We know, we know. It’s election day. But our guess is that everyone will probably be ready for a drink and a distracting chat about books on today of all days. This month we’ll be talking about Bettyville, the charming memoir by friend of Skylark, the much-missed George Hodgman.

When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself—an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook—in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can’t bring himself to force her from the home both treasure—the place where his father’s voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict: Betty, who speaks her mind but cannot quite reveal her heart, has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay.
 
As these two unforgettable characters try to bring their different worlds together, Hodgman reveals the challenges of Betty’s life and his own struggle for self-respect, moving readers from their small town—crumbling but still colorful—to the star-studded corridors of Vanity Fair. Evocative of The End of Your Life Book Club and The Tender Bar, Hodgman’s New York Times bestselling debut is both an indelible portrait of a family and an exquisitely told tale of a prodigal son’s return.

October’s Skylarking Book Club is the brilliant Colored Television, by Danzy Senna. Come and join the discussion about this stunning novel at 6:30 on October 31!

A brilliant take on love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex from the bestselling author of Caucasia

Jane has high hopes that her life is about to turn around. After a long, precarious stretch bouncing among sketchy rentals and sublets, she and her family are living in luxury for a year, house-sitting in the hills above Los Angeles. The gig magically coincides with Jane’s sabbatical, giving her the time and space she needs to finish her second novel—a centuries-spanning epic her artist husband, Lenny, dubs her “mulatto War and Peace.” Finally, some semblance of stability and success seems to be within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, like countless writers before her Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford, a hot producer with a major development deal at a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer,” and together they begin to develop “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.” Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.

Funny, piercing, and page turning, Colored Television is Senna’s most on-the-pulse, ambitious, and rewarding novel yet.

Please join us on Thursday, October 24, for what will be a fascinating discussion about by author and professor Claire Horisk about the dangers of joking around. In this election season, with some highly unserious people vying for our votes, it seems like an especially good time to look at how jokes are weaponized.

People often get away with belittling others if they frame their speech as jokes-speech that would be condemned if stated seriously. "It's just a joke," they say. But what is different or special about joking? And if jokes about lawyers and politicians are morally acceptable, then what is wrong with joking about race or gender? Furthermore, if we may joke about a politician's shirts, may we joke about his weight? People who are targeted by demeaning jokes feel their impact but may not be able to pinpoint where the harm lies. 

Dangerous Jokes develops a novel, well-researched, and compelling argument that lays bare the power of demeaning jokes in ordinary conversations. Claire Horisk draws on her expertise in philosophy of language and on evidence from sociology, law and cognitive science to explain how the element of humor-so often used as a defence-makes jokes more potent than regular speech in communicating prejudice and reinforcing social hierarchies. She addresses the morality of telling, being amused by, and laughing at, derogatory jokes, and she gives a new account of listening that addresses the morality of listening to demeaning speech. She leaves us with no illusions about whether "it's just a joke" is an excuse for demeaning humor.

Claire Horisk is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri, specializing in philosophy of language. Her current research focuses on how language shapes society. She is the author of Dangerous Jokes: How Racism and Sexism Weaponize Humor (OUP). Her published work also includes articles about the nature of truth, theories of meaning, contextualism, and animal communication.

Just in time for Halloween, October’s New Romantic Book Club will be discussing My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine. As usual, we’ll be meeting in the shop at 6:30 p.m. on the third Wednesday of the month (the 16!) All are welcome - we just ask that you buy the book from us!

Nothing sucks more than fake dating a vampire in this paranormal romantic comedy from the USA Today bestselling author of My Roommate Is a Vampire.
 
Amelia Collins is by definition successful. She would even go so far as to say successfully single. But not according to her family, and she's tired of the constant questions about her nonexistent dating life. When an invitation to yet another family wedding arrives, she decides to get everyone off her back once and for all by finding someone--anyone--to pose as her date. 
 
After a chance encounter with Reginald Cleaves, Amelia decides he's perfect for her purposes. He's a bit strange, but that’s fine; it'll discourage tough questions from her family. (And it certainly doesn't hurt that he's very handsome.) For centuries-old vampire Reggie, posing as her plus-one sounds like the ultimate fun. And if it helps his ruse of pretending to be human, so much the better.

