Calendar of Events

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Three Muses won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and is a love story that enthralls; a tale of Holocaust survival venturing through memory, trauma, and identity, while raising the curtain on the unforgiving discipline of ballet. In post-WWII New York, John Curtin suffers lasting damage from having been forced to sing for the concentration camp kommandant who murdered his family. John trains to be a psychiatrist, struggling to wrest his life from his terror of music and his past. Katya Symanova climbs the arduous path to Prima Ballerina of the New York State Ballet, becoming enmeshed in an abusive relationship with her choreographer, who makes Katya a star but controls her life. When John receives a ticket to attend a ballet featuring Katya Symanova, a spell is cast. As John and Katya follow circuitous paths to one another, fear and promise rise in equal measure. Three muses—Song, Discipline, and Memory—weave their way through love and loss, heartbreak and triumph to leave readers of this prize-winning debut breathless.

Martha Anne Toll writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on September 20, 2022. Toll brings a long career in social justice to her work covering BIPOC and women writers. She is a book reviewer and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, The Millions, and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll has recently joined the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

Gavin Larsen is a writer, teacher, and former professional ballet dancer. Born and raised in New York City, Gavin received her professional dance training at the School of American Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet School and the New York School of Ballet. Over the course of her 18-year professional career, she was a member of Pacific Northwest Ballet, Alberta Ballet, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and Oregon Ballet Theatre, dancing prominent roles in ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Anthony Tudor, James Kudelka, Christopher Wheeldon and Paul Taylor, as well as the major classical works and numerous original contemporary pieces.

Some of our greatest art has come in response to the pain of this world: war, accident, crime and punishment, physical and mental illness, racial and class-based inequities. As Asheville resident Nancy Sehested has written, “The deeply human questions of forgiveness, redemption, and mercy emerge from the ruins of broken lives…Pain is not the last word.”

On eight evenings from September to December, the Wilma Dykeman Legacy and the West Asheville Library will celebrate four memoirs of resilience and hope from the mountains of Western North Carolina. All events are free and will be at the West Asheville Library, except for the digital event on December 8.

About the Wilma Dykeman Legacy

The Wilma Dykeman Legacy is a tax-exempt non-profit organization founded in 2012 to sustain and promote Wilma Dykeman’s values by sponsoring diverse workshops, events, and other programs.  The core values of this extraordinary woman from Buncombe County included environmental integrity, social justice, and the power of the written and spoken word.  For more information, visit www.wilmadykemanlegacy.org.

The Book for October is: ‘The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois by Fanonne Jeffers

The 2020 National Book Award–nominated poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.

Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.

To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/books/review/the-love-songs-of-web-du-bois-honoree-fanonne-jeffers.html

This is a hybrid event, meaning there is an option to attend virtually and a limited number of seats are available to attend the event in-store. The event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.

Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.

This event includes a book signing. If you can’t attend in person you may request a signed copy using the order comments field. For personalization, include the name of the person to whom the book should be signed, e.g. “to Matt.”

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

For fans of unexpected-yet-badass female sleuths, meet former FBI agent-turned-boardinghouse landlady Ethel Fiona Crestwater. Her age affords her precious invisibility. She can outthink and outshoot most men–and women–half her age.

When someone murders one of her boarders, Ethel springs into action–much to the surprise of her double-first-cousin-twice-removed, Jesse, who has recently come to stay with her while he attends university. As he watches her photograph the crime scene, conceal evidence, and speed-dial the Secret Service Director, Jesse realizes that there’s much more to Ethel than appearances suggest.

When Jesse is assaulted and the gym bag full of cash Ethel had hidden is stolen from the basement, the pair decides it’s time to launch their own unofficial investigation. With no one to trust but each other, this unlikely duo learns that the only thing truly worth risking your life for is family.

