What Happened to Ruthie Ramirez (fiction – hardbound) by Claire Jimenez
The Ramirez women of Staten Island orbit around absence. When thirteen‑year‑old middle child Ruthy disappeared after track practice without a trace, it left the family scarred and scrambling. One night, twelve years later, oldest sister Jessica spotted a woman on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show. Could it be Ruthy, after all this time? What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez is a vivid family portrait, in all its shattered reality, exploring the familial bonds between women and cycles of generational
violence, colonialism, race, and silence, replete with snark, resentment, tenderness, and, of course, love.
In the Shadow of the Mountain (nonfiction/memoir – paperback) by Silvia Vasquez Lavado
Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir following her journey to Mount Everest. A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing, to the biggest mountain: Everest. This is a stunning memoir by the first openly gay mountain climber to conquer Everest. Just released in paperback!
Tell Me the Truth About Love (fiction – hardbound) by Erik Tarloff
A novel about sexual love, straight and queer, about love between friends, between exes, between parents and children, between lovers old and new, Erik Tarloff’s Tell Me the Truth About Love tells the story of Toby Lindeman, a divorced man in San Francisco leading what appears to be an enviable bachelor’s life. Suave, attractive, and somewhat detached from the emotional needs of those around him, he seems to sail blithely above life’s common difficulties as he goes about his duties as chief fundraiser for the San Francisco Opera. Suspenseful, sexy, and often laugh-out-loud funny, Tell Me the Truth About Love is a very contemporary look at the varieties of human connection.
Upcoming Events
Sunday, March 26 @ 1 pm (free – Corte Madera store) Cathleen Schine, author of Künstlers in Paradise
Cathleen Schine, the bestselling author of The Three Weissmanns of Westport, once dubbed “the modern-day Jewish Jane Austen,” is back with a comedy of generational manners about exile and the power of stories—both the ones we hand down and the ones held secretly in the heart—that slips between 1939 and 2020 L.A. as Mamie Künstler and her twentysomething grandson
entertain and care for each other under lockdown.
Thursday, April 6 @ 6 pm (ticketed – Shack 15 in the SF Ferry Building) Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, author of Reconceptions
Traditional family structures are adapting to make room for children conceived in previously unimaginable ways. Whole
industries and internet-enabled communities are being built around reproductive technologies. And there’s more change coming as science continues to move forward. Combining intimate personal stories with cutting-edge research, Reconceptions invites readers to reconsider their own ideas about parenthood and to embrace a new vision of the meaning of family.
Tuesday, April 11 @ 5 pm (free – Ferry Building store) James M. Zimmerman, author of The Peking Express
This is a thrilling true story of train-robbing revolutionaries and passengers who got more than they paid for. In 1923 Shanghai, native and foreign travelers alike are enthralled by the establishment of a new railway line to distant Peking. With this new line comes the Peking Express, a luxurious express train on the cutting edge of China’s continental transportation. The Peking Express is the incredible, long-forgotten story of a hostage crisis that shocked China and the West. It vividly captures the events that made international headlines and later inspired Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 Hollywood masterpiece Shanghai Express.
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