A memorable gift for Francophiles and armchair travelers, this delightful book captures the fanciful and romantic spirit of Paris through images of the countless angels that grace the city’s fountains and facades, monuments and mansions, rooftops, doorways, and window frames.

Richard Kramer's new novel These Things Happen is set in Manhattan and told through a cast of familiar, sympathetic voices. It's the story of Wesley, a bright, sensitive and self-conscious teenager who moves from his mother and step-father's home to live with his gay and hitherto elusive father. When Wesley and his best friend Theo become victims of random violence, the fragile structure of his family is shattered and they are forced to confront their real feelings. Trauma makes them authentic.

Join Tamim Ansary, Sahar Muradi, and Zohra Saed for a discussion about the history and present day realities of Afghanistan, a country very much at the center of current political debate.

About Games Without Rules:

Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real; but it sits atop an older struggle, between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan: a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.

Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out, and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every 40 to 60 years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told in conversational, storytelling style, and focusing on key events and personalities, Games without Rules provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.

About Darkest America:

An exploration and celebration of a controversial tradition that, contrary to popular opinion, is alive and active after more than 150 years.

Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen investigate the complex history of black minstrelsy, adopted in the mid-nineteenth century by African American performers who played the grinning blackface fool to entertain black and white audiences. We now consider minstrelsy an embarrassing relic, but once blacks and whites alike saw it as a black art form—and embraced it as such. And, as the authors reveal, black minstrelsy remains deeply relevant to popular black entertainment, particularly in the work of contemporary artists like Dave Chappelle, Flavor Flav, Spike Lee, and Lil Wayne. Darkest America explores the origins, heyday, and present-day manifestations of this tradition, exploding the myth that it was a form of entertainment that whites foisted on blacks, and shining a sure-to-be controversial light on how these incendiary performances can be not only demeaning but also, paradoxically, liberating.

McSweeney's is pleased to announce the release of their newest non-fiction, Real Man Adventures by T Cooper. Come celebrate this brilliant collage of letters, essays, interviews and artwork that will forever change what you think about what it means it be a man— with music performances by Hem, Geo Wyeth, Wingdale Community Singers (Rick Moody, Hannah marcus, & David Grubbs), and Dynasty Handbag. Tickets only $12 Advance, $15 day of show.

Rabbi Kushner will discuss The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened To A Good Person. From one of the most trusted spiritual advisers, a thoughtful, illuminating guide to that most fascinating of biblical texts, the book of Job, and what it can teach us about living in a troubled world. (Free for CBE members/ $10 suggested donation for non-members)

Playwright August Wilson praised Romare Bearden for his celebration of “black life presented on its own terms, on a grand and epic scale, with all its richness and fullness, in a language that was vibrant and which, made attendant to everyday life, ennobled it, affirmed its value, and exalted its presence.” In the last year, Bearden’s centenary was marked nationwide with a host of exhibitions and events befitting the legacy of a great American artist. Now the Poetry Center invites creative writers to speak about what his life and art has meant to them. Thanks to Russell Goings, Bearden’s devoted friend, our tribute will also feature a special showing of Bearden’s artwork in 92Y’s Weill Art Gallery.

Barkan's splendid meditations take us from Plutarch, who believed that 'painting is mute poetry, poetry a speaking picture,' through Horace, to the art and poetry of early modern Europe. In his rich and detailed musings on this ongoing debate in the history of ideas, Barkan concludes, as Shakespeare does, that "even when we insist that poetry and painting lie separately, it turns out they lie together."

We are pleased to welcome Leonard Barkan and his colleague Thomas Hare to the store for a conversation about words and images. Please join us.

Join us for the third Double Take Reading, organized by Albert Mobilio, where three pairs of authors read original shorts written about a shared experience. Featuring:

Susan Daitch & Christopher Beha on the New York Aquarium

Richard Price & Lorraine Adams on going home

Jennifer Gilmore & Joanna Hershon on Hurricane Sandy in Red Hook

Apexart turns into a "supper club" for the evening with snacks and refreshments. Free and open to the public.

“Real Man Adventures” is T Cooper’s exploration of the paradoxes and pleasures of masculinity. He takes us through his transition into identifying as male, and how he went on to marry his wife and become an adoring stepfather of two children. Join us for an evening that will also feature music performances inspired by the book from Soce the Elemental Wizard and Rocco Katastrophe. T Cooper is the author of three novels, including “The Beaufort Diaries” and “Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes.”

