For the fourth installment of our Community Conversation series with the African American Heritage Association we will be joined by historian and author Dr. Charles B. Dew to discuss his latest book The Making of A Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade and much more. 

Register for the event through our GOOGLE FORM and a Zoom link will be sent to you closer to the event date. You can also order Dr. Dew's book HERE. 

 Charles B. Dew is Ephraim Williams   Professor of American History   Emeritus at Williams College. A       native of St. Petersburg, Florida, he   graduated from local schools and   then from Woodberry Forest School in   Virginia in 1954 and from Williams in   1958; he received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied under C. Vann
Woodward, in 1964. He taught at Wayne State University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the University of Virginia before returning to teach at Williams in 1977. Professor Dew retired in 2020 following forty-three years as a member of the Williams faculty. His teaching there focused on the American South, the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the institution of slavery. His most recent book is The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade. Earlier scholarship includes: Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge; Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War; and Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Ironworks.

On the night of January 21, 1897, in Simpson County, Kentucky, a mob of white men surrounded the farmhouse of freedman George Dinning, who had lived and farmed peacefully in the area for fourteen years. The mob wrongfully accused him of theft and began shooting into his home, where his wife and children were sleeping. Dinning fired back in self-defense, killing the heir of a wealthy local family. Dinning was charged with, and convicted of, murder.

What happened next may surprise you. With the help of an unlikely ally, Confederate soldier-turned-lawyer Bennett H. Young, and a stunning outpouring of public support, Dinning managed to claw his way to justice in asystem that was stacked against him. In A SHOT IN THE MOONLIGHT: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South, Ben Montgomery unravels the sensational and little-known story of George Dinning’s life, and the fascinating legal episode that ended with him becoming the first Black man in America to win damages against a would-be lynch mob.

Ben Montgomery is a former enterprise reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and founder of the narrative journalism website Gangrey.com. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting and won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for a series called "For Their Own Good," about abuse at Florida's oldest reform school. He lives in Tampa with his children. He is the author of The Man Who Walked Backward, The Leper Spy, and Grandma Gatewood's Walk.

  James Chapin's work has appeared   in Slate,   Image Journal, Creative Loafing   Tampa, and   the Tampa Bay Times. His   debut novel set in   frontier Florida, Ride   South Until the   Sawgrass, was published   in October   (Lanternfish Press). He   currently lives in   Athens, Georgia with his   wife and their animals.
 

Tombolo Books is proud to partner with Pride and Less Prejudice and their founder Lisa Forman for an interview of local author and friend of the bookstore Rob Sanders! 

To register for the event fill out the form on Pride and Less Prejudice's website.

Rob Sanders is a teacher who writes and a writer who teaches. He is known for his funny and fierce fiction and nonfiction picture books and is recognized as one of the pioneers in the arena of LGBTQ+ literary nonfiction picture books. Rob's 2020 releases included THE FIGHTING  INFANTRYMAN: THE STORY OF ALBERT D. J. CASHIER, TRANSGENDER CIVIL WAR  SOLIDER (Little Bee Books), MAYOR PETE: THE STORY OF PETE BUTTIGIEG  (Henry Holt & Co.) and BLING BLAINE: THROW GLITTER, NOT SHADE  (Sterling). Rob is co-regional advisor for SCBWI Florida and a frequent speaker, teacher, and critiquer.

A native of Springfield, Missouri, he has lived in Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee. After earning a B.S. in Elementary Education and a Master’s Degree in Religious Education, Rob worked for fifteen years in children’s religious educational publishing as a writer, educational consultant, trainer, editor, editorial group manager, and product developer.

In 2006, Rob moved to Florida and began working as an elementary school teacher. Soon he was serving as a district writing trainer and resource teacher. These days you’ll find him teaching fourth graders about books and words and reading and writing at Mintz Elementary School in Brandon, Florida.

The mission of Pride and Less Prejudice (PLP) is to promote positive LGBTQ representation by providing LGBTQ-inclusive books to pre-K through 3rd-grade classrooms. We believe that such representation will not only normalize LGBTQ identities in classrooms, but it will also foster the support of LGBTQ and questioning youth themselves, making them feel more at home in educational spaces. Additionally, it will benefit other children by introducing them to perspectives different from their own. This will result in more empathetic classrooms and compassionate communities for all.

