Your photos?

Wed 21 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | 20 Comments| Posted by: Gavin

We’re in the final stages of our new Working Writers Daily Planner and I thought I’d throw out a last minute call for for photos or art. We pay $10 + 1 copy for print + electronic rights. Please post links in the comments but only to art/photos you have rights to, thanks!

Also just added the multiple copy discounts for this one. These were very popular last year as whole workshops and bookclubs and all kind of book-related groups planned out their year together.


Meeks today, more tomorrow

Tue 20 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin

Today is publication day for Julia Holmes’s excellent debut novel Meeks! If you’re in NYC or environs, there’s an awesome launch party happening at WORD tonight. Do not say we did not warn you! Julia’s reading all over the place (Portland, OR! Boston, MA! More!) and you should attend in your bachelor suit.

Other updates: Kathe Koja and Holly Black are reading in South Carolina this week.

You can now preorder our fall books direct from us! We ship preorders out asap. Those books include Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others (just got an amazing blurb for that!), Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy, A Working Writer’s Daily Planner, and the book that we are just about to send to the printer: Karen Joy Fowler’s stunner of a collection, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories. Ouch, that’s a good one.

We have one more title, a November book, which we haven’t announced yet even though it is getting really damn close but the contract, it could not be agreed upon. But, news should come on that soon, so: yay. And: phew.

Then we have new books which are coming next year all of which will be world-bestriding green-energy fueled juggernauts. Or, at least, great books. Because why do anything else?

Bachelor Suits at 7:30!


Weightless is Featherproof!

Tue 20 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin

Over on our Weightless ebook store (the best place for indie press ebooks!) we just added half a dozen titles from one of our fave Chicago publishers, Featherproof Books, plus two o/p titles from sf writer Judith Moffett—who was in the right place at the right time when we needed to try adding a few more titles from other people.Weightless is taking off nicely and we should have more addition announcements and so on over there most Tuesdays.


Meeks

Tue 20 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Books | 2 Comments| Posted by: Gavin

July 20, 2010 · 9781931520652 · trade paperback

Read excerpts from Meeks at The Collagist, BenMarcus.net, and Conjunctions.

“Meeks is a wild, woolly, sly, gentle and wry first novel. . . . It’s a book whose singular vision keeps returning to me at odd moments, one of the most original and readable novels that’s come my way in a long time.”
—The New York Times Book Review | Editor’s Choice

“The novel is a postmodern parable about American passion and paranoia, like The Great Gatsby as told by Don DeLillo.”
—The New York Observer

“The satire here has plenty of bite, but instead of winking at the reader, Holmes evokes her world with luminous prose.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Holmes is a wonderful writer.”
—The Stranger

“A highly imaginative debut finds a stark Darwinian logic in a rigidly hierarchical society. . . . Holmes has fashioned a terrifying and utterly convincing world in which the perfect human being is one stripped of all illusions.”
—Publishers Weekly

Belletrista

No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor’s suit . . . and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, he’s just discovered that his mother is dead and that his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn’t enough, he must now find a wife, or he’ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city’s oppressive factories.

Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he’s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks’s survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain—but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration?

A dark satire rendered with all the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes’s debut novel evokes the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel in a dystopic setting reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Meeks portrays a world at once hilarious and disquieting, in which frustrated revolutionaries and hopeful youths suffer alongside the lost and the condemned, just for a chance at the permanent bliss of marriage and a slice of sugar-frosted Independence Day cake.

Read an interview with Julia on Portland’s Reading Local:

But the farther along you go, the better you understand the world’s weird local laws — even in an entirely invented, contrived world, there’s no tolerance for lies. I think that’s just crazy and delightful.

Julia picks 5 Recent Reads for Impose Magazine.

