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 safe and uncomfortable 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 simply ask all  members to observe our community agreements (see "Group Rules" on our Facebook group by requesting to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1209081876153121).

For our April 13^th pick we are reading We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown.

“Cancel” or “call-out” culture is a source of much tension and debate in American society. The infamous "Harper’s Letter,” signed by public intellectuals of both the left and right, sought to settle the matter and only caused greater division. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to address harm and take down powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, call outs are seen by some as having gone too far. But what is “too far” when you’re talking about imbalances of power and patterns of harm? And what happens when people in social justice movements direct their righteous anger inward at one another?

InWe Will Not Cancel Us, movement mediator adrienne maree brown reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible paths beyond this impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes even from from its targets. However, brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, if it doesn’t, how do we seek accountability and redress for harm in ways that reflect our values?

To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com. And stay tuned for our May pick!

The only thing better than one book release is TWO! Florida authors Gale Massey and Tyler Gillespie will be in conversation about their exciting new releases. Massey, award-winning author of The Girl from Blind River, returns with a collection of transformative new stories, Rising And Other Stories. She will be joined by poet and celebrated journalist, Tyler Gillespie, whose book The Thing About Florida gives readers a glimpse into the author's upbringing in the Sunshine State. 

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 your copy of the books HERE and HERE! 

In story after story in her new collection, Rising and Other Stories, Gale Massey illustrates the moments that shape and alter destiny. Bringing each to life through interconnected themes of moving water and transience, Massey shares with us an unvarnished narrative of a world that objectifies women and the strength and resourcefulness required to attempt to overcome those limitations.

Meanwhile, in The Thing About Florida, Gillespie who was once embarrassed to call Florida home, faces his Florida denial and takes readers on an exuberant search for the state behind the caricatures, cutting through the media storm with curiosity and humor. His journey leads him to unexpected places such as halfway houses, gator pits, venom rooms, and clothing-optional campgrounds, where he meets eclectic and unconventional Floridians who have been misrepresented in news stories.


 Gale Massey is also the author of the   novel,THE GIRL FROM BLIND RIVER (July,   2018; Crooked Lane Books), which received   a 2018 Florida Book Award and was a   finalist for the Clara Johnson Award. Her   work has been featured in Lambda   Literary, CutBank, CrimeReads, Sabal, the   Tampa Bay Times, Saw Palm and Tampa   Bay Noir. Gale was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference and a fellow at Writers in Paradise, and has served as a panel judge for the Lambda Literary Awards. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in both fiction and nonfiction.

 Tyler Gillespie, a fifth-generation Floridian, is a   poet and award-winning journalist. He has   written for GQ, the Guardian, the Nation, VICE,   and Salon. he is the author of Florida Man:   Poems and coeditor of The Awkward Phase: The   Uplifting Tales of Those Weird Kids You Went To   School With.
 

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.

April’s selection is Zora Neale Hurston’s classic autoethnography, Mules and Men, the first great collection of Black America’s folk world.

In the 1930s, Hurston returned to her ‘native village’ of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons, and songs dating back to the time of slavery which she remembered hearing as a child. In her quest, she found herself and her history throughout these highly metaphorical folk-tales, ‘big old lies,’ and the lyrical language of song. With this collection, Zora Neal Hurston has come to reveal and preserve a beautiful and important part of American culture, testifying to her belief that, in her biographer Robert Hemenway’s words, “folk were creating art that didn’t need the sanction of art to affirm its beauty.” Join us as we salute one of Florida’s greatest writers through one of her most groundbreaking books.

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

Next month (May), we will be reading Peter Matthiessen’s Killing Mister Watson.

May marks the third anniversary of Green Book Tampa Bay, so co-founders Hillary Van Dyke and Joshua Bean will be joining Gwendolyn Reese to talk about the history of the "Negro Motorist Green Book" which was a necessary guide for Black travelers in the Jim Crow south. It allowed Black people to safely travel through the south, providing information on safe accommodations, food, service stations, and the like.

The group will also discuss Green Book Tampa Bay, which provides our area with a guide to Black-owned businesses, historic and cultural sites, and artist for all of Tampa Bay support. Van Dyke and Bean will discuss the origins of Green Book Tampa Bay, its mission, and its vital role in our community. 

Sign up for the event by filling out the GOOGLE FORM. A link will be sent to you closer to the event date.


 With over a decade of experience as
 an educator, ensuring a future for the   lives of Black youth is a passion of   Hillary Van Dyke’s. While pursuing her   master’s degree in Educational   Leadership from the University of   South Florida- St Petersburg, she   became especially interested in   achieving educational equity. Since   then, she worked as a Diversity, Equity,   Inclusion practitioner training people   from a variety of sectors on bias and racism. She is also the co-founder of the Green Book of Tampa Bay, host of Podcast Pedagogy, a volunteer leader of Outdoor Afro, and pursuing a doctorate in social sciences curriculum and instruction at the University of South Florida.

