Reading the Mind, Tombolo Books' new mental health and wellness book club, delves into books about the brain. Our readings will take us through different genres, such as memoir and narrative non-fiction, and through dark valleys, uplifting stories and new strategies for understanding our minds. There is no cost to join.

We meet every other month, on the first Thursday of that month, at 7:00 p.m. While we will eventually meet at the bookstore, we're sticking to virtual meetings for now.

For our inaugural meeting, we'll be discussing Little Panic by Amanda Stern, which intrigued us with its stunningly relatable and ultimately hopeful account of navigating life with an anxiety disorder. 

To RSVP, please email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com for a Zoom link.

Our facilitator is Lindsey Epperson, who is a licensed clinical social worker and practitioner at Sunshine City Counseling here in St Pete.

The Gabber Book Club, in partnership with Tombolo Books, aims to celebrate Florida authors and great books set in our state. We meet every second Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Historic Peninsula Inn (though, for now, we'll be meeting virtually). There is no cost to join.

For our inaugural meeting, we'll be discussing Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden. We chose this book because we want to amplify all voices, especially those historically marginalized. The memoir describes Madden's childhood growing up as a queer, biracial teenager in Boca Raton, a blend of privilege, destruction and beauty. Here's a bit more about this book. Get your copy at tombolobooks.com. 

Our facilitator for August will be Cathy Salustri, a Gulfport-based writer who owns the Gabber Newspaper. Every month will feature a different facilitator from the Gulfport community; facilitators get a free copy of the book courtesy of Tombolo and the Gabber Newspaper. September's book is Jennifer Clement's Gun Love; if you'd like facilitate the September book club, reach out to the Gabber here.

If you want to download the audiobook or read the book virtually, you can support indie bookstores by doing so from libro.fm.

To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, please email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com.
 

In 2020, the Book Club at the MFA dives in to books by or about female authors, artists and activists, with discussions centered on topical issues and themes universal to all: empowerment, artistic and creative excellence, and the push for equality for all.
 

For August, we are reading Remembering Paradise Park: Tourism and Segregation at Silver Springs by Lu Vickers and Cynthia Wilson-Graham, and will join together on Zoom with author Lu Vickers for this special Virtual Book Club! This online event is free, but registration is required and will be limited to 50 participants. Register by clicking here.
 

Silver Springs was Florida’s only attraction to operate a parallel facility for African-Americans (closed 1969), but its story has been overlooked in conversations around Florida’s tourism industry. Paradise Park, billed as the “colored only” counterpart to Silver Springs for 20 years, came to be viewed as a place of delight and leisure for African-American families during the painful era of Jim Crow. Though both parks shared the same river, patrons rarely crossed paths, and leisure took different forms in each park. This book takes a look back at the forces leading to the creation of this vital part of Florida’s history.

Join Tombolo Books in welcoming Molly Howes, PhD as we celebrate the launch of her newest book, A Good Apology. In A Good Apology, Dr. Howes explores "the power and importance of a thorough apology." Using her research, field experience, and knowledge of relationships, Dr. Howes delves into four straightforward steps we can all use to craft an effective apology. 

During this virtual event Dr. Howes will be joined in conversation by Roy Peter Clark. Clark is a full-time faculty member of the Poynter Institute and the author and editor eighteen books. His most recent writing book is Murder Your Darlings.

You can register for the event through our GOOGLE FORM and a Zoom link will be sent to you closer to the event date. You can pre-order the book HERE.

This paradigm-shifting book on apologies is a thoughtful examination of the meaning and the means of making amends: how they work, why they're so hard, and why they are essential for rebuilding
relationships on any scale.We've all done something wrong or made a mistake or insulted someone -- even if by accident. We've all
been hurt and wanted the other person to help us heal. It may be surprising, but the breaches themselves aren't the real problem; our inability to fix them is what causes us trouble. Drawing on her decades of clinical experience with couples, and incorporating spiritual practices, social justice perspectives, current news stories, and neuro-scientific findings, her model of apologies is unsparing
but accessible and ultimately optimistic. She teaches how we can all learn to craft an effective apology with four straightforward steps.


