At McIntyre's Books
Paula McLain, Kevin Powers and more
Dear Gentle Reader,
Thank you so much to all who came out to celebrate their independents and visited your local independent bookstore. We had giveaways, Mr. Billy played the guitar, and just so appreciated visiting with our guests. We are going to continue our big hit sale though next Monday, so in case you missed it, you can still visit our tables of 50% off books. Mysteries, cooking, fiction and non-fiction in hardcover, as well as some gift items, perfect for Mother’s Day and other gift opportunities with dads and grads.
Also don’t forget to purchase your ticket for our upcoming Literary Luncheon with Paula McLain on Wednesday, May 23 at noon. Her latest novel, Love and Ruin, delves into the fiery third marriage of Ernest Hemingway and journalist Martha Gellhorn. Lunch includes a talk by Ms. McLain, lunch and an autographed copy of Love and Ruin. Hope to see you there!
Friday, May 4th at 10:30am
Friday Storytime
Today’s Theme: One World Many Stories
Friday, May 4th from 6-7pm
May the 4th Be With You
In addition, we will be celebrating Star Wars Day with a story time and crafts that are out of this galaxy! Join us on Friday, May 4th from 6-7pm. Costume contest for kids and adults! Fun for the whole family, but aimed at Padawans ages 3-8.
Tuesday, May 8th at 10:30am
Storytime with Miss Sarah
Today’s theme: People in Our Neighborhood
Wednesday, May 9th at 6:30pm
Suzanne Adair launches her crowd-funded book, Killer Debt
A special event like one we have never hosted.
Please join Suzanne Adair in helping to promote her new historical novel, Killer Debt. Ms. Adair wants to see her book published as she thinks it should be. Having gone through all the usual publishing routes and after much frustration, she has decided to publish her latest novel via crowd funding. A visitor to McIntyre’s several times over, we would love to reintroduce you to one of the hardest working authors out here today.
A slain loyalist financier, a patriot synagogue, a desperate debtor. And Michael Stoddard, who was determined to see justice done.
July 1781. The American Revolution rages in North Carolina. Redcoat investigator Captain Michael Stoddard is given the high-profile, demanding job of guarding a signer of the Declaration of Independence on a diplomatic mission to Crown-occupied Wilmington. When a psychopathic fellow officer with his own agenda is assigned to investigate a financier’s murder, Michael is furious. The officer’s threats to impose fines on the owner of a tavern and link her brother to the financier’s murder draw Michael into the case—to his own peril and that of innocent civilians. For neither killer nor victim are what they first seem.
Friday, May 11th at 10:30am
Friday Storytime
Today’s Theme: Families
Tuesday, May 15th at 10:30am
Storytime with Miss Sarah
Today’s theme: Featherd Friends
Thursday, May 17th at 4pm
Bookends Books Club discusses David Lodge’s classic novel, Small World
Friday, May 18th at 10:30am
Friday Storytime
Today’s Theme: Dinosaurs Roar
Friday, May 18th at 6:30pm
Kevin Powers shares his latest novel, A Shout in the Ruins
Set in Virginia during the Civil War and a century beyond, this novel by the award-winning author of The Yellow Birds explores the brutal legacy of violence and exploitation in American society.
Spanning over one hundred years, from the antebellum era to the 1980’s, A Shout in the Ruins examines the fates of the inhabitants of Beauvais Plantation outside of Richmond, Virginia. When war arrives, the master of Beauvais, Anthony Levallios, foresees that dominion in a new America will be measured not in acres of tobacco under cultivation by his slaves, but in industry and capital. A grievously wounded Confederate veteran loses his grip on a world he no longer understands, and his daughter finds herself married to Levallois, an arrangement that feels little better than imprisonment. And two people enslaved at Beauvais plantation, Nurse and Rawls, overcome impossible odds to be together, only to find that the promise of coming freedom may not be something they will live to see.
Seamlessly interwoven is the story of George Seldom, a man orphaned by the storm of the Civil War, looking back from the 1950s on the void where his childhood ought to have been. Watching the government destroy his neighborhood to build a stretch of interstate highway through Richmond, he travels south in an attempt to recover his true origins. With the help of a young woman named Lottie, he goes in search of the place he once called home, all the while reckoning with the more than 90 years he lived as witness to so much that changed during the 20th century, and so much that didn’t. As we then watch Lottie grapple with life’s disappointments and joys in the 1980’s, now in her own middle-age, the questions remain: How do we live in a world built on the suffering of others? And can love exist in a place where for 400 years violence has been the strongest form of intimacy?
Written with the same emotional intensity, harrowing realism, and poetic precision that made The Yellow Birds one of the most celebrated novels of the past decade, A Shout in the Ruins cements Powers’ place in the forefront of American letters and demands that we reckon with the moral weight of our troubling history.
Saturday, May 19 at 11am
Jenny Milchman discusses Wicked River
Saturday, May 19th at 2pm
Norah Gaskin shares her latest, The Worst Thing
Special lunch with the authors
If you are coming to see Jenny Milchman and/or Norah Gaskin, you might want to join them for lunch.
Buy your lunch at the Belted Goat, next door to the bookstore, and join the authors in the room reserved for them. A great opportunity to chat with them on an informal basis and have a good lunch. Members of the crime writing group, Sisters in Crime, will be there, so it promises to be a lively discussion!
All the best from the usual suspects:
Pete, Sarah, Mouse, Billy, Johanna, Anna, Kelley, Hazel and Keebe