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Misty Valley Books
Main Street
On The Green
PO Box 700
Chester, Vermont
05143
802.875.3400


Monday-Friday
10 am - 6 pm
Saturday
10 am -5 pm
Sunday
11 am - 4 pm



 



Upcoming Events at Misty Valley Books



SAVE THIS DATE

Saturday, January 28, 2012
New Voices 2012

Misty Valley Books presents its annual weekend of authors reading from their first books. Now in its 18th year, we have welcomed Matthew Dicks (Something Mi sing, Milo), Hillary Jordan (Mudbound, When She Woke), Alex Berenson (The Faithful Spy, Ghost War), Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, The Given Day), Steve Almond (Candy Freak, Which Brings Me to You), Emily Mitchell (The Last Summer of the World), Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha), James Collins (Beginner's Greek), Gregory Maguire (Wicked), Lewis Robinson (Water Dogs), Elena Gorokhova (A Mountain of Crumbs), Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell from the Sky), Jennifer Egan (The Invisible Circus, A Visit from the Goon Squad), and many others.

The readings/discussions will take place at the Vermont Institute of Contemporary Arts (new venue)* at 2:00 PM. The schedule includes opportunities for the public to meet the authors skiing or snowshoeing at Grafton Ponds, at the reception after the readings, or at a wine and cheese reception followed by dinner at the Fullerton Inn on the Green in Chester. Many local inns will be offering special New Voices packages.


New Voices 2012 authors are:



Betty Shotton
Liftoff Leadership


Christopher Boucher
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive


Katharine Britton
Her Sister's Shadow


Naomi Benaron
Running The Rift


Paul Grossman
The Sleepwalkers

Betty Shotton
Liftoff Leadership

Pilots and leaders have a lot in common. Betty Shotton, a pilot , CEO, serial entrepreneur, and lifelong leader, is an advocate for meaningful and principled leadership. In her book, she thoughtfully guides readers through ten principles, including courage, integrity, possibility, and awe, utilizing theory complemented by a values- driven narrative filled with personal stories from the C suite and intriguing tales from the cockpit. She is a commercially trained pilot, with 35 years experience as a CEO, and travels the country speaking on the need to return to and integrate fundamental values that benefit mankind. She has served on the board of CapeAir and currently is on the board of First Flight Foundation. www.liftoffleadership.com


Christopher Boucher
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

Trying to explain this book - its complexity, its brilliance, the
way it makes perfectly emotional sense even though almost everything about
it is, on the surface, absurd- is a challenge. The jacket reads."If you
think raising a kid in today's world is hard, imagine how tough it would be
if your child happened to be a Volkswagen Beetle." For all the surrealism
that you should be prepared for, there is nothing glib about this book. The narrator's son, the VW, is ill throughout and getting sicker. He's prone to breakdowns and struggling with rust. Boucher's world is made up of absolutely human and recognizable truths: it's unspeakably sad when a parent dies; it's really scary when your child is seriously ill; it can be comforting to avoid change, to stay close to home. We all run on stories and Boucher's is wildly imaginative and masterful. www.vwalive.com


Katharine Britton
Her Sister's Shadow

Lilli Niles is at home in her North London flat when she receives an unexpected call. Her elder sister, Bea - at the family homestead in White Head, Massachusetts - has just lost her husband, and she'd like Lilli to fly home for the funeral. Lilli, a painter, is preparing for her latest gallery opening. And more to the point, there are reasons she moved all the way to England to escape her older sister, reasons that have kept them estranged for decades. But something in Bea's voice makes Lilli think it's time to return to the stately house in New England she loved as a child, to the memory of a shared loss - and to a time when simple sisterhood was enough to overcome betrayal and resentment. Katharine Britton has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing f rom Dartmouth College, teaches at Colby-Sawyer College, and at The Writers' Center. www.katharinebritton.com


Naomi Benaron
Running The Rift

Awarded the prestigious Bellwether Prize (like two former New
Voices, Hillary Jordan and Heidi Durrow) for its treatment of compelling
social issues, Benaron's novel is a powerful portrait of an alarming episode
in global history, the Rwandan Genocide, through the eyes of a runner, Jean
Patrick Nkuba, the son of a murdered school teacher, who dreams of bringing
peace to his country and equality to his Tutsi compatriots by representing
Rwanda at the Olympics. A beautiful and heart-rending story.
www.naomibenaron.com


Paul Grossman
The Sleepwalkers

Berlin, 1932. In the final weeks of the Weimar Republic, as Hitler and his National Socialist Party angle to assume control of Germany, beautiful girls are seen sleepwalking through the streets. When a young woman of mysterious origin is pulled dead from the Havel River with her legs bizarrely deformed, Berlin Inspektor-Detektiv Willi Kraus, a veteran of World War I who earned the Iron Cross for bravery and who happens to be Jewish, begins a murder investigation. A riveting debut! www.paulgrossmanwriter.com


Schedule

  • 9:30 am - Ski or snowshoe with the authors at Grafton Ponds
    (call Grafton Ponds 843-2400 for prices)
  • 2:00-4:30 pm - Readings and discussion at Vermont Institute of Contemporary Arts (new venue)*
  • 4:30-5:30 pm - Reception and book signing at Vermont Institute of Contemporary Arts
  • 5:45-6:30 pm - Wine and Cheese reception in front of the fire at The Fullerton Inn (cash bar)
  • 6:30-8:00 pm - Dinner at the Fullerton Inn (reservations please 875-2444)

Note: All events are open to the public.

For more information , call Misty Valley Books at 802 875-3400. VTICA (www.vtica.org) is located at 15 Depot Street at the corner of Main Street and Depot Street (across from the Jiffy Mart)



SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, February 5 at 4:00 PM
Beach Conger, M.D. presents his book, It's
Probably Nothing: More Adventures of a Vermont Country Doctor

Hiram Stedrock sat in the examining room worried about a family member in distress. Her name was Gloria. She was a cow. When Dr. Beach Conger = returns to Vermont, after several years in Philadelphia, he reenters a medical practice that is worlds away from big-city medicine.

In It's Probably Nothing, Conger learns that his patients-from Pauline Pontifact to Uptah
Corless-need him more than ever to teach them how to navigate the modern medical maze. This collection of stories showcases Conger's irreverent view
into the doctor's role and his profound empathy for the characters he encounters along the way. Conger also examines how medicine-and problems
with our current health-care system-can remain the same and yet feel vastly different whether you're a small-town farmer or an urban resident.

Reception and book signing. At the bookstore.

 



SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 4:00 PM Chester author Linda Cunningham talks about her new book, Small Town Girl

When Lauren Smith begrudgingly returns to the small Vermont town where she grew up to arrange for the sale of her late grandmother's old farmhouse, she has everything she's always worked for. Lauren drives a Mercedes. She's
engaged to one of the most powerful businessmen in the country and wears a three-carat diamond ring to prove it. She lives in a penthouse on Central Park West. Yes, Lauren has everything she considers important. She is smugly prepared for any eventuality in dealing with these country people so Lauren isn't surprised when the hot water isn't working at the old house. No problem. She simply looks in the phone book and calls the local plumber.

The moment Caleb Cochran steps through the old screen door to fix the hot water, the glittery facade that masquerades as Lauren's life begins to crumble around her. Though she tries hard to deny their mutual, magnetic attraction, Lauren is finally forced to reevaluate her focus and come face-to-face with her true self. Small Town Girl is a story of discovering the true meaning of life and love.

Reception and book signing. At the bookstore.

 


Past Events Archive


SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, December 11 from 2:00-4:00 PM Anna Dewdney returns to Misty Valley to sign her book, llama llama home with mama.

Warm and comforting, llama llama home with mama is just the right book for anyone who is feeling under the weather and needs a little cheering up.

Anna Dewdney will sign her book and maybe read while she's at Misty Valley! Holiday refreshments, too.

 



SAVE THIS DATE

November 2 7:00-8:00 PM
Michael Palma returns for a new poetry series:
“Where the Heart Lies”- the poetry of Robert Browning

The poetic reputation of Robert Browning (1812-1889) grew slowly over several decades, and for many years he was a specialized taste, highly esteemed by his fellow poets but largely unknown to the general public. (Even today, there are many who know him best as one half of a famous literary couple, whose romance and elopement were the basis for The Barretts of Wimpole Street.) He began to win a wider audience with the appearance of Men and Women (1855), his finest collection of shorter poems—whose concluding lyric provides the title for the series. His fame was consolidated by The Ring and the Book (1868-69), a rich psychological analysis of the principal figures in an actual murder case in seventeenth-century Italy.

Marked by intensity, compassion, and rare insight into human nature, Browning’s poems present the most varied and complex set of characters in English poetry since the plays of Shakespeare. He is the acknowledged master of the dramatic monologue, a poem in which a character speaks directly to another—and to the reader—revealing the deepest needs and often the most lurid impulses of the human heart. At least one outstanding example, “My Last Duchess,” is known to everyone who has taken a high-school English class.



SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, November 6 at 2:00 PM
Archer Mayor kicks off this year’s Vermont Voices-Sundays in November series with his new Joe Gunther mystery,
Tag Man.

Tag Man is the 22nd mystery in this well received series, with complicated characters - both the criminals and the victims. Joe Gunther, struggling to recover from a devastating personal loss, leads his VBI team to untangle the many conflicting pieces of evidence, while the burglar himself struggles for survival in the no-man's-land between the police and the villains. www.archermayor.com

Discussion and book signing.
Chester's First Baptist Church on
Main Street



SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, November 13 at 2:00 PM
Yannick Murphy presents her book,
The Call

The daily rhythm of a veterinarian’s family in rural New England is shaken when a hunting accident leaves their eldest son in a coma. With the lives of his loved ones unhinged, the veterinarian struggles to maintain stability while searching for the man responsible. But in the midst of their great trial an unexpected visitor arrives, requesting a favor that will have profound consequences—testing a loving father’s patience, humor, and resolve and forcing husband and wife to come to terms with what “family” truly means. Yannick Murphy is the author of the novels, Signed, Mata Hari, Here They Come, and The Sea of Trees as well as several children’s books. Her work has appeared in The Best American Non-Required Reading and the O.Henry Prize Stories 2007. She lives in Reading, Vermont. www.yannickmurphy.com

Discussion and Book Signing.
At the Bookstore



SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, November 20 at 2:00
Sally Ryder Brady,
A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage

Awash in grief three weeks after the sudden death of the love-of-her-life, Sally Brady stumbled on a tangle of secrets. Her husband, with whom she had shared her bed, her body, her heart and soul, had had another life, a sex life with men.

As she threaded back to their first dance at the Boston Cotillion in 1956 when she was seventeen and Upton eighteen, through a glamorous courtship with champagne and waltzes, incense and confession, commitment and promise. she reviewed their forty-six year marriage, alive with children and careers, rife with conflicting passions, glorious and dangerous. She looked for misread clues as she traced Upton’s alcoholism, homophobia, homosexuality and shame. This bittersweet journey is for her a valentine, a testament to the universal challenges and joys of enduring love. www.sallyryderbrady.com

Discussion and book signing.
At the Bookstore



SAVE THIS DATE

Thursday, December 1 at 7 :00 PM UPDATED
Charles C. Mann presents a slide show and discussion of his new book,
1493, Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles Mann, the author of 1491, returns to Chester to present a new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, they developed radically different plants and animals. Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas ended that separation. He accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. These old and new world elements form today’s integrated global culture, the “homogenocene”. Mann talks about the incompetence of the first settlers in Jamestown who were saved by tobacco, the first global commodity craze; Malaria and yellow fever debilitated white settlers throughout America but Africans had partial resistance, a major factor in encouraging the slave trade. Focusing on ecology and economics, Mann provides a spellbinding account of how an unplanned collision of unfamiliar animals, vegetables, minerals and diseases produced unforeseen wealth, misery, social upheaval and the modern world. Discussion and book signing. www.charlesmann.org

At the bookstore



SAVE THIS DATE

Saturday, October 1 & Sunday, October 2 10:00-4:00 Meet author Steve Delaney

Steve Delaney will be in front of Misty Valley Books presenting his new book, Cooney, The Making of a Country Cop.

In his third book, Delaney continues the story of Arnold "Cooney" Jacobs, the police sergeant from Nilesburgh, Vermont that we met in his book, Kevin, The Last Invisible Vermonter. According to Delaney, Cooney told him that he needed his own story. VPR listeners will recognize Delaney's voice as the voice of VPR's Morning Edition and Midday Report for many years. A former correspondent for NBC News, he covered presidential candidates for two decades, served as resident correspondent in the Middle East for four years, and covered the State Department during the Iran hostage crisis. Stop by during the Craft Fair and have a chat with Steve.



SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, October 2 at 4:00 PM
Jon Katz presents
Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die

When his beloved dog, Orson, died, the death shook him in a deeply profound way. "I was embarrassed by my grief," he remembers. "What right did I have to fall to pieces over a border collie?" In Going Home, Katz addresses the difficult but necessary topic of saying goodbye to a devoted companion, and offers comfort, wisdom, and a way forward from sorrow to acceptance. Jon Katz has written twenty books—seven novels and twelve works of nonfiction—including Rose in a Storm, Soul of a Dog, Izzy & Lenore, Dog Days, A Good Dog, and The Dogs of Bedlam Farm. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Rolling Stone, Wired, and the AKC Gazette. He has worked for CBS News, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Katz is also a photographer and the author of a children’s book, Meet the Dogs of Bedlam Farm. He lives on Bedlam Farm in upstate New York with the artist Maria Heinrich; his dogs, Rose, Izzy, Lenore, and Frieda; and his barn cats, Mother and Minnie. www.bedlamfarm.com Discussion and a reception will follow Katz’s remarks. The event is free of charge.

At the bookstore.

MEET THE DOGS OF BEDLAM FARM, by Jon Katz





SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, June 26 at 4:00
Jesse Haas presents Revolutionary Westminster, From Massacre to Statehood.

Join Chester Historical Society and Misty Valley Books in welcoming author Jesse Haas.

Haas, the author of more than 30 award-winning books for children and young adults, has written her first historical non-fiction book for adults, Revolutionary Westminster: From Massacre to Statehood. She will discuss it at the Chester Historical Society across the street from Misty Valley Books.

Most people think the beginning of the American Revolution took place at the battles of Lexington and Concord. But, over a month before, in March 1775, Westminster Whigs endured an attack, which left two dead, from their own Loyalist sheriff and his men. In response, the county rose in revolt in what became known as the Westminster Massacre and set the stage for Vermont's separation from New York and her position as a mainstay of American independence throughout the entire war.

At the bookstore.


SAVE THIS DATE

Four Wednesdays: July 6-July 27 at 7:00 PM- Michael Palma returns with a new poetry series: "In a World I Never Made"- the poetry of Thomas Hardy and A. E. Housman

The title of this series is a line from a poem by A.E. Housman who, with the publication of A Shropshire Lad in 1896, Housman instantly took his place among the leading poets of his time. Classics such as "To an Athlete Dying Young" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty" have remained perpetual favorites for their rueful longings, mordant wit, and knack for memorable phrase-making.

After a successful career as a novelist that produced Tess of the D'Ubervilles, and The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy stopped writing fiction in his late 50's and turned to his first love, poetry. He wrote over 900 poems, including a poignant series of verses provoked by grief and guilt after his wife's death in 1912. Reservations encouraged. FREE ~ At the bookstore.



SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, July 10 at 4:00 PM Rosanne E. Putnam presents her new book, Springfield (VT).

Although Springfield was chartered in 1761, residents did not begin taking advantage of the waterpower on the Black River until the 1800’s. Once dams were built to harness the water, mills and factories followed. Innovation could not be stopped and for the next 150 years, one invention or improvement after another emerged from this little town.

Things like the spring clothespin and sandpaper were invented in Springfield as well as world famous tool making machines such as the turret lathe and gear shaping and grinding machines. A combination of the right people at the right place and time allowed Springfield, “the little town that did”, to transform from an agrarian and mill town to the home of a world-renowned machine tool industry. Rosanne Putnam grew up in Springfield and currently writes a weekly historical column, Pictures of the Past for the local newspaper. She is also the president of the Friends of the Springfield Town Library. Reception and book signing. At the bookstore. Free.

At the bookstore.


SAVE THIS DATE

April 27- May 18, 2011 ‘A Terrible Beauty’: The Poetry of W. B. Yeats

Michael Palma, returning to Misty Valley Books, will consider the poetry of William Butler Yeats on four Wednesday evenings. The free sessions will begin at 7 pm and last about an hour.

Palma, an acclaimed poet and translator, led the spellbinding and insightful discussions of Robert Frost’s poetry at Misty Valley Books in the summer of 2007 in a four-week series called Frost in July. He then took all comers on a tour of hell with Dante’s Inferno, a subject with which Palma is especially conversant as he has done a brilliant translation. In spring 2009, Palma talked about Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and his own poetry. Then it was Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, W. H. Auden and, last fall, Wilfred Owen and Philip Larkin.

Palma's next poet, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), is generally considered to be the greatest English-language poet of the twentieth century. He is almost as famous for his obsession with the political activist Maud Gonne, who inspired some of his finest work, as he is for his poetry. From early lyrics based on Irish mythology to harder-edged confrontations with social and political issues, from symbolic poems that grapple with the deepest questions of existence to a final burst of gritty explorations of the basic passions, he produced first-rate poetry at every stage of his life. The title of Palma’s Misty Valley Books series is taken from the refrain in the poem Easter 1916, his celebration of the rebels who began the movement to free Ireland from British domination: “All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.”

At the bookstore.




SAVE THIS DATE Willem Lange

Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 4:00 PM Willem Lange and Mary Azarian, A Dream of Dragons, A Saga in Verse

Join beloved author Willem Lange and renowned illustrator, Mary Azarian who will talk about their new book, A Dream of Dragons. Their book tells a story of the Viking Age which began over a thousand years ago when the ancient Norse perfected their swift-sailing, dragon-headed longships. Young men, and later whole families, left Norway’s rugged fiords in search of open land, trade, treasure, or fame. Many others took to the unknown sea simply because something vague and irresistible beckoned to them. They settled islands all across the North Atlantic and landed in North America over four hundred years before Columbus. Their exploits are recounted in the ancient Norse sagas.

A Dream of Dragons is a proper and modern Norse saga written with all the power of Melville and Hemingway and a true story now retold in the ageless rhythms of blank verse as irresistible as the beautiful and especially commissioned wood cuts of Mary Azarian.

Willem Lange directed the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center from 1968 to 1972 (and is an adopted member of the Dartmouth Class of 1957). From 1972 until his “retirement” in 2007, he was a building and remodeling contractor in Hanover. In 1981 he began writing a weekly column, “A Yankee Notebook,” which appears in several New England newspapers. He’s a commentator for Vermont Public Radio and both Vermont and New Hampshire Public Television. His annual readings of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol began in 1975 and continue unabated. In 1973 Will founded the Geriatric Adventure Society, a group of outdoor enthusiasts whose members have skied the 200-mile Alaska Marathon, climbed in Alaska, the Andes, and Himalayas, bushwhacked on skis through northern New England, and paddled rivers north of the Arctic Circle. After forty years in New Hampshire, he and his wife, Mother, moved recently to East Montpelier, Vermont. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Mary Azarian, who has illustrated A Dream of Dragons, moved to a small hill farm in northern Vermont in 1963. She and her partner farmed with horses and oxen, kept chickens, a milk cow and sheep, made maple syrup and raised three sons as well as a large vegetable and flower garden. These years on the farm became the basis for the subjects she has chosen to depict in her woodcut prints. In 1969, she started Farmhouse Press and began producing woodcut prints, first printing by hand and eventually printing on a 19th century Vandercook proof press. Trained as a painter as well as a printmaker, she developed a non-traditional technique of adding the color with water based paints rather than with individual color blocks. In addition to producing prints, Mary Azarian has illustrated over 40 books. In 1999, Snowflake Bentley, a picture book about Vermont’s famous photographer of snow crystals won the Caldecott Award. She continues to illustrate picture books and a collection of note cards reproduced from original woodcuts. Reception and book signing.

At the bookstore. Free.


SAVE THIS DATE Anna Dewdney

Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 4:00 PM Henry Homeyer presents his new book, Organic Gardening (not just) in the Northeast

Henry Homeyer, “The Gardening Guy”, is a freelance writer, garden designer, and consultant His new book, Organic Gardening, is organized around the calendar year, starting in March and continuing through the year with timely advice such as how to sharpen your pruners, rototilling- good or bad?, growing giant carrots, dealing with insect pests without chemicals, and protecting plants for the winter. This book will not stay on your shelf; it will reside in the potting shed or on a garden bench. Henry Homeyer is a UNH Master Gardener and was the New Hampshire//Vermont associate editor for People, Places, and Plants magazine for more than ten years. He is the author of Notes from the Garden (now out of print), The New Hampshire Gardener’s Companion, and The Vermont Gardener’s Companion (Globe Pequot Press). Henry writes a weekly gardening column that appears in 12 newspapers throughout New England, is a regular commentator on Vermont Public Radio, and teaches a course in Sustainable Gardening at Granite State College. He lives in Cornish Flat, NH. Reception and book signing.

At the bookstore.





SAVE THIS DATE


Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 4:00 PM Bill Schubart reads from his new book, Fat People.

For most people, food is a source of sustenance and pleasure. But for some, it is their only friend and main source of comfort, and it may become their addictive nemesis. Bill Schubart, a man of girth, is a keen and sympathetic observer of those whose lives become defined by their obesity. Fat People adds to our understanding of how easily food can overwhelm a life. The fourteen stories Schubart tells are by turns poignant and evocative. They touch on all facets of obesity- addictive behavior, the pressure of prejudice, how food comes to rule a life, and the intimate psychological development of people for whom food becomes both companionship and family. Fat People is an entirely unique fictional look at the emotions and experiences of those who live to eat: the estrangement, loneliness, embarrassment, fear, defeated sexuality, unresolved anger, but also the simple pleasure of food.

Bill Schubart was born in New York City. His father died in the Philippines before his birth. Soon after, his widowed mother moved them both to Morrisville, Vermont, where she later remarried and had two more children. Schubart attended Exeter Academy, Kenyon College and graduated from UVM with a degree in French. Over the years, he co-founded Philo Records and Resolution, and has been active in various cultural, civic and business organizations throughout his lifetime in Vermont. He is a regular commentator on Vermont Public Radio. He has four children and lives and writes in Hinesburg with his wife Kate. Reception and book signing.

At the bookstore. Free.

 

SAVE THIS DATE

Sunday, May 22. 2011 at 4:00 PM Cheryl Wilfong discusses her book, The Meditative Gardener: Cultivating Mindfulness of Body, Feelings, and Mind

In this wise, down-to-earth book, Master Gardener and mindfulness meditation teacher Cheryl Wilfong offers us a rich bouquet of the Buddha’s teachings. Wilfong helps us to weed our inner garden to improve conditions for the flowering of skillful habits. She shows us how, as gardeners, we have a unique opportunity to observe nature close up, understanding the laws of cause and effect, that everything changes, finding the sacred in a single flower, and practicing mindfulness as we bring awareness to the time we spend in the garden. Cheryl offers meditation tools for the body, feelings, and the mind, and contemplations and investigations to help us practice. Reception and book signing.

At the bookstore. Free




SAVE THIS DATE Pam Flowers

Sunday, March 27 at 4:00
Pam Flowers presents her children’s book Ellie’s Long Walk, The True Story of Two Friends on The Appalachian Trail

If you missed Pam Flower’s presentation in Chester in 2002 on her trip alone across the Arctic with just her sled dogs, you’ll have another chance to meet this amazing woman. On August 24, 2008, Pam reached the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine’s Baxter State Park. Her plan was to hike the entire Appalachian Trail with her dog, Ellie (for Eleanor Roosevelt). Their goal: Springer Mountain, the southern terminus, 2, 174 miles south in the state of Georgia. They hiked for 199 days, crossing Wildcat Ridge and almost getting washed off by a torrent of mud and gravel, stalked by winter weather moving south, with Pam severely injuring her back when she slipped on an icy patch, almost losing Ellie who broke through ice and nearly drowned, but ultimately arriving at he end of the Trail on March 10, 2009. Pam will give a power point show illustrating their trip. Ellie will make a cameo appearance! A book signing and reception will follow. Free. At the bookstore.

At the bookstore.

 


SAVE THIS DATE

April 10 at 4:00 PM
Susanne Dubroff, One Remaining Star AND Chard De Niord, The Double Truth

At the bookstore.



SAVE THIS DATE
Anna Dewdney

Sunday, February 20 at 2:00
Dogs of Bedlam Farm's owner/author Jon Katz talks about his new novel, Rose in a Storm .

