Join us for this exciting Book Launch! This event is free but registration is required. Please CLICK HERE TO REGISTER. Registrants will receive an email on the day of the event with the URL and password required to attend on Zoom. If you decide to attend and to purchase the author’s book(s), we ask that you purchase from Malalprop’s. When you do this you are supporting our work and keeping more dollars in our community. For info about getting your book signed, please CLICK HERE.

THE ILLUSTRATED CRYSTALLARY

In the ancient world there were three medicine kingdoms: animal, vegetable, and mineral. Following her previous acclaimed volumes on animal ( The Illustrated Bestiary) and vegetable ( The Illustrated Herbiary), Maia Toll fulfills the call for mineral with The Illustrated Crystallary, exploring the mystical qualities of 36 fascinating crystals and minerals, including gold, silver, copper, amethyst, hematite, mica, Smokey quartz, emerald, ruby, and more. Combining bits of ancient wisdom with her own insights, Toll explores the aspects and energy of each stone and, through rituals and reflections, the life guidance it might offer contemporary readers. Obsidian’s shiny surface and sharp edges reflect the shadowy corners of the self and serve as the tool for cutting them loose. The sky-like color of earthly turquoise provides balance between opposing forces. The stunning illustrations of Kate O’Hara magnify the symbolism of each crystal throughout the book, and are also featured on 36 oracle cards included in an envelope bound in the back of the book.
Also available: The Illustrated Herbiary Collectible Box Set and The Illustrated Bestiary Collectible Box Set.

Maia Toll has been many things — including a horseback riding instructor, a clinical herbalist, and a university teacher — but being an author is by far her favorite. Her Wild Wisdom series, featuring bestseller The Illustrated Herbiary, The Illustrated Bestiary, and The Illustrated Crystallary, offers a glimpse into the knowings of the natural world and the wilds within ourselves — insights Toll contemplated during her yearlong apprenticeship to a traditional healer in Ireland. When not reading books and “talking” to trees, stones, and her two dogs, she helps to run Herbiary, a multi-city natural wellness and sacred living store she owns with her partner, Andrew. She teaches and blogs to an international following at maiatoll.com.

Malaprop’s is pleased to host a virtual launch for Fable.  Click here to sign up to receive an email with the link required to attend online. Click here to Pre-order a signed copy of Fable! For personalization use the order comments field to provide the name to which the book should be autographed.  Adrienne will also sign or personalize copies of her previous two books, Sky in the Deep (now in paperback) and The Girl The Sea Gave Back (paperback forthcoming). Signed books will be shipped or made available to pick up after September 1.

FABLE

The NY Times bestselling author of Sky in the Deep starts a new fantasy duology in Fable. Welcome to a world made dangerous by the sea and by those who wish to profit from it, where a young girl must find her place while trying to survive in a world built for men. As the daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows, the sea is the only home seventeen-year-old Fable has ever known. It’s been four years since the night she watched her mother drown during an unforgiving storm. The next day her father abandoned her on a legendary island filled with thieves and little food. To survive, she must keep to herself, learn to trust no one and rely on the unique skills her mother taught her. The only thing that keeps her going is the goal of getting off the island, finding her father, and demanding her rightful place beside him and his crew. To do so, Fable enlists the help of a young trader named West to get her off the island and across the Narrows to her father.

Adrienne Young is a born and bred Texan turned California girl, soon to turn into a Carolina girl. She is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she’s not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, scouring antique fairs for old books, sipping wine over long dinners, or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her documentary filmmaker husband and their four little wildlings.

Check the WILD book club’s Facebook page for COVID-19 related updates. Please RSVP the moderator at [email protected] for the Zoom meeting passcode for the meetings.  

Join former Malaprop’s General Manager Linda-Marie Barrett for this woman-only book club that seeks to have fun by reading books (fiction & non) by women writers. 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 6:30 P.M. on the first Tuesday of the month at the Battery Park Book Exchange. It will be held virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This live stream event is free but registration is required.  Registrants will receive an email on the day of the event with the URL and password required to attend on Zoom. Jennie Liu will sign and personalize books ordered prior to the event. Please purchase the book online via the link below and add your personalization request in the comments section during checkout.

LIKE SPILLED WATER
Na’s life at her vocational college in China ends when she has to go home and support her family.

Nineteen-year-old Na barely knows her parents, who work year-round in the city of Taiyuan. Even her younger brother, Bao-bao, became a stranger after joining their parents in the city to study for the National Higher Education Entrance Exam. Na’s modest freedom at vocational college ends when Bao-bao dies and she returns to live with her parents. As Na adjusts to being an only child, she looks through her brother’s possessions and begins to realize Bao-bao wasn’t the dedicated, high-achieving student she envied and she has questions about the circumstances surrounding his death. Na’s feelings of jealousy regarding male favoritism and her limited future options inspire sympathy. She filters detailed depictions of filial piety, funeral rites, grief, romantic relationships, and parental support through a modern teenager’s perspective. While the depiction of traditional Chinese sayings and expectations, their impact on Na, and her limited awareness of mental health might be jarring to some Western readers, Na is likewise puzzled by the characters in Jane Eyre and their individual freedoms. Na’s character-driven story arc is stealthily subversive. The multigenerational cast is all Chinese.

Jennie Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She has been fascinated by the attitudes, social policies, and changes in China each time she visits. She lives in North Carolina with her family.

Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and to purchase the author’s book(s), we ask that you purchase from Malalprop’s. When you do this you are supporting our work and keeping more dollars in our community. Thank you!

Join us for this exciting Book Launch! This event is free but registration is required. Registrants will receive an email on the day of the event with the URL and password required to attend on Zoom. Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle will sign and personalize books ordered prior to the event. Please pre-order the book via the link below and add your personalization request in the comments section during checkout. If you decide to attend and to purchase the author’s book(s), we ask that you purchase from Malalprop’s. When you do this you are supporting our work and keeping more dollars in our community.

EVEN AS WE BREATHE

Nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah yearns to escape his hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. When a summer job at Asheville’s luxurious Grove Park Inn and Resort brings him one step closer to escaping the hills that both cradle and suffocate him, he sees it as an opportunity. The experience introduces him to the beautiful and enigmatic Essie Stamper — a young Cherokee woman who is also working at the inn and dreaming of a better life. With World War II raging in Europe, the resort is the temporary home of Axis diplomats and their families, who are being held as prisoners of war. A secret room becomes a place where Cowney and Essie can escape the white world of the inn and imagine their futures free of the shadows of their families’ pasts. Outside of this refuge, however, racism and prejudice are never far behind, and when the daughter of one of the residents goes missing, Cowney finds himself accused of abduction and murder. Even As We Breathe invokes the elements of bone, blood, and flesh as Cowney navigates difficult social, cultural, and ethnic divides. Betrayed by the friends he trusted, he begins to unearth deeper mysteries as he works to prove his innocence and clear his name. This richly written debut novel explores the immutable nature of the human spirit and the idea that physical existence, with all its strife and injustice, will not be humanity’s lasting legacy.

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her work Going to Water won the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium and was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. She is coeditor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the board of trustees for the North Carolina Writers’ Network.