Author Event

Please join us for a special evening with acclaimed author Julia Glass, winner of the National Book Award, for a reading and booksigning featuring her new novel, THE WIDOWER'S TALE

In a historic farmhouse outside Boston, seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. His routines are disrupted, however, when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved preschool take over his barn. As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents, and teachers, he must reexamine the solitary life he has made in the three decades since the sudden death of his wife. No longer can he remain aloof from his community, his two grown daughters, or, to his shock, the precarious joy of falling in love.

One relationship Percy treasures is the bond with his oldest grandchild, Robert, a premed student at Harvard. Robert has long assumed he will follow in the footsteps of his mother, a prominent physician, but he begins to question his ambitions when confronted by a charismatic roommate who preaches—and begins to practice—an extreme form of ecological activism, targeting Boston’s most affluent suburbs.

Meanwhile, two other men become fatefully involved with Percy and Robert: Ira, a gay teacher at the preschool, and Celestino, a Guatemalan gardener who works for Percy’s neighbor, each one striving to overcome a sense of personal exile. Choices made by all four men, as well as by the women around them, collide forcefully on one lovely spring evening, upending everyone’s lives, but none more radically than Percy’s.

With equal parts affection and satire, Julia Glass spins a captivating tale about the loyalties, rivalries, and secrets of a very particular family. Yet again, she plumbs the human heart brilliantly, dramatically, and movingly.

 

Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; The Whole World Over; and I See You Everywhere, winner of the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Book Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her short fiction has won several prizes, and her personal essays have been widely anthologized. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.

 

 
Beginning in the early 1800s and climaxing with the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, Wicked River takes us back to a time before the Mississippi was dredged into a shipping channel, and before Mark Twain romanticized it into myth. Drawing on an array of suspenseful and bizarre firsthand accounts, Lee Sandlin brings to life a place where river pirates brushed elbows with future presidents and religious visionaries shared passage with thieves—a world unto itself where, every night, near the levees of the big river towns, hundreds of boats gathered to form dusk-todawn cities dedicated to music, drinking, and gambling. Here is a minute-by-minute account of Natchez being flattened by a tornado; the St. Louis harbor being crushed by a massive ice floe; hidden, nefarious celebrations of Mardi Gras; and the sinking of the Sultana, the worst naval disaster in American history. And here is the Mississippi itself: gorgeous, perilous, and unpredictable, lifeblood to the communities that rose and fell along its banks.

An exuberant work of Americana—at once history, culture, and geography—Wicked River is a grand epic that portrays a forgotten society on the edge of revolutionary change. 

A gripping book that plunges you into a rich dark stretch of visceral history. I read it in two sittings and got up shaken.
—Garrison Keillor

Wicked River almost makes you feel guilty for enjoying an education so much. I learned things at every S-curve, neck deep in a fine, fine story. I lived a stone's throw from that river, and though I knew it flowed through eons of meanness and sadness and ribaldry, I didn't know it was this twisted.
—Rick Bragg, author of The Prince of Frogtown

Great stuff, essential stuff, and yeah, wicked.
—Roy Blount Jr, author of Alphabet Juice and Long Time Leaving Dispatches From Up South

One of the best book’s ever written about the Mississippi River. Each page rounds a new bend full of delirious missionaries, hell-bent-for-speed steamboat captains, and gaudy traders in ‘fancy girl’ slave prostitutes. You won’t put it down till you’ve read every steamy, malarial, fascinating page.
—Mike Tidwell, author of Bayou Farewell

LEE SANDLIN’s essays, most of which were published in the Chicago Reader, received the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism and an award for Best Arts Criticism from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. His essay “Losing the War” was included in the anthology The New Kings of Nonfiction. He lives in Chicago.

This brand new look at Carnival's oldest parading organization colorfully documents the 140-year history of Rex

The story of Rex’s fanciful Carnival Kingdom—its royalty and traditions, its Processions and Imperial Receptions, its crown jew- els and rich art—is a story best told in pictures. Rex: An Illustrated History of the School of Design presents more than 250 images, most not previously published, to illuminate that visual history.

 

As the Rex Organization’s Archivist, Dr. Hales has helped collect, assemble and display images and artifacts documenting the Organization’s nearly 140 years of history. He is the author of several articles on the history of Carnival and the School of Design. Hales has practiced pediatrics in New Orleans for 35 years and is a member of the Clinical Faculties of the Tulane and Louisiana State University Schools of Medicine.

Please join us for a reading and book signing with Bob Carr celebrating the release of his book, RAINSING OUR CHILDREN ON BOURBON: A French Quarter Love Affair (with illustrations by Rolland Golden).

