From the Morristown Festival of Books:
THIRD ANNUAL MORRISTOWN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS ANNOUNCES AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR LINEUP
Including 4 Pulitzer-Prize winners!
Morristown Festival of Books is thrilled to announce its much-anticipated 2016 award- winning author lineup!
Widely acclaimed journalist and New York Times best-selling author of The Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in Belmont, War, and now Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger kicks off the Festival with his Keynote Address on Friday, Sept. 30.
The all-day free main Festival on Saturday, Oct. 1, features over 35 award-winning fiction, non-fiction, children’s, and young adult authors, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Bill Dedman, Gilbert M. Gaul, Amy Ellis Nutt, and Stacy Schiff, novelists Emma Donoghue, Nadia Hashimi, Matthew Thomas and Colson Whitehead, best-selling suspense authors Mary Higgins Clark and Karin Slaughter, non-fiction writers Rana Foroohar and Amanda Freitag, Nebula award-winning fantasy author Naomi Novik, and best-selling children’s author of all time, R.L. Stine!
New Jersey’s premier book festival, Morristown Festival of Books offers something for everyone. This year’s award-winning selected titles fall under a number of categories.
Fiction includes Thrillers, Fantasy, Romance, and Short Stories; Non-fiction includes History, Election, Finance, Foreign Policy, Social Policy/Gender Identity, Autism, Sports, and Cooking. As in previous years, the Festival is also featuring a number of Debut Authors as well as Children’s and Young Adult authors.
Young readers will delight in hearing the latest tales of Biscuit and Bad Kitty, while older children will be captivated and spooked by the long-awaited, Goosebumps Most Wanted.
For tweens and teens, this year’s festival picks are sure to hit home as the characters in these novels are itching for independence, looking for love and romance, and questioning friendships, decisions and, most of all, themselves.
In addition to these offerings for children and young adults, Festival attendees will have the opportunity to hear Pulitzer-Prize winner Bill Dedman recounting the mysterious case of heiress Huguette Clark who owned several palatial homes yet lived for 20 years in a hospital despite being healthy; Rana Foroohar discussing how financialization is threatening the economic future of America; and Amanda Freitag, celebrated chef from Food Network’s Chopped, delighting home cooks with her stories and recipes for restaurant- quality meals.
You also can hear two-time Pulitzer-Prize winner Gilbert M. Gaul examining the myriad problems with elite college football programs; Pulitzer-Prize winner Amy Ellis Nutt sharing the true story of a transgender girl and her family’s extraordinary journey through this transformation; and Stacy Schiff unveiling for the first time the mystery surrounding the Salem Witch Trials.
Fiction lovers will be thrilled by the vast array of novelists featured at the Festival. Some of the award-winning and best-selling novelists include Mary Higgins Clark (As Time Goes By), internationally acclaimed author of Room, Emma Donoghue (The Wonder), Nadia Hashimi (A House Without Windows), Karin Slaughter (The Kept Woman), debut author Matthew Thomas (We Are Not Ourselves), and Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad).
Sebastian Junger, the award-winning, veteran reporter who has written extensively of his experience embedded with American troops in Afghanistan, will discuss his latest book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging in his Keynote Address on Friday, Sept. 30 at 7:30pm, at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South St., Morristown.
Bring your families and friends and join the Morristown community in celebrating the power of the written word! The all-day free main Festival takes place on Saturday, Oct. 1.
Over 35 award-winning and best-selling authors will speak and answer questions in one-hour sessions at six locales, all within walking distance of each other along South Street in historic Morristown, including St. Peter’s Church Sanctuary and Parish House, Morristown Presbyterian Church Parish House, The Church of the Redeemer, the Morristown/Morris Township Library and the Starlight Room at the Mayo Performing Arts Center.
Book sales and signings will occur at a tent on the grounds of the historic Vail Mansion. The Friday night Keynote Address and the free all-day Saturday Festival are presented by Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management.
Morristown Festival of Books is proud to introduce our Independent Bookstore Partner: Bookends at 211 East Ridgewood Ave. in Ridgewood, NJ (201) 445-0726 .
Bookends has generously donated a portion of the book price to the Festival and this helps to keep our Saturday Festival free and open to the public. Morristown Festival of Books encourages all attendees to support their local independent bookstores.
To date, the AWARD-WINNING AND BEST-SELLING AUTHOR LINEUP is as follows:
FICTION
Literary Fiction
Emma Donoghue (Featured title: The Wonder)
Donoghue, author of the international bestseller and Academy Award-nominated adapted screenplay, Room, takes her readers to Ireland in the 1850s where Lib, an English nurse,
observes a young girl who has been fasting for four months and claims she is living only on manna from heaven.
Nadia Hashimi (Featured title: A House Without Windows)
Hashimi’s moving and haunting tale depicts the complex and often horrifying lives of a group of modern Afghan women who meet in a prison cell. When an Afghan-born American lawyer arrives into their closed world, he discovers that, like Afghanistan itself, his client may not be at all that he imagines.
