Apr
27
9:00 AM09:00
Apr
27
10:00 AM10:00
Book Launch with Lauren Castillo: Just Like Millie
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome local author and illustrator Lauren Castillo to Harrisburg on Independent Bookstore Day for a story time and signing on her new children’s picture book, Just Like Millie. This event is free and open to the public.
To help celebrate Lauren’s new book, we’ll be having a special dog and puppy adoption event with Nirvana Animal Rescue! Join them on-site at the bookstore with adorable pups looking for their forever homes.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
In a gentle story from Caldecott Honoree Lauren Castillo, a shy young girl finds exploring her new city and making friends overwhelming—until a rescue dog helps her uncover the bravery that was always in her.
A young girl and her mother move to an apartment in a new city. Despite her mother’s efforts to take her out, the girl would rather play by herself in their cozy home—she feels just fine on her own. Introductions to children her age have her hiding behind her mother’s legs, and invitations to group activities have her in tears. That is, until she meets Millie, a rescue dog who is not too big, not too small, and kisses her arm when the girl nervously reaches out. With Millie, saying hello to new people isn’t so scary . . . and maybe making a friend isn’t either. Through emotionally honest prose and soft, expressive illustrations, Lauren Castillo explores one girl’s shyness and anxiety—and how one dog’s love helps her open up—in a warm picture book that reminds readers of how the right companion can make the world feel like a less frightening place.
About the Author:
Lauren Castillo studied illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art and received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She is the author and illustrator of the 2015 Caldecott Honor-winning book Nana in the City, as well as The Troublemaker and Melvin and the Boy. She currently draws and dreams in Harrisburg, PA.
Apr
27
2:00 PM14:00
Book Signing with Gwendolyn Kiste: The Haunting of Velkwood
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome Bram Stoker award-winning Gwendolyn Kiste to Harrisburg for a meet & greet and signing on her new horror novel, The Haunting of Velkwood. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
From Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a chilling novel about three childhood friends who miraculously survive the night everyone in their suburban hometown turned into ghosts—perfect for fans of Yellowjackets.
The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter—and only one has in the past twenty years, until now.
Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything to do with the tragedy that took her mother and eight-year-old sister, drifting from one job to another, never settling anywhere or with anyone, feeling as trapped by her past as if she was still there in the small town she so desperately wanted to escape from. When a new researcher tracks her down and offers to pay her to come back to enter the vicinity, Talitha claims she’s just doing it for the money. Of all the crackpot theories over the years, no one has discovered what happened the night Talitha, her estranged, former best friend Brett, and Grace, escaped their homes twenty years ago. Will she finally get the answers she’s been looking for all these years, or is this just another dead end?
Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste has created a suburban ghost story about a small town that trapped three young women who must confront the past if they’re going to have a future.
About the Author:
Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Haunting of Velkwood. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including LitHub, Nightmare Magazine, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor’s Nightfire, The Lineup, and The Dark. She’s a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror Award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, and Dragon Awards. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at GwendolynKiste.com.
Apr
30
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Stephen Fried: Profiles in Mental Health Courage
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome New York Times bestselling author Stephen Fried to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new book, Profiles in Mental Health Courage. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Books may not be signed until after the event.
About the Book:
Profiles in Mental Health Courage portrays the dramatic journeys of a diverse group of Americans who have struggled with their mental health. This book offers deeply compelling stories about the bravery and resilience of those living with a variety of mental illnesses and addictions.
Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction—and the nation’s—in his bestselling memoir, A Common Struggle. Now, he and his Common Struggle coauthor, award-winning healthcare journalist Stephen Fried, have crafted this powerful new book sharing the untold stories of others—a special group who agreed to talk about their illnesses, treatments, and struggles for the first time.
When Kennedy’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, published his classic book Profiles in Courage, he hoped to inspire “political courage” by telling the stories of brave U.S. senators who changed America.
In Profiles in Mental Health Courage, former Congressman Kennedy adapts his uncle’s idea to inspire the “mental health courage” it takes for those with these conditions to treat their illnesses, and risk telling their stories to help America face its crisis in our families, our workplaces, our jails, and on our streets. The resounding silence surrounding these illnesses remains persistent, and this book takes an unflinching look at the experience of mental illness and addiction that inspires profound connection, empathy, and action.
In this book, you’ll meet people of all ages, backgrounds, and futures, across politics and government, Hollywood and the arts, tech and business, sports and science—some recovering, some relapsing, some just barely holding on, but all sharing experiences and insights we need to better understand. You’ll also meet those trying to help them through—parents, siblings, spouses, therapists, bosses, doctors, and friends who create the extended families needed to support care and wellness.
The personal stories they share with Kennedy and Fried are intimate, sometimes shocking, always revealing. And they are essential reading for caregivers, family members, policymakers, and the general public—just as they are for those who often feel alone in experiencing these challenges themselves.
About the Author:
Stephen Fried is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author who teaches at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Pennsylvania. He is, most recently, the author of the historical biography Appetite for America, and the coauthor, with Congressman Patrick Kennedy, of A Common Struggle. His earlier books include the biography Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia and the investigative books Bitter Pills and The New Rabbi. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written frequently for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, and Philadelphia Magazine. He was born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and now lives with his wife in Philadelphia.
May
4
2:00 PM14:00
An Afternoon with Erik Larson and Steve Inskeep: The Demon of Unrest
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore and WITF are honored to welcome #1 New York Times bestselling author Erik Larson to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new book, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. Larson will be in conversation with NPR's Steve Inskeep. This event is in partnership with WITF.
This ticketed event will take place at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Harrisburg, located at 2701 North 3rd Street, Harrisburg, PA 17110. Ample free parking is available in their lots, located behind the venue and across the street. Every ticket includes a pre-signed, hardcover copy of The Demon of Unrest. Doors will open at 1:00pm, and the event will begin at 2:00pm. Seating is General Admission; first come, first served.
Additional signed copies of Erik Larson and Steve Inskeep's previous books will be available for sale at the event. There will be an opportunity for a book personalization with Erik Larson immediately following the program. A maximum of two additional books (besides The Demon of Unrest) may be personalized, and those books must be purchased through the Midtown Scholar Bookstore's on-site bookselling station. No outside books may be brought to the venue.
LIVE-STREAM TICKET
This event will be live-streamed. Every live-stream ticket includes one signed copy of The Demon of Unrest and the live-stream link. The live-stream link will be sent at least one hour before the event begins, and will expire after 24 hours. Please check your SPAM folder if you do not receive the link in time. Books will be shipped via USPS Priority. US addresses only.
About the Book:
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”
At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.
About the Authors:
Erik Larson is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, most recently The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, which examines how Winston Churchill and his “Secret Circle” went about surviving the German air campaign of 1940-41. Larson’s The Devil in the White City is set to be a Hulu limited series; his In the Garden of Beasts is under option by Tom Hanks for a feature film. He recently published an audio-original ghost story, No One Goes Alone, which has been optioned by Chernin Entertainment, in association with Netflix. His Thunderstruck has been optioned by Sony Pictures Television for a limited TV series. Larson lives in Manhattan with his wife, who is a writer and retired neonatologist; they have three grown daughters.
Steve Inskeep is a cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition, the most widely heard radio program in the United States, and of NPR’s Up First, one of the nation’s most popular podcasts. His reporting has taken him across the United States, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Pakistan, and China. His search for the full story behind the news has led him to history; he is the author of Instant City, Jacksonland, and Imperfect Union.
Tax-Inclusive: a $2.03 Harrisburg City amusement tax and 6% PA state sales tax are included in the cost of each ticket.
May
9
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Adam Higginbotham: Challenger
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome New York Times bestselling author Adam Higginbotham to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
From the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster, based on fascinating in-depth reporting and new archival research—a riveting history that reads like a thriller.
On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of the crew, which included New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like the assassination of JFK, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in twentieth-century history—one that forever changed the way America thought of itself and its optimistic view of the future. Yet the full story of what happened, and why, has never been told.
Based on extensive archival research and meticulous, original reporting, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space follows a handful of central protagonists—including each of the seven members of the doomed crew—through the years leading up to the accident, and offers a detailed account of the tragedy itself and the investigation afterward. It’s a compelling tale of ambition and ingenuity undermined by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubris and heroism; and of an investigation driven by leakers and whistleblowers determined to bring the truth to light. Throughout, there are the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and later hidden from the public.
Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program and the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster, as well as the designers, engineers, and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space. A masterful blend of riveting human drama and fascinating and absorbing science, Challenger identifies a turning point in history—and brings to life an even more complex and astonishing story than we remember.
About the Author:
Adam Higginbotham has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, and Smithsonian. He is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, which was the winner of the William E. Colby Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. He lives with his family in New York City.
May
14
7:00 PM19:00
Jeff Shaara with Karen Hendricks: The Shadow of War
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome New York Times bestselling author Jeff Shaara to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new novel of historical fiction, The Shadow of War: A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Shaara will be in conversation with journalist Karen Hendricks. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Signed books may not be available for pickup/shipment until after the author’s appearance.
About the Book:
From the bestselling author comes the story of rising conflict between the super-powers that gripped the world, a global war that almost happened: The Cuban Missile Crisis.
In 1961, the new president John F. Kennedy, inherited an ill-conceived, poorly executed invasion of Cuba that failed miserably and set in motion the events that put the U.S. and the Soviet Union on a collision course that nearly started a war that would have enveloped much of the world.
Extensively researched and vividly imagined, The Shadow of War brings to life the many threads that lead to the building crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1962.
Told from a multitude of perspectives and voices, from the Russian engineer attempting the near impossible task of building the missile launch facilities in Cuba, to the U.S. Navy commanders who ships are sent to "quarantine" Cuba, to the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, desperately trying to maintain a challenging balancing act between the conflicting demands of various powerful forces, to the brothers Kennedy (Bobby and JFK) who can't allow Russia to land nuclear missiles in Cuba, or to appear weak in confronting Khrushchev, but keenly understand how close they are dancing to the edge of war.
Shaara brings to life all the action and actors, famous and little known, that embodied a war that almost happened, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
About the Speakers:
Jeff Shaara is the award-winning, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of seventeen novels, including Rise to Rebellion and The Rising Tide, as well as Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure - two novels that complete his father's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, The Killer Angels. Shaara was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Karen Hendricks is a lifelong journalist based in the Harrisburg area. Her work, which spans newspapers, radio, television, podcasts and magazines, has garnered nearly 20 journalism awards over the years. Her voice is regularly heard on WITF, Central Pennsylvania’s NPR station, and she has written for Celebrate Gettysburg magazine for more than 10 years.
May
17
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Sean Carroll: Quanta and Fields
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to host award-winning theoretical physicist Sean Carroll in Harrisburg for a presentation and signing on his new book, Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Signed books may not be available for pickup/shipment until after the event.
About the Book:
Quanta and Fields, the second book of Sean Carroll’s already internationally acclaimed series The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, is an adventure into the bare stuff of reality.
Sean Carroll is creating a profoundly new approach to sharing physics with a broad audience, one that goes beyond analogies to show how physicists really think. He cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in a uniquely accessible way.
Quantum field theory is how modern physics describes nature at its most profound level. Starting with the basics of quantum mechanics itself, Sean Carroll explains measurement and entanglement before explaining how the world is really made of fields. You will finally understand why matter is solid, why there is antimatter, where the sizes of atoms come from, and why the predictions of quantum field theory are so spectacularly successful. Fundamental ideas like spin, symmetry, Feynman diagrams, and the Higgs mechanism are explained for real, not just through amusing stories. Beyond Newton, beyond Einstein, and all the intuitive notions that have guided homo sapiens for millennia, this book is a journey to a once unimaginable truth about what our universe is.
About the Speakers:
Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of From Eternity to Here, The Particle at the End of the Universe, The Big Picture, and Something Deeply Hidden. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the American Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of London, and many others. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, writer Jennifer Ouellette.
May
18
10:00 AM10:00
Storytime and Cookie Decorating with Jasmine Cho
HAAPI (Harrisburg Asian American Pacific Islander) is proud to host the 3rd Annual AAPI Heritage Month Celebration in partnership with the Susquehanna Art Museum, Midtown Scholar, and Make Us Visible PA. Join us in celebrating and recognizing the contributions of Asian American & Pacific Islanders to the history, culture, beauty, and achievements of the Greater Harrisburg Area and beyond.
At the Midtown Scholar Bookstore, we’ll be hosting the following activities on Saturday, May 18th from 10am-12pm.
10:00am-11:00am: AAPI Book Scavenger Hunt
Kids of all ages can explore Midtown Scholar’s AAPI books with a scavenger hunt. All participants will receive a prize for taking part in the fun.
11:00am-12:00pm: Storytime & Cookie Decorating with Jasmine Cho
Join Jasmine M. Cho, a Pittsburgh-based artist, author, and cookie activist for a story time, book signing, and cookie decorating experience.
May
21
7:00 PM19:00
Kafka's Selected Stories with Mark Harman, Kerry Wallach, and Scott Lerner
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome renowned translator Mark Harman to Harrisburg for a panel discussion and signing on his new work of translation, Selected Stories by Franz Kafka. Harman will be in conversation with local university professors Kerry Wallach and Scott Lerner.
Harman, Wallach, and Lerner will discuss Kafka’s life, work, literary influence, and his enduring legacy. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
A superb new translation of Kafka’s classic stories, authoritatively annotated and beautifully illustrated.
Selected Stories presents new, exquisite renderings of short works by one of the indisputable masters of the form. Award-winning translator and scholar Mark Harman offers the most sensitive English rendering yet of Franz Kafka’s unique German prose—terse, witty, laden with ambiguities and double meanings. With his in-depth biographical introduction and notes illuminating the stories and placing them in context, Harman breathes new life into masterpieces that have often been misunderstood.
Included are sixteen stories, arranged chronologically to convey a sense of Kafka’s artistic development. Some, like “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” “A Hunger Artist,” and “The Transformation” (usually, though misleadingly, translated as “The Metamorphosis”), represent the pinnacle of Kafka’s achievement. Accompanying annotations highlight the wordplay and cultural allusions of the original German, pregnant with irony and humor that English readers have often missed.
Although Kafka has frequently been cast as a loner, in part because of his quintessential depictions of modern alienation, he had a number of close companions. Harman draws on Kafka’s diaries, extensive correspondence, and engagement with early twentieth-century debates about Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and Zionism to construct a rich portrait of Kafka in his world. A work of both art and scholarship, Selected Stories transforms our understanding and appreciation of a singular imagination.
About the Speakers:
Mark Harman is Professor Emeritus of German and English at Elizabethtown College. His award-winning translations include Franz Kafka’s Amerika: The Missing Person and The Castle, as well as Herman Hesse’s Soul of the Age: Selected Letters and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
Kerry Wallach is Associate Professor and Chair of German Studies and an affiliate of the Jewish Studies Program at Gettysburg College. She is the author of Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany.
L. Scott Lerner is the Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor of the Humanities and Professor of French and Italian at Franklin & Marshall College, where he teaches in the Comparative Literature Program, as well as in French, Italian and Judaic Studies. He has published widely on Jewish literature, film and history in relation to majority cultures in modern France and Italy, on representations of loss and mourning, and on Modernist writers, especially Marcel Proust. Most recently, he co-edited with Jonathan Druker The New Italy and the Jews: From Massimo D'Azeglio to Primo Levi. Occasionally, when teaching the work of Kafka along with that of Proust and Pirendello, he has been thrilled to include a reading and class visit by a world-renowned translator of Kafka's fiction.
May
24
7:00 PM19:00
Steven Williams with Patty Kim: Skadi and the Geats
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome local author Steven Williams to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new book, Skadi and the Geats. Williams will be in conversation with State Representative Patty Kim. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
An Earl with godly ambitions. A Viking warrior. A scheme, decades in the making.
The heart of the Ironwood, a mysterious forest, has been pillaged and replacedr with a mine. Hrothgar, the Earl of Lejre has amassed so much power in his great hall that he’s now staked his claim as ruler of Midgard. But only under the use of violence. Children have been separated from their parents. Entire communities have been destroyed. And hopelessness grips the weak and strong alike.
But there are still those willing to fight for their home. Skadi, a Viking Warrior, has recently defeated a jötunn and now joins the wise, bodiless Mimir in search of his body. Skadi’s victory has made her a legendary warrior, but this fame has come with a price: the attention of powerful and cunning adversaries.