As Amelia and Reggie practice their fauxmance, it becomes clear that Reggie is as loyal to her as the day is long, and that Amelia’s first impressions could not have been more wrong. Suddenly, being in a real relationship with Reggie sounds pretty fang-tastic.

A new book by local favorite Jake Adelstein is always something to celebrate, and we’re thrilled to welcome Jake back to Skylark on Saturday, October 12, to mark the publication of his most recent book, Tokyo Noir.

A darkly comic sequel to Tokyo Vice that is equal parts history lesson, true-crime exposé, and memoir.

It's 2008, and it's been a while since Jake Adelstein was the only gaijin crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun. The global economy is in shambles, Jake is off the police beat but still chain-smoking clove cigarettes, and Tadamasa Goto, the most powerful boss in the Japanese organized crime world, has been banished from the yakuza, giving Adelstein one less enemy to worry about--for the time being. But as he puts his life back together, he discovers that he may be no match for his greatest enemy--himself.

And Adelstein has a different gig these days: due diligence work, or using his investigative skills to dig up information on entities whose bosses would prefer that some things stay hidden.

The underworld isn't what it used to be. Underneath layers of paperwork, corporations are thinly veiled fronts for the yakuza. Pachinko parlors are a hidden battleground between disenfranchised Korean Japanese and North Korean extortion plots. TEPCO, the electric power corporation keeping the lights on for all of Tokyo, scrambles to hide its willful oversights that ultimately led to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. And the Japanese government shows levels of corruption that make the yakuza look like philanthropists in comparison. All this is punctuated by personal tragedies no one could have seen coming.

In this ambitious and riveting work, Jake Adelstein explores what it's like when you're in too deep to distinguish the story you chase from the life you live.

Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993, reporting in both Japanese and English. From 2006 to 2007 he was the chief investigator for a US State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. He has been writing for The Daily Beast, The Japan Times, and other publications since 2011, and was a special correspondent for The Los Angeles Times. Considered one of the foremost experts on organised crime in Japan, he works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the United States. He co-hosted and co-wrote the award-winning podcast about missing people in Nippon, The Evaporated: gone with the gods in 2023. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: a western reporter on the police beat in Japan, which is now a series on HBO Max, and also The Last Yakuza: life and death in the Japanese underworld (2023).

He has appeared on CNN, NPR, the BBC, France 24, and other media outlets as a commentator on social issues in Japan, as well as its criminal justice system, politics, and nuclear industry giant, TEPCO.

We are HUGE fans of Leslie Jamison here at Skylark, and are very excited that she will be coming to Columbia, courtesy of our friends at the Missouri Review, on October 9 to discuss Splinters, her astonishing new memoir of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage. It’s an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love, and it will blow you away.

This conversation will be a behind-the-scenes look at the editing and publishing of Splinters, and is the next installment in the Missouri Review’s Miller Conversations on Literary Publishing.  It is open to the public and takes place at Memorial Union, 518 Hitt Street. Attendance is free but you must reserve tickets here. They will be made available on September 2, but we suggest that you go to the page and click on the “Remind Me” button.

You really won’t want to miss this talk. Jamison is one the best and most interesting writers working today and it is sure to be a fascinating evening. Space is limited.

Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams; the collection of essays Make It Scream, Make It Burn, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; and the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Harper’s, the New York Times Book Review, the Oxford American, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among many others. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.

Come and join us in the always-hospitable surroundings of Twain Bar and BBQ on the first floor of the Tiger Hotel for an informal book discussion (with alcohol!) about a notable book with links to the Show-Me State. In October we’ll be discussing the new novel by Chris Whitaker, All the Colors of the Dark.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.

It’s Columbia One Read time again, and we are thrilled to participate in this annual city-wide celebration of Migrations, the wonderful debut novel by Charlotte McConaghy. This is the second of two events we’ll be hosting at the store. As always, it’s completely free to attend.

The monthly Skylarking Bookclub will discuss Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers. This novel, the first in the Monk and Robot series, is a wonderful example of solarpunk fiction. Unlike many genres that imagine the future in often grimly dystopic terms, solarpunk seeks to offer hope that will empower individuals and communities to work together for a better future. The novel is an optimistic look at how technology and humanity can exist and thrive in a lush, beautiful environment that is coming back from the brink of disaster. It is a fascinating counterpoint and companion to the ideas presented in Migrations.

