiCamillo’s latest picture book, La La La. A signing will follow the talk. There is no gift card option for this event, but don’t forget, La La La will make a great gift for the upcoming holiday season.

Kate DiCamillo is not just one of the most acclaimed children’s book authors writing today - she’s also one of the most beloved. Her events are incredibly popular and it’s hard to walk away from her presentations without being moved to tears. DiCamillo only does a handful of public speaking events in the United States each year. Boswell and our two partners are excited to be one of those select events, bringing fans the first metro Milwaukee event with DICamillo in five years.

Jim Higgins spoke to Kate DiCamillo in the Journal Sentinel.



And don't forget about Monday, October 30, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, author of Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America.

This event is cosponsored by Milwaukee Turners, as part of their Mass Incarceration series.

Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, assistant professor of history at Cornell University, show how in 1970s America, get-tough campaigns on drugs, crime, and welfare helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. Getting Tough sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand.

Kohler-Hausmann illuminates this narrative through three legislative cases: New York's adoption of the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws, Illinois's and California's attempts to reform welfare through criminalization and work mandates, and California's passing of a 1976 sentencing law that abandoned rehabilitation as an aim of incarceration. Spanning diverse institutions and weaving together the perspectives of opponents, supporters, and targets of punitive policies, Getting Tough offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state.