Rose, a border collie is determined and focused, keeping the sheep out of danger, protecting the other creatures on the farm she calls home. But of all those she's looked after since coming to the farm as a puppy, it is Sam, the farmer, whom she watches most carefully. Awakened one cold midwinter night during lambing season, Rose and Sam struggle into the snowy dark to do their work. The ever observant Rose has seen a change in her master of late, ever since Sam's wife disappeared one day. She senses something else in the air as well: A storm is coming, but not like any of the ones she's seen over the years. This storm feels different, bigger, more foreboding. When an epic blizzard hits the region, it will take all of Rose's resolve, resourcefulness, and courage to help Sam save the farm and the creatures who live there. Jon Katz consulted with animal behavior scientists to create his unique and convincing vision of the world as seen through the eyes of a dog. Poignant, thrilling, and beautifully wrought, Rose in a Storm is a wonderfully original and powerful tale from a gifted storyteller.

At the bookstore.



SAVE THIS DATE Anna Dewdney

Friday, January 21st at 7:00 PM
Sam Tanenhaus, Editor of The New York Times Book Review & Week in Review presents his latest book, The Death of Conservatism.

Is conservatism dead? Author Sam Tanenhaus believes so. In his book, The Death of Conservatism, an expansion on his article in The New Republic, Tanenhaus argues that American conservatism has been taken over by revanchists who are at war with the American government.

Join Tanenhaus for a lively evening at the bookstore. A reception and book signing will follow his talk.



SAVE THIS DATE

Saturday, January 29, 2011 New Voices 2011

Misty Valley Books presents its annual weekend of authors reading from their first books. Now in its 17th year, we have welcomed Matthew Dicks (Something Mi sing, Milo), Hillary Jordan (Mudbound), Alex Berenson (The Faithful Spy, Ghost War), Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, The Given Day), Steve Almond (Candy Freak, Which Brings Me to You), Emily Mitchell (The Last Summer of the World), Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha), James Collins (Beginner's Greek), Gregory Maguire (Wicked), Lewis Robinson (Water Dogs) and many others.

The readings/discussions will take place at the Stone Church at 2:00 PM. The schedule includes opportunities for the public to meet the authors skiing or snowshoeing at Grafton Ponds, at the reception after the readings, or at a wine and cheese reception followed by dinner at the Fullerton Inn on the Green in Chester. Many local inns will be offering special New Voices packages.

New Voices authors are Paul Doiron, The Poacher's Son, Jay Varner, Nothing Left to Burn, Dori Ostermiller, Outside the Ordinary World, Ben Farmer, Evangeline, and Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, The Storyteller of Marrakesh.

Schedule:

  • 9:30 - Ski or snowshoe with the authors at Grafton Ponds (call Grafton Ponds 843-2400 for prices)
  • 2:00-4:30 - Readings and discussion at the Stone Church
  • 4:30-5:30 - Reception and book signing at the Stone Church
  • 5:45-6:30 - Wine and Cheese reception in front of the fire at The Fullerton Inn (cash bar)
  • 6:30-8:00 - Dinner at the Fullerton Inn (reservations please 875-2444)Note: All events are open to the public.

For more information , call Misty Valley Books at 802 875-3400. At the Stone Church in Chester.


SAVE THIS DATE

Lynn Levine

Sunday, December  5, 2010 at 4:00 PM
Lynn Levine, presenting her new book
Snow Secrets

Join author and tracker Lynne Levine, author of the popular tracking guide, Mammal Tracks and Scat  as she teaches the reader to walk in the woods with respect and curiosity. Snow Secrets, geared for children 8-12,  is the story of Sarah and Jasmine, both sixth graders, who venture into the woods with Tess, an Abenaki woman, and learn the art of tracking. Mysteries await them at every turn. When they return home, they learn that Boots, Sarah’s cat, is missing. On their own, the girls use their recently acquired skills to search for Boots. The girls have very different ways of learning. Sarah is school smart, while Jasmine learns more about the world from the out-of-doors. Sarah has trouble riding horses, while Jasmine excels. Although they are jealous of each other, they must learn to work as a team.

Lynn Levine was born in Brooklyn and moved to Vermont in 1974. Four years later, having received her masters degree in forestry from the University of Massachusetts, Lynn became the first female consulting forester in New England. Throughout her career, she has been passionate about protecting the integrity of the forest. Lynn has inspired young people and adults to connect with the woods. She has taken thousands of people into the forest to share her love of nature. A group of fourth graders anointed Lynn “The Scat Lady”, a quirky title that she cherishes. Fascinating for all age groups. At the bookstore.



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Willem Lange and Bert Dodson

Saturday, December 11, 2010 at 5:00 PM Willem Lange and Bert Dodson return to Misty Valley to present the Christmas favorite, Favor Johnson, A Christmas Story

Favor Johnson lives on a small farm in the hills of Vermont.  He keeps to himself, surrounded by dozens of animals and his one constant friend, a hound named Hercules. A mystery hangs over a village as Christmas approaches. Who is delivering dozens of homemade fruitcakes from house to house? A modern American folktale, Favor Johnson has been a favorite radio story for twenty-five years and is published now for the first time, brought to life by the wonderful watercolor illustrations of Bert Dodson.

The unsentimental story of Favor Johnson, his dog, Doctor Jennings, and the mysterious house-to-house delivery on Christmas Eve has become a Vermont classic tale of neighborliness and generosity. A story about the real spirit of Christmas, its message is not only for or about Christmas time.

Lange’s text is brought to life by the wonderful watercolor illustrations of Bert Dodson, the author and illustrator of numerous children's books including, most recently, Kami and the Yaks and Grannie's Secret Cupboard.  He lives in Bradford, Vt.

One of the most beloved storytellers and authors in New England, Willem Lange is a commentator and host on Vermont Public Radio and New Hampshire Public Television.  He writes a weekly column in The Valley News and The Rutland Herald and lives with his wife in East Montpelier.

This book is Lange and Dodson’s second collaboration, the first being the highly acclaimed John and Tom, published in 2001 by The Vermont Folklife Center.

A reception and book signing will follow the presentation, which is open free of charge to the public.

A special addition to this year’s signing will be Favor Johnson’s Fruitcake, on sale for $5.95 made by Old Cavendish Products of Cavendish, Vermont from the receipe in Lange’s books. A perfect stocking stuffer! For more information call Misty Valley Books at (802) 875-3400.



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Anna Dewdney

Sunday, December 12, 2011 from 2:00-4:00 PM Author Anna Dewdney will sign her new holiday book, Llama, Llama, Holiday Drama

If there's one thing Llama Llama doesn't like, it's waiting. He and Mama Llama rush around, shopping for presents, baking cookies, decorating the tree . . . but how long is it until Christmas? Will it ever come? Finally, Llama Llama just can't wait any more! It takes a cuddle from Mama Llama to remind him that "Gifts are nice, but there's another: The true gift is, we have each other." Come meet this wonderful author/illustrator who lives right down the road in a Vermont farmhouse where she creates her llama, llama books. At the bookstore.

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Vermont Voices 2010
Four Sundays in November at 2:00 at the Stone Church

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Sunday, January 9, 2011 at 4:00 PM Brattleboro Write Action authors present selections from their new anthology.


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Archer Mayor, Red Herring

Sunday, November 7
Archer Mayor, Red Herring

Archer Mayor, Vermont's favorite mystery writer and raconteur, returns this year on Sunday, November 7, with his new - and 21st - Joe Gunther tale, Red Herring, which unfolds this time in Brattleboro with a fascinating side trip to the Brookhaven National Laboratories. VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) head Joe Gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of violent deaths that appear unrelated until telltale clues reveal a linkage between them and that all of the deaths are, in fact, murders. Author Archer Mayor has a life story that may make most people feel like humdrum run-of-the-millers: Yalie, scholar, editor, researcher, photographer, political advance-man, medical illustrator, lab technician, assistant medical examiner, EMT, fireman, policeman, Newfane resident - and, yes, novelist and winner of the prestigious New England Booksellers Association award for fiction.



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Creston Lea, Wild Punch

Sunday, November 14
Creston Lea, Wild Punch

Vermont Voices continues with Burlington's Creston Lea, master guitar builder and excellent fiction writer. Lea will present Wild Punch, a collection of short stories set in northern New England and portraying the revelatory moments of small-timers, clergymen, hotheads, day laborers, motorcycle racers, loggers, horse farmers and young veterans of the Gulf War. "Lea is a new voice for the rural North Country in the tradition of Howard Frank Mosher, Russell Banks and Annie Proulx", says Ernie Hebert. Creston Lea's writing is realistic and understated. His style can be compared to writers like Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff and is a master of local grit and local color, an author who clearly loves his characters. He understands their contradictions and their stark daily realities, and he writes about them with an authority based on authenticity, generosity, grace, and sharply observed humanity. He lives in Burlington with his wife and young daughter. There, he builds electric guitars under the name Creston Electric Instruments. www.crestonguitars.com



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David Carkeet, From Away

Sunday, November 21
David Carkeet, From Away

From Away is humanely funny, mysterious, and most unpredictable. In Denny Braintree, Carkeet has created a marvelously original protagonist, a wisecracking loner who loves model trains, who finds himself stranded in late winter Vermont. Mistaken for a look-alike native son who mysteriously disappeared three years before, Denny takes on his new identity, A good thing, too, as the woman he had hoped to sleep with, has turned up dead, and Denny is the chief suspect. David Carkeet is a trumpet player, an author of five novels, an Edgar nomination an O. Henry award and lives in Vermont.



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Jon Clinch, Kings of the Earth & Wendy Clinch, Double Black

Sunday, November 28
Jon Clinch, Kings of the Earth & Wendy Clinch, Double Black

Double Black tells the story of twenty-something Stacey Curtis who leaves Boston for Vermont in search of the life she's always dreamed about. Instead she stumbles into financial intrigue, bitter family warfare, and murder. An exciting run down some treacherous mountain trails. Kings of the Earth is a powerful and haunting story of three brothers and their life, death, and ties of family. The Clinches live in Plymouth, Vermont.

 



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September 15, September 22, September 29, and October 6 from 7:00-8:30 pm - Professor and Poet Michael Palma returns
to Misty Valley Books "Never Such Innocence Again": The poems of Wilfred Owen and Philip Larkin

Professor Palma will discuss the poems of these celebrated poets on four Wednesday evenings at the bookstore: September 15, September 22, September 29, and October 6 from 7:00-8:30 pm. Dr. Palma will suggest selected books of poetry for purchase. Reservations encouraged. FREE ~ At the bookstore.


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Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 4:00 PM - Roger Guest, student and teacher of Buddhism, psychotherapist, avid kayaker and author, will talk about his book, The Tender Heart of Sadness: 28 Aspects of Warriorship Drawn from the Buddhist and Shambhala Tradition.

The former Executive Director of Karme-Choling, a Buddhist contemplative center in Barnet, VT, Roger Guest has been a student of Buddhism since 1973. After meeting his root teacher, the Vidyadhara, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, he helped found the Vancouver Shambhala Center. His book describes the very essence of meditation and how it can help us live authentic, awake, and heart-filled lives. He continues to teach and lead retreats and offer Shambhala and Buddhist programs throughout the USA, Canada, and Mexico. He lives in Chester, VT. ~ At the bookstore.


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Saturday, October 2, 2010 2:00-4:00 PM - Meet the Artist

Renowned watercolorist Robert O' Brien will display his original French paintings in front of the store. Cider & doughnuts. Free.

~ At the bookstore.



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Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 4:00 PM - Tim Simard, Haunted Hikes of Vermont

Whether you are a beginner hiker or an expert alpinist, Haunted Hikes of Vermont will provide you with plenty of spooky spots to explore. And most thrilling, Simard's excellent trail directions and detailed hike descriptions make ghost hunting in Vermont that much easier.

~ At the bookstore.



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Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 7:00 PM - Steve Friesen presents his book Buffalo Bill: Scout, Showman, and Visionary

Buffalo Bill: Scout, Showman, Visionary stands apart from other historical tributes to Buffalo Bill's life and times. Based upon the collection of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, this book provides a new perspective on William F. Cody through a detailed look at his personal effects and memorabilia from his larger-than-life shows.

Steve Friesen is the director of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave. Like Buffalo Bill, Friesen was raised in Kansas. He attended Bethel College in Newton, once characterized by Buffalo Bill as the wildest and wickedest town in the West. Friesen has a master's degree in American folk culture from the State University of New York's Cooperstown Graduate Program. He's married to Monta Lee Dakin, whom he met at a national museum conference in Philadelphia. They have two children.

