Wakefield Books June Newsletter

This month's newsletter is loaded with lots of info about our new releases, events and great gift ideas.

Summer is here as far as we're concerned because the weather is getting warmer, the beaches are calling, and the new releases book calendar is loaded this month with great new titles from all of your favorite authors.

We hope all you Dad's have a great Father's Day and
Congrats to all of our Graduates on a job well done!

Father's Day is Sunday June 18th

So many great books for Dad. A new book by his favorite author, his favorite hobby, or a gift book celebrating Fatherhood.

Congratulations to all the Graduates!

Whether it's High School or College, it's an exciting time to look at what you've accomplished and to get ready for the next chapter of your life.
Celebrate your success and build on that for the future. The key is to never stop learning. We've made some great selections of titles to help you do just that.

Booksigning Event Saturday 6/17 from 10am-12pm

Meet local Author and Historian
Christian McBurney Saturday 6/17 from 10am-12pm.

He will be at Wakefield Books signing copies of his newest book:

World War II Rhode Island.

Co-written with Patrick T. Conley, Maureen A. Taylor

Rhode Island's contribution to World War II vastly exceeded its small size. In Narragansett Bay at Quonset Point, they included the Northeast's largest naval air station and the main training center for the Seabees. In Newport and Aquidneck Island, they included the nation's most important torpedo production facilities, a naval training station for some 500,000 sailors, and the nation's main PT boat training center. Three special, top-secret German POW camps were based in Narragansett and Jamestown. Meanwhile, Rhode Island workers from all over the state-including for the first time many women-made their contributions by manufacturing military equipment and building warships, most notably the Liberty ships at Providence Shipyard. Authors from the Rhode Island history blog smallstatebighistory.com trace Rhode Island's outsized wartime role, from the scare of an enemy raid after Pearl Harbor to the war's final German U-boat sunk off Point Judith.

Sean Fay Wolfe Event

Saturday June 25th from 12-2

We are proud to have local Best Selling Author Sean Fay Wolfe back here on June 25th to meet with his fans and sign copies of his newest book

The Elementia Chronicles Battle Book: The 19 Greatest Battles that Never Happened

Author's on Main Series kicks off This Month !

Join us at the Contemporary Theater on Main Street in Wakefield

for the free Author's on Main Summer Series which kicks off on Sunday 6/25 at 6pm with Author Wayne Worcester, co-author of The Last Good Heist

The Last Good Heist: The inside Story of The Biggest Single Payday in the Criminal History of the Northeast

On Aug. 14, 1975, thieves ransacked safe-deposit boxes at a secret bank used by organized crime, and its associates in Providence., R.I. The crooks fled with duffle bags crammed full of cash, gold, silver, stamps, coins, jewels and high-end jewelry. The true value of the loot has always been kept secret, partly because it was ill-gotten to begin with.The heist was bold enough and big enough to rock the underworld to its core, and it left La Cosa Nostra in the region awash in turmoil that still reverberates more than forty years later. This is the true story of the robbery and its aftermath.

Wayne Worcester, a former reporter and editor at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, is an essayist, novelist and Professor of Journalism Emeritus at the University of Connecticut in Storrs where he taught news, feature and magazine writing as well as editing and literary journalism to hundreds of undergraduates from 1987 to 2013.

This event is free. The Theater is located at 327 Main Street in Wakefield, Rhode Island. The building is handicapped accessible. Free parking is available.

Staff Picks

Rise and Shine, Benedict Stone
by Phaedra Patrick

Benedict Stone has settled into a complacent and predictable routine. His wife has left him due to his obsession with having children which they have been unsuccessful at so far and his jewelry store is barely surviving. That is until Gemma, the teenage daughter of his estranged brother shows up on his doorstep for a visit. I enjoyed this book very much. Phaedra Patrick taps into her characters souls revealing feelings and thoughts that many people could relate to which helps form a bond between her characters and her readers. The quirky townspeople, the vivid descriptions of the moors near the town and the small town atmosphere made Benedict's quest for a better life all the more charming. The interesting information about various gemstones and their meanings was an added bonus to this delightful book.
-Lisa

Death in the Off-Season
by Francine Mathews

The first in a mystery series set in Nantucket featuring detective Merry Folger, the daughter of the police chief. The story starts out with the discovery of a dead body in a cranberry bog who turns out to be a member of one of the wealthiest families on the island. This is Merry's first murder investigation and she feels pressure from all sides to solve it. This is a great mystery, but also involves family tensions, friendships and grudges, and the politics of small island life. -Sue

I'm Dying up Here

by William Knoedelseder

A fascinating look at the business of stand up comedy in the 70's when young and hungry comedians fought for stage time and honed their craft for their big break which many defined as getting on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Richard Lewis, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Robin Williams, and Richard Pryor just to name a few went on to be big stars while many others did not. The audiences were tough and the business was tougher, but this book is a rare treat back in time when stand up comics were about to become the new rock stars.

-Bob

Into The Water

by Paula Hawkins

Very twisty tale from the author of The Girl On The Train. This story uses a site historically known as the Drowning Pool, a place where many "troublesome" women have met their end. There are a lot characters, many mysterious deaths & many plausible suspects. If you like suspenseful stories & don't mind some not- so-endearing characters, then try this one. -Kim

This Month's Featured Local Interest Titles

Rhode Island Shipwrecks
by Charlotte Taylor

The record of shipwrecks in Rhode Island begins immediately after the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century, and thousands more vessels came to grief in its waters in the following centuries. Many shipwrecks from the 19th century on into the 20th were captured in the dramatic images gathered here. These pictures show the variety of vessels that traveled Rhode Island's waters back when the ocean was the primary transportation corridor and the many ways in which they met misfortune.

