The official launch for Busara Road is upon us!

​Sunday, April 7, 5:30 p.m.
Head House Books
619 South 2nd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
(215) 923-9525

Facebook event page here.
Details about the book here.

You may realize that April 7 is also National Beer Day. This conjunction is partly an accident, but not totally. We will have some brewskis.

Here's a fine article about the genesis of our forthcoming novel, Busara Road by David Hallock Sanders.

An American Quaker boy transported to Kenya just after the Mau Mau rebellion? Yep, that much is from personal experience:

"For a year and a half, Sanders spent his youth swinging on vines, wandering rainforests and munching on roasted maize, seeking his own preadolescent introspection while the country of Kenya itself was, too, searching for an identity in the shadow of gaining independence from British rule."

Read the rest of the article here.

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.