Burlington

Archer Mayor's Joe Gunther series has been described by the Chicago Tribune as "the best police procedurals being written in America." Mayor is also the 2004 winner of the New England Independent Booksellers Association Award for Best Fiction-the first time a writer of crime literature has been so honored. In addition, Mayor is a death investigator for Vermont's Chief Medical Examiner, and a Deputy Sheriff for Windham County, VT.

Phoenix Books Burlington is extremely proud to announce an event with Caragh O'Brien, author of the Young Adult series that started with Birthmarked. Fans of Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) will love Caragh O'Brien! Caragh's books are all multiple staff picks here at Phoenix Books.

Since earning an MA in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, Caragh M. O’Brien has been a high school teacher, an author of romance novels, and now a novelist for teens. Her novels Birthmarked and Prized were named YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults. Birthmarked was also a Junior Library Guild Selection and chosen for the ALA 2011 Amelia Bloomer List. She lives with her family and writes from her home in Connecticut. More about the author and her novels can be found at www.caraghobrien.com.

Celebrate local food with Vermont's own self-sufficiency maven! Abigail will bring homemade crackers for you to sample, and will demonstrate how to make yogurt cheese. Then, there will be plenty of time for questions and book signing.

Abigail R. Gehring, author of The Ultimate Self-Sufficiency Handbook and many other Green Living titles, may be the face of the new self-reliance revolution: just like the movement itself, she does not confine herself to either the rural or urban environment (she splits her time between New York City and Windham, Vermont) and she has equally firm footing in both the traditional (she was home-schooled in Vermont) and the modern (“organic” and “green” are not just buzzwords to her).

Abigail is the author or editor of Back to Basics, Homesteading, Self-Sufficiency, The Back to Basics Handbook, The Homesteading Handbook, and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living. She’s practiced self-sufficient living since her childhood in Vermont, being home-schooled, home-canning jams and jellies, and enjoying natural crafts. She divides her time between New York City and Windham, Vermont.

Celebrate Star Wars Reads Day and master the art of reading! We'll have the latest Star Wars books (for everyone from kids to adults), costumed character appearances by 501st Legion members, Star Wars-themed crafts, and exclusive Star Wars Reads Day giveaways and raffle items.

The 501st Legion is a world-wide costuming organization dedicated to the 'Bad Guys' (they quibble on that term) of the franchise. They also work closely with their sister organization, the Rebel Legion. While they focus on movie-quality costumes, they work to give back to the communities in which they live. Learn more here.

The local branch of the 501st Legion attended Free Comic Book Day on Church Street with Earth Prime Comics, and trooped at the Brownell Library to support their Star Wars Club, as well as at the Derby Line Community Day. They're hoping to support Weird Al Yankovic when he's in Burlington and Rutland for his two concerts this October, and they're actively seeking recruits.  Anyone interested in joining the dark side?

Star Wars Reads Day is a national event that celebrates reading and Star Wars. It was created by Lucasfilm and its publishing partners--Abrams, Chronicle Books, Dark Horse, Del Rey, DK Publishing, Random House Audio, Scholastic, Titan Magazines and Workman.

Janet Mason is an award winning writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry whose literary commentary is regularly featured on This Way Out, an international LGBT radio news syndicate based in Los Angeles and aired on more than 400 radio stations in the U.S. and abroad. She is also a blogger for The Huffington Post.

Her book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters was published by Bella Books in 2012. Tea Leaves has been nominated for inclusion in the 2012 ALA list of notable LGBT Books and is featured by the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Literary Book Club. The review and reader’s guidelines can be found at http://www.lambdaliterary.org/book-club/

Tea Leaves tells the story of mothers and daughters, embarking when the narrator’s mother is diagnosed with fourth-stage cancer. A dutiful daughter, the narrator proceeds to take care of her mother, 74-year-old Jane, and enters a deeper understanding of her own life through her mother’s stories. Her grandmother (born in 1899) was a spinner in a textile mill and white glove wearing lady of her generation, her mother (born in 1920) was an office worker and feminist ahead of her time. The narrator has taken the foundation of her mother’s life and forged her own – taking her mother’s feminism one step further in becoming a lesbian and becoming the first in her family to graduate from college. Tea Leaves is a story of gender and class, identity and sexuality but, most of all, it is about love.

