The Kindle-format ebook of Busara Road is now available for preorder. Click on the image to visit the Amazon page.

The publication date (when the ebook will be released for download) is April 7. Paperback copies will also be available then.

Why should you read this book? Here's what one advance reviewer has said:

"In his authentic and haunting first novel, Busara Road, David Sanders captures the turbulent early days of newly-independent Kenya through the eyes of eleven-year-old Mark Morgan, the sensitive and inquisitive son of a widowed Quaker missionary. Set in the aftermath of the brutal conflict between colonial British forces and the Mau Mau rebels, the novel navigates the jungle of grief and hope that is a community emerging from years of violence, as well as the suffering of those set upon avenging past atrocities. Sanders creates characters who are memorable, distinctive, multi-dimensional and indelibly true. In the spirit of the best of Norman Rush and Barbara Kingsolver, Busara Road is a Bildungsroman of insight and compassion from an author who has mastered both the substance and the emotion of his subject matter. A riveting tour de force, the novel will appeal to anyone who has ever been eleven years old and at sea in the world. Busara Road leads readers both into the African past and into the depths of the human spirit—it is a road not to be missed."
      Jacob M. Appel, author of Millard Salter’s Last Day

As we said in an earlier post, we have trouble keeping up with our author Nathaniel Popkin because he's involved in so many projects. Some relate to the novel he published with us, Everything Is Borrowed, and some range to other important literary and social topics.

Luckily, he has sent us an email, copied below, detailing his appearances for the next several weeks. All are in Philadelphia, giving you ample reason to visit the city if you suffer the ill fortune of not living here.

February 16, 3PM
"Hidden City, Changing City"
Free Library of Philadelphia Parkway Branch, 4th floor
19th and Vine Streets, Philadelphia
FREE
Register HERE: https://www.facebook.com/events/708064866257581/

As part of the library's Community Day, I'll discuss how literary and film interpretations of the city converge in my own work and others'. Let's dig into the urban layers together!
 
February 19, 1PM
National Book Foundation Presents "Everyday People and Everyday Truths"
With authors Nafissa Thompson-Spires and Adam Haslett, Nathaniel Popkin moderating
Community College of Philadelphia Winnet Student Life Building, Great Hall Room S2-19
502 N. 17th Street, Philadelphia
FREE
Event Info HERE: https://www.ccp.edu/calendars/events/everyday-people-and-everyday-truths

Stories about everyday Americans might seem mundane on the surface—banal compared to heroic epics or sweeping romances. But with humor and sharp insight, these two National Book Awards–honored authors illustrate the everyday lives of their characters with great depth and significance. Join 2018 National Book Awards author Nafissa Thompson-Spires (Heads of the Colored People) and two-time National Book Awards nominee Adam Haslett (You Are Not a Stranger Here and Imagine Me Gone) as they discuss the vitality of stories that reflect the lives of everyday people, the struggles they face, and how humor can work to reveal deeper truths.
 
February 27, 6:30PM
"Sisters in Freedom" Screening and Panel Discussion
With Professors Emma Lapsansky and Kate Oxx, Nathaniel Popkin moderating
Free Library of Philadelphia Parkway Branch, Skyline Room
19th and Vine Streets, Philadelphia
FREE
Register HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sisters-in-freedom-screening-and-panel-discussion-tickets-55283533537

"Sisters in Freedom" tells the story for the first time of pioneering black and white women in the 1830s who defy social, economic, and cultural norms to come together to agitate against slavery, white supremacy, and inequality of race and gender. The film reveals how the resistance work of these pioneering women leads directly to the meeting at Seneca Falls and the launch of American feminism.
 
March 4, 6:30-8PM
"Tomorrow is Now: How Will We Survive a Changing Climate"
Panel discussion with Professors Scott Knowles, Howard Kunreuther, and Mira Olsen, Saleem Chapman and Nathaniel Popkin
Academy of Natural Sciences
19th and Race Streets, Philadelphia
FREE
Register HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/academy-town-square-tomorrow-is-now-how-will-we-survive-a-changing-climate-tickets-55768037702

Extreme storms, increased flooding, deadly heat waves, sea level rise. Climate change is happening now, and it is affecting our own neighborhoods. Join us for an Academy Town Square about what Philadelphia and the region are doing—or should be doing—to address this critical issue. Drexel University Professor Scott Knowles, an expert on urban disasters, will lead the discussion among city and regional officials and scientists. They will provide insight into how we can prepare for climate changes ahead.
 
