This past weekend at a mini family reunion, I got to drive my in-laws new all electric Mustang sports car. Just a tap on the pedal and we hit 80 miles per hour--just amazing. Which is how Moab feels; going from lazy winter days to the frenzy of full on spring with town crawling with people. Lucky for us, a LOT of these folks are readers; 2022 is off to a great literary start. April 4th also beckons the inception of the Timed-entry reservation system at Arches National Park which should go a long way to alleviate the over-crowding each morning at Arches. Maybe someday, due to overwhelming demand, we'll need to sell tickets to get into Back of Beyond Books, but for now we welcome one and all.

Back of Beyond Books also will host several signings and virtual events in April. Please read below for more details on these events, staff picks and more.

Last but no least, we are looking for names for the Back of Beyond Books Staff Dory. Several suggestions include HMS Bounty, Seldom Seen, Woody, Back of Beyond Boat (BoBB), Bobbing, Pealer, S.S. Minnow or the Katie Lee. Please forward your names to: andy@backofbeyondbooks.com

P.S. After finding that the entire BoBB staff could not fit in the dory we decided to make the BoBB Boat available for purchase. It measures 5 ft. from bow to stern and would look great in any boater's den or gear room. $300.00

Please join Back of Beyond Books

Back of Beyond Books is pleased to welcome poet Sue Scavo and author of Desert Cabal, Amy Irvine, in conversation about Sue’s debut book of poems, Buried [A Place], one woman’s journey through the shadows of trauma, relationship and story. Scavo asks: What do we do when we are lost? Who do we turn to for help on our journey? When does a teacher, a mentor, a brother, a father, no matter how seemingly beloved, become something else? When do we realize the stories we have been told are, at their root, stories against – the body, the feminine, even the planet itself? Irvine responds: this catastrophic, conflict-ridden era is no Anthropocene, but rather the Patrescene. Life has been shaped not by “humans” but by a patriarchy of greed, power, fear and ultimately violence against the feminine and the planet.

Brianna Madia will be signing her debut memoir Nowhere for Very Long at Back of Beyond Books on Friday, April 15, 2022 between 4-7 pm. There will be limited number of people permitted into the store at at any given time and masks are highly recommended. This event is free and open to the public.

Back of Beyond Books was honored that Brianna chose us as one of three bookstores handling pre-orders for her book. We sold 5,500 books in 36 hours!!

NOWHERE FOR VERY LONG is the chronicle of a woman learning and unlearning, from backroads to breakdowns, married to solo, and finally, from lost to found.

On the surface, NOWHERE FOR VERY LONG: The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life (on sale April 5, 2022; $26.99; HarperOne) is Brianna Madia's life story: buying a van she named Bertha, filling it with her three dogs Bucket, Dagwood, and Birdie, venturing out into the canyons of Utah and the deserts of Nevada, and what she discovered along the way. But if you go back a bit further, and start at the beginning, Brianna's is the story of a movement.

A young woman rejecting the competitive and capitalistic path set out for her and choosing a truer version of happiness, one that is scary and uncertain and entirely her own. That doesn’t mean it was easy—in fact, it was terribly difficult, boring, and lonely at times when the van overheated, when the weather was excruciating, when she was stressed about money and her future—but it was a life of her choosing and that made all the difference.

Please join Back of Beyond Books in celebrating Moab area author M. Dressler's new book, Our Eyes at Night. She will joining us via Zoom (link above) for a reading and conversation.

In a climate-ravaged town in the remote Utah desert, a house remodels itself, a cemetery is rearranged, and an ancient valley is suddenly haunted by a glimmering visitor. Called in to “clean” the unwanted dead, ghost hunter Philip Pratt finds himself in territory at once familiar and unfamiliar, stalking the spirit of Emma Rose Finnis, a one-hundred-year-old phantom who has never let his own spirit rest.

Yet Emma has come to this blazing desert for her own reasons—to see just how far a ghost can go in a changing world. And if a living man bars her path, she must find a way through him, even if it means risking her heart and soul. Joined by other ghosts of the West, both old and new, she will make her stand for the unexpected chance at love and home, far from the cold ocean grave where she began.

Hardback Radio airs April 4th

Join Shari and Andy from Back of Beyond Books Monday April 4th at 5pm for the Radio Book Club. These two are voracious readers and will provide many great reading choices and new book reviews. Tune in locally at 90.1 or 106.7 or world-wide at KZMU.org

We will be joined by Moab based author M. Dressler who is celebrating the release of her third Last Ghost Series title Our Eyes at Night. See above for details on her Back of Beyond Books event on April 20th.

Anyone with an internet connection can stream the program live, or listen to archived programs at this link, https://www.kzmu.org/radio-book-club/