Showing posts with label author. Show all posts
Showing posts with label author. Show all posts

Third Place Books presents Robin LaFevers, in conversation with Leigh Bardugo - Igniting Darkness

Thursday, August 13, 2020


Saturday, August 15, 2020 - 5:00pm

This is a virtual event! Register for this livestream event here!

Two assassins will risk absolutely everything--even their own divinity--to save the people and the country they love in this lush historical fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Robin LaFevers. Set in the world of the beloved His Fair Assassin series, this smart, sensational follow up to Courting Darkness is perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Holly Black.

When you count Death as a friend, who can stand as your enemy?

Sybella, novitiate of the convent of Saint Mortain and Death's vengeance on earth, is still reeling from her God's own passing, and along with him a guiding hand in her bloody work. But with her sisters on the run from their evil brother and under the watchful eye of her one true friend (and love) at court, the soldier known as Beast, Sybella stands alone as the Duchess of Brittany's protector.

After months of seeking her out, Sybella has finally made contact with a fellow novitiate of the convent, Genevieve, a mole in the French court. But Sybella, having already drawn the ire of the French regent, may not be able to depend on her sister and ally as much as she hoped. Still, Death always finds a way, even if it's not what one expects.

No one can be trusted and the wolves are always waiting in this thrilling conclusion to the Courting Darkness duology, set in the world of Robin's beloved His Fair Assassin trilogy.

Robin LaFevers, author of the New York Times best-selling His Fair Assassin books, was raised on fairy tales, Bulfinch's mythology, and nineteenth-century poetry. It is not surprising that she grew up to be a hopeless romantic. She was lucky enough to find her one true love, and is living happily ever after with him in California. Visit her online at robinlafevers.com and on Twitter @RLLaFevers.

Leigh Bardugo is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy novels and the creator of the Grishaverse (coming soon to Netflix) which spans the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, the Six of Crows Duology, The Language of Thorns, and the King of Scars duology. Her short stories can be found in multiple anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. Leigh was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Southern California, and graduated from Yale University. These days she lives and writes in Los Angeles.

The book is in stock at Third Place Books 206-366-3333.




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Third Place Books presents author David Gessner - Leave It As It Is

Tuesday, August 11, 2020



Third Place Books presents a virtual author event

Leave it as it is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness

Friday, August 14, 2020 - 7:00pm


"A rallying cry in the age of climate change." --Robert Redford
An environmental clarion call, told through bestselling author David Gessner's wilderness road trip inspired by America's greatest conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt.

"Leave it as it is," Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. "The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it." 

Roosevelt's rallying cry signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with the American wilderness and with the president who courageously protected it, acclaimed nature writer and New York Times bestselling author David Gessner embarks on a great American road trip guided by Roosevelt's crusading environmental legacy. 

Gessner travels to the Dakota badlands where Roosevelt awakened as a naturalist; to Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon where Roosevelt escaped during the grind of his reelection tour; and finally, to Bears Ears, Utah, a monument proposed by Native Tribes that is embroiled in a national conservation fight. 

David Gessner
Along the way, Gessner questions and reimagines Roosevelt's vision for today. As Gessner journeys through the grandeur of our public lands, he tells the story of Roosevelt's life as a pioneering conservationist, offering an arresting history, a powerful call to arms, and a profound meditation on our environmental future.

David Gessner is the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestseller All the Wild That Remains

He has taught environmental writing as a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard and is currently a professor and department chair at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he founded the award-winning literary journal Ecotone. Gessner lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Order the book through Third Place Books Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness (Hardcover) $28.00



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Third Place Books presents Candace Robb, author of medieval mysteries

Monday, August 10, 2020


Third Place Books presents

Virtual Event - Candace Robb - A Choir of Crows - with Michelle Urberg and Marian Seibert
Thursday, August 13, 2020 - 5:00pm


When two bodies are discovered in the grounds of York Minster shortly before the enthronement of the new archbishop, Owen Archer is summoned to investigate. 
December, 1374. With the great and the good about to descend on York for the enthronement of Alexander Neville as the new archbishop, the city authorities are in a state of high alert. When two bodies are discovered in the grounds of York Minster, and a flaxen-haired youth with the voice of an angel is found locked in the chapter house, Owen Archer, captain of the city bailiffs, is summoned to investigate. 
Tension deepens when an enigmatic figure from Owen's past arrives in the city. Why has he returned from France after all these years - and what is his connection with the bodies in the minster yard and the fair singer? 
Before Owen can make headway in the investigation, a third body is fished out of the river - and the captain finds himself with three mysterious deaths to solve before the all-powerful Neville family arrives in York.


Candace Robb has read and researched medieval history for many years, having studied for a Ph.D. in Medieval and Anglo-Saxon Literature. She divides her time between Seattle and the UK, frequently visiting York to research the series. She is the author of eleven previous Owen Archer mysteries and three Kate Clifford medieval mysteries.

Michelle Urberg is a medieval musicologist, librarian, and champion of research for the public good. She has studied the music, book culture and gender roles of the Birgittine monastic order in-depth and has been active with the community of scholars who study the Birgittines. Michelle lives in Seattle, where she sings in the Medieval Women’s Choir and serves on its Board of Directors.

Marian Seibert is a soloist with the Medieval Women's Choir. She has performed with many local ensembles and organizations, including the Tudor Choir, St. Mark's Cathedral, the Esoterics, Northwest Baroque, the Early Music Guild, St. James Cathedral, the Trinity Consort, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Gallery Concerts, Seattle Opera, Northwest Puppet Center, Seattle Experimental Opera, and the Seattle Academy of Opera. She is a featured soloist on the Medieval Women's Choir's CDs, River of Red and Laude Novella, and serves the choir as rehearsal director.



