Friday, April 20, 2012

Chaon and Murakami Discussion

Join us Thursday, April 26 for the next edition of Book Club for Writers, in which we read and discuss short stories with a particular focus on questions of writing and craft. This month, we will discuss "Big Me" by Dan Chaon and "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" by Haruki Murakami.

The discussion will be held at 7:00 PM at library, and is free and open to all. Copies of the stories are available at the library.

Dan Chaon is the author of two novels and three collections of short stories, most recently Stay Awake (2012). His short stories have won the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been selected for Best American Short Stories anthologies. His collection Among the Missing, which includes "Big Me," was a finalist for the National Book Award. He teaches creative writing at Oberlin College.

Haruki Murakami is the winner of such international literary awards as the Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, and the International Catalunya Prize. Perhaps the best-known in the West of living Japanese writers, Murakami is the author of such novels as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, A Wild Sheep Chase, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. His most recent novel, 1Q84, was a sensation in Japan, where it was published in three volumes, and an international phenomenon when published in English last year. He is widely considered, as described in The Guardian, as "among the world's greatest living novelists."

Book Club for Writers is a fiction discussion group that meets four times a year. It was created by the New Hampshire Writers' Project and is sponsored locally by a fiction writing group that meets weekly at the Haverhill Corner Library. The summer edition will be held on Thursday, July 26 and will feature "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs and "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Author Tea with Jane K. Cleland

The library will host an author tea with acclaimed mystery novelist Jane K. Cleland on Sunday, April 15. Cleland is the author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries, which are set in New Hampshire and have been hailed as "Antiques Roadshow for mystery fans." The tea will be held from 3:00 to 5:00 PM at Susan Brown's Rock Creek Farm on Route 10 north of Haverhill Corner. Catering will be provided by Janice Robinson, and admission will be $10, to benefit the library.

Cleland's popular series features antiques appraiser Josie Prescott, who operates an antiques store and auction house in fictional Rocky Point, New Hampshire. The first volume in the series, Consigned to Death, has been selected by Library Journal as one of twenty-two "core titles" recommended for libraries seeking to build their collections in cozy mysteries. The Josie Prescott books are "packed with antique lore, complex characters, and intricate plots," says Library Journal.

Cleland has just published her seventh mystery in the series, Dolled Up for Murder, which has already been praised by Publishers Weekly for "action [that] builds to a seamless and fitting conclusion."

In addition to her novels, Cleland has also published short stories in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, where she has a new story scheduled for this summer. Her books have been bestsellers for the bookstores of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. She has served on the national board of the Mystery Writers of America and is past president of its New York City chapter. She is on the faculty of Manhattanville College's Master of Arts in Writing program and has taught writing at MIT.

Call the library to reserve a spot for this event.