An August 2010 Indie Next Notable Book

“Holmes has created a fabulously surreal dystopia where to be married is the only way to find true happiness. Bachelors spend their days cultivating skills to impress ladies in what is essentially a lottery, and if they aren’t successful, they are consigned to a life of civil service–or worse. Darkly comic and lyrical, Meeks provides a unique satirical lens to look at our own changing perceptions of marriage, home life, and success.”
—Emily Pullen, Skylight Books, Los Angeles

Early Reader Reaction:

“Meeks is a feat of desolating literary spellcraft, irresistible for its bleak hilarity and the sere brilliance of Julia Holmes’s prose.”
—Wells Tower (author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned)

“The world of Meeks is cruel, cold, and weird, suffocating in laws so strange they very nearly resemble our own.  Julia Holmes is that rare artist who, with invention and mythology, reveals nothing less than the most secret inner workings of the real world we overlook every day. A masterful debut by a writer of the most forceful originality.”
—Ben Marcus (author of Notable American Women and The Age of Wire and String)

“Oh bachelors, poor bachelors, pining for their pale suits—these needy men, so poignant in their search for wives, will break your heart in twain. Splendid and limping, hilarious and painful, a quiet perfection in its idiosyncrasy, the powerful alternate reality of Meeks is also an unforgettable truth. You’ll never see marriage the same way again.”
—Lydia Millet (author of How the Dead Dream and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart)

“The life of a bachelor is always hard, but in Meeks it’s truly desperate: if you don’t have the right suit then it’s either the Brothers of Mercy or the factories. Julia Holmes’s lucid prose tightens the noose of this curious world around your readerly neck before you even know what’s hit you. An invisible enemy, a pageant, a fashion system whose signification would stymie Roland Barthes, and a society that demands everyone rush quickly to fill their odd social slot, makes Meeks a unique (and uniquely imaginative) nightmare and a severely engrossing read.”
—Brian Evenson (author of  Fugue State and The Open Curtain)

“Pity the young gentleman set loose in this world of cruel tailors, perpetual war, large-scale civic pastry and the untold rivalries of the Bachelor House! With her uncommonly assured first novel, Julia Holmes channels the surreal paranoia of Poe and the dark-comic melodrama of a lost Guy Maddin script. The strangest, most compelling debut you’ll read this year.”
—Mark Binelli (author of Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!)

Cover art © Robyn O’Neil.


Solitaire: a novel

Sat 17 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Forthcoming, Preorders | Leave a Comment| Posted by: intern

A New York Times Notable Book, Borders Original Voices selection, and Nebula, Endeavour, and Spectrum Award finalist.

“A stylistic and psychological tour de force.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Suspenseful and inspiring.”—School Library Journal

There are many books we’d love to see back in print and we’re very happy to have acquired Kelley Eskridge’s debut novel, Solitaire, and will publish it in January 2011.

Jackal Segura is a Hope: born to responsibility and privilege as a symbol of a fledgling world government. Soon she’ll become part of the global administration, sponsored by the huge corporation that houses, feeds, employs, and protects her and everyone she loves. Then, just as she discovers that everything she knows is a lie, she becomes a pariah, a murderer: a person with no community and no future. Grief-stricken and alone, she is put into an experimental program designed to inflict the experience of years of solitary confinement in a few short months: virtual confinement in a sealed cell within her own mind. Afterward, branded and despised, she returns to a world she no longer knows. Struggling to make her way, she has a chance to rediscover her life, her love, and her soul—in a strange place of shattered hopes and new beginnings called Solitaire.

Praise for Solitaire:

“Solitaire is a novel of our time: a story of dashed expectations and corporate manipulations. Eskridge explores what it means to really see ourselves, and what we are ultimately capable of. Jackal, a slight adolescent, matures into an adult capable of living well, no matter what her circumstances. She is a worthy role model for any reader.”
—BookPage

“Vivid and provocative.”
—The Baltimore Sun

“As with Eskridge’s short fiction, the vividness of the characters is what makes this book so memorable.”
—Locus

“Psychological insights that would warm the heart of Alice Hoffman.”
—The Seattle Times

Kelley Eskridge is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. Her stories have received the Astraea Award and been adapted for television. A movie based on Solitaire is in development. She lives in Seattle with her partner, novelist Nicola Griffith.