A message from the Earl draws Skadi into a decades-long conspiracy involving the Aesir gods. She is a fast, strong, and skilled warrior with years of combat experience, but if she has any hope of taking down the Earl and his followers, she’s going to have to accept that victory could depend on other people.
In Lejre, a town full of lies.
About the Speakers:
Steven Williams is an avid traveler, amateur cook, and fantasy author. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife Danielle.
State Representative Patty Kim serves as the Majority Chair of the House Insurance Committee. She was previously Chair of the Aging and Older Adult Services Committee. She is credited with creating and serving as the first Chair of the PA Legislative Asian Pacific American Caucus. Prior to her work in the legislature, Kim was elected to Harrisburg's City Council where she served two terms.
May
30
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with R. O. Kwon: Exhibit
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome bestselling author R.O. Kwon to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on her new novel, Exhibit. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Preordered copies will not be signed until after the event.
About the Book:
From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She’s been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
About the Author:
R.O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel The Incendiaries, which was translated into seven languages, named a best book of the year by over forty publications, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book and the recipient of the inaugural Joy Award. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
Jun
6
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Harold Holzer: Brought Forth on This Continent
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome bestselling historian Harold Holzer to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new novel, Brought Forth on This Continent": Abraham Lincoln and America Immigration. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Preordered copies will not be signed until after the event.
About the Book:
From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the backdrop of the Civil War.
In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.
Abraham Lincoln’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.
Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, “The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the ‘nation might live.’” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln’s life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.
About the Author:
Harold Holzer is the recipient of the 2015 Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize. One of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era, Holzer was appointed chairman of the US Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission by President Bill Clinton and awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush. He currently serves as the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, City University of New York.
Jun
12
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Emma Copley Eisenberg and Clare Beams
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome award-winning authors Emma Copley Eisenberg and Clare Beams to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on their new novels, Housemates (Eisenberg), and The Garden (Beams). Eisenberg and Beams will be in conversation with local author Jamie Beth Cohen. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Signed books may not be available until after the event.
About Housemates
What does it feel like, standing in the moments that will mark your life?
When Bernie replies to Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.
After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.
What ensues is a journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the housemates into conversation with people from all walks of life—“the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country”— as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to chase their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.
Warm and insightful, Housemates is a story of youth and freedom—a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.
About The Garden
The discovery of a secret garden with unknown powers fuels this page-turning and psychologically thrilling tale of women yearning to become mothers and the ways the female body has always been policed and manipulated, from the award-winning author of The Illness Lesson.
In 1948, Irene Willard, who’s had five previous miscarriages in a quest to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and is now pregnant again, comes to an isolated house-cum-hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure for her condition. Warily, she enlists herself in the efforts of the Doctors Hall to “rectify the maternal environment,” both physical and psychological. In the meantime, she also discovers a long-forgotten walled garden on the spacious grounds, a place imbued with its own powers and pulls. As the doctors’ plans begin to crumble, Irene and her fellow patients make a desperate bid to harness the power of the garden for themselves—and must face the incalculable risks associated with such incalculable rewards.
With shades of Shirley Jackson and Rosemary’s Baby, The Garden delves into the territory of motherhood, childbirth, the mysteries of the female body, and the ways it has always been controlled and corralled.
About the Speakers:
Emma Copley Eisenberg is a queer writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her first book, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.
Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. With her husband and two daughters, she lives in Pittsburgh.
Jamie Beth Cohen is a writer, storyteller, and worker bee who has done many things in order to feed and clothe herself and her family, but none as enjoyable as scooping ice cream in the summer of 1993 in Pittsburgh, PA. She is the author of The Alice Burton Novels (WASTED PRETTY and LIMINAL SUMMER, both from Black Rose Writing), and her words have appeared in HuffPost, The Washington Post, Salon, and many other outlets including SFWP Quarterly. In 2021, she was named Best Storyteller in Lancaster (PA). She is currently working on a memoir about her complicated father, their layered relationship, and his unexplained death. When she’s not writing, reading, working, or spending time with her family, she can be found mentoring incarcerated writers and novice storytellers.
Jun
20
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Kimi Cunningham Grant: The Nature of Disappearing
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome bestselling author Kimi Cunningham Grant to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on her new thriller, The Nature of Disappearing. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
In this captivating novel of suspense from the USA Today bestselling author of These Silent Woods, a wilderness guide must team up with the man who ruined her life years ago when the friend who introduced them goes missing.
Emlyn doesn't let herself think about the past.
How she and her best friend, Janessa, barely speak anymore. How Tyler, the love of her life, left her half dead on the side of the road three years ago.
Her new life is simple and safe. She lives alone in her Airstream trailer and works as a fishing and hunting guide in scenic Idaho. Her closest friends are the community's makeshift reverend and a handsome Forest Service ranger who took her in at her lowest.
But when Tyler shows up with the news that Janessa is missing, Emlyn is propelled back into the world she worked so hard to forget. Janessa has become a social media star, documenting her #vanlife adventures with her rugged boyfriend. She hasn't posted lately, though, and when Emlyn realizes the most recent photo doesn't match up with its caption, she reluctantly joins Tyler to find her old friend. As the two trace Janessa's path through miles of wild country, Emlyn can't deny the chemistry still crackling between them. But the deeper they press into the wilderness, the more she begins to suspect that a darker truth lies in the woods—and that Janessa isn't the only one in danger.
Poignant, suspenseful, and unforgettable, Kimi Cunningham Grant's THE NATURE OF DISAPPEARING explores what it takes to start over—and the cost of letting the past pull you back in.
About the Author:
KIMI CUNNINGHAM GRANT is the USA Today bestselling author of Silver Like Dust, Fallen Mountains, These Silent Woods, and The Nature of Disappearing. She is also an award-winning poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Fathom, Literary Mama, RATTLE, Poet Lore, and Whitefish Review. She lives with her family in Pennsylvania.
Jun
22
6:00 PM18:00
An Evening with Joseph Earl Thomas: God Bless You, Otis Spunkemeyer
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to host award-winning author Joseph Earl Thomas in Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new novel, God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Signed books may not be available until after the event.
About the Book:
After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility.
Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day black life—of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.
About the Author:
Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories, Leviathan Beach, among other oddities.
Jun
24
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Riley Sager and Jason Rekulak: Middle of the Night
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome #1 New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager in Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new novel, Middle of the Night. Sager will be in conversation with the author of Hidden Pictures, Jason Rekulak.
This is a ticketed event. Every ticket includes a signed copy of the book and general admission entry. Doors will open at 6:00pm, and the event will begin at 7:00pm. Seating is general admission; first come, first served. Book signing to follow presentation. Additional copies of Riley's previous books may be purchased at the event.
About the Book:
In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.
The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.
Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul-de-sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed ghosts roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.
The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
About the Speakers:
Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, most recently The Only One Left and The House Across the Lake. A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Jason Rekulak is the author of HIDDEN PICTURES, THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTRESS, and (coming October 2024!) THE LAST ONE AT THE WEDDING. His work has been translated into 30+ languages. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children.
Jul
2
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Samuel Kọ́láwọlé: The Road to the Salt Sea
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome debut author Samuel Kọ́láwọlé to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his novel, The Road to the Salt Sea. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice.
Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.
But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe and a new life in a better place is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom.
As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.
About the Author:
Samuel Kọláwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships, and has been a finalist for the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, shortlisted for UK’s The First Novel Prize, and won an Editor-Writer Mentorship from the Word. He studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his PhD in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He has taught creative writing in Africa, Sweden, and the United States, and currently teaches fiction writing as an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.
Jul
24
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Anne Applebaum: Autocracy, Inc
Tickets On-Sale Soon
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on her new book, Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.
This is a ticketed event. Every ticket includes a copy of the book and up to two general admission seats. Doors will open at 6:00pm, and the event will begin at 7:00pm. Seating is general admission; first come, first served. Book signing to follow presentation.
About the Book:
From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.
We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don’t stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren’t linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan’s essay calling for “containment” of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat.
About the Speakers:
ANNE APPLEBAUM is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Senior Fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her previous books include Iron Curtain, winner of the Cundill Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and a finalist for three other major prizes. She lives in Poland with her husband, Radek Sikorski, a Polish politician, and their two children.