New Orleans sparks an emotion in everyone who hears the name. It’s an enchanted city! Raising Our Children On Bourbon is the story of Bob and Jan Carr, who escaped the mundane life of mid-America and moved to the heart of the infamous French Quarter to raise their children among the “Quarter eccentrics” while accomplishing spectacular careers in radio and television. Join them as they renovate and restore a Bourbon Street mansion, passing through one crisis after another. This story depicts the bright side of the city’s indomitable spirit as it forges ahead and continues to dazzle visitors.

Every now and then a book comes along and lifts the curtain on the hidden sweetness of life in New Orleans.  Raising Our Children on Bourbon is just such a charmer, giving readers a glimpse of the surprising joys of family life in the French Quarter during an extraordinary time and the pleasures — and laughs — of working in television here. This is also an enchanting and sexy New Orleans love story: Bob and Jan Carr fell in love with a city, and — not surprisingly to any reader lucky enough to pick up this book — New Orleans loved them right back.
- Susan Larson, Literary Critic

A young Midwestern family drives down the rabbit hole into New Orleans’ French Quarter and not only survives, but thrives in the most raunchy, raffish, notorious neighborhood in America. Quite a read!
- David Cuthbert, WYES-TV’s ‘Theater Guy’

Raising Our Children On Bourbon is a hilarious and heartfelt love letter to our wonderful and enigmatic New Orleans, from one of her most beloved couples, Bob and Jan Carr. Bob has crafted such lively and fascinating stories, I am truly grateful that he decided to share them with us!
- Bryan Batt, Actor, stage, screen and TV

 

Please join us at the Uptown JCC for a lecture and booksigning by Rodger Kamenets featuring his new work, BURNT BOOKS: Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and Franz Kafka.

 

Rodger Kamenetz's groundbreaking dual biography of the venerated Hasidic storyteller Rabbi Nachman and the iconic modern master Franz Kafka uncovers surprising parallels between two tragically abbreviated lives, both spent in search of spiritual meaning.

Rodger Kamenetz, acclaimed author of The Jew in the Lotus, has long been fascinated by the mystical tales of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. And for many years he has taught a course in Prague on Franz Kafka. The more he thought about their lives and writings, the more aware he became of unexpected connections between them. Kafka was a secular artist fascinated by Jewish mysticism, and Rabbi Nachman was a religious mystic who used storytelling to reach out to secular Jews. Both men died close to age forty of tuberculosis. Both invented new forms of storytelling that explore the search for meaning in an illogical, unjust world. Both gained prominence with the posthumous publication of their writing. And both left strict instructions at the end of their lives that their unpublished books be burnt.

Kamenetz takes his ideas on the road, traveling to Kafka’s birthplace in Prague and participating in the pilgrimage to Uman, the burial site of Rabbi Nachman visited by thousands of Jews every Jewish new year. He discusses the hallucinatory intensity of their visions and offers a rich analysis of Nachman’s and Kafka’s major works, revealing uncanny similarities in the inner lives of these two troubled and beloved figures, whose creative and religious struggles have much to teach us about the significant role played by the imagination in the Jewish spiritual experience.

Rodger Kamenetz Discusses Burnt Books from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

 

Rodger Kamenetz is the author of The Jew in the Lotus and The History of Last Night’s Dream, and of seven other books of poetry and prose. A winner of the National Jewish Book Award, he recently retired as LSU Distinguished Professor at Louisiana State University and was founding director of its Jewish Studies Program. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, the novelist Moira Crone, and works as a dream therapist. 

In this wonderfully transporting novel, award-winning author  Karen Essex turns a timeless classic inside out, spinning a haunting, erotic, and suspenseful story of eternal love and possession.

"Reader, you are about to enter a world that exists simultaneous with your own. But be warned: in its realm, there are no rules, and there is certainly no neat formula to become—or to destroy—one who has risen above the human condition…The truth is, we must fear monsters less and be warier of our own kind."

London, 1890. Mina Murray, the rosy-cheeked, quintessentially pure Victorian heroine, becomes Count Dracula’s object of desire. To preserve her chastity, five male “defenders” rush in to rescue her from the vampire’s evil clutches. This is the version of the story we've been told. But now, from Mina’s own pen, we discover that the story is vastly different when told from the female point of view.

In this captivating, bold act of storytelling, award-winning author Karen Essex breathes startling new life into the characters of Bram Stoker's Dracula, transporting the reader into the erotic and bizarre underbelly of the original story. While loosely following the events of its classic predecessor, Dracula in Love deviates from the path at every turn. 

