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Scares Beyond the Page: Spooky Listening Party + Craft Night
Past event
Featured Book
When the wolf comes home
"One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy's father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives. As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first Jess thinks she understands what they're up against, but she's about to learn that there's more to these surreal and grisly events than she could've ever imagined. And that when the wolf finally comes home, no one will be spared."-- Provided by publisher
About This Event
The Astoria BOOookshop invites you to a cozy Spooky listening party and craft night on Tuesday Oct. 20th to celebrate 5 Years of Tor Nightfire's publishing bestselling and award-winning books for the living, the dead, and everyone in between! Our evening will feature a meet and greet with Astoria neighbor and horror author Nat Cassidy ( When the Wolf Comes Home ); Audiobook excerpts from Nightfire's greatest hits; Crafting -- BYO project (knitting, embroidery, drawing, etc) or paint-your-own pumpkin (painting supplies provided!) We'll have Tor Nightfire goodies and audiobook downloads to give away. Customers who purchase books in-store during the event -- physical books from our shelves or audiobooks via LibroFM -- will get a Nightfire tote bag, while supplies last. Seating is limited; RSVP requested.
Featured Author
Cassidy, Nat
About the Venue
Astoria Bookshop
The Astoria Bookshop is a queer woman-owned, general interest bookstore in the heart of Western Queens. The store opened for business on August 21st, 2013, and moved to 36-19 30th Street in May 2023. Our mission is to serve our diverse, vibrant community with the books we stock and the events we host.
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"Story Time" for Parents and Caregivers: Crystal Hana Kim
Join the Astoria Bookshop every month for our "Story Time" for Parents & Caregivers, a recurring DAYTIME series for parents, caregivers, and their babies. In October, we welcome Crystal Hana Kim, author of the novels The Stone Home and If You Leave Me . Crystal will read selections from her work, as well as a classic kid's book for the baby audience. In between readings, local author and parent Nicole Haroutunian will facilitate a discussion with your fellow caregivers. Babies and young toddlers are welcome and encouraged to come along (we provide toys, a changing table, and stroller parking!) RSVP not required, but encouraged (you'll get a reminder email!) About the book “I read the entirety of The Stone Home during a recent flight to Seoul, unable to put it down, often crying.... The novel’s portrayals of caretaking, mothering, and tenderness inside and despite the reformatory’s walls are richly layered and intensely moving."--R. O. Kwon, Electric Literature In South Korea in the 1980s, young Eunju and her mother are homeless on the street. After being captured by the police, they’re sent to live within the walls of a state-sanctioned reformatory center that claims to rehabilitate the nation’s citizens but hides a darker, more violent reality. While Eunju and her mother form a tight-knit community with the other women in the kitchen, two teenage brothers, Sangchul and Youngchul, are compelled to labor in the workshops and make increasingly desperate decisions—and all are forced down a path of survival, the repercussions of which will echo for decades to come. Inspired by real events, told through alternating timelines and two intimate perspectives, The Stone Home is a deeply affecting story of a mother and daughter’s love and a pair of brothers whose bond is put to an unfathomably difficult test. Capturing a shameful period of history with breathtaking restraint and tenderness, Crystal Hana Kim weaves a lyrical exploration of the legacy of violence and the complicated psychology of power, while showcasing the extraordinary acts of devotion and friendship that can arise in the darkness. About the reader Crystal Hana Kim (she/her) is the author of The Stone Home and If You Leave Me , which was named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications. Kim is the recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and is a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize winner. Currently, she is the Visiting Assistant Professor at Queens College and a contributing editor at Apogee Journal. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. About the host Nicole Haroutunian (she/her) is the author of Choose This Now, a novel-in-stories about art, parenthood, and the role of friendship in forging a life, as well as the story collection Speed Dreaming . Her work has appeared most recently in Electric Literature , The Rumpus , Mutha , The Georgia Review , and Story . She lives with her family in Woodside, Queens. Find her at nicoleharoutunian.com and on Instagram @nicoleharoutunianwriter.