Molly Howes, PhD, is a Harvard-trained clinical psychologist and an award-winning writer. Following a Clinical Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, she completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Florida State University and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Community Health Plan. Dr. Howes has contributed to research projects studying the interpersonal effects of depression, the impact of a parent's cancer on the child's psychological well-being, and the incidence and prevalence of mental health disorders in primary care practices and in larger international populations.

She is an author of several academic papers and presents at conferences for professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association. A MacDowell fellow, she has also been published in the New York Times's Modern Love column, Best American Essays, NPR's Morning Edition, and elsewhere.

For thirty-five years, she has maintained an independent psychotherapy practice in which she treats couples, as well as individual patients of all ages.
 

Join Tombolo Books as we welcome award-winning author and enviormentalist Eric Jay Dolin, PhD. Dolin will discuss his latest book A Furious Sky, which tells the history of America through its five-hundred-year battle with the fury of hurricanes.

You can register for the event through our GOOGLE FORM and a Zoom link will be sent to you closer to the event date. You can pre-order a signed copy of the book HERE. 

“This compelling book is much more than a meteorological history, it is a remarkably human story of people struggling with nature at its fiercest . . . Many of [these] true tales of survival and loss will tug at the readers’ heartstrings as Dolin makes them vivid and memorable.”
                                         — James Pekoll, Booklist, starred review

On the heels of his “fascinating” (Wall Street Journal), “rumbustious,” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “elegantly written” (Sea History) history of piracy in the Americas, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin turns to a subject just as unruly, and much more urgent: A FURIOUS SKY is a magisterial, sprawling account of how hurricanes have shaped American history, from the arrival of the first Europeans on these shores to our own era of global warming and mega storms.

Eric Jay Dolin is the and best-selling author of Leviathan, and Black Flags, Blue Waters. In addition to awards for his books, he has also been the recipient of other honors, including the Switzer Environmental Fellowship, the Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship, and the Starr Fellowship for Public Service from Brown University. He is am also a Nantucket Historical Society Research Fellow, and was awarded a special commendation from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for "Contributing to the Award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC." He and his family live in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
 

Tombolo Books' social justice book club celebrates books that tackle deep-seated issues from race to capitalism to immigration to criminal justice. We aim for thought-provoking discussions and actionable steps in a welcoming space. We hope that our discussions will lead us to interrogate how these issues show up in the communities in which we live and how we can think about social change at local, national, and international levels.

We meet every first Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the bookstore (though, for now, we'll be meeting virtually). There is no cost to join.

For our second meeting, we'll be discussing The Color of Money by Mehrsa Baradaran, described in The Atlantic as "A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family." 

Copies are available at tombolobooks.com. Our facilitators are Matthew and Susie, who are both white folks and community-engaged residents of St. Pete passionate about justice, equity, and acting locally while thinking globally.

To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, please email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com.
 

Join us virtually for an evening with widely-celebrated author Susan Cerulean for a discussion of her latest release I Have Been Assigned The Single Bird. Cerulean will discuss her memoir which explores the poignant parallels between natural and human life. She will be joined by Thomas Hallock for this discussion. Hallock has published widely on early Florida and nature writing, and is Professor of English at USF St. Petersburg. His most recent book, A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlan to Amherst, is due out February with the University of Alabama Press.

You can register for the event through our GOOGLE FORM and a Zoom link will be sent to you closer to the event date. You can pre-order a signed copy of the book HERE.  
 

"A beautiful and significant book. I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird offers a lament for the precious things that have passed, an elegy for the fragile beauty that remains,and a recognition of the inseparable Nature of all living things. With compassion, keen insights, and elegant prose, Susan Cerulean celebrates our inherent and intractable relationship with the natural world and explores the strange paradox of humanity's disconnections."
—Joe Hutto, award-winning author of Illumination in the Flatwoods, The Light in High Places, and Touching the Wild

Susan Cerulean’s memoir trains a naturalist’s eye and a daughter’s heart on the lingering death of a beloved parent from dementia. At the same time, the book explores an activist’s lifelong search to be of service to the embattled natural world. During the years she cared for her father, Cerulean also volunteered as a steward of wild shorebirds along the Florida coast. Her territory was a tiny island just south of the Apalachicola bridge where she located and protected nesting shorebirds, including least terns and American oystercatchers. I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird weaves together intimate facets of adult caregiving and the consolation of nature, detailing Cerulean’s experiences of tending to both.