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Lake Forest Park native publishes first novel

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

The Risk in Crossing Borders by William McClain

At age 54, Yana Pickering is comfortably and firmly rooted in Seattle. On the other side of the world, Elias is neither comfortable nor rooted. His once-secure life as head of surgery at a major Aleppo hospital has been destroyed by the Syrian conflict. 

Now he’s on a desperate quest to locate his son and daughter— all that’s left of his family. The thread that draws these two together forms an engrossing story that spans Seattle, Beirut, Syria, and France.

Yana finds herself on a personal journey of new borders— from refugees crossing countries in search of safety, to a young woman facing risks in crossing the transgender border. 
Ultimately, Yana must decide what she values most, and which borders she is willing to cross, decisions that will profoundly shape her future.
 
With humor and kindness, The Risk in Crossing Borders pulls the reader into the complex lives and harrowing experiences of those who stand up for the things in life that matter.

About the Author

William McClain and his wife both grew up in Lake Forest Park and graduated from Shorecrest High School. 

William McClain spent a decade teaching high school math and physics, including at Shorecrest in the late 80s. After that he spent nearly three decades helping large employers enhance their employee retirement programs. 

When not writing, he spends time hiking, gardening, photographing nature, and playing soccer. He also enjoys volunteering as a tutor for refugees and homeless youth. He lives with his wife in Lynnwood but stays involved with LFP. 

The Risk in Crossing Borders is his first book. Both the Edmonds Bookshop and Third Place Books plan to carry the book. Call Third Place Books to pre-order 206-366-3333.





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Shoreline author publishes Book Two in his Waterfront Mystery series

Monday, August 3, 2020

Shoreline author Jeffrey D. Briggs has published book two in his Waterfront Mystery series with Martha Whitaker, Within A Shadowed Forest.

His debut novel, Out of the Cold Dark Sea, has been called “gripping,” “compelling,” and “compulsive and luscious” by critics and readers. The “fierce, intelligent” Martha Whitaker now returns in a new waterfront mystery, Within a Shadowed Forest.

Recovering from the physical and emotional wounds she suffered in Out of the Cold Dark Sea, Martha travels to Duluth, Minnesota, to help her friend James MacAuliffe.

Someone blew up his truck and a charred body is discovered in the wreckage.

Together, they pursue a trail of clues that lead them up the North Shore to the scenic village of Grand Marais, into the vast northern forest, and onto the frigid waters of Lake Superior in search of answers— and a shadowed killer.

Before they become the next victims.

Both Within A Shadowed Forest and Out of the Cold Dark Sea are available from Amazon and from these local independent bookstores:
Beach House Greetings
Edmonds Bookshop
Third Place Books Lake Forest Park 206-366-3333

Jeffrey D. Briggs

Jeffrey D. Briggs has been writing about the waterfront since he moved onto his sailboat over thirty years ago.

He now lives on land in Richmond Beach with his wife and dog and can often be found on the shores of Puget Sound, wondering what secrets lie hidden beneath those cold waters.

Out of the Cold Dark Sea was the first book in the Waterfront Mystery series featuring Martha Whitaker.




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Local author advocates for National Stop on Red Week following the tragic death of her mother in a Kenmore crosswalk

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Lori Koidahl at her mother's memorial garden
shows the book she wrote about how to navigate
grief and begin to heal


Not a day goes by that Shoreline resident Lori Koidahl doesn’t think about being a cautious driver. Her mom was tragically killed in a Kenmore cross walk on June 19, 2007 by a driver who ran a red light. The story, which made headline news, included six other pedestrians who were also injured with Lori’s mom, Kathy Cook, who was killed at the scene.

A truck speeding at 45mph hit a front loader, a massive piece of machinery that moves dirt, which sent the truck careening toward the pedestrians and crushed Lori’s mom against a utility pole.

This week Lori is placing a sign at her mom's memorial garden, which is at the intersection of the crash site. It promotes safe driving habits during National Stop on Red Week, August 2-8, 2020.

The signage serves as a reminder of the dangers in intersections and the importance of Stopping on RED. Preventing these crashes is in each driver’s control.

Stop On Red Week is observed in August to educate the public and bring awareness to the number and severity of intersection crashes. This event provides an opportunity to promote safe driving and remind drivers of the dangers of running red lights.

  • Between 2004-2018, an estimated 11,877 people were killed in crashes related to red-light running according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
  • In 2018, 846 people were killed, and an estimated 139,000 were injured in crashes involving red-light running.
  • In a 2018 national telephone survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 85 percent of drivers said it's very or extremely dangerous to speed through a red light, but 31 percent reported doing so in the past 30 days (AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 2019). 
  • The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) found that about half of red-light running crash deaths involve pedestrians, cyclists and occupants in vehicles struck by the red-light runners.
  • On average, two people died each day in red-light running crashes in the United States in 2018.


Lori Koidahl’s mom Kathy’s tragic death changed the trajectory of her life. She has become a safe driving advocate and recently wrote a book about her experience navigating the grief and healing she went through losing her mom in such an unexpected and traumatic manner.

Lori said, “I don't want others to have to go through what I went through. Especially when it can be prevented by paying closer attention to one's driving and “STOPPING ON RED.”

Her book is called Garden of Grief and can be purchased through normal retailers including Third Place Books, 206-366-3333 or HERE



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Third Place Books presents The Port of Missing Men - virtual event Wednesday

Tuesday, July 28, 2020



Third Place Books presents Aaron Goings in conversation with David Price about Goings' new book - The Port of Missing Men

Wednesday, July 29, 2020 - 7:00pm

This is a virtual event! Register for this Livestream Event here!