Tax-Inclusive: Harrisburg City amusement tax and 6% PA state sales tax are included in the cost of each ticket.
Apr
25
7:00 PM19:00
Nell Irvin Painter with Zinzi Clemmons: I Just Keep Talking
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome renowned historian and artist Nell Irvin Painter for a conversation and signing on her new book, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays. Painter will be in conversation with award-winning author Zinzi Clemmons. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Signed books may not be available until after the event.
About the Book:
From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it.
Throughout her prolific writing career, Nell Painter has published works on such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Malcolm X. Her unique vantage on American history pushes the boundaries of personal narrative and academic authorship. Led by an unbridled curiosity for her subjects, Painter asks readers to reconsider ideas of race, politics, and identity. I Just Keep Talking assembles her writing for the first time into a single volume, displaying the breadth and depth of Painter’s decades-long historical inquiry and the evolution of Black political thought—and includes a dazzling introduction and coda being published for the first time in this collection. From her mining of figures like Carrie Buck and Martin Delaney for their resonance today, to a deep dive into the history of exclusion through the work of Toni Morrison, to a discussion of the American political landscape after the 2016 election, Painter nimbly portrays the trials of a country frequently at war with itself.
Along with Painter’s writing, this collection offers her original artwork, threaded throughout the book as counterpoint and emphasis. Her visual art shows a deft mind turning toward the tragedy and humor of her subjects; pulling from newspapers, personal records, and original sketches, Painter’s artwork testifies to the dialectic of tremendous change and stasis that continues to shape American history.
These essays resist easy answers in favor of complexity, the inescapable sense of our country’s potential thwarted by its failures. This collection will surely solidify Painter’s place among the finest critics and writers of the last half century.
About the Author:
Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, is the author of books of history including the New York Times bestseller The History of White People; Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol; the National Book Critics Circle finalist Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over; and the forthcoming I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2007, she has received honorary degrees from Yale, Wesleyan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dartmouth. After a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, she earned degrees in painting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and the Rhode Island School of Design. Nell Painter lives and works in East Orange, New Jersey, and has made artists’ books in residencies such as MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, and Bogliasco. She currently serves as Madame Chairman of MacDowell.
Zinzi Clemmons's debut novel, What We Lose (Viking 2017), was a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize. She is a 2017 National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree. She wrote the foreword to a new edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane, published by Penguin Classics in 2019. An essay collection, Freedom, is forthcoming from Viking. She is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California Davis.
Apr
21
12:00 PM12:00
Book Signing with Gabriela Epstein: Danny Phantom
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome acclaimed illustrator Gabriela Epstein to Harrisburg for a meet & greet signing on her new book for young readers, Danny Phantom: A Glitch in Time. This event is free and open to the public. Epstein will also be available to sign copies of Invisible, Babysitter’s Club #9, and Babysitter’s Club #11.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
About the Book:
New York Times bestselling author-illustrator Gabriela Epstein’s Danny Phantom: A Glitch in Time, is an original full-color graphic novel based on the hit Nickelodeon animated series, taking place directly after the series finale with the original ghost gang: Danny Fenton and his best friends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley—on a mission through time and space to save humanity.
When the gang starts experiencing time travel glitches, Danny’s archnemesis Vlad Masters arrives on his doorstep with terrifying news: Dark Danny has escaped his prison! Danny must then get his friends together and partner with Vlad to jump through time and space and unlock secrets of the Ghost Zone! But can they make it back to Amity Park before Dark Danny destroys the ghost gang’s entire world?
About the Author:
Gabriela Epstein is a New York Times bestselling illustrator based in Austin, Texas. She graduated with a BFA in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and has since illustrated the Baby-Sitters Club middle-grade graphic novels Claudia and the New Girl and Good-Bye Stacey, Good-Bye, as well as the young adult graphic novel Invisible for Scholastic Graphix.
Apr
19
6:00 PM18:00
Spring Jazz at the Scholar!
Jazz up your spring at April’s Third in the Burg!
Join The Blake Slusaw Quartet at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore for a one-night-only jazz performance on Friday, April 19th from 6:00pm-8:30pm. The bookstore + cafe will be open for browsing and shopping, and we’ll have the perfect live jazz music to compliment your Third in the Burg experience. This event is free and open to the public, and is in partnership with the Central Pennsylvania Friends of Jazz.
Apr
16
8:00 PM20:00
Salman Rushdie in conversation with Suleika Jaouad
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore, Random House Publishing Group and PEN America are proud to present internationally renowned writer, free speech advocate, and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie in conversation with Suleika Jaouad, the New York Times bestselling author of Between Two Kingdoms, founder of The Isolation Journals, and subject of the Netflix documentary American Symphony.
Rushdie’s new memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, is a gripping account of surviving an attempt on his life 30 years after the fatwa was ordered against him. In unforgettable detail, Rushdie is speaking out for the first time about the traumatic events of April 12, 2022.
Join us on Tuesday, April 16 at 8 p.m. ET on Vimeo for an intimate conversation as they discuss life, loss, love, the power of art, and finding the strength to keep going—and stand up again. The event will feature an audience Q&A and a closing note from PEN America. You will have the opportunity to submit a question when registering for the event and may see it answered during the conversation. Please submit your questions no later than March 25. Please note: this event will be prerecorded, and you will be viewing its only broadcast.
Each ticket includes a hardcover copy of Knife. All participants will have the option to purchase Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms, as well.
Apr
11
7:00 PM19:00
How to Write and Publish Anything with Jo Piazza and Jennifer Herrera
THIS IS A TICKETED EVENT. PURCHASE TICKETS HERE.
Everyone has a story inside them. Whether it's a novel, a memoir, a blog, a newsletter or a screenplay. The trick is getting started. Join us with bestselling author, influencer and podcast host Jo Piazza to engage in a frank and open chat about how to get started writing and monetize your content. Piazza will be in conversation with literary agent Jennifer Herrera.
This is a ticketed event. Every ticket includes a signed, hardcover copy of THE SICILIAN INHERITANCE by Jo Piazza. Doors will open at 6:00pm for browsing and mingling, and the event will begin at 7:00pm. Seating is general admission; first come, first served.
There will be ample time for questions with the audience, and a book signing with both authors will follow the discussion. Seating is general admission; first come, first served.
About the Speakers:
Jo Piazza is the national and international bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance, We Are Not Like Them, You Were Always Mine, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, The Knockoff and How to Be Married. Her work has been published in ten languages in twelve countries and four of her books have been optioned for film and television. Jo's podcasts have garnered more than twenty-five million downloads and regularly top podcast charts. An editor, columnist and travel writer, her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, New York magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour and many other publications. She lives in Philly with her husband, Nick Aster and three feral children.
Jennifer Herrera is a former philosophy grad student turned literary agent, who is fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves to live and the lies we cling to that sabotage our chances at a good life. She has lived in six states and five countries (so far) and now resides in Philadelphia with her husband, daughter, and cat.
Tax-Inclusive: Harrisburg City amusement tax and 6% PA state sales tax are included in the cost of each ticket.
Apr
6
6:00 PM18:00
An Evening with Lisa Scottoline: The Truth About the Devlins
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on her new thriller, The Truth About the Devlins. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
Lisa Scottoline, the #1 bestselling author of What Happened to the Bennetts, presents another pulse-pounding domestic thriller about family, justice, and the lies that tear us apart.
TJ Devlin is the charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, all of whom are lawyers at their highly successful firm—except him. After a stint in prison and rehab for alcoholism, TJ can’t get hired anywhere except at the firm, in a make-work job with the title of investigator.
But one night, TJ’s world turns upside down after his older brother John confesses that he just murdered one of the clients, an accountant he’d confronted with proof of embezzlement. It seems impossible coming from John, the firstborn son and Most Valuable Devlin.
TJ plunges into the investigation, seizing the chance to prove his worth and save his brother. But in no time, TJ and John find themselves entangled in a lethal web of deception and murder. TJ will fight to save his family, but what he learns might break them first.
