The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome New York Times Bestselling author Madeline Miller to Harrisburg as she presents her new novel, Circe. This event is free and open to the public. 

“An epic spanning thousands of years that’s also a keep-you-up-all-night page turner.” – Ann Patchett

About the Book:

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child–not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power–the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.

About the Author:

Madeline Miller was born in Boston and attended Brown University where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. She lives in Narbeth, PA with her husband and two children. The Song of Achilles was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction and has been translated into twenty-five languages.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to welcome author Jared Brock to Harrisburg as he presents his new book, The Road to Dawn: Josiah Henson and the Story That Sparked the Civil War. This talk will be presented alongside a screening of the accompanying documentary, Josiah, narrated by Danny Glover. This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

This sweeping biography immortalizes the man who was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in an epic tale of courage and bravery in the face of unimaginable trials.

Josiah Henson overcame incredible odds to escape from slavery and improve the lives of hundreds of freedmen throughout his long life. He found international fame–including visits to Windsor Castle and the White House–as the real “Uncle Tom” in the novel that fueled the abolitionist movement and ignited the Civil War. But his story has been mostly lost to history, until now.

A dynamic, driven man with exceptional intelligence and unyielding principles, Henson spent forty-one years in bondage before he was finally able to escape with his wife and four children, carrying the youngest two on his broken shoulders for 600 miles. He eventually settled with his family as a free man across the border in Canada. Once there, Henson agitated for racial equality, raised millions for the abolitionist cause, won a medal at the first World’s Fair in London, and became a beloved preacher. He returned to America and rescued 118 more slaves, including his own brother, and helped purchase land to build what would become one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad, a 500-person freedman settlement called Dawn.

The Road to Dawn retraces Henson’s improbable journey from slavery to freedom and restores a hero of the abolitionist movement to his rightful place in history.

About the Author:

Jared A. Brock is the author of A Year of Living Prayerfully, Bearded Gospel Men, and The Road to Dawn. Brock is the director of Over 18, Red Light Green Light, and Josiah, and his writing has appeared in Esquire, Huffington Post, and Writer’s Digest.

In conjunction with Lancaster Against Pipelines, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome Minneapolis Star Tribune writer Maya Rao as she presents her new narrative nonfiction book, Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks and the Making of an Oil Frontier. Audience Q&A and book signing to take place after the talk.

This event is free and open to the public.

About the Book:

The story of a twenty-first century American frontier–where the free market reigns supreme as profiteers rush to develop a massive new oilfield.

The word was that you could earn $17,000 a month in the Bakken Oilfield of North Dakota. So they flooded in: the profiteers, deadbeats, ex-cons, dreamers, and doers. And so too did Maya Rao, a journalist who embedded herself in the surreal new American frontier.

With an eye for the dark, humorous, and absurd, Rao set out in steel-toed boots to chronicle the largest oil boom since the 1968 discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Businessmen turned up to restart their careers after bankruptcy or fraud allegations from the financial crisis. An ex-con found his niche as a YouTube celebrity exposing the underside of oilfield life. A high-rolling Englishman blew investors’ money on $400 shots of cognac as authorities started to catch on that his housing developments were part of a worldwide Ponzi scheme.

Part Barbara Ehrenreich, part Upton Sinclair, this is an on-the-ground narrative of capitalism and industrialization as a rural, insular community transformed into a colony of outsiders hustling for profit-a sobering exploration of twenty-first century America that reads like a frontier novel.

About the Author: 

MAYA RAO is a staff writer in the Washington D.C. bureau of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Awl, Philadelphia Inquirer, Longreads, and more.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to partner with the National Civil War Museum to welcome award-winning historian Allen Guelzo to Harrisburg! Dr. Guelzo will present his new book on the Civil War, Reconstruction: A Concise History with WITF's Scott LaMar. This event is free and open to the public. 

About the Book:

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Conflict shifted from the battlefield to the Capitol as Congress warred with President Andrew Johnson over just what to do with the South. Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction, which was sympathetic to the former Confederacy and allowed repressive measures such as the "black codes," would ultimately lead to his impeachment and the institution of Radical Reconstruction. 

While Reconstruction saw the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments, expanding the rights and suffrage of African Americans, it largely failed to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and the rise of Jim Crow. It also struggled to manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern free-labor economy. However, these failures cannot obscure a number of accomplishments with long-term consequences for American life, among them the Civil Rights Act, the election of the first African American representatives to Congress, and the avoidance of renewed civil war. Reconstruction suffered from poor leadership and uncertainty of direction, but it also laid the groundwork for renewed struggles for racial equality during the civil rights movement.

In this concise history, award-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo delves into the constitutional, political, and social issues behind Reconstruction to provide a lucid and original account of a historical moment that left an indelible mark on the American social fabric.