~ At the bookstore.



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Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 4:00 PM - Bob Stannard gives us the secret to surviving the recession in the most unlikely place: Vermont, in his new book "How to Survive the Recession: A Vermont Perspective"

Green Mountain state native Bob Stannard believes that Vermont has been in a recession since around 1790. Bob is mystified that the rest of the world is struggling with the effects of a fiscal meltdown. In his view, simply living a lifetime in Vermont is about all you need to prepare yourself for global meltdown. Stannard has worked as a logger, owned a lawn and garden business, run an energy audit company, served as state representative and local selectman, sold commercial real estate, performed as a professional blues singer and harmonica player and currently earns his living as a lobbyist.

~ At the bookstore.


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Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 4:00 PM - Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost- the very best ghost story ever written- humbly told by storyteller Annie Hawkins

Hawkins returns to Misty Valley Books near Halloween to tell a story which contains all of life- romance, humor, tears, crime, punishment, regret, compassion, and redemption. A plucky young heroine. Her twin trickster brothers. A spooky old English manor house, and a weary ghost caught between two worlds and longing for eternal rest. Annie Hawkins is a rare treat- not to be missed

~ At the bookstore.



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Sunday, August 15 at 4:00 PM, Sean Hemingway discusses the Restored Edition of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

Many of us remember reading these lines from Hemingway's memoir of his expatriate life in Paris in the 1920's with Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, and others. This new, restored edition seeks to provide readers with a clearer picture of the author's original intent for his unfinished memoir. Patrick Hemingway, Hemingway's lone surviving son, prefaces this restored edition, and the editorial changes and new additions are detailed in an introduction by Sean Hemingway, the project's editor and authors's grandson. Included in this volume are never before published sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son Jack, his first wife, Hadley, Fitzgerald, and Ford Maddox Ford. The restored edition brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized. Sean Hemingway is curator of the Greek and Roman Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. - At the bookstore.

 


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Wednesdays, April 7-28 at 7:00 PM Michael Palma returns for four evenings of poetry discussion.

This session will celebrate W. H. Auden and his poetry. Auden (1907-1973) was the leading poet of his generation and a central figure of a revolution in British poetry. He settled in the United States in 1939 and became an American citizen in 1946. His long poem The Age of Anxiety (1974) won the Pulitzer Prize, inspired a symphony by Leonard Bernstein, and gave a phrase to the English language. Each evening, Palma will examine several Auden poems in depth.

An inexpensive volume of his poetry will be available for sale at the bookstore in advance. The public is encouraged to attend all four free sessions but everyone is welcome at any of the sessions.
At the bookstore.

 


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Sunday, April 18 at 4:00 PM Celebrate Poetry Month with poet Gary Margolis who will read from  his newest collection, Below the Falls

Below the Falls is a brilliant journey through the emotions. According to Jay Parini, Gary Margolis' collection of poems is "among the handful of recent volumes that has sunk deep into my mind and heart." John Elder writes, Below the Falls offers a world in which everything melts away and nothing is lost. I feel personally grateful for his way of mapping a path through a long Vermont winter into the sometimes troubled irrepressibility of spring." Gary Margolis is Executive Director of College Mental Health Services and Associate Professor of English and American Literatures at Middlebury College. He is on the board of the Vermont Humanities Council, is a former Frost Fellow, and is on the staff at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His poems have been featured on National Public Radio.
At the bookstore.



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Saturday, May 1 at 2:00 PM  Author Bill McKibben will present his newest book, Eaarth

Barbara Kingsolver says, "Read it please. Straight through to the end. Whatever else you were planning to do next, nothing could be more important.". Twenty years ago, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming, most of which have gone unheeded. Now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long and that massive change is not only unavoidable, but underway. We've created a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth. Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back, on building the kinds of societies and economics that can hunker down, concentrate of the essentials, and create the kind of community (in the neighborhood but also on the internet) that will allow us to weather trouble on an  unprecedented scale. Change- fundamental change- is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance. At the First Universalist Church (Stone Church), Route 103 North.

 

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Sunday, May 2 at 4:00 Author Ron Koss presents his book (co-authored with his brother, Arnie), The Earth's Best Story: A Bittersweet Tale of Twin Brothers Who Sparked an Organic Revolution

People of every imaginable background and station in life want to make a difference with their lives. But how do you do that effectively? How does an idea journey successfully across the wastelands separating fantasy and reality? In The Earth's Best Story, twins Ron and Arnie Koss masterfully recount their transition from eking out livings as sprout growers and broom makers to creating Earth's Best baby food-the first organic food to sit beside mainstream competitors on the nation's supermarket shelves. That feat revolutionized and empowered the organic-foods movement and benefited hundreds of farmers as well as the millions of babies whose very first foods have been organically grown. Told through the dual narrative of each brother, this memoir is as rich in life lessons as it is in entrepreneurial wisdoms and warnings. Personal, intense, and inspirational, the Koss brothers' tale reflects the quest to find a place in this world by somehow changing it for the better. At the bookstore.

 

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Thursday, May 13 at 6:30 PM Cornelia Read presents her third mystery novel, Invisible Boy


The smart-mouthed but sensitive runaway socialite Madeline Dare is shocked when she discovers the skeleton of a brutalized three-year-old boy in her own weed-ridden family cemetery outside Manhattan. Determined to see that justice is served to the perpetrators, Madeline finds herself examining her own troubled personal history, and the sometimes hidden, sometimes all-too-public class and racial warfare that penetrates every level of society in the savage streets of New York City during the early 1990s. She is aided in her efforts by a colorful assemblage of friends, relatives, and new acquaintances, each one representing a separate strand of the patchwork mosaic city politicians like to brag about. The result is a gripping narrative that relates the causes and consequences of a vicious crime to the wider relationships that connect and divide us all. In Invisible Boy , Cornelia Read depicts, with sensitivity, eloquence, and powerful emotion, the unstable fault lines of family, friendship, and society at large. At the bookstore. Dinner afterwards with the author at The Stone Hearth Inn. Reservations encouraged. At the bookstore.



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Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 4:00 Howard Frank Mosher will present his newest book, Walking to Gatlinburg

It's 1864, and seventeen-year-old Morgan Kinneson is helping a runaway slave named Jesse to freedom in Canada. But the chance to kill a moose that would feed his family for months lures Morgan away, and on his return, he finds that Jesse has been murdered. Desperate and guilt-ridden, Morgan decides to travel south from northern Vermont through war-torn America to the Great Smokey Mountains, searching for his older brother Pilgrim, who is now missing fromn the Union Army. Morgan's determination to locate the brother he idolizes and reclaim what little family and honor he feels he has left is a dangerous gambit at best. When Morgan learns that Jesse's killers are on  his tail and that he unknowingly possesses something of great value, his trek to Gatlinburg becomes a journey of intenmse survival. At the bookstore. Reception and book signing.



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Wednesday, February 17, 2010
at 5:30 PM
Judy Lake, The Lampshade Lady

Join Judy Lake, the Lampshade Lady, author of The Lampshade Lady’s Guide to Lighting Up Your Life, as she demonstrates how easy it is to make your own lampshade. If you can cut and glue, you can renew and revive old lampshades. Soon, after having mastered the basics, you won’t be able to pass by a piece of fabric without thinking, ”That would make a fabulous shade.” Lake has been making lampshades for more than 20 years and turning out distinctive handmade lampshades from her Vermont shop for more than 11 years. Join Judy at the bookstore for her demonstration and talk. At the bookstore.

 

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Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 4:00 PM Dave Bonta and Stephen Snyder will talk about their latest book, The New Solar Home.

From an umbrella home in California and a stunning luxury condominium in New York to a Chicago brownstone-style home in Illinois and a pueblo-style gem in the foothills of Santa Fe, solar homes have come a long way from the PV-clad creations of the 1980’s. Bonta and Snyder demonstrate that today’s solar homes are attractive, good financial investments, and comfortable places for daily living. These homes are groundbreaking not only in their use of renewable energy but also in their commitment to recycling and repurchasing materials. The authors will talk about why these homeowners decided to go solar and how having a solar home can save you money in the long run. Dave Bonta is the president and founder of USA Solar Stores, the largest renewable energy retailer in the northeast. Stephen Snyder is the communications director for USA Solar Stores, having left New York Coty in 1995 to start an organic farm in Vermont. They both live in Perkinsville, Vermont. At the store. Reception and book signing. At the bookstore.



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Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 8:00 PM
Preview of Avenue Q

Join the Weston Playhouse directors in a preview of Avenue Q, this spectacular musical playing this summer in Weston. At The Stone Hearth Inn. Co-sponsored by Stone Hearth Inn and Misty Valley Books.

By Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx & Jeff Whitty

Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical, Best Score and Best Book. A bright-eyed college grad named Princeton settles in Avenue Q, the last affordable neighborhood in New York City, whose denizens include a diverse band of live characters and puppets à la an adult Sesame Street. In warm and witty songs like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “The Internet Is for Porn,” Princeton and his new friends learn about losing a job, falling in love and finding your place in the world.

 

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New Voices 2010, A
Showcase of New Authors Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 2:00 at the Stone Church in Chester.

Join Misty Valley Books for its 16th year of featuring outstanding new authors in Chester, Vermont, a quintessential New England town nestled in the Okemo Valley.

 

 

 

Featured Authors:


James Landis
The Last Day


"I'm on the beach, but I don't know how I got here. My mind is as dark as the night. . . . I spend the whole night on the beach. But when the sun's faint light begins to bend around the Earth, I see him. . . . There, coming toward me, out of the light, is a man. . . . Behind the man a faint curtain of light rises to the sky out of the ocean. He wears the light like a robe, though I see he's dressed like me. Jeans and a T-shirt, no shoes. And that he's older than I am, a lot older, maybe mid-thirties. He walks right toward me. He walks right into my eyes. So begins the spellbinding story of Warren Harlan Pease, a young U.S. Army sniper freshly returned from the Iraq War to his native New Hampshire. What follows is a page-turning adventure that is also a powerful meditation on religion and war, love and loss. This extraordinary work of compassion and healing grace combines the themes of religion, war and poetry in a way that is wholly original, and unforgettable. It will resonate with skeptics and believers, be shared and discussed between friends and among families."

Elena Gorokhova
A Mountain of Crumbs

website

"What is it about A Mountain of Crumbs that makes it so damn readable? Is it the setting - the Soviet Union in the second half of the last century on the verge of disintegration? Is it the author's way with the English language - her second language? Elena Gorokhova deftly moves us from the intimacies of family life to school, to university, to various bureaucracies with exposure along the way to ballet and theater. This is a rich experience - a personal journey paralleled by huge national changes and ending in a deeply satisfying portrait of peace in America. Those who have traveled from another place to America will find themselves in this rich memoir. Yes, rich is the word I've been groping for: Rich."

Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes
   


Heidi Durrow
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
website

This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980’s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. Meanwhile, a mystery unfolds, revealing the terrible truth about Rachel’s last morning on a Chicago rooftop. Interwoven are the voices of Jamie, a neighborhood boy who witnessed the events, and Laronne, a friend of Rachel’s mother. Inspired by a true story of a mother’s twisted love, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky reveals an unfathomable past and explores issues of identity at a time when many people are asking “must race confine us and define us?


Deborah Copaken Kogan
Between Here and April
website

When a deep-rooted memory suddenly surfaces, Elizabeth Burns becomes obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of her childhood friend April Cassidy. Driven to investigate, Elizabeth discovers a thirty-five-year-old newspaper article revealing the details that had been hidden from her as a child--shocking revelations about April's mother, Adele. Elizabeth, now herself a mother, tracks down the people who knew Adele Cassidy and who thought that they knew what was going through her mind before she committed that most incomprehensible of crimes. She seeks out anyone who might help piece together the final months, days, and hours of this troubled woman’s life--from Adele's former neighbor to her psychiatrist to her sister. But the answers are more elusive than any normal investigation can yield, the questions raised difficult to contemplate. In fact, the further into the story Elizabeth digs, the more she is forced to accept that she and Adele might not be so different. Elizabeth's exploration thus leads her ultimately back to herself: her compromised marriage, her increasing self-doubt, her desire for more out of her career and her life, and finally to a fearsome reckoning with what it means to be a wife and mother.