Thrillers
Mary Higgins Clark (Featured title: As Time Goes By)
Clark’s latest thriller tells the story of a news reporter who begins her search for her birth mother just as she is assigned to cover a high-profile trial of a woman accused of murdering her wealthy husband. As the trial unfolds, the reporter’s relentless pursuit of the truth outside the courtroom puts her life in imminent danger.
Karin Slaughter (Featured title: The Kept Woman)
The author of the widely acclaimed Pretty Girls and bestselling Will Trent series returns with this emotionally complex thriller that has readers at the edge of their seats. Will Trent is brought in on a murder case inextricably linked to his own troubled past and the consequences just might destroy him.
Peter Swanson (Featured title: The Kind Worth Killing)
Swanson’s latest thriller has Entertainment Weekly asking, “Is The Kind Worth Killing the next Gone Girl?” This psychological suspense novel has it all – love, infidelity, intrigue…and a plot to kill.
Fantasy
Naomi Novik (Featured title: Uprooted)
A fantasy influenced by the Polish fairy tales of her childhood, Uprooted weaves tales of a heroine’s adventures that are enchanting, magical, and utterly unforgettable.
Romance
Eloisa James (Featured title: My American Duchess)
An arrogant Duke, his brother, and a bold and adventuresome American heiress make up the love triangle of this lush and vibrant romance novel.
Sarah MacLean (Featured title: A Scot in the Dark)
Miss Lillian Harwood longs for love and readily agrees to pose for a scandalous portrait—then finds that the artist has in fact betrayed her and made the portrait public. Lily has no choice now but to turn to the one man who might save her from ruin.
Colson Whitehead (Featured title: The Underground Railroad)
In his spellbinding new novel, Colson Whitehead chronicles a young slave girl’s
terrifying journey of escape. Through this journey, Whitehead both recreates the unique
terrors for blacks in the pre-Civil War era and meditates on the unfulfilled promises in the
present day.
Lauren Willig (Featured title: The Other Daughter)
A romance centering around two half-sisters who are brought together after one of the sister’s mothers has died, The Other Daughter is a page-turner full of deceit, passion, and revenge.
Short Stories
Mia Alvar (Featured title: In the Country)
In nine globe-trotting tales, Alvar gives voice to the women and men of the Philippines
and its diaspora. Her stories explore the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and
the longing to connect across borders both
Debut Authors
Matthew Thomas (Featured title: We Are Not Ourselves)
A gripping family saga about the quest for the American Dream, We Are Not Ourselves presents an extraordinary view of early-onset Alzheimer’s and the emotional, physical, and financial toll it takes on one ordinary, middle-class American family.
Imbolo Mbue (Featured title: Behold the Dreamers)
A compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream—the unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy.
Sharon Guskin (Featured title: The Forgetting Time)
A single mom confronts the possibility that her troubled son is the reincarnated spirit of a murdered child. combines a murder mystery and a sentimental story. Fearlessly provocative, Guskin’s debut novel combines a muder mystery and a sentimental story, while exploring the profound connection between a parent and child .
Lynda Cohen Loigman (Featured title:The Two-Family House)
A heart-wrenching, gripping multigenerational story about friendship, marriage, and long buried secrets.
Naomi Jackson (Featured title: The Star Side of Bird Hill)
In this coming-of-age debut novel, two sisters are suddenly sent from their home in Brooklyn to Barbados to live with their grandmother. This is a story of family, love, and betrayal and it is told with a beauty and tenderness you won’t soon forget.
Wendy Walker (Featured title: All Is Not Forgotten)
A stunning debut suspense novel about a family and community that are put to the test when a young woman is raped and then given a drug that erases her memory of the assault.
NON-FICTION
History
Stacy Schiff (Featured title: The Witches: Salem, 1692)
The first great American mystery is unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most
acclaimed historians.
Bill Dedman (Featured title: Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune) Reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, who owned several palatial homes yet lived for 20 years in a simple hospital room despite being in excellent health, is at the heart of this rich mystery of wealth and loss that connects the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance.
Andrea E. Mays (Featured title: THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio)
Debut author Andrea Mays recounts the thrilling tale of two mysterious men—a brilliant author and his obsessive collector—separated by space and time. Mays’ talk at the Festival coincides with the national tour of the First Folio coming to Drew University for the month of October.
Election
Ari Berman (Featured title: Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America)This groundbreaking narrative history charts both the transformation of American democracy under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, providing new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.
Finance
Rana Foroohar (Featured title: Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business) Exploring the forces that have led American businesses to favor balance-sheet engineering over actual engineering and the pursuit of short-term corporate profits over job creation, Foroohar discusses how financialization has harmed our society, and why reversing this trend is of grave importance to us all.
Foreign Policy
Emma Sky (Featured title: The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq)
An intimate insider’s portrait of how and why the Iraq adventure failed. Sky exposes the failures of the policies of both Republicans and Democrats, and the lessons that must be learned about the limitations of power.