 

Brace yourself for our next foray into the supernatural with Tombolo's Horror Book Club. This month, we're reading The Reddening by Adam L.G. Nevill.

Lifestyle journalist Katrine escaped past traumas by moving to a coast renowned for seaside holidays and natural beauty. But when a vast hoard of human remains and prehistoric artefacts is discovered in nearby Brickburgh, a hideous shadow engulfs her life.

Helene, a disillusioned lone parent, lost her brother, Lincoln, six years ago. Disturbing subterranean noises he recorded prior to vanishing, draw her to Brickburgh's caves. A site where early humans butchered each other across sixty thousand years. Upon the walls, images of their nameless gods remain.

Amidst rumours of drug plantations and new sightings of the mythical red folk, it also appears that the inquisitive have been disappearing from this remote part of the world for years. A rural idyll where outsiders are unwelcome and where an infernal power is believed to linger beneath the earth. A timeless supernormal influence that only the desperate would dream of confronting. But to save themselves and those they love, and to thwart a crimson tide of pitiless barbarity, Kat and Helene are given no choice. They were involved and condemned before they knew it.

The Reddening is an epic story of folk and prehistoric horrors, written by the author of The Ritual and three times winner of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel.

Tombolo Books' Horror book club takes readers beyond the big-name authors and into the exciting, twisted, masterful world of modern horror. From melancholic body horror to gorgeous, tragic tales of the occult, our picks celebrate the genre's diverse authors and literary range.

To join us, RSVP at bookclubs@tombolobooks.com to receive a Zoom link. 

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.

For now, we're meeting virtually. There is no cost to join.

For our February meeting, we'll be discussing The Purpose of Power by Alicia Garza, who in 2013, wrote what she called “a love letter to Black people” on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Garza wrote: 
 
Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. 
 
With the speed and networking capacities of social media, #BlackLivesMatter became the hashtag heard ’round the world. But Garza knew even then that hashtags don’t start movements—people do. 
 
Long before #BlackLivesMatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza had spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about organizing. The lessons she offers are different from the “rules for radicals” that animated earlier generations of activists, and diverge from the charismatic, patriarchal model of the American civil rights movement. She reflects instead on how making room amongst the woke for those who are still awakening can inspire and activate more people to fight for the world we all deserve. 
 
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.

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. There is no cost to join — new members are always welcome. February's selection is the award-winning collection Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American writer who calls Miami home. Her stories often explore power, injustice and the lives of women. A romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends. A marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences. A young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival. Two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives. A baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new. A man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity. At once wide in scope and intimate, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull us together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.  “Haunting, profound—an answered prayer for those who have long treasured [Danticat’s] essential contributions to the Caribbean literary canon.” —O, The Oprah Magazine To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, please email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com.

Body Electric members are welcome to join us in person or virtually for our free, monthly gathering of The Body Electric Book Club. February's selection is Breath: New Science of a Lost Art by James Nester.
 
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.
 
Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.
  
The BE Book Club is facilitated by Carley Siedlecki. Books are available locally from Tombolo Books and at The Body Electric Yoga Company and The Body Electric Athletic Company. The Body Electric Book Club meets every second Thursday at The BE Athletic, 655 31st. St. South, St. Pete.

America's Writing Coach, Roy Peter Clark is back with the second installment in a series of workshops for writers of all sorts! This time Clark will teach from Murder Your Darlings: And other gentle writing advice from Aristotle to Zinsser . 

Admission to the workshop is $10. That $10 will be applied to a gift card that you can use as store credit towards your next purchase. Be sure to indicate in the notes section of your purchase if you would like to pick up your gift card in the store or have it mailed to an address you provide. 

With so many excellent writing guides lining bookstore shelves, it can be hard to know where to look for the best advice. Should you go with Natalie Goldberg or Anne Lamott? Maybe William Zinsser or Stephen King would be more appropriate. Then again, what about the classics -- Strunk and White, or even Aristotle himself?

Thankfully, your search is over. In Murder Your Darlings, Roy Peter Clark, who has been a beloved and revered writing teacher to children and Pulitzer Prize winners alike for more than thirty years, has compiled a remarkable collection of more than 100 of the best writing tips from fifty of the best writing books of all time.