March 28, 6PM
"To Reach the Spring: The Banality of Evil and the Climate Crisis"
Reading and discussion with Professor Bethany Wiggin, Director, Penn Program in Environmental Humanities
Rosenbach Museum and Library
2008 Delancey Place, Philadelphia
MUSEUM ADMISSION
Register HERE: https://rosenbach.org/events/in-conversation-with-nathaniel-popkin/

Nathaniel Popkin will read and discuss a new work, To Reach the Spring, which asks, what do we owe our children and grandchildren if the greenhouse gases we contributed to global warming cause extreme suffering or death? Should we someday be held morally accountable? Popkin’s work draws on his own experience as an environmental organizer as well as the work of Hannah Arendt and Primo Levi, and contemporary ecologists and scientists. To Reach the Spring is a literary essay in the spirit of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, meant to place a new lens on a paralyzing problem in human society.                         

Haven’t yet bought a Valentine’s gift for your significant other? Luckily, we’re here to help.

How about a romantic e-book, a modern story of lovers facing greater obstacles than Romeo and Juliet? In THE SPEED OF CLOUDS Mindy rides a wheelchair, Len a motorcycle, but that’s not their biggest barrier. In the fantasy universe of SkyLog, Len identifies with the bad-boy Santaks, Mindy with the straight-arrow Transortium: not just different clans, different SPECIES. Plus, if you count the cyborg guy, it’s a love triangle. What will happen? How can this star-crossed pair tear down the Trumpian wall between them? Find out today, and for the next week, at a special discount price of $1.99 for the Kindle-format e-book. Your lover will love you for this gift, even if you forgot the chocolates.

If your lover's tastes are more down-to-earth, so to speak, you can give the gift of a link to a new article by one of our authors, about the adventures of privy diggers in a Colonial-era neighborhood. What lies under ye olde commode? Dare you dig in?

We have trouble keeping up with our peripatetic author Nathaniel Popkin. At any given point he's involved in a dozen or so projects related to books, film, city history, or the fate of the Earth. Below is one event happening this Saturday, February 16, at 3:00, as posted by the Free Library of Philadelphia. For more detail, follow the link at the end of the description or click on the map.

Here's the latest five-star review of The Speed of Clouds. Though a self-confessed "outsider" in the sci-fi fan world described in the book, the reviewer got deeply absorbed in the characters and story.

​Which is what we've been saying all along about this remarkable novel. It's about community in general--what makes us stick together or fall apart. It's got romance, rejection, rivalry, antiques, motorcycles, and Sitting Bull. As the characters pursue their own adventures, both real and fantasy, the book becomes, as the reviewer says, "an adventure in its own right."

The headline above is the title of the next All But True reading, to be hosted by Louis Greenstein. It's on Wednesday, January 30, 6:30 p.m., at Penn Book Center. Click here for more details.

If you wonder how fiction can deal with complicated questions of spiritual identity, come out for the reading and discussion with Anjali Mitter Duva and Janet Mason.

Yo! Yo! For a short time we have the Kindle-compatible version of Everything Is Borrowed by Nathaniel Popkin available at a humongous discount. You can get it for less than a cappuccino, and it'll last much longer. Click on the image or here to go to the Kindle page.

No, this timeless classic isn't from New Door Books, but our own Miriam Seidel will be helping to launch it on January 22 when she converses with the author, Josiah Bancroft.

The Hod King is the third in Bancroft's Books of Babel series, which starts with a couple on a honeymoon and goes on to feature madhouses, assassinations, a flying fortress, a Sphinx, a mysterious Tower, and ultimately the Hod King himself.

This, by the way, is fantasy, not the latest U.S. foreign policy adventure.

The launch party is at Penn Book Center in West Philadelphia, 34th & Sansom Streets, Tuesday, January 22, 6:30 p.m. For the full info, see the bookstore's page here.

A couple of weeks ago, we began sending out ARCs of our next title, Busara Road by David Hallock Sanders, and enthusiastic comments have been rolling in. We'll paste some of them below. To read more about the book, go to the catalog page. If you are a reviewer who would like an advance review copy, use the contact page to let us know.

