At 51 years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world around them. Inside its walls, they make music, and in its garden, they grow everything they need to survive. To an outsider, it looks like poverty; to them, it is home. But when Dot dies unexpectedly, the world they’ve so carefully created begins to fall apart. The cottage they love, and the security it offered, is taken back by their landlord, exposing the twins to harsh truths and even harsher realities. Seeing a new future, Julius becomes torn between the loyalty he feels towards his sister and his…
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When award-winning, trendsetting chef Gregory Gourdet got sober, he took stock of his life and his pantry, concentrating his energy on getting himself healthy by cooking food that was both full of nutrients and full of flavor. Now, the beloved Top Chef star shares these extraordinary dishes with everyone. Gourdet’s Everyone’s Table (Harper Wave) features 200 mouthwatering, decadently flavorful recipes carefully designed to focus on superfoods — ingredients with the highest nutrient density, the best fats, and the most minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants — that will delight home cooks. Gourdet’s dishes are inspired by his deep affection for global ingredients and techniques — from his Haitian upbringing to his French culinary education, from the cuisines of Asia as well as those of North and West…
Comments closedFrom Paula McLain, the bestselling author of The Paris Wife, comes an atmospheric novel of intertwined destinies and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal? Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime…
Comments closedMark your calendars!!! On Thursday, April 15th at 6:30 p.m., poet and novelist Ocean Vuong will read from his recent creative works. Following the reading, Vuong will be joined by faculty mentor and interdisciplinary artist Dao Strom for a conversation. This event will be co-hosted by PNCA’s MFA Low-Residency Creative Writing and MA Critical Studies programs and has been made possible by a generous grant from the Collins Foundation. Ocean Vuong is the author of The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, from Penguin Press (2019) and forthcoming in 30 languages. A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Vuong is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10…
Comments closedMichio Kaku, renowned theoretical physicist and New York Times bestselling author of Hyperspace and The Future of Humanity, tells the story of the greatest quest in all of science. When Newton discovered the laws of motion and gravity, he unified the rules of heaven and earth. From then on, physicists have been discovering new forces and incorporating them into ever-greater theories. But the major breakthroughs of the 20th century — relativity and quantum mechanics — are incompatible, and so since then, physicists have been endeavoring to combine these two theories. This would ultimately tie all the forces in the universe together into one beautiful equation that can unlock the deepest mysteries of space and time. That epic journey is the story of Kaku’s new book,…
Comments closedAward-winning author Willy Vlautin (The Motel Life, Lean on Pete) explores the impact of trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives in his scorching new novel that captures the plight of a young woman pushed to the edge as she fights to secure a stable future for herself and her family. Barely 30, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she’s been diligently working to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother, Kenny. Portland’s housing prices have nearly quadrupled in 15 years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it’s their last best chance to own their own home — and obtain the security they’ve never had.…
Comments closedAs Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken (In the Best Possible Way) (Henry Holt), she explores her experimental treatment of transcranial magnetic stimulation with brutal honesty. But also with brutal humor. Lawson discusses the frustration of dealing with her insurance company in “An Open Letter to My Insurance Company,” which should be an anthem for anyone who has ever had to call their insurance company to try and get a claim covered. She tackles such timelessly debated questions as “How do dogs know they have penises?” We see how her vacuum cleaner almost set her house on fire, how she was attacked by three bears, business ideas she wants to pitch to Shark Tank, and why she…
Comments closedLong before she became the first American woman to summit K2 and the first British woman to return from its summit alive, Vanessa O’Brien was a feisty suburban Detroit teenager forced to reinvent her world in the wake of a devastating loss that destroyed her family. Making her own way in the world, O’Brien strove to reach her lofty ambitions. Soon, armed with an MBA and a wry sense of humor, she climbed the corporate ladder to great success, but after the 2009 economic meltdown, her career went into a tailspin. She searched for a new purpose and settled on an unlikely goal: climbing Mount Everest. When her first attempt ended in disaster, she trudged home, humbled but wiser. Two years later, she made it…
Comments closedAn Event with Jacqueline Winspear and Her Latest Maisie Dobbs book We are thrilled to once again welcome Jacqueline Winspear to our virtual stage to talk about the latest book (#16!) in her series of Maisie Dobbs books, The Consequences of Fear. Jacqueline Winspear is well-known and well-loved for her Maisie Dobbs series, which explores the aftermath of World War I through the character of Maisie, who is very much a woman of her generation–women who claimed independence they were reluctant to relinquish once the war ended. The new novel opens in October 1941, as Europe buckles under Nazi occupation. Maisie is working secretly for the Special Operations Executive, assessing candidates for crucial work with the French resistance. Her two worlds collide when she spots…
Comments closedIn 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by an animal he met in the Falkland Islands: handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcons that were “tame and inquisitive… quarrelsome and passionate,” and so insatiably curious that they stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle. Darwin wondered why these birds were confined to remote islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story, but he set this mystery aside and never returned to it. Almost 200 years later, Jonathan Meiburg takes up this chase. He takes us through South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana, in search of these birds: striated caracaras, which still exist, though they’re very rare. He reveals the…
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