Mark de Castrique grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina where many of his novels are set. He’s a veteran of the television and film production industry, has served as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte teaching The American Mystery, and he’s a frequent speaker and workshop leader. He and his wife, Linda, live in Charlotte, North Carolina. www.markdecastrique.com

Terry Roberts’ debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and his second novel, That Bright Land, won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award as well as the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South. Both novels won the annual Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, given to the author of the best novel written by a North Carolinian. His third novel, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival, was published by Turner in 2018. His newest book, My Mistress’ Eyes Are Raven Black, a literary thriller set on Ellis Island, was published by Turner in 2021. Born and raised near Weaverville, North Carolina, Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn.

Description: Renowned entomologist, environmentalist, and best-selling author Doug Tallamy joins us to pay homage to a giant of the plant kingdom — the mighty oak tree — and share how it plays an irreplaceable role in the health of our environment. Tallamy discusses why “keystone” species are crucial to any ecosystem and why oak trees spectacularly fill that niche in so many places. Join us for this fascinating talk in the Arboretum’s tree-themed October, and we guarantee you’ll never look at a “common” oak tree the same way ever again! We provide a helpful resource for oak species to plant for the betterment of your landscape and for the betterment of our region’s ecosystem!

Douglas W. Tallamy is a professor of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at University of Delaware where he has taught and conducted research for 41 years. His books Nature’s Best Hope and Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants have become central to the native plant movement. The Nature of Oaks The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees is a timely reminder of the oak’s irreplaceable role in the health of our environment. Tallamy is a recipient of the National Wildlife Federation’s Conseravtion Leadership Award and is co-founder of HOMEGROWN NATIONAL PARK.

This club meets in-person and virtually. If you are interested in attending, please email [email protected] for more info and instructions! 

Join host and Malaprop’s bookseller Patricia Furnish to discuss a range of books across different periods of history. The club tackles challenging subjects, hence “NOTORIOUS.”  Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!

The club meets at Malaprop’s on the 3rd Thursday of every month at 7:00 pm.

The Friends of Pack Library will have their Annual Antique and Collectible book sale the third weekend in October at Pack Library in downtown Asheville. There will be a box sale the following Tuesday.

The Oct. 21 and 22 sale will feature antique and collectible books on the lower level of the library, along with comic books and music CDs. Bookends Used Book Store will have a half-price sale on both days. On the second day of the sale, Oct. 22, everything in the sale will be half off.

On Tuesday, Oct. 25, there will be a box sale with a box of books for only $25 or half the price of the books, whichever is lower. Boxes will be provided.

The Friends of Pack Library will have their Annual Antique and Collectible book sale the third weekend in October at Pack Library in downtown Asheville. There will be a box sale the following Tuesday.

The Oct. 21 and 22 sale will feature antique and collectible books on the lower level of the library, along with comic books and music CDs. Bookends Used Book Store will have a half-price sale on both days. On the second day of the sale, Oct. 22, everything in the sale will be half off.

On Tuesday, Oct. 25, there will be a box sale with a box of books for only $25 or half the price of the books, whichever is lower. Boxes will be provided.

The Friends of Pack Library will have their Annual Antique and Collectible book sale the third weekend in October at Pack Library in downtown Asheville. There will be a box sale the following Tuesday.

The Oct. 21 and 22 sale will feature antique and collectible books on the lower level of the library, along with comic books and music CDs. Bookends Used Book Store will have a half-price sale on both days. On the second day of the sale, Oct. 22, everything in the sale will be half off.

On Tuesday, Oct. 25, there will be a box sale with a box of books for only $25 or half the price of the books, whichever is lower. Boxes will be provided.

Romance Book Club is a space to celebrate love in literature. Whether it’s set in early 1800s London, a distant planet years into the future, a fantasy world of magic, or our own contemporary universe, we are here for the stories that end with a happily-ever-after (or at least a happily-for-now).

Meetings will take place at 7:00 PM ET on the last Tuesday of each month via Zoom. Please visit the Romance Bookclub page for the monthly selection, and email Samantha at [email protected] for the link to join.