The result is a darkly haunting, propulsive, and rapturous tale of immortal love and possession.

From the shadowy banks of the river Thames to the wild and windswept Yorkshire coast, Dracula’s eternal muse, Mina Murray, vividly recounts the intimate details of what really transpired between her and the Count—the joys and terrors of a passionate affair that has linked them through the centuries, and her rebellion against her own frightening preternatural powers.

Mina’s version of this gothic vampire tale is a visceral journey into Victorian England’s dimly lit bedrooms, mist-filled cemeteries, and asylum chambers, revealing the dark secrets and mysteries locked within. Time falls away as she is swept into a mythical journey far beyond mortal comprehension, where she must finally make the decision she has been avoiding for almost a millennium. 

Bram Stoker’s classic novel offered one side of the story, in which Mina had no past and bore no responsibility for the unfolding events. Now, for the first time, the truth of Mina’s personal voyage, and of vampirism itself, is revealed. What this flesh and blood woman has to say is more sensual, more devious, and more enthralling than the Victorians could have expressed or perhaps even have imagined.

Dark, gothic, and utterly sensual, Dracula in Love is the novel for Twilight's grownup fans. The character of Mina Murray leaps from the pages in an extraordinary confession of what truly happened between her and Count Dracula. In this novel of forbidden desires and secrecy, purity is an overrated virtue. —Michelle Moran, bestselling author of Nefertiti: A Novel 

The King of the Undead in all his manifestations confronts Victorian society, reclaiming his throne as the ultimate vampire, before whom all other paltry vampires in literature wither away.  Dracula in Love is a sensual fantasy feast, a flight of the imagination, a darkly rich pleasure.  Like The French Lieutenant's Woman, the novel explores and exposes the stifling confines of Victorian society, especially upon women.  But the means of deliverance is altogether different. —Margaret George, bestselling author of The Memoirs of Cleopatra

KAREN ESSEX is the author of Stealing Athena, Kleopatra, and the international bestseller Leonardo’s Swans, which won Italy’s prestigious 2007 Premio Roma for foreign fiction. An award-winning journalist and a screenwriter, she is a native New Orleanian living in Los Angeles.

 

 

You are invited to an evening with Gordon A. Martin, Jr., a retired Massachusetts trial judge who as a young lawyer for the Justice Dept during the Kennedy administration prepared the first big voting rights case brought in Mississippi. He will discuss and sign his new book about the people involved in the case.

In 1961, Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd.  While 30 percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Count Them One by One is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case written by one of the Justice Department's trial attorneys.  Gordon Martin, then a newly minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government's sixteen courageous black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial.

Decades later, Martin returned to Mississippi to find these brave men and women he had never forgotten.  He interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. Martin intertwines these current reflections with vivid commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

As a young lawyer Judge Gordon Martin, Jr. was one of many quiet heroes, Black and White, who worked together in the South to change the world.  In this compelling book he tells the story of the people behind United States v. Theron Lynd with vivid detail, preserving a key piece of American and civil rights history.
-Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children’s Defense Fund, who litigated in Mississippi in the 1960s

To know the reality of the Deep South 50 years ago is to understand that a miracle has occurred in this country. Gordon Martin dramatically shows us that reality in "Count Them One by One": cynical officials ruling that black college graduates were not qualified to register as voters, Americans murdered for trying to vote.  The idea that a black man would be President in our lifetime was simply unimaginable then.  It changed because incredibly brave black citizens of the South risked their lives to win their rights, and the national government eventually responded. Martin shows how difficult the change was, what courage and determination were required.
-Anthony Lewis, Pulitzer Prize Winner, former Supreme Court Reporter of the New York Times

Gordon A. Martin, Jr., Boston, Massachusetts, is a retired trial judge and an adjunct professor at New England Law Boston. His work has been published in the Boston Globe, Commonweal, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, various law reviews, and other periodicals. He has co-authored a civil rights casebook, and is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law.

Please join us for an evening with classical violinist and author Rosalyn Story in celebration of the publication of WADING HOME: A Novel of New Orleans.  The author give a reading and sign books and there will be food and music.

 

As the shadow of Hurricane Katrina looms, Simon Fortier knows how he plans to face the storm—in his long-time home in Treme, just as he did through so many storms before. But when Katrina’s waters rise and the city’s failed levees cause devastating floods, Simon disappears.

