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Open for Phone Orders!
617-491-2220
Monday - Friday:
9am - 6pm
Saturday & Sunday:
11am - 5pm
Open for Curbside Pickup!
Monday - Friday:
12pm - 6pm
Saturday & Sunday:
11am - 5pm
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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
-Marcel Proust
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Hello readers,
We've been blown away by all of the support we have received over the last few days. Even though the storefront is closed, we've been kept so busy processing online and phone orders, bringing orders out for curbside pick up, and shipping orders out that we haven't had as much time to make the videos and other content as we expected. Which is great! Thank you!
But this means the ideas are starting pile up. Over the next few days Kate is going to perform some dramatic readings in a range of different accents and even a couple of foreign languages, Josh is planning a couple of short presentations--one about how to become a superstar in your book club and the other about how the opening pages of Proust (you've got the time!) provide a key to reading the whole thing, and we'll continue to read chapters and selections from our canceled events and other books we love. If there's a particular type of video you'd like to see, reply to this email with your request and we'll see what we can do. We've also got some blog posts coming from both of our Writers in Residence.
But none of those plans help you for right now! One of my favorite things going around the internet today is the
#InternationalPoetryCircle
. Using that hashtag, poets from around the world are reading and sharing poems in one massive, international 24/7 poetry reading. There are always more poems being added so you can check in every day and see something new.
Stay connected, stay well, and keep reading.
all the best, Josh @ PSB
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All Your Twisted Secrets: Fiction, YA
Today, Diana Urban was supposed to launch her debut YA thriller,
All Your Twisted Secrets
. We hope you were able to participate in her virtual launch earlier this evening.
A thrilling debut, reminiscent of new fan favorites like
One of Us Is Lying
and the beloved classics by Agatha Christie, that will leave readers guessing until the explosive ending.
“Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.”
What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill...or else everyone dies.
Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead.
As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something.
And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?
Diana Urban
is an author of dark, twisty thrillers. When she's not torturing fictional characters, she works in digital marketing for startups. She lives with her husband and cat in Boston and enjoys reading, video games, fawning over cute animals, and looking at the beach from a safe distance. Visit her online at
dianaurban.com
or follow her on
Instagram
or
Twitter
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Featured Staff Pick for Adults
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Go to Sleep (I Miss You) by Lucy Knisley
Knisley collects a series of short, 1-page comics--drawn amidst the insanity of parenting. Perfect reading for those long howling sessions or days when you just need a commiserating laugh.
-Marika
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Updates: Cafe Zing, Puzzles & Games
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Because I guess you can't read all the time,
we now have a complete set of puzzles and games
available for local delivery, curbside pick up and priority shipping. (Unfortunately, you can't send puzzles and games via media mail.) We have both 500 and 1000 piece puzzles featuring everything from feathers, to books to Momo the dog to the cat zodiac. (Pictured above because it rules.).
Our boards games run the gamut from long, engrossing games like Mysterium, Catan, and Pandemic: The Cure to classic party games like Anomia and Taboo to "classic" party games like Bards Dispense Profanity.
We hope to add puzzles, games, and other fun stuff for the kiddos soon!
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Digital Audio Books:
A terrific way to support local indies!
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What have we been up to here at the store?
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Sometimes a book just captures the zeitgeist:
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We're reading (well, of course we are!):
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Josh Reads from
The Other Name
by Jon Fosse
(click on the video to hear!)
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We're hosting live story hours on Instagram, Wednesdays at 11AM:
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For all the latest on events, new books, reviews, and more for young and young-at-heart readers.
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Virtual Bookseller
Looking to get some good book recommendations, personalized
just for you?
Check out our Virtual Bookseller! Just fill out the form with your likes and dislikes, genres and favorites, and we'll crowdsource a bunch of great picks for you with our crack team of
real life
booksellers. Give it a whirl!
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Did you have imaginings, like us, that this time of social distancing would
finally be your moment
to finish that writing project you're working on? Nail that opus? Perfect that poem?
...And are you now feeling a little, um... stuck? It happens to the best of us! Here's a quick exercise to get those creative juices flowing!
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To begin, write a single sentence with two clear parts. Something like, "I called my mother and was disconnected."
Once you have your sentence fashioned, find a point between the two parts to write into: how can you successfully expand the middle of the sentence, delaying the sentence’s resolution, keeping its parts apart? Can you slow the sentence down without making it drag? Can you fill it with other kinds of information, actions, sensory detail? Is there a way to insert a mid-sentence list of some sort? Play around with different sentence parts, kinds of clauses: you’re certainly not limited to the prepositional phrase. All that material you’re used to putting at the beginnings or ends of sentences? Try putting in the middle instead. Look for ways to create variety and surprise.
What other effects might be possible from within the middle of the sentence? Surely refusing forward motion isn’t the only thing you might accomplish.
This exercise is from writer and teacher
Matt Bell
and is inspired by a sentence in "The Husband Stitch" by Carmen Maria Machado from her collection
Her Body and Other Parties
.
Sign up to receive more exercises from
Matt here
.
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Leila reads
All Your Twisted Secrets
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Shelf Stable Exquisite Corpse
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An "exquisite corpse" is a group writing exercise in which a story is built one line at a time. Someone kicks it off by writing one sentence on a piece of paper and handing it to the someone else. That person writes the next line, folds the paper so that only their sentence is visible, and passes it to someone else. This goes on until everyone in the room has added their line and then the "story" is read. With social distancing we ain't passing anything to anybody. So we'll do our exquisite corpse online. We'll get us started:
You didn't know there was another door in the basement until it slowly swung open while you were down their looking for a jar of dried beans.
Respond to this email with your next sentence. We'll pick our favorite and put it in the next newsletter. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, we'll publish the entire story on our blog.
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Featured Staff Pick For Kids
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Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale with a Tail by Leslea Newman
This lovely Passover story leaves room for a variety of traditions and depicts a diverse group of characters, making it a stellar choice for families and classrooms! Gal's gestural illustrations are filled with movement while the strong contrast and bright colors sparkle. A story of opposites, warmth, welcome, and animal adoption, it's a holiday title that will be reread throughout the year.
--Marika
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We still want to hear from you! What content would you like to see more of?
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Extras from authors/books who would have been featured in events
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Personal notes from PSB staff
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Behind-the-scenes silliness
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Interactive writing prompts & polls like this one!
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Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
"
Oona Out of Order
is a work of fiction that genuinely encouraged me to reflect upon my own mortality and the trajectory of my life. Oona wakes up on her birthday every year in a different part of her life. The difficulty this imposes is fascinating. Pop culture and music is ever-present, as Oona is a musician and chapter titles are taken from song titles or lyrics. What would it be to live your life out of order? To instinctively want to second guess and redo what you saw as failures? At the heart,
Oona Out of Order
is about mastering the art of living in the moment and it is a terribly fun romp."
-Rachel, Avid Bookshop
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See you next time here at Shelf Stable!
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We'll get out our next issue as soon as we can between fulfilling and delivering your orders. In the meantime, don't forget about all the other places you can catch up with us from afar, on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube
:
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25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140
617-491-2220
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