Stories of Your Life and Others

Sat 17 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Forthcoming, Preorders | 1 Comment| Posted by: intern

This new edition of Ted Chiang’s masterful first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, includes his first eight published stories plus the author’s story notes and a cover that the author commissioned himself. Combining the precision and scientific curiosity of Kim Stanley Robinson with Lorrie Moore’s cool, clear love of language and narrative intricacy, this award-winning collection offers readers the dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar.

Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story, a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection. A clever pastiche of news reports and interviews chronicles a college’s initiative to “turn off” the human ability to recognize beauty in “Liking What You See: A Documentary.” With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty and constant change, and also by beauty and wonder.

Praise for Story of Your Life and Others:

“Chiang writes seldom, but his almost unfathomably wonderful stories tick away with the precision of a Swiss watch—and explode in your awareness with shocking, devastating force.”
—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“The first must-read SF book of the year.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“He puts the science back in science fiction—brilliantly.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)

Ted Chiang is one of the most celebrated science fiction authors writing today and is the author of numerous short stories, including most recently “Exhalation,” which won the Hugo, British Science Fiction, and Locus awards. He lives near Seattle, Washington.


What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

Sat 17 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Forthcoming, Preorders | Leave a Comment| Posted by: intern

9781931520683 · September 2010 · trade cloth/ebook

Preview on Scribd—also embedded below.

In her moving and elegant new collection, New York Times bestseller Karen Joy Fowler writes about John Wilkes Booth’s younger brother, a one-winged man, a California cult, and a pair of twins, and she digs into our past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and incisive way only she can.

The sinister and the magical are always lurking just below the surface: for a mother who invents a fairy-tale world for her son in “Halfway People”; for Edwin Booth in “Booth’s Ghost,” haunted by his fame as “America’s Hamlet” and his brother’s terrible actions; for Norah, a rebellious teenager facing torture in the Shirley Jackson Award winning “The Pelican Bar” as she confronts Mama Strong, the sadistic boss of a rehabilitation facility; for the narrator recounting her descent in “What I Didn’t See.”

With clear and insightful prose, Fowler’s stories measure the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness. This collection, which includes two Nebula Award winners, is sure to delight readers, even as it pulls the rug out from underneath them.

Read a story: “Standing Room Only” · “Always”

Readings:
Oct. 7, 7 PM, Copperfields, Santa Rosa, CA
Oct. 11, 7 PM, Moe’s, Berkeley, CA
Nov. 5, 7 PM, Vroman’s, Pasadena, CA

Reviews

“The bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club goes genre-busting in this engrossing and thought-provoking set of short stories that mix history, sci-fi, and fantasy elements with a strong literary voice. Whether examining the machinations of a Northern California cult, in “Always,” or a vague but obviously horrific violent act in the eerie title story, the PEN/Faulkner finalist displays a gift for thrusting familiar characters into bizarre, off-kilter scenarios. Fowler never strays from the anchor of human emotion that makes her characters so believable, even when chronicling the history of epidemics, ancient archeological digs, single family submersibles, or fallen angels. She even displays a keen understanding of the historical world around Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, in two wonderfully realized historical pieces. Her writing is sharp, playful, and filled with insights into the human condition. The genre shifts might surprise fans of her mainstream hit, but within these pages they’ll find familiar dramas and crises that entertain, illuminate, and question the reality that surrounds us.”
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Karen Joy Fowler:

“No contemporary writer creates characters more appealing, or examines them with greater acuity and forgiveness.”
—Michael Chabon

“Fowler’s witty writing is a joy to read.”—USA Today

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of five novels, including Wit’s End, PEN/Faulkner finalist Sister Noon, and New York Times bestseller The Jane Austen Book Club. Her collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award. Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children, live in Santa Cruz, California.
Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories — Excerpt


Your Very Own Bachelor

Wed 14 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: jedediah

Some exciting updates from the Brothers of Mercy. The launch party for Meeks by Julia Holmes is next Tuesday, July 20th, at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn. To celebrate (and to keep us mindful of our fates, Brothers and Sisters!), a raffle will be held, and with a raffle comes prizes, and oh, what prizes!