Joshua Bean is a Prevention Specialist for Pinellas County Schools. Bean co-chairs the Social Justice Committee at Temple Beth-El in St. Petersburg, FL and he is also the co-founder of Green Book of Tampa Bay. During his free time he enjoys traveling with his wife and two daughters, watching college football, reading books on race and history, going to concerts and collecting vinyl.


 

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 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.

Join us this Earth Day for a free, outdoor poetry reading from some of the poets of @Neptunepoetrymag! The event will take place in our courtyard. Mask are required and social distancing measures will be in place. 

The featured readers are Stephanie Sarkissian, author of Trip Around the Sun, Maureen McDole, creator of Keep St.Pete Lit and Longing for the Deep End, Denzel Johnson-Green creator of Community Poetry and Neptune, Anthony Patterson, author of Life in Traffic and Sara Ries Dziekonski, author of Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor.

The poets will be reading their poems from April’s Neptune as well as past issues and they’ll also be signing copies, so make sure to get a copy of April’s special National Poetry Month issue that releases on the 13th!

Modeled after Record Store Day, Independent Bookstore Day is a nationally recognized annual event that brings attention and support to indies around the country. Publishers produce unique, limited-edition books and art pieces that are available ONLY on Independent Bookstore Day and ONLY from participating bookshops.  

In addition to limited edition books and prints, Tombolo Books will celebrate by hosting a tabletop sale featuring children’s books in the courtyard the bookstore shares with Squeeze Juice Works and Black Crow Coffee.

Event highlights: 

• Limited edition Indie Bookstore Day merchandise and signed books 
• Tabletop kids’ books sale in courtyard - 25% off select kid’s books (30% off for teachers)
• Pop Goes The Waffle food truck will be on site with waffle pops from 12:00-3:00 PM
• Masks are required unless guests are seated and eating in the courtyard
• This event is unticketed and free to the public
• In-store shopping will be limited capacity and reservations are recommended (find reservation form at tombolobooks.com)

"Bookstores are more than just repositories of knowledge. They’re living, breathing, evolving representations of our best selves. I love Independent Bookstore Day because it asks readers, writers, and booksellers to join in celebrating all that bookstores represent. It’s a gathering to remind ourselves that the written word can both change us and the world, and of what’s possible when we all come together.” – Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Independent Bookstore Day ambassador









 

Tombolo Books welcomes debut author Melissa Hope for a virtual launch day celebration of her middle grade, action-packed novel Sea of Kings. Melissa will be joined by Megan E. Freeman, middle grade and YA author and poet, for a conversation and Q&A session. 

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 your copy of Sea of Kings HERE and receive a signed bookplate and bookmark with your book! 

You can also purchase a copy of Megan E. Freeman's middle grade novel Alone HERE!

More about Sea of Kings: 
Thirteen-year-old Prince Noa has hated the ocean since the day it
caused his mother’s death. But staying away from the sea isn't
easy on his tropical island home, where he's stuck trying to keep
up with his overconfident younger brother Dagan—the brawn to Noa’s brains.

When a vengeful pirate lays siege to their home, Noa and Dagan
narrowly escape with their lives. Armed with a stolen ship, a haphazardly assembled crew, and a magical map that makes as
much sense as slugs in a salt bath, the brothers set sail for the realm’s other kingdoms in search of help.

But navigating the sea proves deadlier than Noa’s worst fears. To free his home, Noa must solve the map’s confusing charts and confront the legendary one-eyed pirate before an evil force spreads across the realm and destroys the very people Noa means to protect.

Melissa Hope earned her degree in English and is passionate about sharing her knowledge to help writers improve their craft and connect with the writing community. She escaped the frostbite normalcy of Canadian winters to live in Florida with her family, cat, and growing collection of scuba gear. Visit her website to watch free writing tutorials.
https://www.authormelissahope.com/

 Megan E. Freeman attended an elementary school   where poets visited her classroom every week to   teach poetry and she has been a writer ever since.   She writes middle grade and young adult fiction, and   her debut middle grade novel-in-verse ALONE is   available from Simon & Schuster/Aladdin. Megan is   also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and her poetry   collection, Lessons on Sleeping Alone, was published   by Liquid Light Press. An award-winning teacher with   decades of classroom experience, Megan is nationally   recognized for her work leading workshops and   speaking to audiences across the country. Megan used to live in northeast Los Angeles, central Ohio, northern Norway, and on Caribbean cruise ships. Now she lives in northern Colorado. 
https://www.meganefreeman.com/

To close out National Poetry Month, Tombolo is thrilled to host Gloria Muñoz and an exciting group of local poets for a celebration of poetry and specifically Muñoz's newest collection, Danzirly. The line-up includes Yuki Jackson, JD Scott, Eleanor Eichenbaum, and Melissa Carroll, all joining Muñoz to share their work. 

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. 
 