Every story takes places somewhere. But how do authors decide where to set their characters in motion? How does setting influence character, mood, and action? And what difference does it make if the place is real or imagined? Jennifer Haigh, Hari Kunzru, Sonya Chung, and editor Jennifer Acker discuss the power of place in fiction. Co-sponsored by The Common, a new print literary magazine publishing literature and images with a strong sense of place.

Detroit native and Rolling Stone contributor Mark Binelli takes us on a journey through America’s greatest urban failure and proves that the city might be our most promising laboratory for the future. The Observer’s Michael Miller and fi lmmaker Heidi Ewing join the author in conversation.

You’ve seen Victoria Roberts’ hilarious cartoons in The New Yorker for nearly twenty-five years, and you’ve probably seen her illustrations in The New York Times or The Wall Street Street Journal. Now come and see her discuss her new whimsical, fun novel After the Fall with her friend and colleague New Yorker cartoonist Arnie Levin. After The Fall is a playful, humorous look at a quirky Upper East Side family (loosely based on her own life), a perfect holiday gift for those who love books and cartoons!

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity. We are honored to invite you to a conversation between the author and Elaine Pagels.

Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.

Peter Neil Carroll has written about place in America both as an historian and as a poet. His poetry is inspired by travels around the country exploring lost landscapes, history, and culture from the Black Hills and New Mexico desert to the Ohio Valley. This second collection, A Child Turns Back to Wave: Poetry of Lost Places, won the Prize Americana

Find out everything you ever wanted to know about writing, publishing, and reading romance novels but were afraid (or never had the chance) to ask! Authors Maya Rodale (Seducing Mr. Knightly) and Miranda Neville (The Importance of Being Wicked), Avon editor Tessa Woodward, and RT’s Morgan Doremus will discuss the popular genre from all the angles, take questions, and Rodale and Neville will sign.

The super-sharp and funny author of White Teeth and On Beauty explores her new novel set in northwest London, the corner of the city where Smith grew up and lives part-time now. Taking inspiration from Virigina Woolf, Smith's surprising story focuses on four people who grew up in the neighborhood, left and are reunited 30 years later. In conversation with Hari Kunzru (Gods Without Men). $25; Member $21; 30 & Under $15.

ABOUT NORMA COLE

Norma Cole is a poet, painter and translator. She is the author of Spinoza in Her Youth, Natural Light, Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems, 1988—2008, and, most recently, Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside. A book of essays and talks, To Be at Music, has been published. Her translations from the French include Jean Daive’s A Woman with Several Lives, Fouad Gabriel Naffah’s Mind-God and the Properties of Nitrogen, Danielle Collobert’s It Then, and Crosscut Universe: Writers on Writing from France. Cole has received awards from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Gertrude Stein Awards, the Fund for Poetry, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She teaches at the University of San Francisco.

ABOUT JULIAN T. BROLASKI

Julian Talamantez Brolaski is the author of Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), and co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards (Litmus Press / Belladonna Books 2009). Julian lives in Brooklyn where xe is an editor at Litmus Press and plays country music with Juan & the Pines (www.reverbnation.com/juanandthepines). New work is on the blog hermofwarsaw.

$6 general admission; $3 Dia members, students, and seniors

Advance ticket purchases recommended.

Tickets are also available for purchase at the door, subject to availability.

Greenlight is proud to partner with St. Joseph's College and The Brooklyn Rail to present the Brooklyn Voices series of lectures, forums, performances, and public discussion at St. Joseph's College. The aim of the Brooklyn Voices series is to promote and enhance the creative vitality of our home neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill by providing writers, artists, and intellectuals with a local forum in which to discuss and present their works.

For the first lecture of this year’s Brooklyn Voices series, Sapphire, author of The Kid and a member of the St. Joseph's Writer’s Foundry faculty, will discuss her perspective on the art of writing and of the influences that inspire her work. Her first novel, Push sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was the basis of the Academy Award nominated film Precious. In her latest work The Kid, Sapphire tells the electrifying story of Abdul Jones, the son of Push's unforgettable heroine, Precious. Left alone to navigate a world in which love and hate sometimes hideously masquerade, forced to confront unspeakable violence, his history and the dark corners of his own heart, Abdul claws his way toward adulthood and toward an identity he can stand behind.