Signed copies of Meeks, for starters. And a one-of-a-kind hand-sewn “The Bachelor” action figure. And a piece of original artwork by Robyn O’Neil, “The Hill.” We are especially covetous of this last item, as Robyn O’Neil’s work is strange and haunting stuff, and this piece was created just to mark the publication of Meeks. Robyn’s art has appeared in galleries around the world, and you may have seen it in some other nifty places.

So we are wondering: Which lucky souls will walk away with the loot? Because we can’t keep it for ourselves, sadly…

More details about the event (with link to RSVP) over at the WORD Bookstore site.


Sun 11 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Celebrating | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin

Karen Joy Fowler’s story “The Pelican Bar” received the Shirley Jackson Award! Originally published in the anthology Eclipse 3 from Night Shade Books it will also be available in Karen’s new collection, What I Didn’t See.


Want baby stuff @ Readercon?

Tue 6 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 1 Comment| Posted by: Gavin

We have some stuff we’d like to pass on next week at Readercon to anyone in the community who wants it. Post in the comments or send me an email at info at lcrw dot net.

  • some baby clothes for age 6-18 months, mostly girl’s, some random boy’s stuff in there, too.
  • a lovely Graco Baby Swing (with cute owls) given to us by the great Ford family.

Think that’s it. All the clothes are clean, everything’s in good shape. Drop me a line if you’re interested.


Readercon

Tue 6 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | 1 Comment| Posted by: Gavin

Along with 700 other readers, I (Gavin) will be at Readercon this weekend—there’s a small chance Kelly and Ursula will visit. Small. But I will have pictures. I’ll be there with Michael J. DeLuca and maybe a few others (but not Jedediah Berry, who is overseas spreading the good word about The Manual of Detection) shilling for shillings in the dealer’s room and I am on two panels on Friday (one all male, hmm). There’s also a chance I won’t be there later on Saturday, oops, silly me, but I’ll be back Sunday all the way until the bitter 2 PM end.

We will have new new new books and (glorious word) if you come looking for us, as if by magic you will also find the fine folks from ChiZine Publications.

Friday 3:00 PM, Salon G: Panel

The Best of the Small Press.  Michael Dirda, Gavin J. Grant, Sean Wallace, Robert
Freeman Wexler, Rick Wilber (L).

These days, many of the best novels and novellas, collections and anthologies are published by small presses in print runs that may only number in the hundreds. Most of these cannot be found on the shelves of chain bookstores, or even most independent and specialty shops. We’ll highlight the best works recently published by small presses — including many that Readercon attendees may not have heard about.

Friday 8:00 PM, Salon G: Panel

The New and Improved Future of Magazines.  K. Tempest Bradford, Neil Clarke, Liz Gorinsky (L), Gavin J. Grant, Matthew Kressel.

After last year’s “The Future of Magazines” panels, participant K. Tempest Bradford wrote: “The magazines and anthologies that I love tend to have editors who have taken the time to examine themselves or their culture, to expend their knowledge of other people and ways of being, to open their minds. These magazines and anthologies contain far more stories I want to read by authors of many varied backgrounds. As I said, it’s not fully about print vs. online, it’s about better magazines and books.” This time, creators and proponents of both print and online magazines collaborate on determining ways that any genre magazine can create a brighter and better-read future for itself, using Bradford’s comment as a launching point.


Redemption in Indigo

Tue 6 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Books, Karen Lord | 4 Comments| Posted by: Gavin

July 6, 2010:
9781931520669 · Trade paper · 200 pp · Events

“A clever, exuberant mix of Caribbean and Senegalese influences that balances riotously funny set pieces (many involving talking insects) with serious drama initiated by meddlesome supernatural beings.”
—New York Times

“Lord’s novel is very sprightly from start to finish, with vivid descriptions, memorable heroes and villains, brisk pacing — and an “authorised” epilogue that raises goosebumps along with expectations for a sequel. Iffy or not, that’s clever storytelling.”
—Caribbean Review of Books

—Read the Introduction and first chapter on Tor.com.
—Karen writes about Paama’s origins for Scalzi’s Big Idea.
—Karen blogs for one of our favorite bookstores, Powell’s.com: Listening to stories. Making a book trailer. Cake! Authenticity. The Muse.
—A report on the book launch in Barbados.