About the Author:

Allen C. Guelzo is Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College. Three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize, he is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, which won the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome award-winning debut novelists Meghan Kenny and Jane Delury to Harrisburg on Independent Bookstore Day! Kenny will read from her novel, The Driest Season, and Delury will read from her novel, The Balcony. Following the reading, Kenny and Delury will be in conversation with Alex Brubaker to discuss the the craft of writing fiction, contemporary novels, and the creative process. 

This event is free and open to the public. 

About The Driest Season: 

As her Wisconsin community endures a long season of drought and feels the shockwaves of World War II, fifteen-year-old Cielle endures a more personal calamity: the unexpected death of her father. On a balmy summer afternoon, she finds him hanging in the barn―the start of a dark secret that threatens her family’s livelihood. A war rages elsewhere, while in the deceptive calm of the American heartland, Cielle’s family contends with a new reality and fights not to be undone.

A stunning debut, The Driest Season creates a moving portrait of Cielle’s struggle to make sense of her father’s time on earth, and of her own. With wisdom and grit, Kenny has fashioned a deeply affecting story of a young woman discovering loss, heartache, and―finally―hope.

About The Balcony:

What if our homes could tell the stories of others who lived there before us? Set in a small village near Paris, The Balcony follows the inhabitants of a single estate-including a manor and a servants' cottage-over the course of several generations, from the Belle Époque to the present day, introducing us to a fascinating cast of characters. A young American au pair develops a crush on her brilliant employer. An ex-courtesan shocks the servants, a Jewish couple in hiding from the Gestapo attract the curiosity of the neighbors, and a housewife begins an affair while renovating her downstairs. Rich and poor, young and old, powerful and persecuted, all of these people are seeking something: meaning, love, a new beginning, or merely survival.

Throughout, cross-generational connections and troubled legacies haunt the same spaces, so that the rose garden, the forest pond, and the balcony off the manor's third floor bedroom become silent witnesses to a century of human drama. 

In her debut, Jane Delury writes with masterful economy and profound wisdom about growing up, growing old, marriage, infidelity, motherhood - in other words, about life - weaving a gorgeous tapestry of relationships, life-altering choices, and fleeting moments across the frame of the twentieth century. A sumptuous narrative of place that burrows deep into individual lives to reveal hidden regrets, resentments, and desires, The Balcony is brimming with compassion, natural beauty, and unmistakable humanity.

About the Authors: 

Meghan Kenny is the author of Love Is No Small Thing: Stories. Her short story "The Driest Season"―the basis for her debut novel―won the Iowa Review Award and was a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. She lives in Pennsylvania.

Jane Delury's fiction has appeared in Narrative, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, The Yale Review, and Glimmer Train. She has received a PEN/O. Henry Prize, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Story Award, a VCCA fellowship, and grants from the Maryland State Arts Council. She holds an MA in literary studies from the University of Grenoble, France, and an MA in fiction from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She teaches in the University of Baltimore's MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program.

Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore! As a proud participant in this one-day national event, we’ll have family fun activities, book giveaways, special sales, and a special conversation with two award-winning debut novelists, Meghan Kenny and Jane Delury. 

Why Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day at the Scholar?

Independent bookstores are not just stores, they’re community centers and local anchors run by passionate readers. They are entire universes of ideas that contain the possibility of real serendipity. They are lively performance spaces and quiet places where aimless perusal is a day well spent.

In a world of tweets and algorithms and pageless digital downloads, bookstores are not a dying anachronism.  They are living, breathing organisms that continue to grow and expand. In fact, there are more of them this year than there were last year. And they are at your service.

Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more details!

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome urban designer and former Harrisburg resident Matthew Frederick as he presents his new book, 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School. This new title in the bestselling 101 Things I Learned® series provides unique, accessible lessons on urban design for students, professionals, and even general readers who wish to better understand the design of cities and towns.

In this presentation, Frederick will show how the urban designer’s unique understanding of space can reshape how we see Harrisburg and envision its future. Frederick will focus on a few early lessons in his own schooling that profoundly impacted his understanding of cities. His search for a deeper understanding of the urban problem led him all the way back to the Copernican Revolution, when a monumental shift in perception and consciousness came to place urbanism outside our preferred mental models. This eventually led to the blighting of our cities; today it hampers and distorts our efforts to repair them. Indeed, America’s “successful” cities are beset by runaway rents, over-scaled buildings, the displacement of low-income residents, and a loss of authenticity. The truly successful cities of the 21st century will pursue a different course. They will eschew today’s top-down, developer-centric fixations and will re-engage the organic, bottom-up processes that once built and sustained them. A successful Harrisburg of the future will be built by and for everyone, not by a privileged few.

Join us afterward for a sale and signing of Matthew Frederick’s new book, 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School, and the rest of the 101 Things I Learned series.

About the Author:

MATTHEW FREDERICK, a former Harrisburg resident, is an architect, urban designer, author of the bestselling 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, and the creator of the 101 Things I Learned book series. He previously served as HACC professor of architecture and as architecture columnist for the Patriot-News. His latest book, 101 Things I Learned in Urban Design School, will be released by Penguin Random House on April 3.