Murder by the Book Club is free and open to the public. While buying the book at Old Town Books is not required to attend, we would greatly appreciate it to help keep our free literary programming sustainable!
 

You can purchase a copy of We Keep the Dead Close with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)!

RSVP HERE!

About the book:
 

Dive into a "tour de force of investigative reporting" (Ron Chernow): a "searching, atmospheric and ultimately entrancing" (Patrick Radden Keefe) true crime narrative of an unsolved 1969 murder at Harvard and an "exhilarating and seductive" (Ariel Levy) narrative of obsession and love for a girl who dreamt of rising among men.
 

You have to remember, he reminded me, that Harvard is older than the U.S. government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget.
 

1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.
 

Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims.
 

We Keep the Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.
 

About the author:
 

Becky Cooper is a former New Yorker editorial staff member and Senior Fellow at Brandeis's Schuster Institute for Investigative Reporting. Research for this book was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists. She is also the author of Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers (Abrams, 2013).

Old Town Books' Sci Fi and Fantasy Book Club is free and open to the public. While buying the book at Old Town Books is not required to attend, we would greatly appreciate it to help keep our free literary programming sustainable!
 

You can purchase a copy of Escaping Exodus with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)!

RSVP HERE!
 

About the book:
 

The Compton Crook award–winning author of The Prey of Gods and Temper returns with a dazzling stand-alone novel, set in deep space, in which the fate of humanity rests on the slender shoulders of an idealistic and untested young woman—a blend of science fiction, dark humor, and magical realism that will appeal to fans of Charlie Jane Anders, Jeff VanderMeer, and Nnedi Okorafor.
 

Earth is a distant memory. Habitable extrasolar planets are still out of reach. For generations, humanity has been clinging to survival by establishing colonies within enormous vacuum-breathing space beasts and mining their resources to the point of depletion.
 

Rash, dreamy, and unconventional, Seske Kaleigh should be preparing for her future role as clan leader, but her people have just culled their latest beast, and she’s eager to find the cause of the violent tremors plaguing their new home. Defying social barriers, Seske teams up with her best friend, a beast worker, and ventures into restricted areas for answers to end the mounting fear and rumors. Instead, they discover grim truths about the price of life in the void.
 

Then, Seske is unexpectedly thrust into the role of clan matriarch, responsible for thousands of lives in a harsh universe where a single mistake can be fatal. Her claim to the throne is challenged by a rival determined to overthrow her and take control—her intelligent, cunning, and confident sister.
 

Seske may not be a born leader like her sister, yet her unorthodox outlook and incorruptible idealism may be what the clan needs to save themselves and their world.
 

About the author:
 

Nicky Drayden’s short fiction has appeared in publications such as Shimmer and Space and Time. She is a systems analyst and resides in Austin, Texas, where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. Her debut novel, The Prey of Gods, was a best of the year pick by Book Riot, Vulture, and RT Book Reviews.

RSVP HERE

2020, am I right? Now that we’ve got that out of the way... come join us for a refreshing writing workshop about keeping creative in the new year. Through a series of prompts and moderated discussion we'll explore our expectations and desires around creative writing. This 1.5 hour generative writing workshop is about discovery - let’s take a productivity time out and tap in to flow. Examine how goal setting can sometimes be loaded, more hindrance than help. This class is about being gentle with ourselves while still being ambitions. Come curious and leave inspired. 
 

This event is developed and led by MoonLit DC founder Kris Zory King and Old Town Books proprietor Ally Kirkpatrick. It’s free with a pay-what-you-can donation to Book Love, Old Town Book's charitable giving program that delivers new books to area kids in need. $10 suggested donation.

Old Town Book(s) Club is free and open to the public. While buying the book at Old Town Books is not required to attend, we would greatly appreciate it to help keep our free literary programming sustainable!
 

You can purchase a copy of The Prophets with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)!

RSVP Here!

About the book:
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man--a fellow slave--seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony.

With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr., fiercely summons the voices of slaver and enslaved alike, from Isaiah and Samuel to the calculating slave master to the long line of women that surround them, women who have carried the soul of the plantation on their shoulders. As tensions build and the weight of centuries--of ancestors and future generations to come--culminates in a climactic reckoning, The Prophets masterfully reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty, and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love.

About the author:
Robert Jones, Jr., was born and raised in New York City. He received his BFA in creative writing with honors and MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Essence, OkayAfrica, The Feminist Wire, and The Grio. He is the creator of the social justice social media community Son of Baldwin. Jones was recently featured in T Magazine's cover story, "Black Male Writers of Our Time." The Prophets is his debut novel.

About this Event

'Rakes, Alphas, Grumps, and Cinnamon Rolls—'Book Boyfriends' and Why We Love Them

Join local romance novelist + USA Today best seller Charis Michaels as she leads an interactive discussion on male protagonists in romance fiction (aka heroes). We’ll discuss archetypal heroes and why a romance novel is really the heroine’s story (sorry, Tavian!). Bring questions/comments about your works-in-progress or examples of your favorite heroes and why. 
 

About the Author: 

USA-Today bestselling author Charis Michaels believes a romance novel is a long, entertaining answer to the question, 'So, how did you two meet?' and she loves making up new ways for fictional characters to meet and dislike each other before falling in love instead. She grew up on a peach farm in Texas and gave tours at Disney World in college but now can be found raising her family and writing love stories in the historic Port City of Alexandria, Virginia