Susan Cerulean is a writer and activist based in Tallahassee, Florida. Her many books include Tracking Desire: A Journey after Swallow- tailed Kites (Georgia), UnspOILed: Writers Speak for Florida’s Coast, coedited with Janisse Ray and A. James Wohlpart, and the award-winning Coming to Pass: Florida’s Coastal Islands in a Gulf of Change (also Georgia). She was a founding member and former director of the Red Hills Writers Project and was named Environmental Educator of the Year by the Governor’s Council for a Sustainable Florida.

Join Tombolo Books in welcoming award winning author Chelsea Catherine for a celebration of her latest novel Summer of the Cicadas. Summer of the Cicadas earned Catherine the Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press which is given annually for a short story collection, novel, or essay collection written by a queer writer.  Catherine will be joined in-conversation by Bookseller and Marketing Coordinator for Tombolo Books, Andrew Harlan. 

You can register for the event through our GOOGLE FORM and a Zoom link will be sent to you closer to the event date. You can pre-order a signed copy of the book HERE. Please make sure you indicate how you would like your book inscription to be personalized in the order notes! 

"Chelsea Catherine is a bright, raw, original new voice in American fiction. Her prose is electric. And Summer of Cicadas was a novel I couldn’t put down."—Thomas Christopher Greene, author of The Perfect Liar 

Summer of the Cicadas is about a West Virginian town where a brood of Magicicadas emerges for the first time in seventeen years. The cicadas damage crops and trees, and swarm locals. Jessica, a former cop whose entire family was killed in a car crash two years earlier, is deputized during the crisis. Throughout the book, Jessica must deal with her feelings for her sister’s best friend, Natasha, who is a town council member. After Fish and Wildlife removes the swarm, Jessica must also confront the two-year anniversary of her family’s death, Natasha’s budding romance with a local editor, as well as a sudden but devastating loss that changes everything.

Chelsea Catherine is a PEN Short Story Prize Nominee, a winner of the Raymond Carver Fiction Contest in 2016, a Sterling Watson fellow, and an Ann McKee Grant recipient. Her novella Blindsided won the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was published in October of 2018. Her nonfiction recently won the Mary C. Mohr Award through the Southern Indiana Review. A native Vermonter, Catherine lived in Key West for two years where she was secretary of the Key West Writers Guild. She now lives in St. Petersburg, FL.

When you think of horror, you probably think of shelves of Stephen King or Dean Koontz books. In this book club, we’re going to go beyond those titles into a deeper realm of contemporary literature.

The horror genre is experiencing a boom right now and includes some of the highest quality fiction writing you’ll find anywhere. In this club we will explore how horror can help us confront horrifying times, how it can be terrifically empowering, and the nature of fear on both a societal and a personal level.

Our second book is The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste.

Kiste's first novel is a beautiful, melancholic lament about a past that can never be reclaimed. She hails from the rust belt city of Cleveland and this story provides for us an elegy of sorts for that metropolis. It’s one of the saddest, most atmospheric books you'll read, but also one which will leave you trembling with dread.

In it, we hear of a woman returning to her home neighborhood after many, many years of absence. We’re taken back to the 1980s for the majority of the story when we read about the factory closures and the horrible, mystifying transformations occurring on Denton Street: the young girls there are literally turning to rust. This is a story about economic disaster and the real effects it has on our bodies, our relationships, our psyches, and our neighborhoods. THE RUST MAIDENS won the 2018 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel and Novel of the Year for the 2018 "This is Horror" awards.

This book takes us to a different sub-genre of horror (body horror), is a bit more literary than our last selection, and demonstrates how horror doesn’t necessarily have to be scary to qualify.

Just like Paul Tremblay did, Gwendolyn Kiste will join us for a small portion of our virtual club meeting.

To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com.

The Tombolo Book Club highlights the best of literary fiction and non-fiction. 

We meet every other month, on the fourth Thursday, at 6:30 p.m. at the bookstore (though, for now, we'll be meeting virtually). There is no cost to join. 

For our second meeting, we'll be reading Lab Girl, a memoir by geobiologist Hope Jahren. She has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil, and her book explores her love of plant life from her Minnesota childhood to the lab she shares with her beloved lab manager, Bill. Jahren writes with warmth and curiosity about love and work.

Our facilitator is local librarian Mallory Arents. To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com.