In the early twentieth century so many dead bodies surfaced in the rivers around Aberdeen, Washington, that they were nicknamed the "floater fleet." 

When Billy Gohl (1873-1927), a powerful union official, was arrested for murder, local newspapers were quick to suggest that he was responsible for many of those deaths, perhaps even dozens-- thus launching the legend of the Ghoul of Grays Harbor.

More than a true-crime tale, The Port of Missing Men sheds light on the lives of workers who died tragically, illuminating the dehumanizing treatment of sailors and lumber workers and the heated clashes between pro- and anti-union forces. 

Goings investigates the creation of the myth, exploring how so many people were willing to believe such extraordinary stories about Gohl. He shares the story of a charismatic labor leader-- the one man who could shut down the highly profitable Grays Harbor lumber trade-- and provides an equally intriguing analysis of the human costs of the Pacific Northwest's early extraction economy.

Aaron Goings is associate professor of history and chair of the History and Political Science Department at Saint Martin’s University. He is coauthor of The Red Coast: Radicalism and Anti-radicalism in Southwest Washington and Community in Conflict: A Working-Class History of the 1913–14 Michigan Copper Strike and the Italian Hall Tragedy. His newest book, The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest is available now from the University of Washington Press.

David Price is a Professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University in Lacey Washington. His research uses the Freedom of Information Act, archives, and interviews to document historical interactions between anthropologists and intelligence agencies.

Call Third Place Books to order any book: 206-366-3333.




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Third Place Books presents Kendra Atleework in a Tuesday virtual event


Third Place Books presents Kendra Atleework and her new book Miracle Country in a free virtual event on Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - 7:00pm

Register for this Livestream Event here!


Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero.

Kendra’s family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price. 

When Kendra was six, her mother was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, and she died when Kendra was sixteen. Her family fell apart, even as her father tried to keep them together. Kendra took flight from her bereft family, escaping to the enemy city of Los Angeles, and then Minneapolis, land of all trees, no deserts, no droughts, full lakes, water everywhere you look.

But after years of avoiding the pain of her hometown, she realized that she had to go back, that the desert was the only place she could live. Like Wild, Miracle Country is a story of flight and return, bounty and emptiness, and the true meaning of home. But it also speaks to the ravages of climate change and its permanent destruction of the way of life in one particular town.

Kendra Atleework received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. An essay that formed the basis for a chapter of Miracle Country was selected for The Best American Essays 2015. She is the recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award and the AWP Intro Journals Project Award.



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Third Place Books presents author Larry Watson

Tuesday, July 21, 2020


Third Place Books presents Larry Watson with his new book The Lives of Edie Pritchard in a virtual event on Friday, July 24, 2020 - 7:00pm

Register to attend this Livestream Event Here!

From acclaimed novelist Larry Watson, a multigenerational story of the West told through the history of one woman trying to navigate life on her own terms.

Edie-- smart, self-assured, beautiful-- always worked hard. She worked as a teller at a bank, she worked to save her first marriage, and later, she worked to raise her daughter even as her second marriage came apart. 
Really, Edie just wanted a good life, but everywhere she turned, her looks defined her. Two brothers fought over her. Her second husband became unreasonably possessive and jealous. Her daughter resented her. And now, as a grandmother, Edie finds herself harassed by a younger man. 
It's been a lifetime of proving that she is allowed to exist in her own sphere. The Lives of Edie Pritchard tells the story of one woman just trying to be herself, even as multiple men attempt to categorize and own her.

Triumphant, engaging, and perceptive, Watson's novel examines a woman both aware of her physical power and constrained by it, and how perceptions of someone in a small town can shape her life through the decades.

Raised in Bismarck, North Dakota, Larry Watson is the author of ten critically acclaimed books, including the bestselling Montana 1948. His fiction has been published internationally and has received numerous prizes and awards. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and other periodicals. He and his wife live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A film adaptation of Watson's novel Let Him Go is currently in production with Kevin Costner and Diane Lane and due to release in 2020.


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Third Place Books author event with Kelly McWilliams and Jewell Parker Rhodes


Third Place Books presents Kelly McWilliams and Jewell Parker Rhodes - Agnes at the End of the World and Black Brother, Black Brother - in a virtual event on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - 7:00pm

Register for this Livestream Event here!

Exploring themes of faith and the damage caused by the patriarchy, AGNES AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Kelly McWilliams is set in a cult-controlled and insular community, while the outside world is ravaged by a terrifying virus. A gripping and emotionally powerful story of a young woman and her utter selflessness, this standalone novel will send chills down your spine.

Agnes loves her home of Red Creek-- its quiet, sunny mornings, its dusty roads, and its God. There, she cares tirelessly for her younger siblings and follows the town's strict laws. What she doesn't know is that Red Creek is a cult, controlled by a madman who calls himself a prophet. Then Agnes meets Danny, an Outsider boy, and begins to question what is and isn't a sin. Her younger brother, Ezekiel, will die without the insulin she barters for once a month, even though medicine is considered outlawed. Is she a sinner for saving him? Is her sister, Beth, a sinner for dreaming of the world beyond Red Creek?
As the Prophet grows more dangerous, Agnes realizes she must escape with Ezekiel and leave everyone else, including Beth, behind. But it isn't safe Outside, either: A viral pandemic is burning through the population at a terrifying rate. As Agnes ventures forth, a mysterious connection grows between her and the Virus. But in a world where faith, miracles, and cruelty have long been indistinguishable, will Agnes be able to choose between saving her family and saving the world?

From award-winning and bestselling author, Jewell Parker Rhodes comes a powerful coming-of-age story about two brothers, one who presents as white, the other as black, and the complex ways in which they are forced to navigate the world, all while training for a fencing competition. 