Boyce Upholt and THE GREAT RIVER, presented with the Ag & Water Desk, KBIA, The New Territory and River Town.

We’re very pleased to welcome author Boyce Upholt to Skylark on Tuesday, September 24 to talk about his new book, The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi. The book is brilliant, but don’t take our word for it. Dan Egan, a Skylark favorite, wrote: “With masterful research and reporting, Boyce Upholt makes a compelling case that, despite our centuries-long efforts to control its unpredictable pulses with concrete, steel, and earthen berms, the Mississippi River in many ways remains wild as ever. And he shows us why that is good.”

This conversation with Boyce Upholt is presented in partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent environmental reporting network based at the Missouri School of Journalism, and the River Town podcast from KBIA and The New Territory magazine. It will be hosted by Ag & Water Desk editorial director Tegan Wendland and River Town host Tina Casagrand, the founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Territory magazine. 

The Mississippi River lies at the heart of America, an undeniable life force that is intertwined with the nation’s culture and history. Its watershed spans almost half the country, Mark Twain’s travels on the river inspired our first national literature, and jazz and blues were born in its floodplains and carried upstream.

In this landmark work of natural history, Boyce Upholt tells the epic story of this wild and unruly river, and the centuries of efforts to control it. Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded “the great river” with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. The river was ever-changing, and Indigenous tribes embraced and even depended on its regular flooding. But the expanse of the watershed and the rich soils of its floodplain lured European settlers and American pioneers, who had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer.

Centuries of human attempts to own, contain, and rework the Mississippi River, from Thomas Jefferson’s expansionist land hunger through today’s era of environmental concern, have now transformed its landscape. Upholt reveals how an ambitious and sometimes contentious program of engineering—government-built levees, jetties, dikes, and dams—has not only damaged once-vibrant ecosystems but may not work much longer. Carrying readers along the river’s last remaining backchannels, he explores how scientists are now hoping to restore what has been lost.

Rich and powerful, The Great River delivers a startling account of what happens when we try to fight against nature instead of acknowledging and embracing its power—a lesson that is all too relevant in our rapidly changing world.

Boyce Upholt is a “nature critic” whose writing probes the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, especially in the U.S. South.

Boyce grew up in the Connecticut suburbs and holds a bachelor’s degree from Haverford College and an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2009, where he discovered an unexpected wilderness amid an agricultural empire: the Mississippi River, which for hundreds of miles offers a corridor of islands and sandbars and wetland forests, with no settlement or development.

An obsession with how this wild place came to persist, despite so much change and engineering, inspired a wider interest in the strange nature of “nature” itself—this thing that we call separate but are really a part of. Boyce’s work ranges from straightforward journalism and science writing to travel writing that invites readers to better connect with the “more-than-human” world.

His work has been published in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications, and was awarded the 2019 James Beard Award for investigative journalism. His stories have been noted in the Best American Science & Nature and Best American Nonrequired Reading series. Boyce lives in New Orleans.

The Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk is a collaborative network of journalists focused on increasing coverage of agriculture, water and other environmental issues surrounding one of the world’s major river systems. Founded in 2021, the Ag & Water Desk brings together contributors from more than 20 local newsrooms from across the watershed, including KBIA. Newsrooms can run the Desk’s stories for free and the public can sign up for a weekly newsletter with the latest environmental news from the basin. This award-winning independent initiative is based at the Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

In the River Town podcast, host Tina Casagrand Foss, the founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of The New Territory magazine, takes us all on a magical Disneyland log ride down the Missouri River. Along the way, we get to see how this mighty waterway shapes the people and places it flows through. River Town is a collaboration between KBIA, The Missouri News Network, The Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, The New Territory Magazine, and PRX.

It’s always a pleasure to welcome back one of our favorite local authors, Marlene Lee, who will be reading from her new novel, Anna and Sebastian, on Thursday, September 19.

Anna and Sebastian opens as a much older Anna grapples with aging and a disorienting change in the relationship with her long-time lover, Sebastian. Years earlier he hired a woman who, unlike Anna, was still of child-bearing age. Now, eighteen years later, the daughter, attempting to live alone as an adult, is sexually assaulted and trafficked. At this point, the novel explores the effects of assault and trafficking not only on Sebastian’s daughter, but on Anna, who adapted to the unusual paternity, and on Sebastian, who did not bargain for the suffering he experiences as a father. 