Social Policy/Gender Identity
Amy Ellis Nutt (Featured title: Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family)
An inspiring, true story of an American family confronting an issue that is at the center of today’s debate on gender identity. Becoming Nicole is not only profoundly moving – it is also both timely and necessary.
Autism
John Donvan, co-author (Featured title: In a Different Key: The Story of Autism) Caren Zucker, co-author (Featured title: In a Different Key: The Story of Autism) An extraordinary narrative history of autism: the riveting story of parents fighting for their children’s civil rights; of doctors struggling to define autism; of ingenuity, self- advocacy, and profound social change.
Sports
Gilbert M. Gaul (Featured title: Billion-Dollar Ball: A Journey through the Big- Money Culture of College Football) In this riveting and shocking look inside the money culture of college football, Gaul
examines the consequences of college coaches being among the highest-paid public
employees in the country and of players receiving ten times more in scholarship awards
than academically gifted students.
Cookbook
Amanda Freitag (Featured title: The Chef Next Door: A Pro Chef’s Recipes for Fun, Fearless Home Cooking)
A master at knocking out fabulous meals in her restaurant kitchen and on the set at Food Network, Amanda was intimidated to cook in her tiny apartment kitchen, a fear of many home cooks. She has now created 100 restaurant-quality recipes that shine in the home kitchen—and teaches you how to think (and cook) like a chef.
CHILDREN’S
R. L. Stine (Featured title: Goosebumps Most Wanted #10: Lizard of Oz)
When Kate Orton sees a pop-up ad on her computer for an amazing lizard from Australia,
she has to have it. The ad says the lizard can change its color to blend in with its
surroundings, and it can change its shape. After anxiously checking the mail every day
for two weeks, the package finally arrives—but there’s no lizard inside. There’s only an
egg with a written warning. Is Kate ready for what’s about to hatch?
Nick Bruel (Featured title: Bad Kitty, Scaredy-Cat)
Bad Kitty is back in her first full-length picture book, and she’s up against something scary, something creepy, something more frightening than Puppy’s good moods: Halloween.
Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Featured title: Biscuit Feeds the Pets)
Beginning readers’ favorite little yellow puppy is ready to help his neighbor feed her pets!
But what happens when playtime gets in the way of mealtime? Biscuit might just find a
new way to make sure everyone gets what they need.
Corey Rosen Schwartz (Featured title: Hensel and Gretel: Ninja Chicks)
When Hensel and Gretel’s dad gets snatched by a fox, the sisters put their ninja skills to work to track him down before he can be stir-fried. But are these two little chicks ready to take on a dark tangled forest, a tricky house made of corn bread, and an even trickier fox?
Meg Medina (Featured title: Mango, Abuela, and Me)
Mia’s Abuela has moved in and Mia quickly discovers that Abuela can’t read the words inside Mia’s favorite book. While they cook, Mia tries to help Abuela learn English, and Mia learns some Spanish too, but it’s not enough for Abuela to tell Mia all her stories. Then Mia sees a parrot in the pet-shop window and has a perfecto idea!
Courtney Sheinmel (Stella Batts Scaredy Cat )
Stella Batts can’t wait for the class sleepover at the library. Dressed in their pjs, the
students and teachers begin their fun with a scavenger hunt and Stella is giddy with
excitement – that is until she finds something spooky in her search.
Nadia Hashimi (Featured title: One Half From the East)
A coming-of-age journey set in modern-day Afghanistan that explores life as a bacha posh—a preteen girl dressed as a boy. Life in this in-between place is confusing, until Obayda meets another bacha posh. Their transformation won’t last forever, though— unless the two friends can figure out a way to make their newfound freedoms endure.
Heather Alexander (Featured title: A Child’s Introduction to Natural History: The Story of Our Living Earth–From Amazing Animals and Plants to Fascinating Fossils and Gems)
This entertaining and educational book introduces readers ages 6 to 12 to the fascinating wonders of our natural world and highlights every kingdom of life—plants, bacteria, mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, rocks and minerals. Illustrated sidebars throughout offer biographies of naturalists, such as Charles Darwin, Mary Anning, and Charles Henry Turner, as well as fun, hands-on projects.
YOUNG ADULT
David Lubar (Featured title: Character, Driven)
Time is running out for Cliff Sparks. With only one year left of high school, he is
desperate to find a girlfriend and to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, since
he’s pretty sure his unemployed father plans to kick him out of the house the minute he
turns eighteen. Cliff is at the edge, on the verge, dangling―and holding on for dear life.
Carolyn Mackler (Featured title: Infinite in Between)
The Breakfast Club meets Boyhood in this striking young adult novel from Printz Honor author Carolyn Mackler, which chronicles the lives of five teenagers through the thrills, heartbreaks, and joys of their four years in high school.
Meg Medina (Featured title: Burn Baby Burn)
While violence runs rampant throughout New York, a teenage girl faces danger within her own home in Meg Medina’s riveting coming-of-age novel.
For more information and full author bios, go to morristownbooks.org.
Wonderful selection. Something for everyone.