![[offsite in Brooklyn!] THE APPARENT TRAP by Ali Rosen: launch party & cookie bake-off](https://cdn1.bookmanager.com/i/920590x/events_images/apparent_trap.jpeg?cb=1790002288)
[offsite in Brooklyn!] THE APPARENT TRAP by Ali Rosen: launch party & cookie bake-off
Join us on November 2nd from 6-8pm for a cookie swap book party at Kellogg’s Diner, celebrating the release of Ali Rosen’s The Apparent Trap ! Featuring guest judges Carla Hall (author of Carla Bakes & host of The Chew ), Erika Kwee (@ThePancakePrincess), and Caroline Schiff (@PastrySchiff & author of Daily Dessert ), this evening is your chance to eat lots of cookies, win prizes, and join four dessert obsessives in getting nerdy about books and baked goods! This is a ticketed event -- all tickets include a signed copy of The Apparent Trap If you would like to join the cookie competition please bring at least one dozen of your favorite cookies to share and swap -- prizes will include a Zwilling Fresh and Save; Burlap and Barrel Hot Chocolate; and much much more! Carla and Caroline will also have books for purchase and signing courtesy of the Astoria Bookshop.
RAVEN by Lyndsay Faye, with Hilary Davidson
Join the Astoria Bookshop for a conversation about Lyndsay Faye's new historical mystery novel, RAVEN , with thriller writer Hilary Davidson! About the Book An orphaned young woman in antebellum Maryland is pulled into a maelstrom of passion, pain, and occult power in this Gothic homage to the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. I died a fortnight ago this coming Thursday. It was a terrifically unpleasant experience—being murdered, I mean to say. Raven Helen Allan has always been haunted by witchcraft. Since the death of her beloved mother, she has soothed herself by speaking words into spells—a proclivity enhanced by time spent with her aunt’s library of occult books. She also finds a self-destructive solace in transmuting the pain in her heart onto her flesh. After an itinerant childhood spent first with her mother’s traveling theater troupe and then being passed around from relative to relative, Raven is relieved to finally settle down with Aunt Berenice in her Baltimore townhouse—even if her aunt spends most evenings in a laudanum haze. There she finds a long-sought sense of belonging with the family of enslaved workers in her aunt’s household, especially the brilliantly odd youngest daughter Pym. Raven’s infatuation with her friend only grows more intimate as the girls become women together. But when the household is threatened with financial ruin, Raven must set out to earn her own living. Taking a job as a paid companion, Raven arrives at the crumbling Moldavia Manor. Her charge is a delicate young invalid named Lenore Legrand who haunts the Gothic structure like a phantom. Living with them is Lenore’s devoted older cousin Trevanion, who shares Raven’s interest in the occult and devotes his days to searching ancient texts for an Elixir of Life that might cure his cousin. Raven finds herself inexorably drawn to both cousins as well as to the secrets hidden in the shadows of Moldavia Manor. Will she find the answers she seeks in Trevanion’s alchemical texts? What is the meaning of glowing green light emitted from the tower windows? And is Raven truly narrating this story from beyond the grave—if so, who murdered her? About the Author Lyndsay Faye (she/her) is the internationally bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed novels and two short story collections. She has been published in fifteen languages, nominated for two Edgar Awards, and received an American Library Association award for Best Historical Novel. A notable writer of Sherlock Holmes pastiches including Dust and Shadow and Observations by Gaslight , she also particularly enjoys upending classical literature, as in Jane Steele , which transforms Jane Eyre into a feminist serial killer. A true New Yorker in the sense that she was born elsewhere, Faye lives in Queens with her husband Nicholas and her cat Prufrock. In conversation with Hilary Davidson (she/her) is the bestselling author of eight novels, including Every Lie I Told and Her Last Breath . Her fiction has won two Anthony Awards, a Derringer Award, and a host of other accolades. She is also the author of more than fifty short stories, two crime-fiction collections, and a novella. In her prior life as a travel journalist, Hilary authored eighteen nonfiction books. Originally from Toronto, she has called New York City home since 2001. Visit her online at www.HilaryDavidson.com.