In this clever and entrancing debut novel—which won the Frank Collymore Award—Paama frees herself from a troublesome and capricious husband, only to become the unwitting heroine in a fantastic struggle to reconcile the supernatural forces of fate with humanity’s free will.

“Full of sharp insights and humorous asides (”I know your complaint already. You are saying, how do two grown men begin to see talking spiders after only three glasses of spice spirit?”), Redemption extends the Caribbean Island storyteller’s art into the 21st century and hopefully, beyond.”
—Seattle Times

“Redemption in Indigo is a quick, engaging read, and I expect that most readers will find it a fresh addition to the genre. I’ll certainly be looking forward to Karen Lord’s future books. Should she choose to revisit these characters in particular, I know I’d enjoy it very much.”
—BSC Review

“What if Paradise Lost were recast in an African setting, its themes of rebellion, disobedience, greed, innocence lost, and redemption intact, its trickster characters both earthly and heavenly also intact, but its storyline adjusted to suit a more contemporary audience and adjusted to avoid having the young (or older) skeptic call it a fairy tale?”

“Karen Lord’s first novel is unique, warm, funny, and smart, and her speculative imaginings should awaken every fantasy fan’s sense of wonder. It might not make it to a bestseller list, but given time, it might be found on a list of hidden gems—as might whatever Lord writes next.”
—Reflection’s Edge

“A great deal happens in the novel’s relatively short course, but confusion is minimal because Lord has found the ideal voice for the narrator—feminine yet authoritative, amusing yet soothing, omniscient yet humble. This is one of those literary works of which it can be said that not a word should be changed.”
—Booklist *Starred Review*

Karen Lord“Lord’s debut, a retelling of a Senegalese folktale, packs a great deal of subtly alluring storytelling into this small package…. An unnamed narrator, sometimes serious and often mischievous, spins delicate but powerful descriptions of locations, emotions, and the protagonists’ great flaws and great strengths as they interact with family, poets, tricksters, sufferers of tragedy, and—of course—occasional moments of pure chaos.”
—Publishers Weekly *Starred Review*

“The impish love child of Tutuola and Garcia Marquez. Utterly delightful.”
—Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring)

“Adventure, mystery, familial relations, discourse of power, ananse, the spirit world—a difficult mix/transition between conventional ‘plot’/narrative and magical realism—between cooking and xtreme lyric—beyond the boundary of what we conventionally/conveniently think of as ‘Bajam’, as ‘West Indian writing’, but part of and contribution to the ‘new generation’ of Caribbean imprint, pioneered by Lawrence Scott (TT/UK), in development now by Nalo Hopkinson (Guyana/Canada), (Marina Warner’s Indigo too?) and being incremented on/to by this challenging first novel by prize-winning Karen Lord of Barbados.”
—Kamau Brathwaite (Born to Slow Horses)

“Drawing on a multicultural mélange of narrative traditions—both oral and written—this Barbadian author surprises. She tap dances across the conventional, using it to make spirited sounds. She twists out of tired modes: “Once upon a time—but whether a time that was, or a time that is, or a time that is to come, I may not tell.” Then, Lord ends the tale by challenging “those who utterly, utterly fear the dreaded Moral of the Story.” Expect a work that can revive this and other exhausted elements of story.”
—Foreword Reviews

Author photo © Risée N. C. Chaderton.
Cover photo © Corbis.

Events Calendar

Sept. 10: Reading with Julia Holmes
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY

Sept. 12: 2 PM, Karen reads at the Brooklyn Book Festival and signs books at the Small Beer Press table.
Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Sept. 14: Reading with Julia Holmes (Meeks)
Greenlight Bookstore
686 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY

Check back for more readings, a launch party in Barbados, and more!


Yesterday, we shipped!