About the Author:
Lisa Scottoline is the number-one bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of thirty-five novels. A former President of Mystery Writers of America, she has thirty million copies of her books in print and has been published in thirty-five countries. Her books have been optioned for film and TV, and she has also co-authored a series of humorous memoirs with her daughter, novelist Francesca Serritella. A former lawyer, Scottoline taught a course she developed, “Justice & Fiction,” at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. She lives on a farm outside Philadelphia with an array of disobedient pets.
Mar
23
5:00 PM17:00
Rebecca Serle with Sara Shepard: Expiration Dates
From the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer comes the romance that will define a generation.
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Serle to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on her new novel, Expiration Dates. Serle will be in conversation with the author of Pretty Little Liars, Sara Shepard. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
Being single is like playing the lottery. There’s always the chance that with one piece of paper you could win it all.
Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; five weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.
But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information that—if he found out—would break his heart.
Told with her signature warmth and insight into matters of the heart, Rebecca Serle has finally set her sights on romantic love. The result is a gripping, emotional, passionate, and (yes) heartbreaking novel about what it means to be single, what it means to find love, and ultimately how we define each of them for ourselves. Expiration Dates is the one fans have been waiting for.
About the Author:
Rebecca Serle is the New York Times bestselling author of Expiration Dates, One Italian Summer, In Five Years, The Dinner List, and the young adult novels The Edge of Falling and When You Were Mine. Serle also developed the hit TV adaptation Famous in Love, based on her YA series of the same name. She is a graduate of USC and The New School and lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Find out more at RebeccaSerle.com.
Sara Shepard is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series, The Lying Game series, The Heiresses, The Elizas, The Perfectionists series, and Reputation. She is also the author of the Penny Draws series for middle grade readers.
Mar
21
3:30 PM15:30
Keystone Speaker Series: The Future of War in Europe and Ukraine
Please join the Foreign Policy Association of Central Pennsylvania and the Midtown Scholar Bookstore at our Keystone Speaker Evening and special speaker book signing.
Date: Thursday, March 21, 2024
Location: Hershey Country Club: 1000 E. Derry Rd., Hershey PA 17033
Ambassador Yovanovitch, a career Foreign Service Officer, served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 to 2019 when President Zelensky first came to power. Later removed from her position, she was called to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in November 2019. She also served as the U.S. ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Armenia. In addition, Ambassador Yovanovitch was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the State Department Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, where she coordinated all American policy on European and Eurasian global security issues. Before that, she was the State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary responsible for issues related to the Nordic, Baltic, and Central European countries and served as the Deputy Commandant for the National Defense University in Washington DC. a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a nonresident fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University.
A long time Eurasian specialist, in 2003-2004, Ambassador Yovanovitch was the senior advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. Prior to that, she was the Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. embassy in Ukraine. Within the Department of State, Ambassador Yovanovitch has worked on the Russia desk, the Office of European Security Affairs, in the Department’s Operations Center, and held overseas U.S. embassy assignments in Moscow, London, Ottawa, and Mogadishu.
A member of the Senior Foreign Service (senior general officer-equivalent rank), Ambassador Yovanovitch has earned the Senior Foreign Service Performance Award eight times and the State Department’s Superior Honor Award on nine occasions. She is also the recipient of two Presidential Distinguished Service Awards and the secretary’s Diplomacy in Human Rights Award. In 2020, Georgetown University granted her the Trainor Award for Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy, and Indiana University awarded her the inaugural Richard G. Lugar Award for Public Integrity.
Ambassador Yovanovitch has a B.A. in History and Russian Studies from Princeton University, studied at the Pushkin Institute in Russia, and received an M.S. from the National Defense University.
Just before dinner, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore will have a book signing for her highly acclaimed book, Lessons from the Edge, A Memoir. Books will be available for purchase.
Social Hour & Dinner Information
5:15 – 6:30 pm – Social Hour and Book Signing
6:30 – 7:30 pm – Dinner
7:30 pm – Speaker followed by question and answer session
Dinner Menu:
Salad – organic greens, carrots, cucumbers, onions, champagne vinaigrette dressing
Two entrée choices:
Lemon Herb Chicken with Rosemary Jus
Potato Puree
Seasonal fresh vegetables
Or
Herb Rubbed Salmon with Citrus Beurre Blanc
Roasted vegetable couscous
Seasonal fresh vegetables
Dinner Rolls
Dessert: Reese’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake
Price: $75 per person
With limited seating, please make your reservations NOW.
RESERVATIONS (Paid-in-advance reservations are required for this event)
Registration will close March 8, 2023.
Your reservation will be dated based on the receipt of your check.
Any reservation checks received after this close date are subject to availability.
REGISTRATION OPTION 1: Please PRINT AND MAIL THE FORM AT THIS LINK and your check to:
The Foreign Policy Association of Central PA,
PO Box 60665,
Harrisburg, PA 17106
REGISTRATION OPTION 2 (ON-LINE): Please complete the online form below, click on SUBMIT, and mail your check to the above address.
CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM
Mar
15
7:00 PM19:00
Amy Jo Burns with Lindsay Hameroff: Mercury
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore and AAUW Harrisburg are thrilled to host award-winning author Amy Jo Burns in Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on her new novel, Mercury. Burns will be in conversation with local author Lindsay Hameroff. This event is free and open to the public!
Mercury is a beautiful, heartfelt novel about a family of roofers in blue-collar Mercury, Pennsylvania, whose bonds of loyalty are tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their town.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
A roofing family’s bonds of loyalty are tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town—from Amy Jo Burns, author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner.
It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.
The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known—or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.
About the Author:
Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir Cinderland and the novel Shiner. Her writing has appeared in Elle, Good Housekeeping, The Paris Review Daily, and the anthology Not That Bad. A western Pennsylvania native, she now lives in New Jersey with her family.
Lindsay Hameroff is a writer, humorist, and former English teacher raised in Baltimore, MD and based in Harrisburg, PA. Her writing has been featured in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Weekly Humorist, and other outlets. She also co-edits Frazzled, a parenting humor site. Till There Was You is her first novel.
Mar
9
1:00 PM13:00
Book Signing with Anthony Fredricks: In Search of the Old Ones
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome local author Anthony Fredericks to Harrisburg for a meet & greet and signing on his new book, In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey Among Ancient Trees. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
An extraordinary journey to visit the oldest trees in the United States that beautifully reveals the connection between humans and natural history— a perfect read for nature lovers and fans of The Hidden Life of Trees.
Follow award-winning author Anthony D. Fredericks's adventures across the United States to uncover the remarkable secrets and lives of ancient trees. He introduces some of the oldest trees in the country using up-to-date research, interviews with scientists, captivating storytelling, and a contagious wonder for the natural world. Fredericks's visits to the trees turn readers into fellow travelers. Through firsthand accounts and scientific detail, these enduring trees come to life off the page.
Each chapter begins with a time-travel story that immerses readers in Earth's past, as early as ~58,000 BCE, for a sweeping view of what was happening during human history when the ancient tree took root. It then zooms into present-day to investigate the tree in all its mature glory and the changed world around it.
Some of the featured trees include:
A 13,000-year-old Palmer's oak in California that survives by cloning itself
The 1,200-year-old Seven Sisters Oak in Louisiana that has survived in the path of at least ten major hurricanes
2,000-year-old redwoods (the tallest trees in the world) on the California coast
The 2,628 year old bald cypress in the Black River of North Carolina
Marvelously detailed and deeply passionate, In Search of the Old Ones will transform your perspective of the trees and forests around you.
About the Author:
ANTHONY D. FREDERICKS is Professor Emeritus of Education at York College of Pennsylvania. He has published more than 170 adult nonfiction and children’s books, including The Secret Life of Clams, Horseshoe Crab: Biography of a Survivor, and Desert Night, Desert Day. He has also written for Psychology Today, High Country News, Hawaii Magazine, and more. An educator for nearly 50 years, he has taught science workshops, made natural history presentations, and led field trips throughout North America.
Feb
28
7:00 PM19:00
David Finkel with Alison Dagnes: An American Dreamer
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to host Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Finkel in Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new book, An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country. Finkel will be in conversation with Shippensburg University professor Alison Dagnes. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
A man navigates the deep divisions in America today and discovers that sometimes change can start by finding common ground with your neighbors in this immersive account by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thank You for Your Service and The Good Soldiers.
