Latino literary hero (Becoming Americans, Spanglish) and Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans visits Brookline Booksmith in honor of his long-awaited biography of the late, great Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The first of a two-volume biography, the book covers Marquez’s life until the publication of 100 Years of Solitude.  

The poems in January O’Neil’s debut collection “offer masterfully complex portraits of childhood—both through the speaker’s memory and observations of her own children,” says Denise Duhamel. “O’Neil’s collection is substantial, playful, and compassionate.” Joining her is Nin Andrews, whose work has been called outrageous, scandalous & beautiful.

In 2001, two Massachusetts nurses were investigated for murder when their patient – whom they had been helping with debilitating pain – died. Guggenheim Fellow Dr. Lewis Cohen examines this case as part of a larger ideological debate raging in hospitals everywhere: how should the dying and suffering be treated?

Wildly acclaimed novelist Katharine Weber (Triangle, The Music Lesson) returns with a novel about the daughter of a repressed New England family who tries to mold herself into the model Jewish wife when she marries into the Ziplinskys, owners of Zip’s Candies. Says the New York Times: “True Confections is a great American tale.” Also: free candy!

Judith Warner (Perfect Madness; the columnist of the New York Times’ “Domestic Disturbances”) spoke with a cross section of parents, psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, researchers, and therapists over the course of five years to find out how meds are affecting our children. The enlightening result is a wake-up call.

The Brookline Booksmith Book Club has been sharing great books for 10 years. It meets on the 2nd Monday of each month, at 7:30 pm in our Writer's and Reader's Room. No need to sign up, just show up.

Nancy Kehoe is a nun and psychology clinician. In her first book, she makes a compelling argument for faith as a means to make decisions and order one’s life. With great empathy, she shares stories of the troubled people she has helped and writes of the way religious feeling has shaped her own choices. “Remarkable,” says Cokie Roberts.

A free event presented with and at Temple Kehillath Israel (384 Harvard Street, Brookline)

“Sam Lipsyte can get blood out of a stone” – Edmund White. If the Booksmith has prayers, they’ve been answered; the funniest writer in America is coming to Brookline. Sam Lipsyte (Home Land, Venus Drive) has written his third novel, The Ask, a screed against university development, capitalism, artistic leanings, and the middle classes.  Après Lipsyte, le déluge.

**VENUE CHANGE**
Now in the Writers' & Readers' Room at the Brookline Booksmith
Tickets required - $5 - available 2/1/10

Have you ever wanted to write nonfiction? Learn how at Booksmith’s first-ever writing workshop! Billerica-based writing coach Sherry Ellis (Now Write, Illuminating Fiction) celebrates the release of her latest writing guide, Now Write! Nonfiction with a writing class. Joining her will be fellow teachers Hershman and Cohen.  During this workshop you will have the opportunity to start some of the writing exercises included in the book. 
Bring paper and pen!

Follow Stanford professor Elif Batuman as she visits Tolstoy's estate to investigate a possible murder and loses Isaac Babel's family at the airport. Batuman (Harper’s, The New Yorker, LRB and n+1) has literally walked a mile in the footsteps of her heroes in a sharp, funny, personal literary history that takes us from California to the Caucasus.

Ugly Duckling is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit art and publishing collective.

The Breakwater Reading Series features fiction, non-fiction and poetry by writers from UMass-Boston and Emerson College MFA programs. Join us on the third Friday each month to hear these extraordinary emerging voices. For more information, please contact Angela: breakwater.reading@gmail.com

Local mystery maven Clea Simon’s second Dulcie Schwartz mystery picks up a few months after the end of Shades of Grey. Harvard doctoral student Dulcie Schwartz finds the body of a fellow graduate student on her adviser’s front step. The ghost of Mr. Grey, her deceased cat, returns to offer his usual cryptic advice, leaving Dulcie to try to find the real murderer before the killer finds her.

Sonya Chung teaches writing at NYU and the Gotham Writer’s Workshop. Long for This World centers around a Korean family in America. Kate Walbert calls it "an intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new… a powerful debut from a young writer of great talent and promise."