Marlene Lee graduated from the Brooklyn College MFA program. Her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Calyx; The Christian Science Monitor; Descant; Indiana Review; Other Voices; Maverick Press/Armadillo; roger: an art and literary magazine; and Southern Humanities Review. She is the author of five novels (The Absent Woman, Rebecca’s Road, Scoville, Limestone Wall, and No Certain Home) and a collection of short stories, Inner Passage.

Oh, this is going to be a good one. Come and join us for what is always a hilarious and spirited discussion - this month we’ll be talking about #1 New York Times bestselling author Casey McQuiston's latest romantic comedy, The Pairing. Here’s the set-up: two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they're over each other—except they're definitely not.

As always, we’ll meet in the shop at 6:30 p.m. on the third Wednesday of the month - September 18! See you there!

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, in love, and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on the transatlantic flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives once and for all.

Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but—yeah. It's in the past.

All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.

We have a very special event for all you dog lovers out there!

On Sunday, September 15, we’ll be hosting a book signing and reading with author Livia Bloomer and illustrator Deborah Zemke to celebrate their book, Olive, She’s All Love. The star of the story, Olive, will also be in attendance, together with some other therapy dogs as well. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and all proceeds will benefit Therapy Paws, a nonprofit organization that supports the use of therapy dogs for children.

We’re excited to partner with our friends at the Southern Boone County Public Library in Ashland to welcome bestselling author Brian Freeman and Ashland native Kelly Sapp to discuss Break Every Rule, Freeman's newest book, which is inspired by some of Sapp's adventures.

Brian Freeman is the bestselling author of 30 novels that have been sold around the world and translated into 23 languages. In 2019, he was selected by Putnam and the Robert Ludlum estate as the official author to continue Ludlum’s famous Jason Bourne franchise.

Over the last 35 years Kelly Sapp has served with the U.S. Army Rangers; the Kansas City, Missouri police department; Homeland Security; and various Special Mission Units for U.S. government agencies. During his career, Kelly traveled to over 35 countries including five combat tours in Afghanistan and two combat tours in Iraq. He and Brian Freeman have been close friends for the last few years and their time together inspired Freeman to write Break Every Rule.

This is going to be a fascinating and highly entertaining discussion! Come and join us!

Tommy Miller is a man with deadly skills, hiding in Florida under a false identity. After being set up on an overseas mission, he's on the run from terrorists--and from the government who betrayed him. So when his wife and daughter are violently abducted, it seems his ghosts are finally catching up with him.

But Tommy isn't the only one with secrets. His wife, Teresa, has been concealing her own dangerous past, and as Tommy races to rescue his family, he must peel away the clues she's left behind. With a hotshot police detective, Lindy Jax, close on his trail, Tommy follows a twisted path from Florida to the Bahamas, one that brings him face-to-face with ruthless enemies.

His search for answers soon puts him on the wrong side of the law--hunted by the police and pursued by men who want him dead. Worst of all, if he hopes to save Teresa and their daughter, Rosalita, he must become the man he once was--a killer operating from the deepest shadows.

But when the lives of the people you love are at stake, rules are made to be broken.

Come and meet author Sabrina Blackburry on Wednesday September 10 to help celebrate the publication of the third novel in her Enchanted Fates series. Sabrina will be signing books and chatting with readers from 4:00 to 6:00. Come by and learn about your new favorite fantasy series!

From the author of Dirty Lying Faeries and Dirty Lying Dragons comes a new installment in the Enchanted Fates series in which a young woman involuntarily finds herself in the company of a rogue pack of wolves, with plenty of troubles of their own.

When Juniper stumbles across a small group of strangers during her morning power walk, she jumps in to help an injured member of the party. However, her act of kindness backfires when she’s savagely bitten by what turns out to be a very ill werewolf.

The pack’s acting leader, Dom, gives June a choice: she can return to the human world post-transformation or she can join the pack. Either way, she’ll never be the same again. 

June will have to decide if she wants to face her new reality and take her place with Dom in the pack or risk tearing everything apart.

About the Author:

Sabrina Blackburry is the author of the Enchanted Fates series, which includes Dirty Lying Faeries and Dirty Lying Dragons. She has a love for morally gray characters, fated love with a touch of magic, and passionate women finding their place in the world. When she’s not writing, Sabrina enjoys adding plants to the collection on her front porch, sewing for the local renaissance festival, and hiking. She lives and works with her family in central Missouri.