Framed. Bullied. Disliked. But I know I can still be the best. 

Sometimes, 12-year-old Donte wishes he were invisible. As one of the few black boys at Middlefield Prep, most of the students don't look like him. They don't like him either. Dubbing him "Black Brother," Donte's teachers and classmates make it clear they wish he were more like his lighter-skinned brother, Trey. When he's bullied and framed by the captain of the fencing team, "King" Alan, he's suspended from school and arrested for something he didn't do. 
Terrified, searching for a place where he belongs, Donte joins a local youth center and meets former Olympic fencer Arden Jones. With Arden's help, he begins training as a competitive fencer, setting his sights on taking down the fencing team captain, no matter what. As Donte hones his fencing skills and grows closer to achieving his goal, he learns the fight for justice is far from over. 
Now Donte must confront his bullies, racism, and the corrupt systems of power that led to his arrest. Powerful and emotionally gripping, Black Brother, Black Brother is a careful examination of the school-to-prison pipeline and follows one boy's fight against racism and his empowering path to finding his voice.

Kelly McWilliams is a mixed-race writer who has always gravitated towards stories about crossing boundaries and forging new identities. For this and so many other reasons, young adult literature will always be close to her heart. Her upcoming novel, AGNES AT THE END OF THE WORLD, benefitted from a We Need Diverse Books Mentorship. She has loved crafting stories all her life, and her very first novel, DOORMAT, was published when she was just fifteen-years old. Kelly has also worked as a staff writer for Romper, covering issues important to women and families. She lives in Colorado with her partner and young daughter.

Jewell Parker Rhodes is the author of Ninth Ward, winner of a Coretta Scott King Honor, Sugar, winner of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and the New York Times-bestselling Ghost Boys. She has also written many award-winning novels for adults. When she's not writing, Jewell visits schools to talk about her books and teaches writing at Arizona State University.

Books can be ordered by calling TPB at 206-366-3333.



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Third Place Books author event with Django Wexler

Monday, July 20, 2020


Django Wexler in conversation with Fonda Lee - Ashes of the Sun

Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 7:30pm


Long ago, a magical war destroyed an empire, and a new one was built in its ashes. But still the old grudges simmer, and two siblings will fight on opposite sides to save their world in the start of Django Wexler's new epic fantasy trilogy.
Gyre hasn't seen his beloved sister since their parents sold her to the mysterious Twilight Order. Now, twelve years after her disappearance, Gyre's sole focus is revenge, and he's willing to risk anything and anyone to claim enough power to destroy the Order. 
Chasing rumors of a fabled city protecting a powerful artifact, Gyre comes face-to-face with his lost sister. But she isn't who she once was. Trained to be a warrior, Maya wields magic for the Twilight Order's cause. Standing on opposite sides of a looming civil war, the two siblings will learn that not even the ties of blood will keep them from splitting the world in two.

Django Wexler graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in creative writing and computer science, and worked for the university in artificial intelligence research. Eventually he migrated to Microsoft in Seattle, where he now lives with two cats and a teetering mountain of books. When not writing, he wrangles computers, paints tiny soldiers, and plays games of all sorts.

Fonda Lee is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Jade City and the award-winning YA science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo, and Cross Fire. Born and raised in Canada, Lee is a black belt martial artist, a former corporate strategist, and action movie aficionado who now lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.

Order over the phone: 206-366-3333




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Monday author event: Gail Tsukiyama - The Color of Air

Sunday, July 19, 2020



Third Place Books presents Gail Tsukiyama in conversation with Karen Joy Fowler about her new books The Color of Air.

Monday, July 20, 2020 - 7:00pm Virtual Event

Register to attend this Livestream Event Here!

From the New York Times bestselling author of Women of the Silk and The Samurai's Garden comes a gorgeous and evocative historical novel about a Japanese-American family set against the backdrop of Hawai'i's sugar plantations.

Daniel Abe, a young doctor in Chicago, is finally coming back to Hawai'i. He has his own reason for returning to his childhood home, but it is not to revisit the past, unlike his Uncle Koji. 
Koji lives with the memories of Daniel's mother, Mariko, the love of his life, and the scars of a life hard-lived. He can't wait to see Daniel, who he's always thought of as a son, but he knows the time has come to tell him the truth about his mother, and his father.  
But Daniel's arrival coincides with the awakening of the Mauna Loa volcano, and its dangerous path toward their village stirs both new and long ago passions in their community.

Alternating between past and present-- from the day of the volcano eruption in 1935 to decades prior-- The Color of Air interweaves the stories of Daniel, Koji, and Mariko to create a rich, vibrant, bittersweet chorus that celebrates their lifelong bond to one other and to their immigrant community.

As Mauna Loa threatens their lives and livelihoods, it also unearths long held secrets simmering below the surface that meld past and present, revealing a path forward for them all.

Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California, to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English. She is the bestselling author of seven previous novels, including Women of the Silk, The Samurai's Garden, and most recently, A Hundred Flowers, and has received the Academy of American Poets Award and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She divides her time between El Cerrito and Napa Valley, California.

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of six novels including Booker Prize finalist and international bestseller We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Wit's End, and The Jane Austen Book Club -- which spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was adapted as a major motion picture from Sony Pictures. Her novel Sister Noon was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, and her short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Awards. Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children, live in Santa Cruz, California.



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Virtual Event! Erica C. Barnett, in conversation with Paul Constant - Quitter

Friday, July 17, 2020


Third Place Books continues its author events virtually. On Friday, July 17, 2020 - 7:00pm, see Erica C. Barnett, in conversation with Paul Constant about her new book: Quitter


A startlingly frank memoir of one woman's struggles with alcoholism and recovery, with essential new insights into addiction and treatment, from renowned Seattle journalist Erica Barnett.