   


Matthew Dicks
Something Missing
website

Who wants to catch a thief when he’s as endearing as Martin Railsback, the oddball hero of Matthew Dicks’s first novel, Something Missing. Martin is, after all, prone to rob people of items they’ll never miss (a bar of soap, a few sticks of butter, the odd diamond) as a way of getting to know them. Despite his obsessive-compulsive work ethic, Martin is not a mean thief--in fact, he develops a real fondness for some of his "clients", those couples whose homes he has burgled for small items over and over again for almost a decade. His success is based on a precise and unflagging attention to details as well as a keen knowledge of his targets' schedules, work situations and appointments. This information affords Martin unnoticed access to their homes, access that is planned out and timed to the second--his watch's buzzer tells him when he has less than 30 seconds left in a particular house. When he begins to think of himself as his clients’ guardian angel, conscience rears its ugly head.

 

New Voices 2010 Schedule

Saturday, January 30. 2010

* 9:30-11:30 at Grafton Ponds
Cross country ski or snowshoe with the authors (check with Grafton Ponds for rental and trail cost) www. graftonponds.com

* 2:00 PM-4:20 PM
Readings at the First Universalist Church (The Stone Church), Route 103 North, Chester, VT - Free

* 6:00 PM
Wine & Cheese with the authors in front of the fire (cash bar) at The Fullerton Inn, On the Green, Chester, VT

* 6.45 PM
Dinner with the authors at The Fullerton Inn (Reservations please 802 875-2444)

There will be a reception and book signing after the readings at The Stone Church.

Many inns and B & B’s will be offering special New Voices packages. Go to www.chesterlodging.com

 



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Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 4:00
Dr. Warner E. Jones, Minor Memoir: An Anecdotal Autobiography of a Country Doc

JDr. Warner Jones has practiced internal medicine for 46 years. Now retired, he decided to chronicle his life, including his time in the Air Force as a Flight Surgeon and his years in the Springfield area as a "country doc". Beloved by his patients, friends, family, and Missy, his dog, he is a testimony to the kind of doctor we long for. Dr. Jones will read from parts of his book and will sign copies at the reception following. At the bookstore. Free.

At the bookstore. Free.



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Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 4:00 Author/commentator Willem Lange and illustrator Bert Dodson, Favor Johnson, A Christmas Story

Join well-loved Willem Lange and illustrator Bert Dodson as they read from and talk about their children's book, Favor Johnson, A Christmas Story.

A mystery hangs over a village as Christmas approaches. Who is delivering the delicious treats from house to house? A modern American folktale, Favor Johnson: A Christmas Story has been a favorite radio story for twenty-five years and is published now for the first time, brought to life by the wonderful watercolor illustrations of Bert Dodson. The unsentimental but completely heartwarming story of Favor Johnson, his dog Hercules, Doctor Jennings, and the mysterious house-to-house delivery of homemade fruit cakes on Christmas Eve has become a Vermont classic tale.

At the bookstore. Holiday refreshments.



Vermont Voices:
Four Sundays in November at 2:00 PM at the Stone Church in Chester.

To bring cheer to the dreary November days, Vermont Voices features Vermont authors on four different Sundays.

Sunday, November 1: Archer Mayor, The Price of Malice

Wayne Castine was found brutally murdered and the murderer remains at large. Castine, a suspected child predator, was killed in Brattleboro where he was involved with a tangled network of an extended family living in a local trailer park. Any member of the clan would have had the opportunity to kill him, and, as he was involved with both the mother and her 12 year old daughter, reason to commit the murder. At the same time, Joe Gunther has learned that his girlfriend Lyn Silva’s fisherman father and brother, believed lost at sea off the coast of Maine, might have actually been murdered.

Lyn returns to Maine to try and investigate Gunther’s findings. Gunther puts his on-going murder investigation on hold to go and help Lyn in Maine. It appears increasingly possible that her father and brother weren’t the good guys that Lyn always believed them to be and that they might have been involved with vicious smugglers who murdered them—and might do the same to Lyn if she keeps pushing. Torn between his conscience and his heart, Gunther finds that betrayal and loyalty are often a matter of viewpoint. ARCHER MAYOR is a death investigator for Vermont’s Chief Medical Examiner, a deputy for the Windham County Sheriff’s Department, and has 25 years experience as a volunteer firefighter and EMT. He’s also the author of the critically acclaimed Joe Gunther series, most recently The Catch. He lives in Newfane, Vermont.

 

Sunday, November 8: Governor Madeleine Kunin, Pearls, Politics, and Power, How Women Can Win and Lead

Pearls, Politics, and Power is a call to action for new political engagement and leadership from the women of America. Informed by conversations with elected women leaders from all levels, former three-term Vermont Governor and Ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine M. Kunin asks: What difference do women make? What is the worst part of politics, and what is the best part? What inspired these women to run, and how did they prepare themselves for public life? How did they raise money, protect their family’s privacy, deal with criticism and attack ads, and work with the good old boys? Madeleine Kunin was the first woman governor of Vermont and served as Deputy Secretary of Education and Ambassador to Switzerland under President Clinton. She is the author of Living a Political Life and is currently a Marsh Scholar Professor at Large at the University of Vermont. She is the founder of the Institute for Sustainable Communities and lives with her husband in Burlington, Vermont and Hanover, New Hampshire.

 

Sunday, November 15: Philip Baruth, The Brothers Boswell

The year is 1763. Twenty-two year old James Boswell of Edinburgh is eager to advance himself in London society. Today, his sights are set on furthering his acquaintance with Dr. Samuel Johnson, famed for his Dictionary; they are going to take a boat across the Thames to Greenwich Palace. Watching them secretly is John Boswell, James’s younger brother who has been stalking his brother for days. Consumed with envy and carrying a pair of miniature pistols that fire a single gold bullet each, John is planning to take revenge on his brother and Johnson for presumed slights. The psychological motivations of rivalrous siblings are compellingly portrayed in thei meticulouslu researched literary thriller. Philip Baruth is a novelist and award-winning commentator for Vermont Public Radio. His previous books have included The X President and The Dream of the White Village. Baruth teaches at the University of Vermont.


Sunday, November 22: Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians

Artfully juxtaposing two contrasting personalities Cohen explores the terrain of male middle age in a novel that keenly observes the dissatisfactions of contemporary life. Teddy Hastings, the 53-year-old principal of a New England middle school, yearns for a grand adventure that would celebrate his manhood. Restless and impulsive, Teddy unwittingly causes a scandal that lands him briefly in jail. Disgraced and forced to take a sabbatical, Teddy leaves his wife, Gail, behind and flies to Ethiopia, where his college dropout daughter is working with orphans. Meanwhile, Oren Pierce, the younger man appointed in Teddy's absence, skitters through life in the same manner he has always done: perennially uncommitted, congenitally irresolute, though he is eventually forced to confront the limits of his desultory lifestyle. (Gail comes into play, as well.) Teddy's sojourn in Africa is the most dynamic part of the book, though it is Gail who acts as the novel's fulcrum; witty, sensual, focused and centered in reality, she remains an indelible figure as the two men in her orbit are diminished by the collapse of their dreams and expectations.

 

September 30- -October 21, 2009: Michael Palma returns for The Art of Losing: four Wednesdays to discuss the poetry of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop

Palma enthralled attendees with his "Frost in July", his Dante's Inferno series and his discussion on Longfellow, Dickinson, Robinson, and others. Free. At the bookstore.

 

 


Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 7:00 PM: Bestselling author Kate Walbert will present her book A Short History of Women.


Like her last novel, "Our Kind," which was a National Book Award finalist, "A Short History of Women" consists of linked stories: in this case, 15 lean, concentrated chapters that hopscotch through time and alternate among the lives of Dorothy Trevor Townsend, a British suffragist, and a handful of her descendants. Several of the stories have been previously published; most could stand alone. Yet together they coalesce into more than the sum of their parts. It is Walbert's conceit that while the oldest and youngest generations never meet, they share a legacy of echoes: objects and phrases that repeat mysteriously, and with increasing significance, across the decades. This spare novel manages, improbably, to live up to its title: it delivers what feels like a reasonably representative history of women - at least of white, Anglo-Saxon women, over the past hundred-odd years.

At the bookstore.




Sunday, October 25 at 4:00 Author and storyteller Michael Caduto will read his story
Mean John and the Jack-O-lantern and other stories from The August House Book of Scary Stories: Spooky Tales for Telling Out Loud just in time for Halloween. At the bookstore. Free.




At the bookstore.

 

 


Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 4:00 PM: Linda Tarr-Whelan discusses her book Women Lead the Way: Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World


Linda Tarr-Whelan is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the progressive think-tank Demos. She was Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women in the Clinton Administration, was Deputy Assistant to President Jimmy Carter for Women's Concerns, and was named as one of 50 most powerful women in Washington by Ladies Home Journal. According to Tarr-Whelen, women are the talent pipeline for the future. By closing the leadership gap, women bring their values and vision, new ideas, and can create a more balanced and productive work environment as well as a positive effect on the bottom line in business and government.

At the bookstore.


 

 




Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 7:00 PM:
Tom Reed


Wilderness photographer, explorer, and author Tom Reed brings tales of back country hiking in the southern Andes in his book, The Granite Avatars of Patagonia. Reed will present a digital slide show highlighting his three separate trips to Argentina’s Parque Nacional Los Galciares.

At the bookstore.



 


 



Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 4:00 PM:
Thomas A. Middleton will tell the true story of a guardsman at war in Ramadi, Iraq.

Thomas A. Middleton will tell the true story of a guardsman at war in Ramadi, Iraq. Saber’s Edge is the story of a middle-aged Vermont firefighter called to be a soldier in one of the worst places on earth- Ramadi, Iraq. This is war experienced from the ground up and a unique wartime perspective of our guardsmen.



At the bookstore.


 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 4:00 PM: Ellen Graf presents her book The Natural Laws of Good Luck: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage


How far would you travel to find love? Ellen Graf is forty-six, divorced, and sick of personal ads. Her friend Da Jie tells Ellen about her brother, Lu Zhong-hua in China who is also lonely. She thinks they might like each other. Ellen goes to China and is met at the airport by Zhong-hua who is carrying roses for her. After spending a few weeks together in China, they decide to get married. From this surprising beginning, a funny and original love story is born. A rollicking tale of taking risks, culture clash, and the journey to real love. At the bookstore.

At the bookstore.

 

 

 



Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 7:00 PM Professor of Law at Yale University and author Stephen L. Carter returns to Misty Valley with his fourth mystery/thriller, Jericho's Fall


In an imposing house in the Colorado Rockies, Jericho Ainsley, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and a Wall Street titan, lies dying. He summons to his beside Beck DeForde, the younger woman for whom he threw away his career years ago, miring them both in scandal. Beck believes she is visiting to say farewell. Instead, she is drawn into a battle over an explosive secret that foreign governments and powerful corporations alike want to wrest from Jericho before he dies. An intricate and timely thriller that plumbs the emotional depths of a failed love affair and a family torn apart by mistrust, Jericho’s Fall takes us on a fast-moving journey through the secretive world of intelligence operations and the meltdown of the financial markets.

At the bookstore.



Thursday evening, August 20, 2009 at 7:00 PM at the bookstore, singer and songwriter Elisabeth von Trapp returns to Misty Valley Books to sing songs of Robert Frost from her CD Poetic License.



Von Trapp sang many of these songs, including The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening at a five-week seminar on Frost by Michael Palma held last summer at Misty Valley Books entitled Frost in July. Poetic License also includes Somewhere Over the Rainbow, A Wider Shade of Pale, Fragile, and many more, sung by Elisabeth von Trapp in her inimitable voice. A reception will follow her performance. Her CD’s will be available for sale.

At the bookstore.

 



The Chester Music Series returns to downtown Chester on four Thursdays starting July 23, 2009 from 6:30-8:00 PM.


Bring your lawn chairs and blankets to the Academy Building lawn (across from the bookstore) and enjoy these groups:

July 23, 2009: The Starline Rhythm Boys (rhythm and blues)
July 30, 2009: Chris Kleeman (acoustic)
August 6, 2009: Gerry Grimo and the East Bay Jazz Ensemble (Big Band sounds)
August 13, 2009: Yankee Chank, Vermont’s Cajun Band

 

 



Sunday, June 28, 2009 at 4:00 PM Woden Teachout presents her book Capture the Flag


How Old Glory has been used throughout American history by the Right, the Left, and everyone in between unfolds in a fascinating series of stories in the upcoming Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism. Here Harvard-trained author Woden Teachout traces a complete history of the American flag and its uses and appropriations by groups as varied as radical Revolutionary sailors and Gilded Age businessmen, including stories of traumas it has suffered over the years as it has been burned, shot, spattered with tobacco juice, and stomped by muddy boats in protest at various turns. .