As this powerful book begins, Brent Cummings finds himself coping with the feeling that the country he loves is fracturing in front of his eyes. An Iraq war veteran, raised to believe in a vision of America that values fairness, honesty, and respect for others, Cummings is increasingly surprised by the behavior and beliefs of others, and engulfed by the fear, anger, and confusion that is sweeping through his beloved country as he tries to hold on to his values and his hope for America’s future.
David Finkel, known for his unique, in-depth reporting, spent fourteen years deep inside Brent Cummings’s world to create this intimate and vivid portrait of a man’s life, his work, family, community, his thoughts, and his quest for connection, as America becomes ever more divided. Cummings was one of the unforgettable figures in Finkel’s The Good Soldiers, a book about which The New York Times stated, “Finkel has made art out of a defining moment in history. You will be able to take this book down from the shelf years from now, and say: This is what happened. This is what it felt like.”
An American Dreamer illuminates, with the deepest empathy, the feelings and lives of many people in America today, and it is a brilliant chronicle of one person’s everyday experiences of frustration, confusion, and hope.
About the Speakers:
David Finkel is an editor and writer at The Washington Post. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. A MacArthur Fellowship recipient, he is the author of Thank You for Your Service and The Good Soldiers.
Dr. Alison Dagnes is a Professor of Political Science at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of "Super Mad at Everything All the Time: Political Media and Our National Anger," "Politics on Demand: The Effects of 24-Hour News On American Politics" and "A Conservative Walks Into a Bar: The Politics of Political Humor." She frequently speaks on the topic of the modern political media system and its effects. Prior to receiving her doctorate in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Dr. Dagnes was a producer for C-SPAN in Washington, DC.
Feb
24
1:00 PM13:00
Book Signing with Lindsay Hameroff: Till There Was You
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome local author Lindsay Hameroff to Harrisburg for a meet & greet and signing on her new romance novel, Till There Was You. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
"Witty, warm, and charming...Fans of Emily Henry and Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You are going to go crazy for this one!” —Jennifer Close, author of Marrying the Ketchups
Culinary student Lexi Berman, 24, has one goal: to make her late mother proud by becoming an executive chef in a Michelin-star restaurant. And she isn’t going to let anything–or anyone–get in the way. But when she meets Jake Taylor, a dive bar musician who charms her with show tunes, she makes a rare exception to her no-dating rule. After a steamy weekend together, Jake leaves for L.A. to record his demo, and Lexi never expects to see him again. And she definitely doesn’t expect him to become an overnight celebrity, with a breakout single that’s almost certainly about her famous blueberry pancake recipe.
As Jake’s star rises and the world speculates about the subject of his song, Lexi keeps the affair to herself. After all, she’s finally found her footing at her new restaurant job, and even has a prospective romance with her coworker. But when a distraught Jake turns up on her doorstep late one night, her carefully-laid plans are thrown for a loop. Though she and Jake try to be friends, things between them soon reheat faster than a bowl of Lexi's matzah ball soup. But a relationship with Jake means risking her face in tabloids, withstanding cruel internet comments, and worst of all, jeopardizing her career. As Jake’s upcoming tour approaches, and rumors swirl about him and another pop star, Lexi has to decide if holding onto her meticulously-planned future is worth walking away from what could be the perfect recipe for love.
Set both in the chaos of fame and the high stakes world of New York City restaurants, this novel sprinkles in a second chance at love and a dollop of celebrity drama to create a romantic romp that will make even the most jaded reader smile.
About the Author:
Lindsay Hameroff is a writer, humorist, and former English teacher raised in Baltimore, MD and based in Harrisburg, PA. Her writing has been featured in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Weekly Humorist, and other outlets. She also co-edits Frazzled, a parenting humor site. Till There Was You is her first novel.
Feb
16
7:00 PM19:00
Allen Guelzo with Scott LaMar: Our Ancient Faith
*This event is happening as scheduled!*
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome award-winning historian Allen Guelzo to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new book, Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment. Guelzo will be in conversation with WITF’s Scott LaMar. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still relevant today—by a best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize
"It is altogether fitting and proper that, with this meditation on democracy and its most subtle defender, Allen Guelzo again demonstrates that he is today’s most profound interpreter of this nation’s history and significance." —George F. Will
Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis.
Allen C. Guelzo, one of America’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war. In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War. Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.
About the Speakers:
Allen C. Guelzo is Senior Research Scholar at the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of several books about the Civil War and early-nineteenth-century American history. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize for Military History and has been awarded the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize three times. He lives in Pennsylvania.
Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades. Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s awad-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk. In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event. The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards. LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania. A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.
Feb
15
6:00 PM18:00
Wake Up America: An Evening with Dr. Keisha Blain, Ruth Richardson and Taifa Smith Butler
Reminder: Please note this event starts at 6pm!
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome renowned scholars Dr. Keisha Blain, Ruth Richardson, and Taifa Smith Butler for a conversation and signing on Blain’s new anthology, Wake Up America: Black Women on the Future of Democracy. The authors will be in conversation with Dickinson College Professor Say Burgin. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
From the coeditor of the best-selling Four Hundred Souls, a galvanizing anthology for those seeking to build an inclusive democracy.
In 1968, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer called for Americans to “wake up” if they wanted to “make democracy a reality.” Today, as Black communities continue to face challenges built on centuries of discrimination, her plea is increasingly urgent. In this exhilarating anthology of original essays, Keisha N. Blain brings together the voices of major progressive Black women politicians, grassroots activists, and intellectuals to offer critical insights on how we can create a more equitable political future.
These women draw on their diverse experiences and expertise to speak to three core themes: claiming civil and human rights, building political and economic power, and combating all forms of hate. We hear from Black Lives Matter cofounder Alicia Garza, who argues that Black communities must organize to wield increased political power; EMILYs List president Laphonza Butler, who spells out ways to fight for women’s reproductive rights; and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who delineates practical, thorough steps toward tangible reparations. Additional incisive essays include those by former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner; prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba; disability rights activist Andraéa LaVant; Boston’s first woman and first Black mayor, Kim Michelle Janey; and others at the forefront of the ongoing fight for social justice.
In addressing our most pressing issues and providing key takeaways, Wake Up America serves as a blueprint for the steps we can take right now and in the years to come.
About the Authors:
Keisha N. Blain is professor of Africana studies and history at Brown University. She is a columnist for MSNBC, a Guggenheim Fellow, and author—most recently of the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Until I Am Free. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Ruth Richardson is President & CEO, Planned Parenthood North Central States. Ruth started with PPNCS in October of 2022 and is the first Black women to lead the five State affiliate which consists of Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. PPNCS provides health care to over 100,000 patients annually and comprehensive sexual education throughout the region. A strong Black maternal health leader, Ruth brings extensive knowledge on reproductive health care and justice with a focus on advancing health equity. Ruth has a BA in sociology and history from the University of Minnesota, and a JD from William Mitchell College of Law.
After four years as a member of Demos’ Board of Trustees, Taifa Smith Butler began her tenure as Demos president in July 2021. Butler came to Demos after nearly a decade at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, where, from 2015 to 2021, she led and inspired the GBPI team as its president and CEO. She is an established leader known as a problem solver and tireless champion for equity. Taifa Smith Butler shares her story and the story of Demos as we enter a new era of inclusion, equity, and shared power. Taifa brings more than 20 years of experience in strategic communications, public policy research and data analysis in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. Prior to joining the GBPI team as deputy director in 2011, she served as the policy and communications director for Georgia Family Connection Partnership where she co-managed the Georgia KIDS COUNT project and monitored public policy and its impact on children, families, and communities. Named one of Atlanta’s 500 most powerful leaders in 2020 and 2021 by Atlanta Magazine, Taifa has served on various local, state and national committees and boards. Butler is a Class of 2017 Rockwood Leadership Institute “Leading from the Inside Out” Fellow, a member of the Leadership Georgia Class of 2016 and was a New Executive Fund fellow with the Open Society Foundation in 2015. A first-generation college graduate, Taifa graduated from Mount Holyoke College and holds a master’s in public management and policy with a concentration in economic development and financial management from the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University.