Erica C. Barnett had her first sip of alcohol when she was thirteen, and she quickly developed a taste for drinking to oblivion with her friends. In her late twenties, her addiction became inescapable. 

Volatile relationships, blackouts, and unsuccessful stints in detox defined her life, with the vodka bottles she hid throughout her apartment and offices acting as both her tormentors and closest friends. 

By the time she was in her late thirties, she had run the gauntlet of alcoholism. She had recovered and relapsed time and again, but after each new program or detox center would find herself far from rehabilitated. "Rock bottom," Barnett writes, "is a lie." 

It is always possible, she learned, to go lower than your lowest point. She found that the terms other alcoholics used to describe the trajectory of their addiction--"rock bottom" and "moment of clarity"--and the mottos touted by Alcoholics Anonymous, such as "let go and let God" and "you're only as sick as your secrets"-- didn't correspond to her experience and could actually be detrimental.

With remarkably brave and vulnerable writing, Barnett expands on her personal story to confront the dire state of addiction in America, the rise of alcoholism in American women in the last century, and the lack of rehabilitation options available to addicts. At a time when opioid addiction is a national epidemic and one in twelve Americans suffers from alcohol abuse disorder, Quitter is essential reading for our age and an ultimately hopeful story of Barnett's own hard-fought path to sobriety.

Erica C. Barnett is a Seattle-based political reporter. She started her career at the Texas Observer, the venerable progressive magazine cofounded by Molly Ivins, and went on to work as a reporter and news editor for the Austin Chronicle, Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger. She now covers addiction, housing, poverty, and drug policy at her blog, The C Is for Crank. She has written for a variety of local and national publications, including The Huffington Post, Seattle Magazine, and Grist. She got sober in February 2015.

Paul Constant has published journalism and cultural criticism at Business Insider, the Los Angeles Times, and BuzzFeed, among others. He writes a monthly bookstore profile column for the Seattle Times and he is a co-founder of the Seattle Review of Books. His first full-length comic book from AHOY Comics, Planet of the Nerds, was recently optioned for a feature film by Paramount Players.

Call Third Place Books to order this book and others! 206-366-3333.




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Third Place Books Virtual Event! Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, in conversation with Richard Chiem - Sleepovers

Monday, July 13, 2020


Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, in conversation with Richard Chiem - Sleepovers

Thursday, July 16, 2020 - 7:00pm
Virtual Event presented by Third Place Books

This is a virtual event! Register for this Livestream Event Here!

"There's some kind of crazy magic at work here-- the way that Ashleigh Bryant Phillips takes all the little pieces of daily life that are there in plain sight just laying around and when she gathers them together they become holy, hilarious, transcendent, and unspeakably beautiful. 
"Her style is utterly her own, with wonderful echoes of Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor and Larry Brown mixed in. Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is shockingly talented. I don't think the voices of her characters will ever leave my head." --Mesha Maren, author of Sugar Run

Hailed by Lauren Groff as "fully committed to the truth no matter how dark or difficult or complicated it may be," Sleepovers, the debut short story collection by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, takes us to a forgotten corner of the rural South, full of cemeteries, soybean fields, fishing holes, and Duck Thru gas stations. 

We meet a runaway teen, a mattress salesman, feral kittens, an elderly bachelorette wearing a horsehair locket, and a little girl named after Shania Twain. Here, time and memory circle above Phillips' characters like vultures and angels, as they navigate the only landscape they've ever known. 

Corn reaches for rain, deer run blindly, and no matter how hungry or hurt, some forgotten hymn is always remembered. "The literary love child of Carson McCullers and John the Baptist, Ashleigh Bryant Phillips' imagination is profoundly original and private," writes Rebecca Lee. Sleepovers marks the debut of a fearless new voice in fiction.

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from rural Woodland, North Carolina. She's a graduate of Meredith College and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her stories have appeared in The Oxford American, The Paris Review and others

Richard Chiem is the author of You Private Person (Sorry House Classics, 2017), and the novel, King of Joy (Soft Skull, 2019), which was long listed for the 2020 PEN Open Book Award. He was named a 2019 Writer to Watch by the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at Hugo House, Catapult, and at the University of Washington Bothell. He lives in Seattle.

Third Place Books is located in Town Center, upper level, intersection of Bothell and Ballinger Way in Lake Forest Park. They can be reached at 206-366-3333.




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Livestream author event Tuesday: How Trump Stole 2020

Sunday, July 12, 2020


Tuesday, July 14, 2020 - 4:00pm
Virtual Event presented by Third Place Books

Tickets are required to attend this livestream event! 
Purchase your tickets here! (Ticket includes 1 copy of Greg Palast's new book, How Trump Stole 2020).

Join Third Place Books, in partnership with Book Passage (Corte Madera, California), Word Up Community Bookshop (Washington Heights, NYC), and Seven Stories Press, for an afternoon with Greg Palast and Noam Chomsky (moderated by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!).

Vote theft is the key issue to the 2020 Election and Palast is the expert to explain why....

Has Trump already stolen the 2020 election? Vote theft was once considered to be a marginal issue that no one wanted to talk about, but as the stakes have risen and the facts have become known-- in large part thanks to this author-- it is now recognized as one of the central issues deciding our presidential elections.

The scope is staggering. In the Georgia 2018 midterm election alone-- the testing ground-- Republican voting officials quietly removed half a million voters from the voter rolls-- including Martin Luther King's ninety-two-year-old cousin Christine Jordan. How Trump Stole 2020 is the story of the racially poisonous schemes to steal the 2020 election, the political operatives behind the trickery-- and the hard right billionaires funding it all, written by the investigative reporter who has been covering this story from the outset.