It is up to his son Julian, a celebrated but down-on-his-luck trumpeter, to find him. Julian ushes home to the city he left years before, to search for a father with whom he’d been on difficult terms over preparing for the hurricane. Julian’s return to New Orleans brings him back in touch ith figures from his past, loves and enemies both, and as his search for Simon takes him to the rural plot where Simon grew up, Julian is drawn deep into its troubles. As he tries to come to grips with his father’s likely fate and struggles to regain his trumpet chops, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of the father with whom he’d been at odds.

Lyrical, accessible, compelling, and populated by a broad, fully realized cast of supporting characters,  Wading Home's  timeless story tells how this son strives to save his father: shaken to the core by the devastation of a city, he discovers the true meaning of home, family and history.

ROSALYN STORY lives in Dallas. Her first book, And So I Sing: African American Divas Of Opera And Concert , inspired the PBS documentary Aida’s Brothers and Sisters: A History of Blacks in Opera, in which she appeared as featured narrator. Her first novel, More Than You Know garnered rave reviews and was an Essence bestseller. She is a violinist with the Fort Worth Symphony. 

Meet writer Ben Farmer when he comes to Octavia Books for a reading and signing of EVANGELINE, his brilliant debut novel of the epic love story and harrowing journey from Nova Scotia to New Orleans in pre-Revolutionary America inspired by Longfellow's poem.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published “Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie” in 1847 and it remains his most popular and enduring work. While author Ben Farmer faithfully incorporates the essential elements of the epic poem, EVANGELINE , the novel, emerges as magnificent work of narrative fiction - artfully blending history, romance, adventure with an unforgettable character portraits. It is truly a singular achievement - rich in detail and panoramic in scope. 

"Ben Farmer brings a legend to life in EVANGELINE, evoking grace and panache the travails of the Acadians in mid-18th century America from Nova Scotia to New Orleans. Farmer is a wonderful storyteller, and readers won’t soon forget this tale of love and fortitude. Simply riveting."
–Keith Donohue, New York Times bestelling author of THE STOLEN CHILD and ANGELS OF DESTRUCTION

Join us for a talk and booksigning by Kristin Hersh, founder of the cult rock bank Throwing Muses. as shares her outrageous tale of growing up much faster than planned, in this intensely personal and moving account of the pivotal year of 1985.

 

Kristin Hersh has released more than twenty albums over the course of her career which have sold more than one million copies worldwide. She records solo, as well as with her bands Throwing Muses and 50 FOOT WAVE. She lives in New England and New Orleans.

A WATERSHED ACCOUNT OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL FRIENDSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Please join us for a presentation and book signing with esteemed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg who joined forces to reveal the crucial partnership of two extraordinary founders, creating a superb dual biography that is a thrilling and unprecedented account of early America.

The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper and noble gentlemen, with Thomas Jefferson’s genius overshadowing James Madison’s judgment and common sense. But, in this revelatory book, both leaders are seen as men of their times, ruthless and hardboiled operatives in a gritty world of primal politics where they struggled for supremacy more than fifty years. 

Contrary to received wisdom, James Madison was not dull and empty of emotion, and Thomas Jefferson was even more contentious than tradition tells us. Madison lost his temper at the Constitutional Convention, and for most of the years leading to his presidency, the eloquent Jefferson was actually the less consequential political actor in this famous partnership. Together, “Tall Tommy and Little Jemmy,” as one unsympathetic contemporary dubbed the odd couple, fought as political pugilists, leaving their mark first on Revolutionary Virginia and then America.  

In our histories, the elder figure, Jefferson, looms larger. Yet Madison is privileged in the title because, as Burstein and Isenberg reveal, he was the senior partner at key moments in the formation of the two-party system. It was Madison who did most to initiate the presidency of George Washington while Jefferson was in France in the role of diplomat. So often described as shy, the Madison of this book is quite assertive. Yet he regularly escapes bad press, while Jefferson’s daring pen gets him assailed by a nearly constant barrage of partisan attacks. 

In Madison and Jefferson we see the two as privileged young men in a land marked by tribal identities rather than a united national personality. They were raised to always ask first: “How will this play in Virginia?” Burstein and Isenberg powerfully capture Madison’s secret canny role in Jefferson’s career, acting in effect as a campaign manager. In riveting detail, the authors chart the courses of two very different presidencies: Jefferson’s driven by force of personality, Madison’s sustained by a militancy history has been reluctant to ascribe to him.  

The aggressive expansionism of the third and fourth presidents has been underplayed. After the Louisiana Purchase more than doubled U.S. territory, the pair contrived to purchase Cuba and, for years, looked for ways to conquer Canada. What they said in private and wrote anonymously was often more influential than what they signed their names to. 