My Mrs. Brown
by William Norwich

Emilia Brown has spent a frugal, useful, and wholly restrained life in Ashville, Rhode Island. She is a genteel woman who makes a modest living cleaning and running errands. One day she comes upon a dress that changes everything. As a means to an end as much as a thing of beauty, she must have it. And so, her odyssey to purchase the dress in New York City begins. Timeless, poignant, and appealing, My Mrs. Brown is "a contemporary fairy tale...a gentle rebuke to today's hyped-up fashion culture" (The New York Times).

Down City A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory, and Murder
by Leah Carroll

Down City is a wrenching memoir of a broken family and an indelible portrait of Rhode Island- a tiny state where the ghosts of mafia kingpins live alongside the feisty, stubborn people working hard just to get by. Heartbreaking and mesmerizing, it's the story of a resilient young woman's determination to discover the truth about a mother she never knew and the deeply troubled father who raised her-a man who was, Leah writes, "both my greatest champion and biggest obstacle."

Eden
by Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg

This Author's debut novel is set in a fictional town in Rhode Island. Eden is one woman's story, echoing four women's stories, and is, at the same time, all women's story. It creates a collage of female experience around the drama of introducing Becca's long lost daughter and her impending financial despair.
"Eden is not just another farewell-to-the-summer-house novel, but instead a masterfully interwoven family saga with indelible characters, unforgettable stories, and true pathos. Most impressive, there's not an ounce of fat on this excellent book." Anita Shreive

New Releases for June

These are just highlights of our upcoming new releases.
A more complete llst is available on our website

June 6th

June 13th

June 20th

June 27th

New In Paperback This Month

June Newsletter Features:

Local Author Spotlight

New Releases

We Sell Vinyl

NPR

June Releases

Shelf Awareness

Wakefield Books Now Sells Vinyl Records!

Listen to great music again

...or for the 1st time.

Wakefield Books is now carrying new factory sealed vinyl records. We will feature artists both old and new and across many genres of great music. These are not the albums of yesteryear, these are remastered, repackaged on 180 gram vinyl that look and sound stunning.

What a unique gift idea for the Dad or Grad !

Our collection is growing everyday and we take requests!

I Heard it on

Here's what National Public Radio is saying

about these new Titles:

*The Heirs* by Susan Rieger Love and sex and money and betrayal make for excellent storytelling. And The Heirs has all of that in excess. As an exploration of the hidden lives of Rupert and Eleanor Falkes, it is a posh soap opera written by Fitzgerald and the Brontes. As a window on a family shaken by death, it is The Royal Tenenbaums, polished up and moved across town. But its beauty, economy and expensive wit is all its own.	*Spirit of the Horse* by William Shatner Horse people tell stories.William Shatner is no different. From the first words of Spirit of the Horse, it's clear that this is a man who is wonderfully, hopelessly in love with the creatures. He weaves his own anecdotes and memories with fables,and stories There is a sense that you're sitting on a porch with an old horseman, listening to him muse about the horses he's known, the falls he's taken, and the memories he's made. Horse person or not, this book will delight you.
*Beren and Luthien* by J.R.R Tolkien With help from his son Christopher, this unfinished novel was a love story begun by his father shortly after marrying his wife Edith at the age of 24. In those years he began composing the earliest version of a tale to which he would always return: The love of Beren, a mortal man, and Lúthien, daughter of the Elven King of the forest realm of Doriath. The disapproval of Lúthien's father sends the two lovers on a series of perilous quests, but they rescue each other through bravery, music and love - with an assist from a magical dog.Much like Tolkein, we all leave the world with our story incomplete, our love and work unfinished. We can only hope that what we leave behind will give those who come after us a way to perceive the shape of the tale that might have been told.	*Off Rock* by Kieran Shea Basically a Heist story told in a science fiction setting, Off Rock is a fast read. Like one day at the beach fast. The story zips along with little in the way of complication. Which might be exactly what you're looking for. There was a time when nearly all sci-fi read like Off Rock - when everything was about Zack Spaceman, a rocketship and calamity. And even if the genre has become more respectable and more complex, sometimes it's good to remember where we came from, to touch back on the classic dilemmas and take a ride with a guy, a girl, a gun and some ill-gotten gold while all around us, the world falls apart.
The United States of Absurdity by Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds This book, from the hosts of the American history podcast The Dollop, presents short, informative, and hilarious stories of the most outlandish (but true) people, events in America. Think of it as A People's History of the United States for the slightly lazy.Through 29 particularly American stories of insanity, this brief survey of America's strange past illustrates that we've always been a little insane. That voice in our head saying, "that doesn't seem right?" The writers of The United States of Absurdity want you to listen to that voice.	River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey In 1909, the United States was suffering a shortage of meat. At the same time, Louisiana's waterways were being choked by invasive water hyacinth. Louisiana Congressman Robert F. Broussard proposed an ingenious solution to both those problems: Import hippos to eat the water hyacinth; then, eat the hippos. Luckily the "Hippo Bill" failed to pass by a single vote. Sarah Gailey's imagined United States, however, are differently fortuned, and man-eating Hippo mayhem ensues. River of Teeth' is a wonderfully fun and original debut.