With a chapter devoted to each key strategy, Clark expands and contextualizes the original author's suggestions and offers anecdotes about how each one helped him or other writers sharpen their skills. An invaluable resource for writers of all kinds, Murder Your Darlings is an inspiring and edifying ode to the craft of writing.

Roy Peter Clark, a writer who teaches and a teacher who writes, is vice president and senior scholar of the Poynter Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for journalists in the world. He has written or edited 14 books about writing and journalism. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Tombolo Book Club highlights the best of literary fiction and non-fiction. Moreover, it's a gathering space for our smart, funny, thoughtful and incisive literary community. 

We meet every other month, on the fourth Thursday, at 6:30 p.m. For now, we're doing things virtually. There is no cost to join. 

For our February meeting, we'll be reading Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by the sharp and insightful writer Bess Kalb.

Even after she left home for Hollywood, Emmy-nominated TV writer Bess Kalb saved every voicemail her grandmother Bobby Bell ever left her. Bobby was a force—irrepressible, glamorous, unapologetically opinionated. Bobby doted on Bess; Bess adored Bobby. Then, at 90, Bobby died. But in this debut memoir, Bobby is speaking to Bess once more, in a voice as passionate as it ever was in life.
 
Recounting both family lore and family secrets, Bobby brings us four generations of indomitable women and the men who loved them. There’s Bobby’s mother, who traveled solo from Belarus to America in the 1880s to escape the pogroms, and Bess’s mother, a 1970s rebel who always fought against convention. But it was Bobby and Bess who always had the most powerful bond: Bobby her granddaughter’s fiercest supporter, giving Bess unequivocal love, even if sometimes of the toughest kind. Nobody Will Tell You This But Me marks the creation of a totally new, virtuosic form of memoir: a reconstruction of a beloved grandmother’s words and wisdom to tell her family’s story with equal parts poignancy and hilarity.

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

Join us for a launch date celebration of Tenea D. Johnson's highly anticipated release Broken Fevers!  Johnson will be in conversation with professor, author, and creative coach Michele Tracy Berger. 

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 order a signed copy of the book HERE. 
 

“Tenea Johnson’s new collection, Broken Fevers, is a wide-ranging selection of stories—science  fiction, dark fantasy, horror, folk tales and mythologies, country magic—presented in clear, crisp  writing, minus all affectation, and electric with undercurrents of politics, feminism, and social  justice. For lovers of the short story, don’t miss this powerful voice.” 

                  — Jeffrey Ford, author of A Natural History of Hell 

 

From humor to horror, the speculative fiction in Broken Fevers has a gleaming edge. This new  collection by award winner Tenea D. Johnson features thirteen tales. Though many are dark, they  pull one through the light, if only for a moment, to visit the next vista, a new world, or this one  recast in an uncertain future. Whether it be the lengths a woman will go to for performance art  or how best to communicate the Middle Passage’s horrors to the privileged, darkness has room to  breathe here and bring wonder.  
 

Social commentary and genetic adaptation exist alongside fairy crises, alien liminalities, and the  responsibilities of those holding up the world and those who communicate with the next. Broken  Fevers shares the heart in the hurt, the courage in a cataclysm, and the connections that make we  wherever we find ourselves.  

Tenea D. Johnson was born in Kentucky. From it, she took the calm of the Ohio River and the  swell of honesty (sometimes refreshing, sometimes catastrophic) that afflicts the folks born along  its banks. Writing sustains her; music saves her. As often as possible, she straddles their borders to  create compositions/fusions/hyphenated watchamacallit better heard than described. Her work  has appeared in Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism, African Voices, Arise, Humanities in  the South, Sycrorax’s Daughters, Contemporary American Women Poets, Shades of Blue  and Gray, Whispers in the Night: Dark Dreams III and Necrologue, among others. She is the  author of a poetry/short prose collection, Starting Friction as well as the novels, Smoketown,  R/evolution, and Evolution. Smoketown won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award; R/evolution received an honorable mention the same year.
 