“In his authentic and haunting first novel, Busara Road, David Sanders captures the turbulent early days of newly-independent Kenya through the eyes of eleven-year-old Mark Morgan, the sensitive and inquisitive son of a widowed Quaker missionary. Set in the aftermath of the brutal conflict between colonial British forces and the Mau Mau rebels, the novel navigates the jungle of grief and hope that is a community emerging from years of violence, as well as the suffering of those set upon avenging past atrocities. Sanders creates characters who are memorable, distinctive, multi-dimensional and indelibly true. In the spirit of the best of Norman Rush and Barbara Kingsolver, Busara Road is a Bildungsroman of insight and compassion from an author who has mastered both the substance and the emotion of his subject matter. A riveting tour de force, the novel will appeal to anyone who has ever been eleven years old and at sea in the world. Busara Road leads readers both into the African past and into the depths of the human spirit—it is a road not to be missed.” —Jacob M. Appel, author of Millard Salter’s Last Day
 
“Reading Busara Road is like having your hair cut by a one-armed man who may be a murderer—you’re afraid of what might happen next, but you’re certainly not going anywhere, and you’re excited to find yourself amid a mystery. That very haircut, and a flash of a white shirt against a green jungle, the calls and grunts of unseen animals in the dense foliage, a thick leaf wrapped around a wounded arm with a vine, birds and fish swimming and flying: reading this novel, I was caught in so many vivid images, so many sharp sensations as I was borne along through Kenya’s history and quotidian features, traveling with eleven-year-old Mark Morgan as he shapes his own story. Mark’s path ultimately illuminates what has been so tantalizing and unclear in the rich, hidden world around him; the perfect guide, he is guileless and yet awake, often left alone, always eager to pursue new experiences and sensations.” —Peter Rock, author of My Abandonment

“Brimming with mystery, magic, emotional truth and wide-eyed adolescent wonder, Busara Road compels the reader on a vivid and engrossing adventure marked by discovery, duality and bursts of lyrical beauty.” —Tracy DeBrincat, author of Hollywood Buckaroo and Troglodyte

“Eleven-year-old Mark Morgan and his father move from Philadelphia to a Quaker mission in western Kenya shortly after the new nation’s brutal struggle for independence. With his father mostly away, Mark lives among the deeply wounded survivors, struggling to forge connections in a place where not heeding one’s elders can have grave consequences. A strong, vivid debut set in an unforgettable place and time.” —Janet Benton, author of Lilli de Jong

More events for New Door Books authors:

11/3/2018, 2:30 p.m.:  Miriam Seidel will read at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, Federal Hill Room.

11/5/2018, 7:00 p.m.: It's the night before the election! Nathaniel Popkin will co-host "Who Will Vote for America? A Mid-Term Voting Pre-Party" at Kismet Cowork, 12 W. Willow Grove Ave., in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. Ken Kalfus, Carlos José Pérez Sámano, and Fran Wilde will read from the anthology that Nathaniel edited with Stephanie Feldman, Who Will Speak for America? Organized by Big Blue Marble Bookstore, with musical inspiration from Two of a Kind and snacks and beer provided by Kismet. Proceeds to benefit Fair Districts PA, the group leading the fight against gerrymandering in Pennsylvania.

11/8/2018, 7:00 p.m.: Catch Nathaniel Poplin at the "Creative At The Cannery" literary series, Dock Street Br​ewing Company, 701 S. 50th Street, Philadelphia 19143, with Jos Duncan, Patrick McNeil, and Sabrina Vourvoulias.
​
11/16/2018, 6:00 p.m.: At Philcon (the world's first and longest-running conference on science fiction, fantasy, and horror), Miriam Seidel will co-moderate a panel discussion, "Tesla, Gernsback, and the Birth of Science Fiction," Crystal Ballroom 2, Crowne Plaza Hotel, 2349 W. Marlton Pike, Cherry Hill, NJ 08002. The other panelists are Simone Zelitch (co-moderator), Victoria Janssen, Susan Shwartz, and Kim Kindya. The focus will be on how the scientist/inventor Nikola Tesla influenced the imagination of Hugo Gernsback, and the impact this had on the SF genre.

11/28/2018, 6:00 p.m.: Miriam Seidel will host a night of magical thrillers in the All But True author reading series, featuring YA authors Nova Ren Suma and Katherine Locke, at the Penn Book Center, 130 S. 34th Street (at Sansom), Philadelphia 19104.