 

As part of the 2012 Burlington Book Festival, Phoenix Books will be hosting a series of author readings and book signings entitled "Women's Work."  We are proud to welcome Hinda Miller, Katharine Britton, Emily Bernard and Emily M. Danforth to our Burlington store. The schedule for Sunday is as follows:

 

12:00 pm - Katharine Britton

1:00 pm - Emily Bernard

2:00 pm - Emily M. Danforth

Hinda Miller has been a Vermont State Senator for the past ten years. Her memoir, Pearls of a Sultana: What I’ve Learned About Business, Politics and the Human Spirit, shares her experiences as both a political force and as a business owner. Throughout all her ventures, Hinda Miller is guided and anchored by a strong connection to the practice of yoga. Now she is preparing for a new venture as a Sultana, a woman of experience and wisdom who is always practicing, always learning, and always grateful.

Katharine Britton's debut novel, Her Sister's Shadow, tells the story of two sisters, estranged by time, distance and long-kept secrets, who are unexpectedly reunited by a death in the family. The book explores themes of resentment, sisterhood and forgiveness. Publisher’s Weekly called it ”A touching intimate account of painful memories that radically shape lives.” 

Emily Bernard is an associate professor of English and ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. Her acclaimed new work, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White, is the story of a white man with a passion for blackness. His role in the black cultural movement known was the Harlem Renaissance was dramatic, intimate and controversial. The book is not an attempt to answer the question of whether Van Vechten helped or hurt the black cultural world over which he wielded much influence. Instead it is a tale about the messy realities of race and the complicated tangle of black and white.

Emily M. Danforth is an assistant professor of English-Creative Writing at Rhode Island College. Her debut novel, The Miseducation Of Cameron Post, has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and School Library Journal, and was featured in the LA Times, USA Today, and NPR–whose reviewer called it “…a skillfully and beautifully written story that does what the best books do: It shows us ourselves in the lives of others.”

Please join us in welcoming these four celebrated authors to our store! Learn more about them, as well as the Burlington Book Festival at:

http://burlingtonbookfestival.com/?page_id=999

On October 4th, children and adults will attempt to break a world record by reading Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad, by David Soman and Jacky Davis, in homes and communities around the globe. Phoenix is excited to be a part of this - and we hope you are too! Learn more about the national event at www.readfortherecord.com. (Suggested age range is from 3-7 years old, but all are welcome!)

Join Keith Herkalo to mark the 200 year anniversary of the land and naval battles of Plattsburgh, and to learn about the battles themselves.

Both Roosevelt and Churchill recognized the importance of the land and naval battles of Plattsburgh. Many other, more famous, engagements were ruses meant to divert U.S. troops away from the prize Plattsburgh would afford: a clear pathway into New England. If not for the exemplary skills of two young military officers, Commodore Macdonough and General Macomb, and the force they commanded—regular army and naval personnel, New York and Vermont Militia, Native Americans, Veteran Exempts and boys from the local school—the war and the nation would have been lost. In The Battles at Plattsburgh, using original source documents, author Keith Herkalo retells the battles at Plattsburgh—the key battles of the War of 1812.

Keith Herkalo was born in Plattsburgh, New York, in 1948 and raised in Philadelphia and Plattsburgh (the family summered in Plattsburgh every year). After more than a decade in the military and an additional decade working for military equipment development firms in the Washington, D.C. area, he returned with his family to Plattsburgh (the proverbial return to Woebegon). It was then that he became more interested in Plattsburgh’s history and specifically Plattsburgh’s involvement in the War of 1812. He is an amateur historian who is the research catalyst behind the archaeological rediscovery of the 1812 camp known as Pike’s Cantonment, the editor of The Journal of H.K. Averill, Sr.: An account of the Battle of Plattsburgh and Early North Country Community, has authored numerous local history articles and has been a frequent speaker in local history venues for many years. He is the city clerk of Plattsburgh; a founding member and current president of the Battle of Plattsburgh Association; a musician, theater buff, boat builder, sailor, diver, woodworker, plaster restorer and an 1812-era reenactor. With his wife, Dr. Joy Demarse, Keith is currently building their energy-efficient, solar-powered retirement home.