At the bookstore.

 



David Bonta New Green Home Solutions June 14 at 7:00 PM


David Bonta is the owner/developer of USASolar Store, a licensing program that helped launch 15 successful entrepreneurial-based solar stores and is an expert on renewable energy. His book tells you how green living begins at home. He will discuss how we can create change with renewable energy design, better insulation, and more efficient appliances, winning our energy independence. Bonta has both a business and a home completely powered by solar energy. He drives biodiesel-powered vehicles. A reception and book signing will follow.

Free. At the bookstore.

 

 

 



Michael Palma returns with Four Wednesdays of New England Poets:
May 13 at 7:00 PM



Palma enthralled attendees with his "Frost in July" and Dante's Inferno series. He returns for four Wednesdays to discuss Longfellow, Dickinson, Robinson, and others. One each week. 1 ½ hour sessions.

Free. At the bookstore.

 

 

 

 

 



Sunday, May 17 at 2:00. Bernd Heinrich, reading and discussing his latest book, Summer World, A Season of Bounty.


As the snow melts and spring approaches, the animal kingdom awakens. In Summer World, Heinrich, professor emeritus of Biology at the University of Vermont, brings us the same sense of wonder and reverence for animal life that we saw in Winter World, the Ingenuity of Animal Survival. In Summer World, he focuses on the animal kingdom in the extremes of warmer months. From frogs to wasps and caterpillars to hummingbirds and woodpeckers, Heinrich explores these animals' adaptations for surviving and procreating during the short window of summer and delights in the seemingly infinite feats of animal inventiveness he discovers there. Reception and book signing.

At the First Universalist Church, Route 103 North.

 



Friday, April 3 at 7:00 PM Celebrate Poetry Month with two celebrated poets: Wendy Mnookin and Baron Wormser

In her book, The Moon Makes its Own Plea , Mnookin explores the idea of self and how that self is strengthened and abraded by relationships. Anchored in everyday life, the narrative is fluid and the poems coalesce around the condition of mortality. Her poems probe this question with bravado, defiance, fear, anger, humor and hope. Mnookin graduated from Radcliffe College and the Vermont College MFA Program. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

 



Baron Wormser, author of Scattered Chapters, believes in the power of poetry. He grew up in Baltimore, moved to Maine in 1970, worked as a librarian for twenty-five years, teaching poetry along the way while he and his family lived off the grid on forty-eight acres. His memoir, The Road Washes Out in Spring tells that story. In 2000 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Maine and served in that capacity for six years, visiting schols and libraries throughout Maine. He currently resides in Cabot, Vermont and teaches at the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.

Sunday, March 1 at 2:00 PM SPECIAL EVENT : Join The Boston Globe's Washington Bureau Chief, Peter Canellos, who will be in Chester to talk about The Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.


The youngest of the Kennedy children, Edward Kennedy has witnessed greater tragedy and suffered greater pressure than any of his siblings and yet, once dismissed as a symbol of youthful folly and nepotism, and a spent force in politics after Chappaquiddick Island, has finally liberated himself from the expectations of others and has transformed himself into a symbol of wisdom and perseverance. At the bookstore.

 

 

 


Sunday, March 15 at 2:00 PM Bill Schubart , author of The Lamoille Stories, brings to life the friends and characters of his native Lamoille County where, in the late 1950's and early 1960's, life was lived close to the earth and often against the grain.

His collection of twenty-two stories captures Vermont in its transition from an enclave of hill farms and small towns where everyone knew your grandfather to a place where vehicles bearing license plates from "away" mix with hippie vans filled with born-again Vermonters getting back to the land.. that is.. until the snow falls. A poignant, funny and full-hearted evocation of a Vermont mostly forgotten. Sure to please, no matter what county you're from. At the bookstore.



New Voices 2009 January 31, 2009 at 2:00 at the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village, Route 103 North.

Join Misty Valley Books for its 15th year of featuring outstanding new authors in Chester, Vermont, a quintessential New England town nestled in the Okemo Valley.


Hillary Jordan,
Mudbound

Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) writes that Hillary Jordan’s “characters walked straight out of the 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are still with me.” Jordan’s book tells the story of two families caught up in the blind hatred of a small Southern town and won the prestigious Bellwether Prize for Fiction. Jordan grew up in Texas and Oklahoma and received her MFA from Columbia. She lives in Tivoli, NY.

Michael Dahlie,
A Gentleman’s Guide to
Graceful Living


Michael’s Dahlie’s book has been praised by Julia Glass, National Book Award-winning author of Three Junes: “I could so easily praise Michael Dahlie’s debut as a shrewdly cast comedy of manners or a mesmerizing tale of how the idle rich spend their money and time, but neither description would do it justice. What kept me avidly turning the pages was a far deeper, surprisingly affecting story.” It is the darkly hilarious and moving story of an upper-crust, self-doubting Manhattan everyman who must rebuild his life after his marriage and business fail.
   

Lewis Robinson
,
Water Dogs

Robinson, whom Curtis Sittenfeld (American Wife) calls “a terrific writer” and whose book she terms “a smart, suspenseful, absorbing first novel”, is a graduate of Middlebury and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Southern Maine and coaches middle-school basketball in Portland, where he lives with his wife and daughter. His prose is spare, sometimes very funny, and rolls along flawlessly, capturing the delicate patchwork of a Maine family.

Angela Von der Lippe
,
The Truth About Lou

Angela von der Lippe has a doctorate in German literature from Brown and is a senior editor at W.W. Norton in New York City, where she lives. Colum McCann (This Side of Brightness and Dancer), himself a New Voice at Misty Valley Books in 1996, says of von der Lippe’s book: “The truth is often best told from the undusted corners. Angela von der Lippe manages to dignify the process of fiction, while also bringing forth a cast of history’s best characters. This is an alternative history, told with style, bravura, grace, depth and power.” It is the story of Lou Andreas-Salomé and her relationships with Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud.
   

New Voices 2009 Literary Weekend


Sunday, February 8 at 3:00 PM Remember spelling bees? Join the Weston Playhouse Theater Company at Misty Valley Books for an afternoon of fun and phonetics with a preview of the musical comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Test your spelling against other adults and learn more about this hilarious tale of the over-achievers’ angst of six outsiders vying for the spelling championship of a lifetime. In the actual musical, four audience volunteers are recruited to participate on stage as guest spellers. Refreshments and fun.

 

Tuesday, February 10 at 7:00 PM Join SOVERA (Southern Vermont Astronomy Group) at Misty Valley Books to hear author Andrew Chaikin presenting a discussion and slide showoff his book, A Passion for Mars.


Chaikin is already famous for his history of the United States Apollo program, A Man on the Moon which was the basis for Tom Hank’s documentary series, From the Earth to the Moon. In a single volume, Chaikin has done more to incite interest in Mars than NASA has done in more than fifty years of trying to convince the public that Mars could become our next home. Andrew Chaikin knows Mars having served as an intern at he Jet propulsion Laboratory during the Mars Viking Lander program and has since become one of the world’s finest space exploration writers.

 

 

Sunday, December 14 @ 2:00 PM Come meet
author/illustrator Will Moses


Meet author/illustrator Will Moses who will sign his new book, Raining Cats and Dogs: A Collection of Irresistible Idioms and Illustrations to Tickle the Funny Bones of Young People. as well as his Night Before Christmas, Silent Night, and Hansel & Gretel.

Moses continues to carry on the rich tradition of folk art passed down from his grandfather Forrest K. Moses and his great- grandmother, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as Grandma Moses. He works out of his studio at the Mount Nebo Gallery in Eagle Bridge, New York, next to the same white farmhouse where his legendary great- grandmother began her career. At the bookstore. Holiday refreshments!




Vermont Voices: Four Sundays in November
2:00 pm at the Stone Church
Chester, Vermont



Sunday, November 2
2 pm
Archer Mayor
The Catch

Archer Mayor reads from his 19th Joe Gunther mystery entitled The Catch. Set primarily in Maine, it focuses on the activities of Alan Budney, the disaffected son of an old-time lobsterman. The book begins in Vermont when a deputy sheriff is shot to death. Joe and the VBI get involved in the investigation and end up in Maine and a rendez-vous with Budney and his plans to usurp and replace Maine's biggest drug lord.

 

 






Sunday, November 9
2 pm
Gordon Hayward,
Art and the Gardener

Gordon Hayward presents a slide show and discussion on his new book, Art and the Gardener: Fine Painting as Inspiration for Garden Design. Hayward first presented his slide-illustrated lecture at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1995. He has since refined and presented it at art museums and garden organizations across the country. Now he has turned it into a beautiful book about the visual language shared between painters and garden designers.

 

 




Sunday, November 16
2 pm

Chuck Wooster,
Living with Pigs

Chuck Wooster, associate editor at Northern Woodlands magazine, will introduce his book, Living With Pigs: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Porkers. Pigs are adorable, clean, friendly, and the fourth most intelligent creatures on the planet, just below humans, primates, and dolphins. They also make great bacon. Wooster's comprehensive guide to all things pig tells readers with a reassuring voice and plenty of entertaining anecdotes how easy it is to take care of a pig. Beautifully illustrated with full color photographs by Geoff Hansen.

 

 

.

Sunday, November 23
2 pm
Peter Galbraith,
Unintended Consequences

Peter Galbraith, called by New York Times columnist David Brooks "the smartest and most devastating critic of President Bush's Iraq policies", returns to Chester to talk about his second book entitled Unintended Consequences: How the War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies. Former Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrook calls the book "angry and passionate" and adds that he hopes that "the next president absorbs the lessons of Galbraith's work and acts on them".




Michael PalmaWednesdays, September 17-October 15 7-8PM Join Michael Palma for A Guided Tour of Hell: Dante's Inferno.


For 700 years, Dante's Inferno has been acknowledged as a literary classic and regarded by the Italians as a national treasure. Readers all over the world respond to its direct and vivid style, its brilliant and often harrowing descriptions, and its gallery of unforgettable characters.

Michael Palma's translation, acclaimed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Wilbur, X.J. Kennedy, and other leading scholars, is the first American version in more than eighty years that preserves the terza rima format of the original. Participants will be expected to read a certain number of cantos each week in preparation for discussion.

Free. Reservations recommended. 875-3400

At the bookstore

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Peter GouldSunday, October 19, 2008 at 4:00 PM
Peter Gould
, Write Naked


Join Brattleboro author, theater performer, teacher, director, and clown Peter Gould (who is half of Gould & Stearns, Vermont's legendary and enduring theater duo) as he discusses his new book, Write Naked. It is the story of sixteen year old Victor, a thoughtful loner who tries to live his life "under the radar" and wants to test out the saying "You have to be naked to write". When he sneaks off with an old Royal typewriter to his uncle's cabin deep in the Vermont woods and strips off his clothes, he discovers a face in the window watching him-Rose Anna, a spectacular, home-schooled free spirit with an antique fountain pen and a passion to save the planet. Of course they fall in love, and this beautiful story challenges the conventional, stripping down the barriers and fears that shield us from vulnerability, reminding us of how very important it is to be thoughtful and brave. For adults and teenagers alike. A book signing and reception will be held after the reading.
At the bookstore

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Janet HornSunday, September 7, 2008 at 4:00 PM Physician Janet Horn, co-author with Robin H. Miller, M.D, of The Smart Woman's Guide to Midlife and Beyond, will present her new book.


Written by two practicing doctors who have been close girlfriends since they met during medical training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, The Smart Woman's Guide to Midlife and Beyond includes the doctors' own personal experiences, patient stories from their medical practices, and all the information you need to age with good health, grace and humor.
At the bookstore

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Steve DelaneySunday, July 20 at 4:00 PM Journalist & Vermont Public Radio personality Steve Delaney will read from his new book, Vermont Seasonings: Reflections on the Rhythms of a Vermont Year.

AT THE BOOKSTORE

Delaney, a former NBC correspondent in Tel Aviv who has covered wars on three continents, has turned to Vermont years and ways, opening with the March traditions of Town Meeting and ruminating on terms such as” flatlander”, “downcountry”, and “from away” with delightful, humorous twists, often from his own life. You’ll recognize his voice at once! Reception and book signing to follow. At the bookstore

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Cornelia ReadFriday, July 25 at 6:30 PM Cornelia Read returns to Misty Valley Books to read and discuss her second book, The Crazy School.

