Shiretown Books Hosts Local Author!!!
Shiretown Books Hosts a Reading
LOCAL AUTHOR
SALLY RYDER BRADY
A Box of Darkness:
The Story of a Marriage
FEB. 24 @ 5:00
“…her memoir is as searing and tender as the life she describes.” -Publishers Weekly
In the tradition of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, comes a poignant memoir about a marriage that was as deep and strong as it was mysterious and complex.
Upton and Sally Brady were a rare breed: cultivated and elegant, they lived a life of literary glamour and high expectations. Sally a debutante; Upton a classics major from Harvard, they met at the Boston Cotillion. He was articulate, witty, and worldly, and he danced like Fred Astaire. How could she resist? Despite raising four children on Upton’s modest wage as the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly Press, theirs was a world of champagne, sailboats, private islands, famous writers, family rituals, and ice-cold martinis. They lived life on their terms. But as time wore on, Upton, the charming and brilliant husband, the inventive, beguiling partner, grew opinionated, cranky, controlling, and dangerous.
When Upton died suddenly one evening in their Vermont cottage, Sally began uncovering secrets. As she went through his papers, she discovered that her husband of forty-six years had desired the love of other men. Her riveting, charismatic husband was not quite the man he appeared to be, and a year of mourning became for Sally a time to unravel the dark and unexpected web he had left behind. Hers is a moving and powerful story of coming to terms with what cannot be changed. It is also a story of great love.
Book Club Recommendations for 2011!
From a Free Press bulletin (a division of Simon & Schuster)
JANUARY
Reading Group Guide
Book Website
Video
Read an Excerpt
FEBRUARY
MARCH
Book Website
APRIL
Local Author & Professor, Steve Swayne visits 2/6/11
Steve Swayne, Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, will join us Sunday, February 6 at 3:00pm.
Swayne will read from his new book ORPHEUS in MANHATTAN: William Schuman and the Shaping of America’s Musical Life. The musical landscape of New York City and the United States of America would look quite different had it not been for William Schuman. Orpheus in Manhattan, a fully objective and comprehensive biography of Schuman, portrays a man who had a profound influence upon the artistic and political institutions of his day and beyond. Swayne draws heavily upon Schuman’s letters, writings, and manuscripts as well as unprecedented access to archival recordings and previously unknown correspondence. The winner of the first Pulitzer Prize in Music, Schuman composed music that is rhythmically febrile, harmonically pungent, melodically long-breathed, and timbrally brilliant; to which Swayne offers an astute analysis, including many unpublished scores. Swayne also describes Schuman’s role as president of the Juilliard School of Music and of Lincoln Center, tracing how he both expanded the boundaries of music education and championed the performing arts. Filled with new discoveries and revisions of the received historical narrative, Orpheus in Manhattan confirms Schuman as a major figure in America’s musical life. Join us at 3pm on Super Bowl Sunday for a little musical education.
- Shiretown Books
Reports from a lunch date with an acquaintance of Stieg Larsson
From the owner of Shiretown Books!
Shiretown Books Stieg Larsson Fans: Here is some info on the Millennium Trilogy that will dispel some rumors and other journalist misinformation. This is straight from the mouth of a District Court Judge in Stockholm, Sweden who I happened to have lunch with.
Some tidbits:
- Stieg Larsson fought against racism and any other injustices that were issues in his trilogy.
- He worked for a magazine himself.
- There are no other manuscripts. While there may be drafts–starts and stops of writings like most writers who rewrite and revise, cut and paste, and have numerous false starts–the Millennium Trilogy is it.
Additionally, many of our readers have heard me recommend Henning Mankell, who has written numerous mysteries including his latest The Man From Beijing (highly recommended, soon to be out in paperback). Although Mankell and Larsson were rival writers, Mankell nevertheless mourns the loss of his colleague.
Thus, we must say farewell to our beloved Lisbeth Salander. Someone else will undoubtedly find a way to recreate her.
Local Book on The Royalton Raid a Runaway Bestseller
Yup…We Go As Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier, by Neil Good
win has become one of those unexpected best sellers that doesn’t want to stay on the shelf! Truly a testament to the fact that people crave local history and a connection to their home land through narrative. The book also touches upon the intersections of Native American and European histories, and the complex way that the agencies and intentions of the two interacted…also speaking to a welcome and long overdue literary trend examining Native American cultural consciousness in its own right.
Check out this excerpt from the Vermont Historical Society who published the book:
BARRE, VT: The date: Vermont, October 16, 1780. The place: Royalton, Vermont. With no warning and in almost complete silence, a war party of 265 Canadian Mohawks and Abenakis, led by five British and French-Canadian soldiers, materialized from the forest at dawn. They moved so fast and so quietly there was no time for anyone to escape and spread the alarm. Prisoners were taken, and the town of Royalton was burned to the ground….The narrative the book is based on is one of the longest and most detailed of all Revolutionary captivity narratives, and one of the most extensive documents written about the prisoner of war experience in British Canada. The author, Neil Goodwin, worked hard to understand the perspectives of the Abenaki and Kahnawake Mohawks as well as the British and Vermonters caught up in the endgame of the Revolution. By using the narratives, letters, and diaries of Zadock Steele and other captives from the raid, Goodwin has written a deeply researched, vivid story of attack, capture, imprisonment, and escape.
The newly released book, We Go As Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier, is a fast-paced, action-packed history that situates the raid in the broader context of Vermont’s role in the Revolutionary War and the complex relationships among the British and French empires in North America, various Indian nations seeking their own paths through the conflict, and independent-minded residents trying to establish their identity within the emerging American republic.
We Go As Captives revolves around the story of Zadock Steele, a young man who was captured in the attack on Royalton and subsequently wrote about his harrowing experience as a prisoner, first of the Mohawks and then of the British. Barefoot, ill-clothed, at the mercy of people whose language, customs, and tendency toward mayhem were utterly incomprehensible to them, Steele and the other captives were hustled north to imprisonment in Canada. After two years, as Steele’s resignation turned to despair, he and a few comrades, unaware that the war was about to end, executed a daring escape from the infamous Prison Island in the St. Lawrence River.
Much more than a riveting adventure story, We Go As Captives provides fresh insight into the Royalton Raid, the American Revolution on the northern frontier, and the motives and machinations of the European, Indian, and American players in this epic drama.
MARY HOLLAND author visit Saturday December 18 @1:00
Mary Holland will be here at Shiretown Books to read from and sign her new book Naturally Curious. She has a feature article in the Valley News Monday December 13 on nuthatches. Please join us
TITIA ELLIS: THE SEARCH a memoir of an adopted woman
Please join us at Shiretown Books on Friday December 17 @ 5:00. Titia will be here to read from and sign her new book. Gloria Steinem says, ” The Search is a real life novel, detective story, and deep lesson that the reward for searching out a personal truth is the discovery of a universal one.”