St. Joseph’s College is located at 245 Clinton Avenue.

The Center for Fiction was lucky enough to escape Hurricane Sandy without any damage, but we're teaming up with members of the literary community to give back to those less fortunate. We're working with the author Leora Skolkin-Smith to put together a reading of some of your favorite authors. We hope you'll be inspired by their voices to give. All proceeds will go to Restore Red Hook. Readers will include: Helen Benedict, George Blecher, Wesley Brown, Beverly Gologorsky, Phoebe Hoban, Joanna Hershon, Anne Landsman, Eileen Myles, Dawn Raffel, Victoria Redel, Deborah Shupack, Dan Simon, Leora Skolkin-Smith, Steve Stern, Ronna Wineberg and more

The definitive book about The Smiths, one of the most beloved, respected, and storied indie rock bands in music history.

They were, their fans believe, the best band in the world. Hailing from Manchester, England, The Smiths—Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce—were critical and popular favorites throughout their mid-1980s heyday and beyond. To this day, due to their unforgettable songs and lyrics, they are considered one of the greatest British rock groups of all time—up there with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and the Clash.

Tony Fletcher paints a vivid portrait of the fascinating personalities within the group: Morrissey, the witty, literate lead singer whose loner personality and complex lyrics made him an icon for teenagers who felt forlorn and forgotten; his songwriting partner Marr, the gregarious guitarist who became a rock god for a generation of indie kids; and the talented, good-looking rhythm section duo of bassist Rourke and drummer Joyce. Despite the band's tragic breakup at the height of their success, A Light That Never Goes Out is a celebration: the saga of four working-class kids from a northern English city who come together despite contrasting personalities, find a musical bond, inspire a fanatical following, and leave a legacy that changed the music world—and the lives of their fans.

Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner, Alibis reminds the reader that Aciman is a master of the personal essay.

From the back rooms of New York City’s age-old magic societies to cutting-edge psychology labs, three-card monte games on Canal Street to glossy Las Vegas casinos, Fooling Houdini recounts Alex Stone’s quest to join the ranks of master magicians and what he encounters along the way. Please join us. Tricks will be played.

As Stone navigates this quirky and occasionally hilarious subculture populated by brilliant eccentrics, he pulls back the curtain on a community shrouded in secrecy, fueled by obsession and brilliance, and organized around one overriding need: to prove one’s worth by deceiving others. But his journey is more than a tale of tricks, gigs, and geeks. By investing some of the lesser-known corners of psychology, neuroscience, physics, history, and even crime, all through the lens of trickery and illusion, Fooling Houdini arrives at a host of startling revelations about how the mind works—and why, sometimes, it doesn’t.

Fit is a book about architecture and society that seeks to fundamentally change how architects and the public think about the task of design. Distinguished architect and urbanist Robert Geddes argues that buildings, landscapes, and cities should be designed to fit: fit the purpose, fit the place, fit future possibilities. We invite you to a presentation and conversation with the author.

Fit replaces old paradigms, such as form follows function, and less is more, by recognizing that the relationship between architecture and society is a true dialogue—dynamic, complex, and, if carried out with knowledge and skill, richly rewarding.

With a tip of the hat to John Dewey, Fit explores architecture as we experience it. Geddes starts with questions: Why do we design where we live and work? Why do we not just live in nature, or in chaos? Why does society care about architecture? Why does it really matter? Fit answers these questions through a fresh examination of the basic purposes and elements of architecture—beginning in nature, combining function and expression, and leaving a legacy of form.

Robert Geddes has simultaneously pursued three careers for over 50 years: one as accomplished architect, one as pioneering educator, and another as urbanist, publishing works such as Metropolis Unbound: The Sprawling American City and the Search for Alternative. He is Professor Emeritus at and former Dean of Princeton University's School of Architecture.

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific authors of our time. Her novels include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, A Garden of Earthly Delights, them, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, and dozens of others. Her canon also includes numerous collections of short stories, poetry, essays and memoirs, young adult fiction, and plays. Join the two-time O. Henry Award winning writer as she discusses her illustrious career and creative process.

So that everyone may live here, I build my house with transparent odes.

