Have you ever been torn between the desire to underline or dog-ear a passage you'd like to return to later, and the desire to keep your new book mint and untarnished? You need some Book Darts! These nifty bronze clips mark both the page and the line where you place them, offering a non-permanent, archivally-correct (meaning residue-free) alternative to highlighters, pens, bookmarks, or sticky-notes. We sell them in tins of thirty. Come in for a free sample, while supplies last!

A hearty thanks to everyone who came out for the release of Uncommon Charm, the novella written by our colleague Emily and her wife Kat. It's been a highly successful launch by the look of it, with 80% of the print run already sold or on shelves. We have plenty of copies, and needless to say, they're all signed! Feel free to stop in, or order one here.

Congratulations to all graduating seniors at Macalester and elsewhere (and parents thereof -- we know you put in the work too). If you have a friend or relative who's getting their tassel flipped, we'd be thrilled to help you pick out a book to mark the occasion. Here's a few we have spotlighted in the store right now that might get your gears turning. And don't forget a card; we have beautiful handmade ones in the Macalester colors by local mixed media artist Miriam Simons.

Happy-Go-Lucky –  David Sedaris

Unable to tour and read for audiences as the world gradually settles into a post-Covid reality, Sedaris finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the messages of our time. In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all.

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World –  Barry Lopez

An ardent steward of the land, fearless traveler, and unrivaled observer of nature and culture, Barry Lopez died after a long illness on Christmas Day 2020. At once a cri de coeur and a memoir of pain and wonder, this remarkable collection includes works written in the months before his death, unspooling memories both personal and political. He reflects on those who taught him, including Indigenous elders and scientific mentors who sharpened his eye for the natural world. And in prose of searing candor, he reckons with the cycle of life, including his own, and—as he has done throughout his career—with the dangers the earth and its people are facing. Includes an introduction by Rebecca Solnit.

Nightcrawling –  Leila Mottley

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department. Rich with raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.

Sex and the Single Woman –  Ed. Eliza Smith & Haley Swanson

Edited by former Next Chapter bookseller Haley Swanson! Sixty years ago, Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl sent shockwaves through the United States. Now, in these critical, wry, and expansive essays, twenty-four writers revisit Helen's writing, fielding topics that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—conceive of in 1962: contraception and abortion, queer and trans womanhood, polyamory, celibacy, interracial dating, bodies of all kinds, consent, sex work, IVF, and pop culture. Eliza Smith and Haley Swanson’s anthology honors Brown’s irreverent spirit while validating our modern experiences of singlehood, encouraging us to reclaim joy where it’s been so often denied.

River of the Gods –  Candace Millard

Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were given one mission by the Royal Geographical Society: to find the headwaters of the Nile and claim them for England. Diametric opposites, they clashed from the start. Leading and protecting them was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who had escaped enslavement and forged a living as a guide. Upon return to England, Speke claimed he had found the source, which Burton disputed. As their public rivalry grew, Speke launched another expedition to Africa to prove his claims. In River of the Gods Candice Millard has written a peerless story of adventure, set against the backdrop of the colonial powers' race to exploit Africa.

You Have A Friend in 10A –Maggie Shipstead

From the Booker Prize nominee and NYT-bestselling author of Great Circle, a piercing, collection of short stories exquisite in their craft and audacious in their range. A love triangle plays out over decades on a Montana dude ranch. On the slopes of an unfinished ski resort, a young woman searches for her vanished lover. In the mesmerizing title story, a former child actress breaks with her life in a Hollywood cult. Rich in imagination and dazzling in its shapeshifting style, You Have a Friend in 10A excavates the complexities of love, sex, and life in ways unsparing and hilarious, sharp-eyed and tender.

FINALLY IN PAPERBACK MAY 24th

Summoned – Margaret Hasse

Prognosis – Jim Moore

Margaret Hasse is a poet, teacher, and writing mentor, and has been a consultant to arts organizations throughout the country. She's author of six full-length collections of poems, and a collaborative book with watercolor artist Sharon Demark. In Summoned, Hasse explores the sorrows and delights of daily life through narratives and ruminations enlivened by her lightning-quick imagination and her care in choosing just the right detail. Her attention ranges widely, from the distant past, seen through a filter of nostalgia to the humor and acceptance of aging that enliven the present.

Jim Moore is the author of seven books of poetry. His poetry has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Spoleto, Italy. In his eighth collection, he looks into unrelenting darkness where moments of tenderness and awe illuminate, at times suddenly like lightning in the night, at others, more quietly, as the steady glow of streetlights in a snowstorm. These are poems of both patience and urgency, of necessary attendance and helpless exuberance in the breathing world—something rare in contemporary poetry. Written in Minneapolis amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s masked and distanced loneliness, after the police murder of George Floyd, as an empire comes to an end, Prognosis turns toward the living moment as a surprising source of abundance.