Feb
10
11:00 AM11:00
Kristin Hannah with Adriana Trigiani: The Women
The Friends of Public Libraries of Lancaster County are honored to welcome renowned, New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah to Lancaster for an in-person conversation about her new book, The Women. This event will take place at Calvary Church, which is located at 1051 Landis Valley Road, Lancaster, PA 17601. Hannah will be in conversation with New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani.
This is a ticketed event. Tickets are $50 (plus taxes and fees) and include a hardcover copy of The Women with a signed bookplate and general admission entry. There is no assigned seating; seating is first come, first served. You will receive a PDF ticket upon purchase; please bring your PDF ticket to the venue. Due to the size of our audience and Kristin's very busy schedule, there will be no book signing after the presentation. However, Kristin has kindly signed bookplates that will be included with each copy of The Women.
Additional copies of Hannah's books may be purchased at the venue from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
For customer service questions, please contact Sue at: news1165 [at] gmail [dot] com.
About the Book:
The missing. The forgotten. The brave… The women.
From master storyteller Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds, comes the story of a turbulent, transformative era in America: the 1960s. The Women is that rarest of novels―at once an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics, of a generation both fueled by dreams and lost on the battlefield.
“Women can be heroes, too.”
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different choice for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed and politically divided America.
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on the story of all women who put themselves in harm’s way to help others. Women whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has all too often been forgotten. A novel of searing insight and lyric beauty, The Women is a profoundly emotional, richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose extraordinary idealism and courage under fire define a generation.
About the Speakers:
Kristin Hannah is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including The Nightingale, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds. A former lawyer turned writer, she lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest.
Adriana Trigiani is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Shoemaker’s Wife. Her books have been published in thirty-eight languages around the world. She is an award-winning playwright, television writer/producer, and filmmaker. Among her screen credits, Trigiani wrote and directed the major motion picture adaptation of her debut novel, Big Stone Gap. Adriana grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she co-founded the Origin Project. Trigiani is proud to serve on the New York State Council on the Arts. She lives in New York City with her family.
Feb
7
7:00 PM19:00
Sadeqa Johnson with Jo Piazza: The House of Eve
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore and AAUW Harrisburg are thrilled to welcome New York Times bestselling author Sadeqa Johnson to Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on the paperback release of her new novel, The House of Eve. Johnson will be in conversation with bestselling author Jo Piazza, author of the forthcoming novel, The Sicilian Inheritance (preorder a signed copy here). This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.
Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.
With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.
About the Authors:
Sadeqa Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels. Her accolades include being the 2022 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy finalist, a BCALA Literary Honoree, and the Library of Virginia’s Literary People’s Choice Award winner. She is a Kimbilio Fellow and teaches in the MFA program at Drexel University. Originally from Philadelphia, she currently lives near Richmond, Virginia with her husband and three teens.
Jo Piazza is the international bestselling author of twelve books, including the Good Morning America Book Club pick We Are Not Like Them with Christine Pride. She’s also the host of the critically acclaimed Under the Influence podcast. Her work has been featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three feral children. Piazza’s new novel, The Sicilian Inheritance, will be released this April and is available for preorder.
Feb
6
7:00 PM19:00
Joel Burcat with Tory Gates: Reap the Wind
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome local author Joel Burcat for the book launch celebration of his new novel, REAP THE WIND. Burcat will be in conversation with local author Tory Gates. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
Josh Goldberg is a young lawyer from a prestigious Philadelphia law firm. His girlfriend Kiesha is unconscious and in the hospital. She’s eight months pregnant and may be giving birth to their baby. He’s in Houston and she’s in Cincinnati, one-thousand miles away. The worst climate change-induced hurricane of the century separates them and there are no flights for days. He manages to rent an old Lincoln Continental limo from his friend, the limo driver. His travel companions are his alcohol and drug-addicted best friend and his boss who connives to derail his arrangements so she can get to Philadelphia for a business meeting. Also, she has lascivious plans for Josh.
Josh is torn between taking a perilous road-trip to be with the woman he loves or riding out the hurricane in his five-star hotel room. Then he finds out the former love of Kiesha’s life is her new doctor. Finally, all of his doubts are cast aside and he decides to make the insane drive to be with her. The problem is the odyssey may be a suicide trip.
About the Speakers:
Joel Burcat is a novelist and retired environmental and energy lawyer living in Harrisburg, Pa. His previous novels, Drink to Every Beast, Amid Rage, and Strange Fire have been award-winning thrillers. He is a Gold Medal Winner from Readers’ Favorite for Environmental Fiction, a Finalist of the Next Gen Indie Book Awards, and a winner of the PennWriters Annual Writing Contest.Strange Fire was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Week. He was selected as the 2019 Lawyer of the Year in Environmental Litigation (for Central PA) by Best Lawyers in America He has also edited two award- winning non-fiction works on environmental and oil and gas law. For more information: www.joelburcat.com.
Tory Gates has produced books for the Young Adult and Contemporary Fiction world since 2013. He takes readers to exotic locales, everyday places and brings to life characters that are complex and relatable, while addressing real-life issues. Tory is the author of the Sweet Dreams Series, a trilogy of works that combine time travel, Japanese culture and the power of music. “Searching for Roy Buchanan,” “Call it Love” and “Shake Hands with the Devil” are all available at Sunbury Press Books. He is also the author of two other Sunbury releases, the award-winning “A Moment in the Sun” and “Live from the Café.” Tory’s first book, “Parasite Girls” was released on Amazon and Smashwords. His seventh work, “How the Story Ends” is set for release in early 2024. A broadcaster of forty years, Tory is a journalist, a presenter, and a producer. He is also the host of The Brown Posey Press Show, a podcast for independent and self-published authors on the BookSpeak Network. Tory produces several BookSpeak programs and the Medical Matters Podcast. He is also known as “DJ`Riff,” host of “The Music Club,” a blues program for the London-based Radio- Airwaves Station. A native of Vermont, Tory lives in Harrisburg, PA with a Maine Coon cat named Kao, and can be found anyplace that serves good coffee!
Jan
27
6:00 PM18:00
Kaveh Akbar with Joseph Earl Thomas: Martyr!
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to host critically acclaimed poet Kaveh Akbar in Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his debut novel, Martyr! Akbar will be in conversation with award-winning author Joseph Earl Thomas. This event is free and open to the public.
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.
About the Author:
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine. He lives in Iowa City.
Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories: Leviathan Beach, among other oddities. He is an associate faculty member at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, as well as the Director of Programs at Blue Stoop in Philadelphia.
Jan
26
7:30 PM19:30
An Evening with Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Tobin Miller Shearer: Been in the Struggle
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Tobin Miller Shearer to Harrisburg for an in-person conversation and signing on their new book, Been in the Struggle: Pursuing an Antiracist Spirituality. Stoltzfus and Shearer will be in conversation with award-winning author, Drew Hart. This event is free and open to the public.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
The work of dismantling racism doesn't happen overnight.
Been in the Struggle nurtures, challenges, and fosters the work and witness of dismantling racism for the long haul. Filled with wisdom and insight from nearly three decades of partnering across racial lines in this work, authors Regina Shands Stoltzfus and Tobin Miller Shearer offer a powerful mix of practical direction and poignant reflection to empower and sustain those working to dismantle racism, regardless of their stage on the journey.
Stoltzfus and Shearer draw on the power and promise of interracial relationships to offer a vision for an anti-racist spirituality. Together this Black woman and White man address the spirituality of conflict and crisis, embracing Blackness amid an anti-Black culture, and the importance of spiritual disciplines in the work of antiracism. Whether working to dismantle racism in our own lives or inside institutions, their words on transformation, historical trauma, spiritual formation, and the importance of authentic, restorative celebration will inspire and sustain us for the road ahead.
About the Authors:
Regina Shands Stoltzfus was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and lived there the first half of her life. She currently lives in Goshen, Indiana, and teaches at Goshen College in the religion, justice and society department. Regina is co-founder of the Roots of Justice Anti-Oppression program (formerly Damascus Road Anti-Racism Program) and has worked widely in peace education. She holds a master of arts degree in biblical studies from Ashland Theological Seminary and a PhD in theology and ethics from Chicago Theological Seminary. She is the author of two previous books and her many articles have appeared in publications such as Sojourners and The Mennonite. She has also written for the Anabaptist Historians blog.