It’s Columbia One Read time again, and we are thrilled to participate in this annual city-wide celebration of Migrations, the wonderful debut novel by Charlotte McConaghy. This is the first of two events we’ll be hosting at the store. As always, it’s completely free to attend.

Birdwatching is an outdoor activity that the whole family can enjoy! The Columbia Audubon Society will present an introduction to family birdwatching and read a bird-themed picture book. Come and be inspired to try a new hobby! For kids and families.

A very special evening is in store on Friday, September 6. We are thrilled to welcome Cass Donish back to Skylark to read from Your Dazzling Death, their new collection of poems. This stunning work, written in the devastating aftermath of the suicide of their partner, the poet Kelly Caldwell, is an exploration of queer time, and a powerful expression of nonbinary and trans love in the wake of traumatic loss.

The evening will also celebrate the publication of Kelly Caldwell’s own collection, Letters to Forget. With searing intelligence and great sensitivity, these poems (many of which are addressed to Cass) swim through a complex matrix of transformations: mental illness, divorce, gender transition, and self-discovery. Both striking and elusive, both raw and learned, with a delicacy of syntax that challenges us to interrogate becoming itself, Kelly Caldwell asks: What kind of fragile agency is at the heart of obliterating change?

The evening will consist of readings from both books. Guest readers will read from Letters to Forget, and Cass will read from Your Dazzling Death. There will also be live music. Come and help us celebrate these two wonderful books.

Queer poet and writer Cass Donish was born and raised in the Greater Los Angeles Area. They are the author of the poetry collections Beautyberry and The Year of the Femme, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, as well as the nonfic­tion chapbook, On the Mezzanine. Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, VICE, and elsewhere. Donish received an MA in cultural geography from the University of Oregon, an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, and a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri. They live in Columbia, Missouri.

A trans poet, writer, and visual artist, Kelly Caldwell was the winner of the Norma Lowry Memorial Prize and the Cornelison English Prize from Washington University in St. Louis, an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and the 2019 Greg Grummer Prize. Her writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Entropy, Fence, Mississippi Review, The Missouri Review, Seneca Review, The Rumpus, and VICE. She was founding editor and co-editor-in-chief of The Spectacle. Caldwell died in March 2020. At the time, she was living in Columbia, Missouri, with her partner, the writer Cass Donish. She was posthumously awarded an honorary PhD in English from Washington University in St. Louis.

Come and join us in the always-hospitable surroundings of Twain Bar and BBQ on the first floor of the Tiger Hotel for an informal book discussion (with alcohol!) about a notable book with links to the Show-Me State. While we usually focus on poetry and novels, this season we’re going to be reading more nonfiction books, starting with The Broken Heart of America by Walter Johnson in September. Walter attended the online version of the Unbound Book Festival in 2022 and those of you who saw that conversation will know what a gripping book this is. (Walter’s conversation with Sarah Kendzior is available to watch here.)

A searing and "magisterial" (Cornel West) history of American racial exploitation and resistance, told through the turbulent past of the city of St. Louis.

From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. 

St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America's most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil War's first general emancipation, and the nation's first general strike—a legacy of resistance that endures. 

A blistering history of a city's rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America will forever change how we think about the United States.

This month’s Skylarking Book Club pick is the wonderful new novel from Juliet Grames, The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia. This is one of Alex’s books of the year. Here’s what he wrote about it: “A young American, bursting with hope and idealism, goes to an impossibly remote village in Calabria where she finds no electricity or running water, but plenty of secrets. When a buried skeleton is discovered after a heavy flood, she is drawn into a quest to uncover the mysteries of her new home. We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads, but Juliet Grames expertly takes the reader through a series of satisfying twists and turns on the journey. Exquisitely written and beguilingly evocative, this is a jewel of a novel which will entertain, fascinate, and move you. Highly, highly recommended!”

We’ll be meeting in the shop, as usual, on the last Thursday of the month at 6:30 p.m. Can’t wait to see you there!

One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy (“Terrific” –Boston Globe).

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.

Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.

Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.