Greg Palast regularly contributes original reporting to the BBC, The Guardian, Democracy Now, The Young Turks, and other progressive media. He has been featured recently on among others MSNBC's Joy Reid show and in Salon, and in the New York Times and Washington Post for successfully suing the state of Georgia with Stacey Abrams to release voter rolls after she lost a congressional seat to Brian Kemp who was at the time also the overseer of the voter rolls. 

Palast's two-decade hunt of elections chicanery are detailed in his books, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002), Armed Madhouse (2006), and Billionaires and Ballot Bandits (2012) -- all New York Times bestsellers. 

In 2000, his investigation for the BBC and the Guardian uncovered how the Bush family purged thousands of Black men from Florida voter rolls, falsely labeling them felons, the scheme that won Bush the White House. In 2016, Palast predicted Trump's "surprise" election months earlier in a Rolling Stone exposé detailing exactly how Trump's operatives, in control of voting offices in key states, would bend the election results. Palast lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Noam Chomsky is Professor, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now! An acclaimed international journalist, she has won the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the Alternative Nobel Prize; a lifetime achievement award from Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism; the George Polk Award; Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting; and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award. 

Amy is the New York Times bestselling author, with Denis Moynihan, of The Silenced Majority and Breaking the Sound Barrier; and with David Goodman, of Democracy Now!, Exception to the Rulers, Static, and Standing Up to the Madness. She is a syndicated columnist for King Features.



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Third Place Books: virtual event with three debut novelists

Wednesday, July 8, 2020


Thursday, July 9, 2020 - 7:00pm
Virtual Event

Join Third Place Books and Algonquin Books for a virtual panel with three much-anticipated debut novelists!

This is a Virtual Event! Register for this event here!


Gabriel Bump: Everywhere You Don't Belong

In an alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn't dangerous or brilliant-- he's an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don't Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

Crissy Van Meter: Winter Island

On the eve of Evangeline's wedding, on the shore of Winter Island, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor, the groom may be lost at sea, and Evie's mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. 
From there, in Crissy Van Meter's mesmerizing, provocative debut, the narrative flows back and forth through time as Evie reckons with her complicated upbringing in this lush, wild land off the coast of Southern California. Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island's world-famous strain of weed, Winter Wonderland. Although her father raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself. With wit, love, and bracing flashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of love and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief-- and the ways in which our childhoods can threaten our ability to love if we are not brave enough to conquer the past.

Kimi Eisele: The Lightest Object in the Universe

Carson is on the East Coast when the electrical grid goes down. Desperate to find Beatrix, a woman on the West Coast who holds his heart, he sets off along a cross-country railroad line, where he encounters lost souls, clever opportunists, and those seeking salvation. 

Meanwhile, Beatrix and her neighbors begin to construct a cooperative community, working to turn the end of the world into the possibility of a bright beginning. Without modern means of communication, will Beatrix and Carson be able to find their way to each other? The answer may lie with one fifteen-year-old girl, whose actions could ultimately decide the fate of the lovers. The Lightest Object in the Universe by Kimi Eisele is a moving story about adaptation and the power of community, imagining a world where our best traits, born of necessity, can begin to emerge.



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Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women's Olympic Team - virtual event with author Wednesday



Wednesday, July 8, 2020 - 5:00pm
Third Place Books Virtual Event 

Join Elise Hooper (author of LEARNING TO SEE and THE OTHER ALCOTT) for an evening of stories, history, and Olympic trivia to celebrate the release of her new novel FAST GIRLS! Hooper will be joined by Kate Quinn, Tara Conklin, Jennifer Robson, Jillian Cantor, Kerri Maher, Heather Webb, Jane Healy, and Susie Orman Schnall.

Acclaimed author Elise Hooper explores the gripping, real life history of female athletes, members of the first integrated women's Olympic team, and their journeys to the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Nazi Germany. Perfect for readers who love untold stories of amazing women, such as The Only Woman in the Room, Hidden Figures, and The Lost Girls of Paris.

In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago's Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women's delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America's Golden Girl until a nearly-fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.
Outside of Boston, Louise Stokes, one of the few black girls in her town, sees competing as an opportunity to overcome the limitations placed on her. Eager to prove that she has what it takes to be a champion, she risks everything to join the Olympic team.
From Missouri, Helen Stephens, awkward, tomboyish, and poor, is considered an outcast by her schoolmates, but she dreams of escaping the hardships of her farm life through athletic success. Her aspirations appear impossible until a chance encounter changes her life.
These three athletes will join with others to defy society's expectations of what women can achieve. As tensions bring the United States and Europe closer and closer to the brink of war, Betty, Louise, and Helen must fight for the chance to compete as the fastest women in the world amidst the pomp and pageantry of the Nazi-sponsored 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

A New Englander by birth (and at heart), Elise Hooper lives with her husband and two young daughters in Seattle, where she teaches history and literature.

Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women's Olympic Team (Paperback)
By Elise Hooper
$16.99
ISBN: 9780062937995
Availability: Third Place Books, call 206-366-3333
Published: William Morrow Paperbacks - July 7, 2020



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Third Place Books children’s book buyer shares open letter and petition on diversity in publishing

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Rene Holderman at Third Place Books

Rene Holderman, Head Children’s Book Buyer at Third Place Books, has penned an open letter to publishers demanding an improvement in diversity and transparency in Children’s Literature, and has launched an online petition to call for booksellers to consciously stock children’s books by BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) authors.

“I am writing,” Holderman says in her letter, “to express my frustration at how the publishing industry has chosen to handle the lack of diversity in children’s literature.”

In the letter, Holderman, who has worked in children’s books for over 20 years, explains that publishers have responded to a demand for diverse children’s books in part by publishing books featuring diverse characters, but written by white authors.