Pablo Neruda’s first reading in the United States took place at the Poetry Center in June of 1966. Said Neruda that night: “To all of you who come to meet a poet who came from so far away, for this feeling of fellowship I never expected, I thank you.” Upon publication of All the Odes—he once committed to writing one per week—contemporary poet-translators gather to read from his work. Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1971, Neruda was “the greatest poet of the 20th century—in any language,” wrote Gabriel García Márquez.

What does it mean to be human? Humanism has mostly considered this question from a Western perspective. Hamid Dabashi asks the questions anew, from a non-European point of view. His groundbreaking The World of Persian Literary Humanism presents this rich tradition as the creative and subversive subconscious of Islamic civilization.We are pleased to invite you to a presentation and discussion.

Exploring how 1,400 years of Persian literature have taken up the question of what it means to be human, Dabashi proposes that the literary subconscious of a civilization may also be the undoing of its repressive measures. This could account for the masculinist hostility of the early Arab conquest that accused Persian culture of effeminate delicacy and sexual misconduct, and later of scientific and philosophical inaccuracy. As the designated feminine subconscious of a decidedly masculinist civilization, Persian literary humanism speaks from a hidden and defiant vantage point—and this is what inclines it toward creative subversion.

Literary BFFs is a series hosted by David Gutkowski, aka Largehearted Boy, where authors are paired up with the people who know them all too well — their best friends.

Bonobos: They’re just like us, except they’re apes. In Eliot Schrefer’s Endangered, a girl with no fondness for these clever monkeys is forced to travel to the Congo to a bonobo sanctuary when revolution breaks out. Girl, and apes, must escape into the jungle and rely on each other to survive.

Schrefer will be in conversation with his friend David Levithan, editor at Scholastic, and author of many books, most recently, Every Day. Levithan will grill Schrefer about his book, and perhaps also uncover some humiliating details only a best friend would know.

Come in from the fall chill and listen to two wonderful poets, who are also good friends, read from their latest work and then interview each other. Tracy K. Smith is the author of two books of poems and the recipient of the James Laughlin Award and this year’s Pulitzer Prize for her book, Life on Mars. Tina Chang has written three volumes of poetry and won numerous prizes and awards, she’s been the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn since 2010.

Writers Ian Frazier and Karen Russell and restaurateur Danny Meyer tell favorite stories about lunch, with an introduction by Laura Shapiro and Rebecca Federman, the curators of the Library's current Lunch Hour NYC exhibition. Their conversation will be moderated by Molly O'Neill.

Writers Jami Attenberg (The Middlesteins) and Joshua Henkin (The World Without You) in conversation

Attenberg’s and Henkin’s recent novels feature generations of sprawling, quarrelsome Jewish relatives. The two discuss the challenges involved in capturing the contemporary Jewish family in fiction.

Come and spend the evening listening to two of fashion’s biggest image-makers. Kelly Klein and Sam Shahid discuss Klein’s new book and the world of image making. How does one shape and create an image that is able to intrigue, provoke, soothe, and sell? Come and find out.

Kelly Klein worked for both Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein as an assistant designer. She then left the industry to work as a photographer. She’s worked for endless magazines including British Vogue, French Vogue, Interview and Harpers Bazaar. She’s also written and produced six books of photography.

Sam Shahid has been working as a Creative Director for over twenty-five years. His company Shahid & Company, Inc. works in the fashion, publishing, sports and beauty market. His clients include Versace, Asprey, and Abercrombie and Fitch. He’s also art directed over sixty books of photographs including Klein’s Pools: Reflections.

Historian Stéphane Gerson reads and signs his latest, a scholarly exploration of the life and afterlife of Michel de Nostredame, the astrologer whose Prophecies have been interpreted, adopted by successive media, and eventually transformed into the Gospel of Doom for the modern age.

Catherine Barnett’s (pictured) new poetry collection, “The Game of Boxes,” appeared from Graywolf Press in August 2012. Ilya Kaminsky reads from his new book, “Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva” (Alice James Books, 2012), co-“narrated” with poet Jean Valentine. D. Nurkse’s most recent title is “A Night in Brooklyn” (Knopf, 2012). Jean Valentine’s poetry collections include “Break the Glass” (Copper Canyon Press, 2010).

Join 2 renowned authors for an evening of conversation, readings and author Q & A to celebrate the publication of Dark Pool of Light: Reality and Consciousness: Volume Three.