AT THE BOOKSTORE

Loosely based on her own experiences in a school for troubled teenagers in western Massachusetts, Read has created a chilling novel about a school controlled by a headmaster with a hidden agenda. Madeline Dare, who has signed on as a teacher at Santangelo Academy, must join forces with a small group of the school's most violently rebellious students who may prove to be her only chance of survival. Dinner afterwards at The Fullerton Inn. Reservations please. 875-2444
At the bookstore

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Saturday, July 26 and Sunday, July 27 Meet John Dau, President of the John Dau Foundation and several others of the Lost Boys of Sudan.


Join us in Brattleboro on Saturday and at the home of gardeners Gordon & Mary Hayward in Westminster West on Sunday for a fundraiser which will feature screenings of the documentary God Grew Tired of Us (Friday) and an afternoon of African music, food, and African concessions with the opportunity to talk to Mr. Dau and other Lost Boys (Sunday). Misty Valley Books will be there with books on Africa. More information to come..

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Saturday & Sunday, July 26 & 27 The Lost Boys of Sudan- A Benefit with John Dau


Join one of the Lost Boys, John Dau, of the John Dau Foundation for an African weekend:





Saturday, July 26 at 4:00 PM Latchis Theater, Brattleboro, VT

$10 at the door
Kora Master Youssoupha Sidibe
Screening of the film "God Grew Tired of Us"

Q & A with John Dau and other Lost Boys of Sudan 6:30-8:30 PM
$30
Reservations Only Buffet
Reception at The Riverview Café and cash bar by Windham Wines for John Dau & the Lost Boys

Sunday, July 27 1:00-5:00 PM Hayward Garden, Westminster West, VT
(call for directions)
Concert & Conversation Concert with Kora Master Youssoupha Sidibe African Drumming Malian Food Booth Group Discussions with Lost Boys Books on Africa will be available for sale courtesy of Misty Valley Books
.

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Stephen Carter

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 7:00 PM Professor of Law at Yale University and author Stephen L. Carter will present his third book, Palace Council

AT THE BOOKSTORE

In the summer of 1952, twenty prominent men gather at a secret meeting on Martha’s Vineyard and devise a plot to manipulate the President of the United States. Soon after, the body of one of these men is found by Eddie Wesley, Harlem’s rising literary star. When Eddie’s younger sister, a Harvard Law graduate, mysteriously disappears, Eddie and the woman he loves, Aurelia Treene, are pulled into what becomes a twenty year search for the truth. Carter’s novel is as complex as it is suspenseful and his ability to turn stereotypes inside out make Palace Council an enthralling read. Book signing and reception to follow.


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Tom SlaytonSunday, May 18 at 4:00 PM, Former Vermont Life editor Tom Slayton will discuss his book, Searching for Thoreau: On the Trails & Shores of Wild New England.
AT THE BOOKSTORE


Slayton has written ten vivid essays that transport the reader to places in New England which were important to Thoreau. He retraces Thoreau’s steps from Cape Cod to the deep Maine Woods while attempting to encounter and understand Henry David Thoreau through place. “An unfailingly entertaining literary memoir’, says Howard Frank Mosher.








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Simon WinchesterFriday, June 13 @ 7:00 PM Simon Winchester reading from his new books, The Man Who Loved China: Joseph Needham & The Making of a Masterpiece
AT THE FIRST UNIVERSALIST CHURCH

Winchester has written the true account of the life of an Oxford don- and socialist- who set out to show the extraordinary advances of Chinese technology and science that produced discoveries pre-dating those of the west. Fascinated by China, Joseph Needham bravely set out to China during the Japanese occupation, World War II, and the take-over by the Communists to do his research, having amazing adventures and creating an admirable multi-volume history of science in China.

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Friday, April 25, 2008 at 7:00 PM An Evening of Poetry with Pat Fargnoli (Duties of the Spirit), Tim Mayo (The Loneliness of Dogs), and Leland Kinsey (The Immigrant’s Contract). Join us as these three New England poets read from their latest works.
AT THE BOOKSTORE

Tim Mayo - Photo by John-Komar

Tim Mayo


Leland Kinsey


Pat Fargnoli

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Reeve LindberghFriday, May 2 at 7:00 Reeve Lindbergh talks about her newest book, Forward From Here- Leaving Middle Age.. and Other Unexpected Adventures.
AT THE BOOKSTORE

In her funny and wistful new book, Reeve Lindbergh contemplates entering a new stage of life, turning sixty. As a true Lindbergh she says,”Time flies, but if I am willing to fly with it, then I can be airborne, too.” Age is but one of the many subjects that she writes about with perception and insight. Living in northern Vermont, nature is a big part of her life as is family, including her new family, having found, thirty years after his death, that her father had three secret families in Europe.




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Sunday, May 4 at 4:00 PM Nicholas Daniloff, author of The Kremlin and the Cosmos and Two Lives, One Russia, will talk about his newest book, Of Spies & Spokesmen. AT THE BOOKSTORE


Daniloff tells the riveting story of his life as a foreign correspondent during the Cold War, including his imprisonment there and the forces that led to the presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev. A professor of Journalism at Northeastern University, Daniloff lives in
Andover, Vermont & Cambridge with his wife, Ruth.






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Castle Freeman, Jr.Sunday, May 11 @ 4:00 Randall Balmer, author of God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. AT THE BOOKSTORE

Balmer, professor of religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University has published widely. He is a senior editor for Christianity Today and his commentaries on religion have appeared in newspapers across the country. His book, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America was made into a PBS documentary for which he was nominated for an Emmy. He also wrote a second documentary for PBS on Billy Graham: Crusade, The Life of Billy Graham. Balmer is an Episcopal priest and visiting professor at Yale University and Dartmouth College

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Michael Caduto

Sunday, April 6 at 4:00 PM Chester author Michael Caduto will present his book Everyday Herbs in Spiritual Life: A Guide to Many Practices.

Caduto has written an interesting book which integrates herbs into everyday spiritual life. He discusses meditations and prayer ceremonies throughout history, shows how to create a spiritual herb garden, recommends birth and end-of-life rituals, blessing ceremonies for garden and worship space, and recommends herbs for healing the troubled spirit.

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Castle Freeman, Jr.Sunday, February 10 at 4:00 Castle Freeman, Jr.
reading from his newest book, Go With Me


Newfane , Vermont author Freeman has written a gripping tale of determination set in the Vermont hill country. The local villain, Blackway, is making life hellish for Lillian, a woman from away. She finds unlikely allies- Lester, a crafty old-timer, and Nate, a powerful, naïve young man. A fascinating fable-like story of a community and the nature of choices. At the bookstore.



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New Voices 2008  - January 26, 2008 at 2:00 and 7:30 at the First Universalist Church
in Chester’s Stone Village


Confirmed authors:



James Collins,
Beginner’s Greek



Aoibheann Sweeney,
Among Other Things,
I’ve Taken Up Smoking



Pamela Thompson,
Every Past Thing


James Canon,
Tales From the
Town of Widows


Nora Pierce
The Insufficiency
of Maps
Emily Mitchell

Emily Mitchell
The Last Summer of the World



New Voices 2008 Schedule

Saturday, January 26. 2008

  • 9:30-11:30 at Grafton Ponds Cross country ski or snowshoe with the authors (check with Grafton Ponds for rental and trail cost) www. graftonponds.com
  • 2:00 PM Afternoon Reading at First Universalist Church, Route 103 North, Chester, VT Free
  • 5:00 PM Wine & Cheese with the authors in front of the fire (cash bar) at The Fullerton Inn, On the Green, Chester, VT
  • 5:30 PM Dinner with the authors at The Fullerton Inn (Reservations please 802 875-2444)
  • 7:30 PM Evening Reading at First Universalist Church, Route 103 North, Chester, VT Free

There will be a reception and book signing after each reading at The Stone Church.

Many inns and B & B’s will be offering special New Voices packages. Go to www.chesterlodging.com



Tales from the Town of Widows by James Canon Tales from the Town of Widows
by James Canon

The men of a fictional Columbian mountain town have been marched off to fight in a decades-long guerilla war. The women left behind resign themselves to littered streets, no electricity or water, and starvation until one day, Rosalba, the widow of the police sergeant, declares herself magistrate and promises to restore law and order. The utopia that emerges is ironically the ideal society the guerilla group claims to promote. Magical.


The Insufficiency of Maps by Nora PierceThe Insufficiency of Maps
by Nora Pierce

Pierce, the daughter of a Lebanese mother and American Indian father, tracks the odyssey of a young girl trying to find her home and her identity without a reliable guide. Five-year-old Alice lives nomadically with her schizophrenic mother who makes life enchanting for her daughter, enthralling her with stories of their Quechan history and legends. Returning to their Arizona reservation after a long absence to live with Alice’s father who is still deeply in love with his wife, Alice finds a sense of community, tradition and heritage that ends when her mother becomes ill and she is placed with a white foster family in the suburbs. Pierce asks probing questions about identity and culture.


Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann SweeneyAmong Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking
by Aoibheann Sweeney

Part sexual awakening, part family mystery, Sweeney’s book is animated by the hungry perceptions of a young woman who leaves her widowed father behind on a remote island in Maine to find her place in teeming New York City. When Miranda graduates from high school, her brilliant father, who had moved from Manhattan to Maine to work on a translation of Ovid, sends her to live with friends from his old life and she embarks on a journey from one island to another- a journey that will finally reveal the truth about her father’s past.


Beginner’s Greek
by James Collins

Collins has written a modern Victorian novel- farcical, poised, astringent, generous. It’s the story of Peter Russell, an everyman filled with longing, lust, and good sense. His story of love in modern times with all its missed opportunities is so engaging and real that it is impossible to put down. Collins is a skeptic, a realist and a fervent romantic all in one.


The Last Summer of the World The Last Summer of the World
by Emily Mitchell

Mitchell has written an enchanting story of photographer Edward Steichen and his life in France just before and during World War I. Steichen lived a magical life in eastern France with his wife and two children until the war, then did aerial reconnaissance and photography of the French/German lines for the U.S. Army, developed friendships with the sculptor Rodin and Isadora Duncan and saw his personal life fall apart. Like Steichen’s photographs, Mitchell’s prose shimmers with incandescent light and intriguing shadows and evokes the spell of creativity and the pain of rupture. This is historical fiction at its finest.

Every Past Thing by Pamela ThompsonEvery Past Thing
by Pamela Thompson

In 1899, the streets of New York were as unsettled as the heart and mind of Mary Jane Elmer. Transcendentalist ideas were still in the air, Emma Goldman spoke to the disenfranchised in Union Square, and women were redefining their roles for the coming century, Mary, still grieving the death of her daughter ten years earlier and solitary in her marriage to an intractable and distant artist, struggles to shape a future she can endure. An intimate and moving family portrait during the late nineteenth century.

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Sunday, December 30 at 4:00 (re-scheduled) - Singer, harpist & composer Carol Wood and poet John Wood will delight us with a holiday concert/reading

Carol Wood, who draws her inspiration from great poets like William Blake & W.B.Yeats and from ancient Celtic music, will play & sing pieces from The Beasts of Bethlehem and other holiday songs.




John Wood, an award-winning poet, art critic, and photographic historian will read some of his poems related to Christmas and the winter season.




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Vermont Voices: Four Sundays in November at 2:00 at the First Universalist
Church in Chester:


Archer MayorNovember 4, 2007 - Archer Mayor reading & discussing his 18th Joe Gunther mystery: Chat dealing with internet crime







Howard Frank MosherNovember 11, 2007
- Howard Frank Mosher discussing (and showing slides) his new book, On Kingdom Mountain, the story of Miss Jane Kinneson, an endearing as she is odd librarian, bird carver, and avid hunter & fisherman and her heroic efforts to save her ancestral mountain from development




Jeffrey Lent November 18, 2007 - Jeffrey Lent
presenting his new book, A Peculiar Grace. Set in the art scene of postwar New York, a commune in the early seventies, and contemporary small town New England, it is the story of Hewitt Pearce who must confront his own dark history and rediscover human connection as he faces the heartbreaking losses that nearly destroyed his father and himself.