This practice, she notes, is especially prevalent in the categories of illustrated books, and Graded and Early Chapter Books.

“My frustration stems not only from a severe lack of these particular books,” Holderman writes, “but from the consistent release of Black stories from white authors and white illustrators in the last few years. I would perhaps not be so discouraged if these attempts at diversity did not feel so deceptive...  
"The fact that the book jacket does not make this information blatantly apparent indicates that the publishers are disingenuous in their contributions to true literary diversity.” 

Citing a recent survey published in School Library Journal, which found that the book industry remains 70% white and that no significant improvements in industry diversity have been made since 2015, she writes

“it is crucial to pay BIPOC authors and illustrators for authentic representations of their experiences and communities. We can't keep allowing the publishing industry to profit off of Blackness while saying "Black Lives Matter" if they refuse to make significant strides to actually hire Black creators.”

As Children’s Book Buyer, Holderman is responsible for selecting the titles carried in Third Place Books’ Children’s section. She says that she is committed to prioritizing new titles by BIPOC authors and illustrators in her ordering, and she is urging other booksellers to follow suit.

Holderman’s petition, which was published on Change.org on Friday, June 26, demands that publishers match this effort by making concrete efforts to publish and highlight more books by BIPOC creators.

“I want the children's publishing industry to acknowledge their lack of honest Black representation,” Holderman says, “and going forward [I want publishing] to be transparent about who the author is. Most importantly, children's publishing needs to make a conscious effort to hire and promote Own Voices authors and illustrators.”

Read Holderman’s letter in full, and sign the petition HERE




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My Neighbor, Octavia

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Reprinted with permission of the author

Sheila Liming is an assistant professor of English at the University of North Dakota, where she teaches classes on 20th-century American fiction and digital media. She is a native of Lake Forest Park, where her parents still live.

Butler signing a copy of Fledgling (2005). Wikimedia Commons

My Neighbor, Octavia
By Sheila Liming

For years, I knew Octavia E. Butler, the famed African American science fiction and fantasy writer, by her first name only. That was the way she introduced herself when I first met her back in the fall of 1999. Butler had just purchased the house across the street from my parents’ and joined the ranks of our rather conventional suburban community in Lake Forest Park, WA, located just north of Seattle. A spate of rumors had attended her arrival on the block: “Octavia” wrote novels (about aliens!); “Octavia” had one of those “genius” grants; “Octavia” lived alone and was a reclusive artist type. An interview with Butler appeared in the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Enterprise, our humble (and long-since defunct) local weekly, explaining that our new neighbor was, indeed, the author of a dozen novels and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient.

At the time, I was a high school junior who, like many my age, counted my recently minted driver’s license among my most prized possessions. My new neighbor, meanwhile, did not have a driver’s license—had never driven or owned a car in her life—and this disparity soon became the basis of our neighborly dealings with each other. I would often pass Butler on her walks to and from the grocery store and would stop to offer her rides, which she didn’t always accept; she was an inveterate walker, and walking had even factored into her house purchase. She told me as much on one of the days that she consented to being driven the rest of the way up the hill. She said that she desired only that a grocery store, a bookstore, and a bus stop be located within walking distance, and that the neighborhood should grant her access to the city without actually being in the city.

This was Butler’s motivation for moving to Lake Forest Park, a setting that I, at 16, viewed as insufferably unimportant. I never learned her general motivations for moving to Washington in the first place, but I have since glimpsed some of them in her fiction. Butler grew up in Southern California, remaining in the greater Los Angeles area until the age of 51. In the 1990s, prior to her relocation to Washington, she wrote her award-winning Parable novels. Both Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) describe a not-too-distant dystopic future in which the main characters, initially residents of Southern California, flee northward to escape the growing water crisis there and in the hopes of finding “any job that pays money.” “We’re going to Seattle,” proclaims the character Natividad, who, along with her husband and six-month-old, form part of a “broad river of people” flowing north from California toward the Pacific Northwest in Parable of the Sower.

Butler’s Parable novels—like almost all of her novels—portray California as a site of postmodern exodus and ruin. Butler’s decision to leave California in the late 1990s seems, accordingly, to have hinged on the realization that it was becoming increasingly difficult to remain an optimist in such a setting. In a 2005 appearance on Democracy Now!, for instance, Butler explained that writing the Parable books, which she saw as “cautionary tales,” had left her “overwhelmed” and depressed, yearning for something more “lightweight.” Much like her characters in Parable of the Sower, she imagined that the Pacific Northwest might prove to be a more constructive setting for thinking about the future.

Nonetheless, I imagine that the move to our neighborhood constituted a dramatic change for Butler. She couldn’t help but stick out among the mostly white, unvaryingly middle-class residents of Lake Forest Park, the majority of whom tended to structure their lives around the very things that she lacked— namely, cars and children. But Butler, it is clear, was no stranger to the experience of being a stranger. “I’m black. I’m solitary. I’ve always been an outsider,” is the way she put it in a 1998 Los Angeles Times interview.

Given such a statement, it is tempting to read Butler’s oeuvre through the lens of isolation; her novels ask us, time and again, to reflect on the terms of ordinary outsider-hood. At the same time, though, they also examine the complications and the rewards associated with social belonging. Solitude requires strength and self-assuredness, sure, but so does the trust that social belonging entails. As Walidah Imarisha recounts in her introduction to Octavia’s Brood, a recently released collection of “visionary fiction” dedicated to the author’s memory, Butler never sought to claim the title of “the solitary Black female sci-fi writer. She wanted to be one of many Black female sci-fi writers. She wanted to be one of thousands of folks writing themselves into the present and into the future.”


