previous events

• 

  Swingland:

  Between the Sheets of the Secretive, Sometimes Messy, but Always Adventurous Swinging Lifestyle

  by Daniel Stern

  Touchstone

  $26.00 List Price

  For more info visit:
  Amazon • IndieBound • Barnes & Noble

  Monday, October 28

  7:00pm

  Daniel Stern Swingland

  An estimated fifteen million strong worldwide, swingers are everywhere—a huge community hiding in plain sight whose erotic pastime remains a complete mystery to the rest of us. In Swingland, Daniel Stern outs himself and the secretive society he loves, recounting his transformation from a bumbling …

  An estimated fifteen million strong worldwide, swingers are everywhere—a huge community hiding in plain sight whose erotic pastime remains a complete mystery to the rest of us. In Swingland, Daniel Stern outs himself and the secretive society he loves, recounting his transformation from a bumbling neophyte terrified of all things carnal into a veteran sexual adventurer.
  
  Once confined to suburban key parties and private clubs, “swinging” has transformed, via the Internet, into a free-for-all. Today only a few mouse clicks locates your perfect couple (or couples), far easier and less riskily than ever before (no worrying about running into them at PT A meetings). There are plenty of bumps and bruises along the way for Stern, including countless rejections, missed opportunities, and one particular AARP orgy. But slowly and surely, through an impressive series of threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, this “Vanilla” newbie becomes a much sought-after partner for couples looking to spice up their relationships. During his exploits, he learns a whole new lexicon (there aren’t many single women swingers, or “Unicorns,” but plenty of MFMs, FMFs, MFMFs, and GBs), as well as invaluable advice (be honest, open, and know your limits).
  
  But Swingland is much more than a titillating exposé. Stern’s wit and infectious enthusiasm make Swingland as improbably safe as it is fun—and impossible to put down. All are welcome, but bring flip-flops (it can get messy).
  
  “Daniel Stern's Swingland is brave, funny, eye-opening, entertaining and well-written . . . everything one could ask, really, of a book about sex. But for all its titillations, Swingland is also something more rare: it is humane, and vulnerable. The book is a genuine delight.” Matthew Specktor, author of American Dream Machine
  
  "Los Angeles screenwriter Stern penetrates the unconventional world of swinging… A unique, voyeuristic expose of a taboo bedroom counterculture." Kirkus Reviews
  
  Daniel Stern is Director of Operations at an entrepreneurial company and a screenwriter who placed in the top four in Project Greenlight and was a Sundance Lab screenwriting finalist. He lives in Los Angeles.

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• 

  The Longest Road:

  Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean

  by Philip Caputo

  Henry Holt and Co.

  $28.00 List Price

  For more info visit:
  Amazon • IndieBound • Barnes & Noble

  Monday, October 21

  7:00pm

  Philip Caputo The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean

  One of America’s most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large. Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo…

  One of America’s most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large.
  
  Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take shape: How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he’d drive from the nation’s southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to everyday Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.
  
  So it was that in 2011, in an America more divided than in living memory, Caputo, his wife, and their two English setters made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as “Fred” and “Ethel”) from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 16,000 miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today’s United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could cause us to pull apart.
  
  
  “It is a joy it is to read these stories. I mean that: pure joy. The Longest Road is the best thing to come along since Blue Highways and Travels With Charley.”
  
  —Doug Stanton
  
  
  “… A skilled and seasoned reporter, Caputo strikes small veins of storytelling gold…. An easy, entertaining and at times provocative summer read.” —The Miami Herald
  
  
  Philip Caputo has written 15 books, including two memoirs, five books of general nonfiction, and eight novels. His acclaimed memoir of Vietnam, A Rumor of War, has been published in 15 languages, has sold two million copies since its publication in 1977, and is widely regarded as a classic in the literature of war.
  
  Caputo has won 10 journalistic and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 (shared for team investigative reporting on vote fraud in Chicago), the Overseas Press Club Award in 1973, the Sidney Hillman Foundation award in 1977 (for A Rumor of War), the Connecticut Book Award in 2006, and the Boston Library Literary Lights Award in 2007. His first novel, Horn of Africa, was a National Book Award finalist in 1980, and his 2007 essay on illegal immigration won the Blackford Prize for nonfiction from the University of Virginia.

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• 

  The Affairs of Others:

  A Novel

  by Amy Grace Loyd

  Picador

  $24.00 List Price

  For more info visit:
  Amazon • IndieBound • Barnes & Noble

  Monday, October 14

  7:00pm

  Amy Grace Loyd The Affairs of Others

  A mesmerizing debut novel about a young woman, haunted by loss, who rediscovers passion and possibility when she’s drawn into the tangled lives of her neighbors. Five years after her young husband’s death, Celia Cassill has moved from one Brooklyn neighborhood to another, but she has not moved on.…

  A mesmerizing debut novel about a young woman, haunted by loss, who rediscovers passion and possibility when she’s drawn into the tangled lives of her neighbors.
  