Tobin Miller Shearer is co-founder with Regina Shands Stoltzfus of the Damascus Road anti-racism process (now Roots of Justice) and an award-winning professor of history and African American studies at the University of Montana. He is the author of five books and more than one hundred articles. His work has appeared in publications such as The Chicago Tribune, Conspire, The Mennonite, and Anabaptist Historians. He blogs at Truth and Grace. Shearer is also the co-founder with Cheryl Miller Shearer of the anti-racism training and consulting nonprofit, Widerstand Consulting (www.widerstandconsulting.org).
Drew G. I. Hart is a public theologian and professor of theology at Messiah University. He has ten years of pastoral ministry experience and is the recipient of multiple awards for peacemaking. Hart attained his MDiv with an urban concentration from Missio Seminary and his PhD in theology and ethics from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. He is a sought-after speaker at conferences, campuses, and churches across the United States and Canada. His first book, Trouble I ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism, utilizes personal and everyday stories, theological ethics, and anti-racism frameworks to transform the church s understanding and witness. Hart lives with his wife, Renee, and their three sons in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Jan
24
7:00 PM19:00
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah with Airea D. Matthews: Chain Gang All Stars
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to host New York Times bestselling author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah in Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on the paperback release of his new novel, Chain Gang All Stars. Adjei-Brenyah will be in conversation with award-winning poet, Airea D. Matthews. This event is free and open to the public!
To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
She felt their eyes, all those executioners…
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.
Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice” (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).
About the Speakers:
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He was a National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honoree, the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Saroyan Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book, along with many other honors. Raised in Spring Valley, New York, he now lives in the Bronx.
Airea D. Matthews was Philadelphia’s 2022–2023 poet laureate. Her first collection of poems is the critically acclaimed Simulacra, which won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Poetry, The New York Times, Gulf Coast, VQR, Best American Poets, American Poet, LitHub, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Matthews holds a BA in economics from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program and an MPA from the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, both at the University of Michigan. A Pew fellow, she is an associate professor and codirector of the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College.
Jan
17
7:00 PM19:00
An Evening with Jon Clinch and Jeffrey Nichols: The General and Julia
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore and the National Civil War Museum are honored to welcome author Jon Clinch to Harrisburg for an in-person conversation and signing on his new historical novel, The General and Julia. In this superb work of historical fiction, Ulysses S. Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband, a father, a general, and a president while writing his memoirs and reckoning with his complicated legacy.
Clinch will be in conversation with the CEO of the National Civil War Museum, Jeffrey L. Nichols. This free event is in partnership with the National Civil War Museum.
*Reminder: To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may preorder a copy of the book for pickup/shipment.
About the Book:
Ulysses S. Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband, a father, a general, and a president while writing his memoirs and reckoning with his complicated legacy in this epic and intimate work of “superb historical fiction” (Booklist, starred review).
Barely able to walk and rendered mute by the cancer metastasizing in his throat, Ulysses S. Grant is scratching out words, hour after hour, day after day. Desperate to complete his memoirs before his death so his family might have some financial security and he some redemption, Grant journeys back in time.
He had once been the savior of the Union, the general to whom Lee surrendered at Appomattox, a twice-elected president who fought for the civil rights of Black Americans and against the rising Ku Klux Klan, a plain farmer-turned-business magnate who lost everything to a Wall Street swindler, a devoted husband to his wife Julia, and a loving father to four children. In this gorgeously rendered and moving novel, Grant rises from the page in all of his contradictions and foibles, his failures and triumphs.\
Moving from blood-stained battlefields to Gilded Age New York, the novel explores how Grant’s own views on race and Reconstruction changed over time. “A graceful, moving narrative” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) from historical fiction master Jon Clinch, this evocatively crafted novel breathes fresh life into an American icon.
About the Speakers:
Jon Clinch is the author of the acclaimed novels Finn, Kings of the Earth, The Thief of Auschwitz, Belzoni Dreams of Egypt, Marley, and The General and Julia. A native of upstate New York, Jon lives with his wife in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Find out more at JonClinch.com.
Jeffrey L. Nichols is the Chief Executive Officer of The National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Prior to joining The National Civil War Museum, he was the Executive Director of Georgetown Heritage, a philanthropic partner of the National Park Service in Washington, DC, and before that, he was the President & CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s retreat house and plantation located near Lynchburg, Virginia. He also worked at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, in several roles, serving as Executive Director for the final four years of his tenure there. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Southern Connecticut State University, a Master of Science in Museum Education degree from the Bank Street College of Education, and an MBA from the University of New Haven. He serves as Treasurer for PA Museums and has served on the board of Greater Lynchburg (VA) Habitat for Humanity and was the Treasurer of the Virginia Association of Museums.
Jan
1
10:00 AM10:00
Dec
25
10:00 AM10:00
Dec
15
5:00 PM17:00
Jazz Night at the Scholar!
Jazz up your holiday at December’s Third in the Burg!
Join The Luca Savarino Quartet at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore for a one-night-only jazz performance on Friday, December 15th from 5pm-8pm. We’ll have book browsing hours until 8pm, and the perfect live jazz music to compliment your holiday shopping. This event is free and open to the public, and is in partnership with the Central Pennsylvania Friends of Jazz.
About the Band: Luca Savarino is a local sax player for the Friends of Jazz. Luca played for the Jazz Walk this fall, and is on his way to the prestigious Manhattan School of Music. The Friends of Jazz has been presenting top jazz musicians for 43 years. Check them out here and sign up for future announcements.
Dec
9
10:00 AM10:00
Story Time with Santa!
Santa Claus is coming to town!
We’re thrilled to welcome Old St. Nick for a family-friendly story time on Saturday, December 9th from 10am-12pm. Santa’s visit will include a story time session from 10am-10:30am, followed by the opportunity for kids to take pictures with Santa from 10:30am-12:00pm.
This event is free and open to the public, and will take place in the kids room at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
Nov
25
12:00 PM12:00
Book Signing with Matt Wolf: The Knife's Edge
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome fantasy author Matt Wolf to Harrisburg for book signing on his new novel, The Knife’s Edge. This event will take place from 12pm-2pm. This event is free and open to the public!
About the Book:
Elemental magic. Immortal legends. The Ronin have returned... Eighteen-year-old Gray has a terrible power that all the world fears. A reborn legend of old, he wields the forsaken power of wind. As the world of Daerval crumbles, Gray is their only hope. Labeled as a harbinger of chaos, Gray must lead the last citizens of Daerval to a new world, fleeing the death known as the Kagé, or shadow. With a host of unlikely companions, Gray must save those who fear him, before the Kagé destroy the last vestiges of a dying world.
About the Author:
Matthew Wolf is the author of the Ronin Saga. Or maybe he's a Ronin. Either way, he's involved somehow. He's a huge fan of all things fantasy, DNDer, previous Kung Fu instructor, and notoriously bad at slip and slides. Check out matt-wolf.com for more!
Nov
25
9:00 AM09:00
Small Business Saturday!
We’re thrilled to be a participating #indiebookstore on Small Business Saturday this November 25th from 9am - 7pm! Small Business Saturday is the perfect opportunity to #shopsmall and support your favorite local, independently run businesses in Harrisburg. As an expression of our appreciation, we’ll be running the following specials and programs:
For every $50 you purchase in gift cards, we’ll give you $5 in gift cards for a future transaction
Cart Book Bag Sale: $15 Per Bag
Free Postcard with Every Purchase From Our Collectible Building
Blind-Date-With-A-Book: Holiday Edition!
Book Lover’s Gift Bundles
Author Signing with Matt Wolf From 12pm-2pm
Thanks for #shoppingsmall this holiday season!
Nov
24
9:00 AM09:00
Black Friday!
Open 9am-6pm!
Join us on Black Friday from 9am-6pm! Black Friday is the perfect opportunity to #shopsmall and support your favorite local, independently run businesses in Harrisburg. As an expression of our appreciation, we’ll be running the following specials and programs:
For every $50 you purchase in gift cards, we’ll give you $5 in gift cards for a future transaction
Cart Book Bag Sale: $15 Per Bag
Blind-Date-With-A-Book: Holiday Edition!
Book Lover’s Gift Bundles
Thanks for #shoppingsmall this holiday season!
Nov
23
10:00 AM10:00
Nov
15
7:00 PM19:00