 Michele Tracy Berger is a professor, a writer, a   creativity coach and a pug-lover. Her main   loves are writing speculative fiction, though she also is known to write poetry and creative nonfiction, too. Her short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction has appeared, or is forthcoming in 100 Word Story, Glint Literary Journal, The Wild Word, Thing Magazine, Blood and Bourbon, FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, Flying South, Oracle: Fine Arts Review, Carolina Woman, Ms., The Feminist Wire, Western North Carolina Woman, various zines and anthologies. She is the 2019 winner of the Carl Brandon Kindred Award from the Carl Brandon Society for her story "Doll Seed" published in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. In 2020, her science fiction novella, "Reenu-You" about a mysterious virus transmitted through a hair care product billed as a natural hair relaxer, was published by Falstaff Books. Much of her work explores psychological horror, especially through issues of race and gender.

 

Reading Minds, Tombolo Books' 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. 

We're diving into a staff favorite and store bestseller, now in paperback, that takes aim at some of the biggest topics weighing on our minds: time, justice, climate, attention and creativity. How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell will make for a rich and fascinating discussion. 

In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives.
 
Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.

Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.

To join our free discussion of this unforgettable book, please email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com. This year, we are also creating a Facebook community to further our discussions. We'd love to have you!

Tombolo Books is thrilled to host Maria Ingrande Mora to celebrate the release of her book Fragile Remedy! Mora will be joined by author Lindsey Miller for this exciting event! 

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 order a signed copy of the book HERE. Your purchase of the book from Tombolo exclusively will also come with bookmarks and stickers! 

Sixteen-year-old Nate is a Gem - a Genetically Engineered Medical Surrogate - created by Gathos City scientists as a cure for the elite from the fatal lung rot ravaging the population. As a child, Nate was smuggled out of the laboratory where he was held captive and into the Withers - a quarantined, lawless region. He manages to survive by becoming a Tinker, fixing broken tech in exchange for food or a safe place to sleep. When he meets Reed, a kind and fiercely protective boy that makes his heart race, and his misfit gang of scavengers, Nate finds the family he's always longed for - even if he can't risk telling them what he is.

But Gathos created a genetic failsafe in their Gems - a flaw in their DNA that causes their health to rapidly deteriorate as they age unless they are regularly dosed with medication controlled by Gathos City. When violence erupts across the Withers, Nate's illegal supply of medicine is cut off, and a vicious attack on Reed threatens to expose his secret. With time running out, Nate is left with only two options: work for a shadowy terrorist organization that has the means to keep him alive, or stay - and die - with the boy he loves.

Maria Ingrande Mora is a graduate of the University of Florida, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English with a focus in creative writing. She is a marketing executive with over 18 years of experience building brand narratives, editorial strategies, and digital campaigns for clients across multiple industries.

 

She is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and is on the board of directors of Keep St. Pete Lit, a non-profit promoting literacy through art, education and events in Tampa Bay. A single mom, Ingrande Mora lives in St. Petersburg with her two middle schoolers and a small menagerie of rescue animals. 

 

FRAGILE REMEDY is her debut. 

Linsey Miller grew up in Arkansas and has previously been a crime lab intern, neuroscience (undergrad) lab assistant, and pharmacy technician. She is represented by Rachel Brooks of Bookends Literary and holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Wichita State University. She can currently be found writing about science and magic anywhere there is coffee. She is the author of Mask of Shadows and Ruin of Stars. Her most recent books are Belle Révolte, a French-inspired fantasy about two girls who swap places to study magic, and The Game, a young adult thriller about a game of assassins that turns deadly. Her next book, What We Devour (July 2021), is a young adult dark fantasy about dangerous magic, a curious boy, and the terrible choices we are sometimes forced to make.

 

The Tombolo Book Club highlights the best of literary fiction and non-fiction. Moreover, it's a gathering space for our smart, funny, thoughtful and incisive literary community. 

We meet every other month, on the fourth Thursday, at 6:30 p.m. For now, we're doing things virtually. There is no cost to join. 

For our April meeting, we'll be reading the National Book Award-winning Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, a staff pick recommended by not one but four Tombolo booksellers.

"One of the funniest books of the year. . . . A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire." —The Washington Post

From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.

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

It's Independent Bookstore Day! We will have special exclusives from some of our favorite authors including Jeff VanderMeer! Nikki Giovanni! Stephen King and Joe Hill! and Nigella Lawson!

Details to come!