  Five years after her young husband’s death, Celia Cassill has moved from one Brooklyn neighborhood to another, but she has not moved on. The owner of a small apartment building, she has chosen her tenants for their ability to respect one another’s privacy. Celia believes in boundaries, solitude, that she has a right to her ghosts. She is determined to live a life at a remove from the chaos and competition of modern life. Everything changes with the arrival of a new tenant, Hope, a dazzling woman of a certain age on the run from her husband’s recent betrayal. When Hope begins a torrid and noisy affair, and another tenant mysteriously disappears, the carefully constructed walls of Celia’s world are tested and the sanctity of her building is shattered—through violence and sex, in turns tender and dark. Ultimately, Celia and her tenants are forced to abandon their separate spaces for a far more intimate one, leading to a surprising conclusion and the promise of genuine joy.
  
  Amy Grace Loyd investigates interior spaces of the body and the New York warrens in which her characters live, offering a startling emotional honesty about the traffic between men and women. The Affairs of Others is a story about the irrepressibility of life and desire, no matter the sorrows or obstacles.
  
  
  “A wonderful novel, beautifully written and sensuous, rich with emotion and psychological truth. Amy Grace Loyd’s prose hums with desire as she creates a Brooklyn walk-up that comes alive with the yearning of its tenants and moves them toward an unforgettable ending—suspenseful, erotic, and ultimately hopeful.”—Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
  
  “Debut novels don’t come any more sure-handed and deftly written than The Affairs of Others. But it’s the damaged, brokenhearted Celia—Amy Grace Loyd’s brave, all-in protagonist—who latches on to us and refuses to loosen her grip.”—Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
  
  
  Amy Grace Loyd is an executive editor at Byliner Inc. and was the fiction and literary editor at Playboy magazine. A recipient of both MacDowell and Yaddo fellowships, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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• 

  Lawrence in Arabia:

  War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

  by Scott Anderson

  Doubleday

  $28.95 List Price

  For more info visit:
  Amazon • IndieBound • Barnes & Noble

  Monday, September 30

  7:00pm

  Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

  A New York Times Bestseller, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA is a thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history – the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East. The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War One was, in the…

  A New York Times Bestseller, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA is a thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history – the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East.
  
  The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War One was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, “a sideshow of a sideshow.” Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant attention to the Middle Eastern theater. As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by a small handful of adventurers and low-level officers far removed from the corridors of power.
  
  Curt Prüfer was an effete academic attached to the German embassy in Cairo, whose clandestine role was to foment Islamic jihad against British rule. Aaron Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist and committed Zionist who gained the trust of the Ottoman governor of Syria. William Yale was the fallen scion of the American aristocracy, who traveled the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Standard Oil, dissembling to the Turks in order gain valuable oil concessions. At the center of it all was Lawrence. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist excavating ruins in the sands of Syria; by 1917 he was the most romantic figure of World War One, battling both the enemy and his own government to bring about the vision he had for the Arab people.
  
  The intertwined paths of these four men – the schemes they put in place, the battles they fought, the betrayals they endured and committed – mirror the grandeur, intrigue and tragedy of the war in the desert. Prüfer became Germany’s grand spymaster in the Middle East. Aaronsohn constructed an elaborate Jewish spy-ring in Palestine, only to have the anti-Semitic and bureaucratically-inept British first ignore and then misuse his organization, at tragic personal cost. Yale would become the only American intelligence agent in the entire Middle East – while still secretly on the payroll of Standard Oil. And the enigmatic Lawrence rode into legend at the head of an Arab army, even as he waged secret war against his own nation’s imperial ambitions.
  
  Based on years of intensive primary document research, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.
  
  “Lawrence of Arabia is said to have reinvented warfare, and Scott Anderson has now reinvented Lawrence. By placing him alongside the other adventurers and spies who roamed the Arabian war theater, Anderson brilliantly illuminates how the modern Middle East came to be. The research in this book is so daringly original, and the writing so spectacular, that it feels like I'm reading about the topic for the first time. A deep and utterly captivating reading experience.” —Sebastian Junger, New York Times bestselling author of WAR and THE PERFECT STORM
  
  "A startlingly rich and revealing portrait of one of history’s most iconic figures. Equally satisfying is the cast of obscure German and American agents nearly as eccentric as Lawrence himself. They exercised such outsized influence on shaping the world as we know it that reading about them here is not only revelatory but practically surreal. Anderson is an exquisite writer and dogged researcher, whose accounts of century-old brutalities are made utterly convincing by the knowledge that he has personally witnessed the sort of offhanded horror he’s unearthed in archives. Lovers of big 20th-century history will be in nirvana."
  
  —Tom Reiss, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE BLACK COUNT and THE ORIENTALIST
  
  Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, whose work also appears in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper's, Outside and many other publications. Over the years he has reported from Beirut, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Israel, Sudan, Sarajevo, El Salvador and many other war-torn countries. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel Triage, as well as the nonfiction book The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny and, with his brother Jon Lee Anderson War Zones. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Anderson lives in upstate New York with his wife, the filmmaker Nanette Burstein.

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