Descendants of slaves of the Pettway plantation, at Gees Bend, Alabama, February 1937. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein / US Farm Security Administration in the collection of the Library of Congress


For instance, in Kindred (1979), Butler’s best-known and most canonized work, the main character, Dana, travels back in time and winds up on a pre–Civil War plantation in Maryland. There, Dana encounters a variety of characters who are, in one way or another, “kin” to her: both Rufus, who is white, and Alice, who is black, are her distant ancestors, and Dana also gains an appreciation for the ties that establish her fictive kinship with the other slaves on the Weylin plantation.

In spite of these overt references to formal systems of kinship, though, Kindred also advances an argument for the ties that exist between creative laborers in the postindustrial economy. Butler’s protagonist, who is black, is married to Kevin, who is white. Rather than foreground the subject of racial difference, Butler describes Kevin as being “like [Dana]—a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.” Trying to write, for what unites these characters is a bond of creative perseverance that grows and deepens in spite of their personal fears of futility.

Back when I was 16, I, too, wanted to be a writer. If I wasn’t a full-fledged “outsider,” the time that I spent in the company of books meant that I didn’t resemble anything close to an “insider,” either. Which brings me back to the subject of my driver’s license: my anxieties about being an outsider-in-training (among other things) meant that I tended to skip a lot of classes back in high school. In my own, very small and very narcissistic way, I had come to rely on escape and subterfuge to combat the discomfort of social isolation. I didn’t know it then, but, just across the street, my neighbor Octavia was also struggling with similar feelings of isolation and anxiety (in addition to depression and writer’s block, as a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article explains) during that time.

One day, I blew off an entire day of school and instead drove to the remote mountain town where my family had lived and owned property when I was very young. Upon my return to Lake Forest Park, I met Butler coming back from the grocery store. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” she asked me when she got in the car. I told her that I hadn’t felt like going, skirting the deeper complexities of the issue, and said I’d been in Darrington. She responded that she had never visited the town, which is home to fewer than 1,500 people and located more than 60 miles from Lake Forest Park, but that she had seen it on maps. She asked me a variety of questions about the place before concluding our conversation with a remark that, for all its severity, still struck me as well-intended: “You should probably just go to school and stop screwing around,” she said.

I left for college in Ohio in the fall of 2001 and, to my very great regret, did not stay in touch with my former neighbor. Butler, for her own part, eventually conquered her writer’s block and went on to produce a final novel. Fledgling (2005) centers on a group of vampires who occupy a commune of sorts located “a few miles north of Darrington.” I was still in Ohio at the time of its publication, but I bought a copy and read it that winter. I imagined that, upon my next visit back in Lake Forest Park, I might be able to talk to Butler about the book and about Darrington. That conversation, however, did not come to pass: Butler died in February 2006 from what is believed to have been a stroke. My mom called to tell me the news, and it was from her that I learned that Butler’s body had been discovered by the two young girls who lived next door to her. I knew them well; once upon a time, I had been their babysitter.

Now, when I look back on the few years that I spent in close proximity to Butler, I find that I cannot do so without experiencing a kind of concomitant regret. I ask myself how I might have succeeded in being a better neighbor or friend to a person whose celebrity status seemed, to me, to mean that she needed neither. And I dwell on the memory of my missteps, marveling, for example, at the naiveté that led me to invite Butler, a Hugo and Nebula winner, to join my friends and me at our science fiction book club. Even worse, I cringe to think about the wasted opportunity that resulted from my failure to follow up on the invitation (which Butler actually accepted). I remember that we were reading Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, and Butler said she knew it. Of course she knew it: she’d appeared alongside Russell at a sci-fi symposium held in North Carolina that same spring.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Butler’s death, a fact that has been observed by news media tributes and by The Huntington Library in California, which acquired Butler’s papers in 2008 and has hosted a year-long series of commemorative events. In literary circles, then, it’s clear that Butler’s reputation has continued to rise over the last decade. But a recent trip back to Lake Forest Park prompted me to ask the question: did the neighborhood remember, too? I was curious to see what, if anything, might form the basis of the community’s recollections of Butler, and to know the extent of its residents’ acquaintance with her works and literary legacy.

I spoke to Terry Morgan, who still lives in the neighborhood and remembers passing Butler on the street and giving her “the black nod.” “I was the only other African American artist / musician living in the area, and Butler was kind of a mystery to me. You almost never saw her,” he said. As our conversation progressed, I learned that Morgan’s relationship with Butler in fact had the same foundation as my own: “I used to offer her rides,” he told me, explaining that, in exchange for this service, Butler invited him inside her house one day and presented him with an autographed copy of a book. The moral that emerged from our conversation was also similar: Morgan and I both wish that we could have known our neighbor better, and we both regret that feelings of intimidation and awe prevented us from doing that.

This regret finds its echo in Butler’s fiction, where characters are often forced to alter their expectations of independence in the wake of catastrophe, to venture to know and to trust their neighbors in ways that they previously believed to be impossible, or implausible. I squandered much of the opportunity that I had to know Octavia as a neighbor, but I have relished the process of getting to know Butler as an author, builder of worlds, and archivist of life in America at the dawn of the 21st century.



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Tickets required for virtual event with author David Mitchell

Monday, June 29, 2020



Join Third Place Books and Seattle Arts and Lectures to celebrate the long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks

Join David Mitchell for a virtual conversation with novelist Hari Kunzru (White Tears).

Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you've never heard of. Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss and guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, Utopia Avenue embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho. 
David Mitchell's kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue's turbulent life and times; of fame's Faustian pact and stardom's wobbly ladder; of the families we choose and the ones we don't; of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper; of music, madness, and idealism. 
Can we really change the world, or does the world change us?

Get your tickets here!


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