Supported by a wealth of original sources—newspapers, letters, diaries, pamphlets—Madison and Jefferson is a stunning new look at a remarkable duo who arguably did more than all the others in their generation to set the course for American political development. It untangles a rich legacy, explaining how history made Jefferson into a national icon, leaving Madison a relative unknown. It tells nasty truths about the conduct of politics when America was young and reintroduces us to colorful personalities, once famous and now obscure, who influenced and were influenced by the two Revolutionary actors around whom the story turns. As an intense narrative of high stakes competition, Madison and Jefferson exposes the beating heart of a rowdy republic in its first fifty years, while giving more than a few clues to why we are a politically divided nation today. 

Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg are Manship Professor of History and professor of history, respectfully, at Louisiana State University.  Burstein is the author of six books on early America, including The Passions of Andrew Jackson and Jefferson’s Secrets.  Isenberg is the author of Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr and Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America.

 

 

Come to a block party to celebrate ONE BLOCK: A New Orleans Neiborhood Rebuilds (Photographs by Dave Anderson, Essay by Chris Rose) with the folks who lived through it and made it all happen on 500 Block of Caffin Street in Holy Cross in the  Lower Nine. 

There will be performances by Rebirth Brass Band and Little Freddie King, a photography exhibition by One Block residents and local artists Chaundra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, and special guests.  And of course, there will be a booksigning and Octavia Books will have copies of ONE BLOCK at the event available for purchse.     

One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds (Aperture, August 2010), photographs by Dave Anderson, essay by Chris Rose, is a powerful portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans as seen through the prism of a single city block whose residents are attempting to rebuild their homes. Using portraiture and still lifes, Anderson explores the very nature of community while testing its resilience. The block party, which takes place on the block where Anderson made the photographs, will mark the fifth anniversary of Katrina and celebrate the resiliency of this block and community. 

Anderson’s compassionate treatment of the neighborhood’s difficult circumstances has drawn comparisons to the work of Dorothea Lange and other Farm Security Administration-funded photographers. Seventy years later, between the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina and the current housing crisis, the stability and permanence of the American home is once again in jeopardy. 

One Block reflects Anderson’s affection for New Orleans and his fascination with the power of human resilience – both individually and collectively.

What we have on our hands here is a genuine comedic talent.
–Douglas Brinkley, from the foreword

 

Please join us for a reading performance and booksigning with New Orleans Levee columnist Bud Faust in celebration of the release of GREAT MOMENTS IN NEW ORLEANS HISTORY, VOL. 2.

 

Bud Faust is a humorist and playwright from New Orleans. He is the author of Great Moments in New Orleans History (Volume 1) and has had several plays produced in and around the city, including one (Gettin’ Dirty with Guy Camaro) performed as part of the New Orleans Improv Festival and another (To Hell and Back, Somewhat) being a winner in Le Chat Noir’s 7th Annual New Play Festival. Beautiful Bastards, his critically acclaimed play about the founding of New Orleans, was likened by The Times-Picayune to “what it must have been like watching the Marx Brothers segue from vaudeville to Broadway comedies.”

 

 

Join Octavia Books at Tales of the Cocktail® 2010 where we will be operating the book store in the lobby of Hotel Monteleone at the most spirited festival this summer.  We will feature an impressive collection of titles with dozens of “Shots of Inspiration” book signings by some of the world's leading cocktail and culinary book authors.

Cocktail authors include, among others, Jill and Dale DeGroff, Tony Abou Ganim, Jeff Berry, David Wondrich and Robert Hess. Notable New Orleans figures include actor Bryan Batt, Wayne Curtis and Chef David Guas.

These signings are part of Tales of the Cocktail five-day festival in which authors share their expertise at various seminars, dinners and events! Each guest will be available for signings for one half-hour at their scheduled time.

For a sellect list of titles Octavia Books will be selling, click here.

Tales of the Cocktail is an internationally acclaimed festival of cocktails, cuisine and culture held annually in New Orleans. The event brings together the best and brightest of the cocktail community—award-winning mixologists, authors, bartenders, chefs and designers—for a five-day celebration of the history and artistry of making drinks. Each year offers a Spirited Dinner® series, demos, tastings, competitions, seminars, book signings, tours and parties all perfectly paired with some of the best cocktails ever made.

The on site bookstore hours are Wednesday - Saturday from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM and Sunday from 10:00 AM till sometime in the afternoon.

For more information on Tales of the Cocktail, visit the website at www.TalesoftheCocktail.com or call 504-948-0511.