In books such as Embyogenesis and Embryos, Galaxies, and Sentient Beings, Richard Grossinger brought together the subjects of biological embryology and consciousness as an embodied experience ("The embryo is the universe writing itself on its own body"). In Dark Pool of Light, a three volume series, Grossinger weaves neuroscience-based behaviorism and the phenomenology of "being" and reality together with psychological and psychospiritual views of "that single thing which is most difficult to understand or vindicate: our own existence." All three volumes of the book will be available at the talk and signing.

Please join us for an evening of poetry in celebration and memory of Lexi Rudnitsky (1972-2005), the wonderful poet, teacher, and activist, on the eve of her birthday. The five featured readers include recent winners of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book in Poetry, among them Laura Cronk, author of Having Been an Accomplice, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, author of Sightseer, Allison Seay, author of To See the Queen, Anne Shaw, author of Undertow, and Alexandra Teague, author of Mortal Geography.

Former Poet Laureate, currently poetry editor at Slate, poet, essayist, literary critic, translator, and jazz aficionado Robert Pinsky is an artist-intellectual open to new experience. He is well-matched by his partner for this performance of How to Get Started, the pop-folk singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding, a.k.a the novelist Wesley Stace, author of Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer. Wendy Lesser, editor of The Threepenny Review, moderates the post-performance conversation. $30; Members $25; Under 30 $15.

In celebration of Louise Glück’s Poems 1962-2012, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, poets Frank Bidart, Dana Levin, Robert Pinsky, Peter Streckfus, and Ellen Bryant Voigt will join Glück on stage to read selections of her work. Hosted by the School of Writing, the Academy of American Poets, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Ecco Press.

Moonlighter Presents is an occasional lecture series presenting speakers who are not experts on their subjects. Speakers are encouraged to give talks on topics that they are passionate about and intrigued by but which they are not able to pursue in their professional or academic lives. The tenth Moonlighter will feature Jon Natchez speaking on the everyday lives lurking in American crime-fiction novels; Carlene Bauer on the unknown secrets of South Jersey and its contradictions; and David Dixon dissecting Courbet through the lens of immortality and social responsibility. The tenth Moonlighter Presents is happening Friday the 14th at 8PM, space generously provided by Studio BPM in Williamsburg.

Join dozens of terrific writers and performers for a reading of Charles Dickens’s holiday classic, A Christmas Carol.

Drop in early and often to catch a few surprise performers or linger through the afternoon for the whole, spirited tale. All books are 10 percent off, and the cafe will be stocked with seasonal specials. Finish your Christmas shopping with unique literary finds, have some festive treats from our cafe with a hot cocoa or a glass of wine and enjoy!

Festivities will kick off at noon with Christmas caroling from members of the New York City Master Chorale. The reading of A Christmas Carol will begin at 1 PM inside the bookstore.

Alicia Ostriker & Gerald Stern — Poems

Saturday, December 15th, 2012 at 3PM — Labyrinth Books Princeton

Poets Gerald Stern and Alicia Ostriker will be reading from their new collections. Please join us.

Ostriker's new volume, The Book of Life, charts her extraordinary struggle to deal with a wounded world and find reasons for hope.

The lyric poems of In Beauty Bright, although marked by the same passion and swiftness as Stern’s previous work, move into an area of knowledge—even wisdom—that reflects a long life of writing, teaching, and activism. They are poems of grief and anger, but the music is delicate and moving.

Described by John Ashbery as “pared down but rich, dense, fevered, exactly right and even eerily beautiful,” Christine Schutt’s prose has earned her comparisons to Emily Dickinson and Eudora Welty.

Her newest, Prosperous Friends, tracks a young couple lost in a game of psychosexual brinkmanship. Like Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, Schutt’s portrait of a young couple in ruins is exquisitely beautiful, stunningly resonant, and so minutely and vividly observed you feel devastated at its close. With Prosperous Friends, Schutt takes her place among the best writers of our time.”

Junot Díaz’s new collection of stories is This Is How You Lose Her. His writing is “radiant with the hard lives of those who leave and also those who stay behind—it is a rousing hymn about the struggle to defy bone-cracking history with ordinary, and extraordinary, love,” wrote Walter Mosley. “His characters explode off the page into the canon of our literature and our hearts.”

Julie Otsuka won this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award for The Buddha in the Attic. She “creates a voice that is hypnotic and irresistible, and renders her story with the power of the most ancient, timeless myths, the legends that crowd our dreams, and the truths we cannot bear,” wrote the judges.