Ron PowersNovember 25, 2007 - Ron Powers & John Baldwin discussing their book, Last Flag Down, The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship







John Baldwin


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Sunday, October 28 at 4:00: Marlboro College professor Joseph Mazur presents his new book, The Motion Paradox: The 2500 Year-old Puzzle Behind All the Mysteries of Time & Space






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The Savior
by
Eugene Drucker

Saturday, November 3 at 12:00: Luncheon & Reading with Emerson String Quartet founding member Eugene Drucker who will discuss his book, The Savior

World renowned violinist Drucker has written a haunting novel of a non-Jewish German musician forced to play for concentration camp inmates in the waning days of World War II. Offering a startling juxtaposition of the intense beauty of the European classical music tradition with the indescribable horrors of the Final Solution, The Savior offers a perceptive character study that ponders ageless questions of the Holocaust- its inhuman impulses and its origins in the same highly humanistic culture that produced Bach, Beethoven and other peerless geniuses of the German music tradition.

Book discussion and lunch at The Fullerton Inn next door to Misty Valley Books. Lunch & book $35. Lunch only $15. Reservations please: 802 875-2444



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Kate BraestrupFriday, October 12 at 7:00 PM Kate Braestrup discussing her book, Here if You Need Me.

When Braestrup’s trooper husband was killed in a car crash, she took up his dream of going to seminary and became a chaplain for the Maine Warden Service. Her book is powerful, poignant, and inspirational. At the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village.






Kate Braestrup
speaking at the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village.










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TMSunday, October 21 at 4:00 PM Todd McLeish discussing his book, Golden Wings & Hairy Toes: Encounters with New England’s Most Imperiled Species

Co-sponsored with the Ascutney Mountain Audubon Society. At the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village.


Todd McLeish
McLeish profiles fourteen of New England’s most rare and endangered flora & fauna- mammals, birds, insects, plants, and fish- followingbiologists who are researching and protecting them. McLeish traps bats in Vermont and lynx in Maine, gets attacked by marauding birds in Massachusetts, and observes the metamorphosis of dragonflies in Rhode Island. His goal is to make an emotional connection to a variety of fascinating animals and plants and to show us how we can meet the immense challenges to species preservation. He works at the University of Rhode Island and has published more than 100 articles on wildlife topics for such publications as Bird Watcher’s Digest, Wild Bird, and Northern Woodlands.





Todd McLeish
at the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village.









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Henri de MarneSunday, May 27 at 4:00 - Syndicated columnist Henri de Marne, whose column First Aid for the Ailing House has been a lifesaver for homeowners throughout the US & Canada for 32 years, will talk about his book, About The House with Henri de Marne and will maybe answer a few questions about your house that you have been dying to ask. Homeowners & contractors alike will find this a fascinating afternoon. -- At the bookstore





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Bill McKibbenThursday, May 31 at 7:00 PM - Mt. Ascutney Audubon & Misty Valley Books welcome environmentalist, Middlebury professor, and author Bill McKibben to talk about his newest book, Deep Economy, The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.
-- At the First Universalist Church.











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Gordon HaywardSunday, May 20 at 4:00 - Author/gardener/designer Gordon Hayward will present his two newest books, Tending Your Garden and Small Buildings Small Gardens with a slide show and discussion on creating gardens around structures and tending your garden year round. -- At the bookstore






    





February 15 at 7:00 - SOVERA (Southern Vermont Astronomy Group) will meet at Misty Valley Books to hear a presentation by astrophysicist John Thorstensen of Dartmouth College. He will discuss how our very existence is the product of a series of critical stellar events.




March 4 at 3:00 - Misty Valley Books & Whiting Library welcome Weston Playhouse director Steve Stettler who will lead a discussion on the upcoming production (July 25-August 19, 2007) of Caryl Churchill’s play, A Number. What would happen if you discovered you had a clone -or more than one? Three sons of “a number” of possible clones confront their father about identity, the responsibilities of science, and the depths of filial ties. A fascinating look at the human consequences of genetic engineering. Scripts available at Misty Valley Books & Whiting Library.



Chris GraffSunday, March 11 at 4:00 - Chris Graff, former Vermont Bureau Chief for the Associated Press, will discuss his newest book, Dateline Vermont: The inside story of how Vermont transformed itself from a rural, Republican outpost into the state of Howard Dean, Jim Jeffords, Pat Leahy, and Bernie Sanders. At the bookstore.






Stephen KiernanSunday, March 18 at 4:00 - Stephen Kiernan, Last Rights:
Rescuing the End of Life From the Medical System.









  New Voices 2007 Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 2:00 PM & 7:30 PM First Universalist Church in Chester

Join Misty Valley Books for its 13th year of featuring outstanding new authors in Chester, Vermont, a quintessential New England town nestled in the Okemo Valley. The readings will take place on Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM at the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village, Route 103 North.

Charles Davis,
Angel’s Rest
Alex Berenson,
The Faithful Spy
Bruce Bauman,
And the Word Was
Kris Holloway,
Monique & The Mango Rains
Carolyn Turgeon
Layne Maheu,
The Song of the Crow


 Sunday, February 4, 2007 - (4:00 PM) - Marc Estrin Golem’s Song

golem songWho but Marc Estrin could imagine the line of descent from the Frankenstein Golem of Rabbi Loew to the outrageous false messiah of the Bronx, Nurse Alan Krieger. Like each of Estrin’s novels, Golem Song is an allusive, insightful, and wildly comic approach to the most serious and difficult cultural questions of our time. Estrin has been a New Voice, a Vermont Voice, and is a cellist and activist living in Burlington, Vermont.




 Sunday, February 11, 2007 - (4:00 PM) - Storyteller Annie Hawkins

annie hawkinsJoin us at Misty Valley as storyteller Annie Hawkins returns, this time to tell love stories in honor of Valentine’s Day. Anyone who has heard Annie knows that her stories are about the unexpected and are poignant, funny, and incredibly moving. Take your Valentine afterwards for a light supper at The Moon Dog Café.












Huneck

 

Sunday, December 17 from 1:00-2:00 Vermont artist & sculptor Stephen Huneck will be at Misty Valley Books with his black lab, Sally, to sign books and to talk about his life with dogs.

Huneck has written and illustrated a series of children’s books including The Dog Chapel, Sally Goes to the Mountains, Sally Goes to the Farm, Sally Goes to the Beach, Sally Goes to the Vet, and his newest, Sally’s Snow Adventure. Holiday refreshments for dogs and people will be served!

Sally and Betty Boyd



Sally and Betty Boyd

 


 Vermont Voices 2006 Sundays in November at 2:00 p.m. at the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village


Sunday, October 29, 2006 Annie Hawkins, The Witching Hour: Women on the Edge

In honor of Halloween, Annie Hawkins will tell her original stories and traditional tales of healers and seers. Destiny compels these extraordinary women to live on the edge of society working in consort with nature for the benefit of people who both use them and abuse them. Not to be missed (*not for children).








November 5, 2006 Archer Mayor, The Second Mouse

His newest and best Joe Gunther mystery set in Bennington, Vermont.









November 12, 2006 Jeff Danziger, Blood, Debt, and Fears

Political cartoonist Danziger will present a slide show with commentary of his best cartoons including his newest book of political cartoons on the Bush Administration.





November 19, 2006 Ron Powers, Mark Twain

Middlebury professor Powers will present his exceptional biography of one of America’s greatest writers.











P. Galbraith left and S. Ritter right

Saturday, October 7, 2006 7:00 PM First Universalist Church


Scott Ritter & Peter Galbraith,
Iraq & the Middle East

Scott Ritter was the top UN weapons inspector to Iraq. In his book Iraq Confidential, Ritter reveals in detail how the CIA manipulated and sabotaged the work of UN departments to achieve the U.S.'s hidden foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. His newest book, Target Iran, tells the truth about the White House’s plans for regime change in Iran

Peter Galbraith, former (and first) U.S. Ambassador to Croatia is the Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control & Non Proliferation. His book The End of Iraq is a tough-minded, clear-eyed description of America’s failed strategy in Iraq and what needs to be done to avoid a spreading, dangerous and deadly civil war.

The authors will have an open conversation with the audience about Iraq and the Middle East after their presentations.

Reception and book signing to follow.






Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 5:00 PM Cornelia Read, author of A Field of Darkness Dinner at The Fullerton Inn

Read, who has ties to nearby Weston, Vermont, has written a smart stylish mystery about the fascinating, little-understood, and deeply American theme of old money. Author Lee Child (who invited her to do a joint book tour) says that her book is” completely captivating- wry, knowing, hip, intelligent, exciting- one of the best debuts I’ve seen.” Need we say more?








  Summer Gourmet Mystery Series

John Hilferty

Archer Mayor

Cornelia Read

Join us three Saturday evenings this summer to listen to and dine with three great mystery writers. Each month we will host a mystery writer who will read from and discuss his/her book. Afterwards, we will have dinner at The Fullerton Inn on the Green in Chester -just steps from Misty Valley Books- (except June when we will have a light dinner at the Moon Dog Café) with the author. A great opportunity to learn how mysteries are written and meet the people who write them.



Friday, May 5, 2006 at 7:00 PM at the bookstore

Local author Amanda Clark will read from her newest book of poems, Flying Fall. A book signing and reception will follow.



  Sunday, April 30, 2006 at 4:00 PM at the bookstore

Gary Margolis, Fire in the Orchard: Poems

Margolis, a professor at of English at Middlebury College speaks in a deceptively quiet but urgent voice of what often goes unspoken between people, the distance we keep, and the mortality we bear. He will read from his poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. A book signing and reception will follow.






Hawkins





 Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 7:00 PM at the First Universalist Church in Chester’s Stone Village

Tim Gallagher, The Grail Bird, The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Misty Valley Books and the Ascutney Mountain Audubon Society are co-sponsoring this remarkable author who will give a unique and personal perspective on what could be one of the most significant ornithological events of the past hundred years.

Picnic before the event on the church grounds. Call for details 875-3400.


March 12, 2006 @ 2:00 PM at the First Universalist Church

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, III, My Year in Iraq

Ambassador Bremer spent fourteen danger-filled months as America’s proconsul in Iraq following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Facing daunting problems working with Iraq’s traumatized and divided population, he worked tirelessly to find a path to help the Iraqis form a responsible, representative government. This is a riveting memoir that carries the reader behind closed doors in Baghdad during the most intense months of the occupation.





Hawkins












Friday, November 18, 2005 at 7:00 PM
Charles Mann, 1491, New Revelations about the Americas Before Columbus

In conjunction with the Ascutney Mountain Audubon Society, Misty Valley Books presents Charles Mann, author of the best-seller, 1491: New revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals that in 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than Europe, that certain cities, such as Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, had running water and immaculate streets, that pre-Colombian Indians were masters at genetic engineering of corn, just to name a few. A fascinating study.

 

Sunday, October 16, 2005 @4:00 PM
David Bates Russell, Verses From a Vermont Hilltop

Springfield poet & nonagenarian Dave Russell reads from his book of poetry chronicling the machine tool industry in Springfield and his more than 50 years in Vermont.









Sunday, August 21, 2005 @ 4:00
Frances Winfield Bremer, Running to Paradise

Frances Bremer has written the true story of a Catholic priest, Father Frank, who is training for the NYC marathon. Bremer was moved to write about this former television sportscaster who looked like Tom Cruise to understand why he decided to devote his life to the priesthood. Reception and book signing to follow at the bookstore.

Lynne Reed and Frances Bremer



October 24, 2004 at 4:00 PM

maguire
Misty Valley Books welcomes back former New Voice Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Mirror, Mirror, and now Leaping Beauty and Other Animal Fairy Tales. He will read from Leaping Beauty, an adaptation for younger children (grades 8-12) of well-known fairy tales. Children and adults as well will enjoy “Little Red Robin Hood”, “Goldifox”, “Cinderelephant”, and more. At the bookstore.

 




November 21, 2004     David Moats, Civil Wars, A Battle for Gay Marriage
-More than an essay on gay marriage, Civil Wars is a remarkable  account of democracy (in this case, Vermont's) in action and a revealing story of individual lives swept up in the whirlwind of social change. Moats won the Pulitzer Prize for this series of editorials written for the Rutland Herald.




November 28, 2004     Marjorie Pivar & Quang Van Nguyen, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain -Thau Van Nguyen, who lived in South Vietnam during the French and American wars, was one of the highest ranking Vietnamese monks in that country. At the age of 64 he adopted an orphaned infant, Quang, co-author with Marjorie Pivar, who now practices traditional Asian medicine in Vermont.  A magical, mesmerizing story of Vietnam's anguished history, of healing, faith and a young boy's coming of age.

Slide show and presentation. 
 

 

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