Six years, friends. It’s been a ride. So many books sold, so many wonderful conversations, so many laughs, so many friendships made. It’s been everything we could have dreamed of (OK, maybe not the COVID thing.) Thank you all for making it happen. We literally could not have done it without you.

To celebrate, we’re throwing our annual birthday party on Saturday, August 24.

As usual, we will be giving away a huge bagful of goodies to one lucky customer, unveiling this year's Skylark T-shirt (we think you'll love it) and also, because why not, giving away a signed copy of Setting Free the Kites to absolutely everyone who buys a book that day. We’ll probably come up with some other silly stuff, given half a chance. But we do hope you’ll come by and help us celebrate!

August’s New Romantics Book Club is A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston, the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Year Slip and The Dead Romantics. This one features a grumpy bookstore owner. Uh-oh.

As always we’ll be meeting on the third Wednesday of the month, which is August 21. See you there!

Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.

But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel…

Because it is.

This place can’t be real, and yet… she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect—and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.

Elsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.

Except there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place—a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.

Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.

Hello Waldo-finders!

We had a lot of fun in July with this year’s Find Waldo hunt! Our thanks to everyone who went hunting and to the local businesses who participated.

To celebrate, we are hosting a party for everyone who participated in the hunt on August 18th at 5 pm at Skylark Bookshop, and we hope to see you there! If you turn in a passport with 20 stamps/signatures at the party, you will be entered into a prize drawing including Waldo goodies and some spectacular treasures from several of the participating businesses. If you find all 25 and are able to find his medal so he can set up the big party, you will receive an extra goodie at the party to celebrate your extraordinary sleuthing skills. You must attend the party to receive any prizes from the prize drawing!

We hope to see you there!

Love is in the air! (And you thought it was pollen.) We are gearing up for our annual celebration of all things bookish and romantic on Saturday, August 17: BOOKSTORE ROMANCE DAY!! We have a ton of things for you to look forward to, including:

• Everyone who buys a romance novel will have a chance to win a Skylark gift card!

• Throughout the day we will be hiding "Golden Tickets" in and around the romance sections and displays. Find one, and you get to choose a free book, courtesy of our friends at St. Martins Press!

• There will be free friendship bracelets while stocks last! If you have some of your own, you’re welcome to bring them and trade!

• On the mezzanine floor there will be a "make your own romance cover" station throughout the day. Time to get creative and have some fun!

• We will also be selling some excellent bundles of romance books and (appropriately enough) featuring romance titles in our famous “blind date with a book” series (all of which will be available at half price.)  

• Representatives from Skylark’s most raucous book club, The New Romantics, will be hanging out in the store at various points in the day to talk about the club and how much fun it is. If you’ve never attended a book club before, this is your chance to meet some folks ahead of time and learn more about it.  

• We’ll also be reading love poems throughout the day!

In addition we’ll have other games, events, and more fun things that we haven’t even thought of yet. No need to register - just come along and join in the party!

Come and join us in the always-hospitable surroundings of Twain Bar and BBQ on the first floor of the Tiger Hotel for an informal book discussion (with alcohol!) about a notable book with links to the Show-Me State. In August we’ll be discussing Kate Chopin’s classic novel, The Awakening.

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief  novel so disturbed critics and the public that it  was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read  and admired, The Awakening has  been hailed as an early vision of woman's  emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman's  abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her  awakening to desires and passions that threated to  consumer her. Originally entitled "A Solitary  Soul," this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old  Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction,  rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman  Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in  search of self-discovery turns away from convention and  society, and toward the primal, from convention  and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly  attracted to nature and the senses. The novel, Kate Chopin's last, has been  praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully written." And Willa Cather described its style as "exquisite," "sensitive," and “iridescent.”

Anyone who has come into the shop lately while Alex is in there has probably been told (at some length) about Claire Lombardo’s stunning new novel, Same As it Ever Was, which showcases the same consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made her debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, one of Alex’s favorite novels of the past few years and one of our best-selling titles. 

We’ll be gathering on Thursday, July 25 to talk about this marvelous book! Can’t wait to see you there!

Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty-seven, that she has a firm handle on things.

She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spiky teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.

Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships—how they grow, change, and sometimes end—Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.

July’s New Romantics Book Club features the BRAND NEW BOOK by romance superstar Ali Hazlewood - NOT IN LOVE. Come and join us in the shop for the usual fun and conversation led by Kara!