Thu 1 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Leave a Comment| Posted by: Gavin

We have good news: we have copies of Redemption in Indigo and Meeks! Which means that soon enough your local bookstore (and maybe some other retail outlets) will have them, too. Pre-orders (for which: thanks!—and more TK soon about that for Kathe Koja’s book…!) and more review copies have been shipped from the office. Consortium ship out books to stores, soooon. Of course, you can see both authors in New York (and other places!) over the next couple of months. Keep an eye out here (ouch) or see the handy dandy events thingy.

And, also, Ladies and Gents! All this week! Karen Lord has been blogging at one of the biggest bookshops in the universe: Powell’s Books in Portland, OR. Listening to stories. Making a book trailer. Cake! And today: Authenticity.

Ok, another tab to be opened: Edward Gauvin is at Kepler’s Books’s Well-Read Donkey this week writing about talking to himself and then getting to talk to everyone else about G.-O.C. now that A Life on Paper has been published and ways of reading Châteaureynaud.

Lastly, Kathe Koja on writing what you have to at Ramblings of a Tattooed Head.

Next: tea time and wondering if the tea lady will have any of those nice gingery biscuits left by the time she reaches this part of the office.


Indie Bookstore Week

Thu 1 Jul 2010 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 1 Comment| Posted by: Gavin

Independents Week: July 1–7

Celebrate Independents Week with independent businesses across the country—and around the world as the movement grows. If you shop at local independent businesses your purchases help pay the wages of people in your area—who can then afford to buy books: maybe even your book! Check out the American Independent Business Alliance (www.amiba.net) or for more info on this celebration that is becoming more popular each year.

In celebration of Independents Week we’re listing a few favorite bookshops (many more can be found on Indiebound.org and on our website) from our homestate, Massachusetts. It will only take us 49 more years to cover the whole USA!

Boston has a few good bookshops scattered throughout the metropolitan area which makes for a fun day on the T to try to see them all. Start in Coolidge Corner with the Brookline Booksmith (brooklinebooksmith.com) which features a busy reading series, a used book basement, and a staff of engaged and passionate readers. Brookline is also lucky enough to have a full-service kid’s store, the Children’s Book Shop (thechildrensbookshop.net). Also worth a visit is Calamus, a GLBT bookstore (calamusbooks.com)
Over the Charles River in Cambridge at the Harvard Book Store (harvard.com) they also have a used book basement but their new additions don’t just include their well-stocked ground floor, they also have an On Demand book printer where thousands of out of print books are available—and you can print your book there, too! Harvard Square also boasts a lovely kid’s book store, Curious George & Friends (curiousg.com), Schoenhof’s Foreign Books (schoenhofs.com), as well as the one and only Grolier Poetry Bookshop (grolierpoetrybookshop.org). Up Mass. Ave. is another fave, a newish general bookshop the Porter Square Bookshop (portersquarebooks.com) and further out are Newtonville Books (Newtonville, newtonvillebooks.com), Jamaicaway Books and Gifts (Jamaica Plain, jamaicawaybooks.com), Back Pages (Waltham, backpagesbooks.com), and Cornerstone Books (Salem, cornerstonebooks-salem.com).
Out in central Massachusetts there are a cluster of great bookshops not coincidentally near Easthampton—the popularity of books and reading is a big reason why we’re here. Cherry Picked Books (101 Main St, Easthampton, MA) is a good old-fashioned used booksshop and is handy should you need a stack of holiday paperbacks. . . . Broadside Books (Northampton, broadsidebooks.com) like every indie bookshop can get any book within a day or two. Over the Connecticut River, in Amherst, Amherst Books (amherstbooks.com), Food For Thought Books (foodforthoughtbooks.com), and the Eric Carle Museum Bookshop (picturebookart.org/shop) cover all ages, political philosophies and budgets. The Odyssey  Book Shop (S. Hadley, odysseybooks.com) has an impressive first First Editions Club for readers and collectors. The Montague Bookmill (Montague, montaguebookmill.com) is a favorite of everyone we know.
Out in the Berkshires, the Bookloft (Great Barrington, thebookloft.com) also has an On Demand machine which is so popular they have started a print on demand service, Troy Book Makers which nicely turns the publishing wheel back to the period when publishers were booksellers, now booksellers are publishers!