Something Wicked: A McKenzie Novel – David Housewright

Tickets $5 or Free With Purchase of the Book: Purchase Here

David Housewright is the three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award and a past president of the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA). In Something Wicked, the nineteenth book in his Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie series, Rushmore McKenzie is talked into doing one last job as a favor for an old friend -- a favor involving a castle, an inheritance feud, and at least one mysterious death. Join us for a reading and signing event celebrating the release of the latest book in this beloved series!

Tickets $5 or Free With Purchase of the Book: Purchase Here

Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in the Chicago area. She is a poet, writer, and cultural worker. She is the editor of What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories on Food and Family and of A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, author of poetry collections Unbearable Splendor (finalist for the 2017 PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry and winner of the 2016 Minnesota Book Award for poetry); Rough, and Savage; and Skirt Full of Black (winner of the 2007 Asian American Literary Award for poetry). Incorporating sources such as her own immigration documents, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Columbus's journals, and traditional Korean burial rituals, her latest poetry collection The Wet Hex explores the ways that lives are weighed and bartered. She lives in Minneapolis where she co-directs the community organization Poetry Asylum.

Chavonn Williams Shen is a 2022 McKnight Writing fellow and was a first runner-up for The Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Contest. She was also a Best of the Net Award finalist, a winner of the Loft Literary Center's Mentor Series and a fellow with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature. A Tin House and VONA workshop alum, her writing has appeared in: Diode, Anomaly, Yemassee, Cosmonauts Avenue, and others. When she's not teaching with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, she can be found at home obsessing over her plants.

Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth – Ben Westhoff

Tickets $5 or Free With Purchase of the Book: Purchase Here

In 2005 Ben Westhoff, a white college grad from an affluent family, joined Big Brothers Big Sisters and was paired with Jorell Cleveland, one of nine children from a poor, African American family living in Ferguson. The two instantly connected, forming a bond stronger than nearly any other in their lives. In the summer of 2016, Jorell was shot at point blank range in broad daylight, yet no one was charged in his death. Ben grappled with mourning Jorell, but also with a feeling of responsibility. As a journalist, he had reported on gang life, interviewed crime kingpins, and infiltrated drug labs in China. But now, he was investigating the life and death of someone he knew personally. Learning the truth about Jorell and the man who killed him required Ben to uncover a heartbreaking cycle of poverty, poor education, drug trafficking, and violence. Little Brother combines a deeply personal history with a true-crime narrative that exposes the realities of life in communities like Ferguson.

The Barrens: A Novel of Love and Death in the Canadian Arctic – Kurt & Ellie Johnson

Two young women are canoeing the rapids-strewn river that runs through the uninhabited Barren Lands of subarctic Canada. Holly made the trip once before with a group of skilled paddlers, and she wants to share that experience with her lover, inexperienced paddler Lee, believing it will draw them closer. But a week in, Holly falls while taking a selfie near the edge of a cliff, and succumbs to her injuries. Lee is forced to finish the grueling trip alone in order to save herself and return her lover’s body to her family. During the dangerous journey she engages her grief, reflects on her relationship with Holly, and recalls her coming-of-age off the grid in Nebraska with her estranged eco-anarchist father.

Kurt Johnson and grew up spending summers on a remote island near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, first with his parents and later with his wife and their daughter, Ellie. At the age of seventeen, Ellie paddled the 450-mile Thelon River with three other women. The novel draws from that canoe trip, and from her experiences as a gay woman. Ellie is a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota. Both Ellie and Kurt live in St. Paul.

Next Chapter Bookfair at Modist Brewing Co.

Next Chapter will be running our first-ever bookfair at Modist Brewing Company! We'll have as many of the latest and hottest titles as we can carry, and Modist, of course, will have their incredible selection of craft beers. Nothing beats sipping and reading!

Paradais – Fernanda Melchor

"At its heart, Paradais isn’t a novel about the effects of gender violence; it’s a novel about the people who enact it. Melchor aims to reflect Polo’s damaged psyche—a perilous task, yet a deeply moral one. In a final, climactic scene, when Señora Maroño begs Polo to stop Franco from hurting her, the gardener runs out of the room and drinks himself silly. Still, Melchor suggests, the boy isn’t a monster, but a fearful teenager who has made 'the worst fucking mistake of his shitty little life.' He is both a victim of a cruel society, and an agent of cruelty within it. Paradais ends on a despairing note, with Polo’s circumstances unchanged, his hopes unveiled as shams. It’s a fitting end to an unsparing work."

-Hank

(excerpted from his review in

Cleveland Review of Books)

Many languages have a lacuna (a semantic gap where a concept cannot be translated directly) around the color blue. Languages that do not have a distinct word for blue include Ancient Greek, Papuan Dani, and Tzeltal. These languages cannot describe the hue of a blue sky.

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay demonstrated in 1969 that almost every language develops colors in the same order, starting with black or white, moving onto red, then green or yellow, then blue. This may be because blue is relatively rare in nature (less than 5% of plants and 8% of fruits), meaning that humans rarely need to refer to blue objects or materials.

The World According to Color: A Cultural History, by James Fox