A forbidden, secret affair proves that all’s fair in love and science—from New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood.

Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.

Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through—and he’s a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can’t stop thinking about. The woman who's off-limits to him.

Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business—one that plays for keeps.

Come and join us in the always-hospitable surroundings of Twain Bar and BBQ on the first floor of the Tiger Hotel for an informal book discussion (with alcohol!) about a notable book with links to the Show-Me State. In May we’ll be discussing the new novel by one of our favorite authors, Percival Everett. This is, if you like, a companion piece to last month’s selection, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - James reimagines the same story, but from the viewpoint of Jim.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

June’s Skylarking Bookclub choice is one of the most talked-about nonfiction titles of the summer: the astonishing Silk, by Aarathi Prasad, a gorgeous history that spans continents and millennia and examines the global, natural, and cultural history (and future) of a unique material that has fascinated the world for thousands of years.

Silk—prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty—is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired—from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms—continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning to offer a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics choking our planet.

From the moths of China, Indonesia, and India to the spiders of South America and Madagascar and the silk-producing mollusks of the Mediterranean, Silk is a book rich in the passionate connections made by people of science to the diversity of the animal world. It is an intoxicating read, a mix of biography and science, that not only brings to life the vast, winding history of silk, but also looks to its future as a resource with incredible, untapped potential.

We can’t wait to discuss this book with you all! Come along at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 27 for what we know will be a fascinating discussion!

June’s selection for the New Romantics Bookclub is The Good Ones Are Taken, by Taj McCoy. Many of you will know that Taj was scheduled to come to this year’s Unbound Book Festival but ultimately was unable to attend. So, in her honor, this is the next best thing.

As usual, we’ll meet upstairs at the shop at 6:30 p.m. on the third Wednesday of the month. See you there!

When Maggie's best friend admits he's in love with her, she'll have to decide whether it's worth giving up something good for something that could be amazing in this laugh-out-loud friends-to-lovers rom-com. 

After a bad breakup, Maggie wants to find her Prince Charming, but all she's finding are frogs. When her best friends, Savvy and Joan, apply pressure and demand she find a date worthy of attending their respective weddings, she agrees to take her own advice and try online dating. Since she's the maid of honor for both weddings, her bridal party duties are massive, but both brides insist that Maggie prioritize finding a date. After an onslaught of maybes, noes and hell noes, she's close to giving up, when she meets a handsome doctor at the gym who just might be the one.

Meanwhile, her college bestie, Garrett, throws salt in everyone's game. At every turn, he points out the red flags and tells Maggie to keep looking. Things come to a head when Maggie demands that Garrett be happy for her, and he finally admits that he can't. Not when he's not with her. When he blurts out his feelings, Maggie's world is turned upside down. Now she must choose between the perfect guy and a friendship that is the foundation for everything she's ever wanted.

Who says you can’t go back again?

Thanks to our friends at Rose Music Hall, anyone can step back in time to the joys of the old Scholastic Book Fairs - only now with booze. (If you want.)

We’ve been involved with the Grown Up Book Fair since it began a couple of years ago, and we always have an absolute blast. It’s fun to choose what books to bring and to seek out excellent retro swag for you all! So come join us (and a ton of other excellent booksellers and authors) on Saturday, June 15 for a trip down memory lane! Also included:

»Photo Booth provided by Selfie Love CoMo
»Bar featuring Adult Capri Suns + literary style cocktail menu

Click here for tickets! We look forward to seeing you there!

NB: this event is strictly for those over the age of 18.

I mean, you all knew we’d get here eventually, right?!?

Come and join us in the always-hospitable surroundings of Twain Bar and BBQ on the first floor of the Tiger Hotel for an informal book discussion (with alcohol!) about a notable book with links to the Show-Me State. In June we’ll be discussing a novel by a promising writer that we hold great hope for. (Maybe one day they’ll name a bar after him.)

The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen and a foreword by Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Republic of Imagination.

In recent years, neither the persistent effort to “clean up” the racial epithets in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn nor its consistent use in the classroom have diminished, highlighting the novel’s wide-ranging influence and its continued importance in American society. An incomparable adventure story, it is a vignette of a turbulent, yet hopeful epoch in American history, defining the experience of a nation in voices often satirical, but always authentic.