Danzirly is a striking bilingual poetry collection that fiercely examines the nuances of the American Dream for Latinx people in the United States. With a backdrop of stringent immigration policies, the #MeToo movement, and the increasingly tangible threat of climate change, this collection considers multi-generational Latinx identities in a rapidly changing country and world. Through the author’s Colombian American lens, the poems explore the intersections of culture, gender, history, and intergenerational grief.

Danzirly does not shy away from confronting traditional gender roles, religion, and anxieties surrounding climate change and the digital age. Gloria Muñoz addresses Latinx stereotypes and powerfully dismantles them in poetic form, juxtaposing the promised wonders of a life in America with the harsh re-alities that immigrants face as they build their lives and raise their families here.

Gloria Muñoz is a Colombian American writer,   literary translator, and advocate for multilingual   literacy and writing. Her poetry book Dawn's   Early / Danzirly was awarded the Academy of   American Poets 2019 Ambroggio Prize. She has   also been honored by Lumina’s Multilingual   Nonfiction Writing Award, a Las Musas   Mentorship for Latinx and nonbinary authors, a   New York State Summer Writers Institute   Fellowship, a Creative Pinellas Grant, a University   of South Florida Humanities Poetry Award, and a St. Petersburg Arts Alliance’s Jim Rolston Professional Development Grant. Muñoz is also the author of the chapbook Your Biome Has Found You. In the fall of 2019, she was selected to attend the inaugural Tin House YA Fiction Workshop. A proponent of cross-disciplinary collaboration, Muñoz has worked alongside botanists, musicians, dancers, historians, classicists, visual artists, conservationists, and neuroscientists. She is a co-founder of Pitch Her Productions and she is one-half of the songwriting team Moonlit Musíca.

 Yuki Jackson is a Black and Japanese poet whose   work has appeared in Cream City Review, Four Way   Review, Foundry, Entropy and other publications.   She is also an educator and founder of The   Battleground, a youth program in the Sulphur   Springs neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Her   writing is inspired by her Soka Gakkai International   Buddhist practice, hip-hop lyricism and the art   within daily life. For more on Yuki's work, check out   YukiJackson.com. 

 JD Scott is the author of the story   collection Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours   of the Day (&NOW Books, 2020) and the poetry   collection Mask for Mask (New Rivers Press,   2021).   Scott’s writing has appeared in Best   Experimental   Writing, Best New Poets, Denver   Quarterly, Prairie   Schooner, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere.

 Eleanor Eichenbaum is a writer and educator. She holds   graduate degrees focused in Literature and in   Architectural Studies. Eleanor has been honored to   attend residencies at Trelex in Paris, France and the   Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL.   She teaches at Ringling College of Art and Design.

 Melissa Carroll is a writer, yoga teacher, and a farmer in   Bradenton, FL. She's the author of the poetry chapbook   The Karma Machine, which received the Peter Meinke   Award, and the poetry collection Body of Starlight.   Melissa is the editor of the essay collection Going OM.   She currently teaches online courses on mindfulness,   creative writing, and yoga philosophy.
 

Tombolo Books' Horror Book Club delves into Grady Hendrix's playful -- and terrifying -- HORRORSTÖR.

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

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 a book club, fill out this form to receive a Zoom link. 

After this, we will be reading The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni. Don't miss it!

Join Fairgrounds Immersive Learning, Keep St. Pete Lit and Tombolo Books in celebrating all things Florida by joining our #FLORIDARAMA Book Club!! 

Join Fairgrounds, author Dantiel W. Moniz and Keep St. Pete Lit’s Maureen McDole for a virtual discussion of Milk Blood Heat.
 

Each month we’ll delve into Florida together by reading a sunshine state inspired story. At the end of each book, we’ll come together for a virtual discussion led by Maureen McDole, the Executive Director of Keep St. Pete Lit, and other special guests.

 

Keep St. Pete Lit celebrates and promotes greater St. Pete’s literary community – past, present and future – through arts, education and events with a literary twist. In honor of our partnership with Keep St. Lit, Fairgrounds will donate 100% of book club profits to support their ongoing efforts in St. Pete. To see what great work they’re doing in the community, check out https://keepstpetelit.org/

 

In addition, we’re excited to support a local business by partnering with Tombolo Books to supply Floridarama Bookclub selected books. Buy online to utilize their curbside pick-up, or book an in-store shopping appointment to check out their charming shop and grab this month’s pick by the door! To place a book order, visit Tombolo’s Book club page!

Sign up for our Insiders Club today to learn more about this upcoming program and to be the first to know about all things Fairgrounds!
Pay what you can, as 100% of book club profits support Keep St. Pete Lit’s ongoing literacy efforts!

To register, please visit this link.
After you purchase a ticket, a Zoom link will be emailed to you.

Join is in welcoming back America's Writing Coach, Roy Peter Clark for the third installment in his series of writing workshops. We are tackling grammar this month! Clark will guide this workshop using his book How To Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times.

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. 

In How to Write Short, Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed-from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill.

Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services. With examples from the long tradition of short-form writing in Western culture, How to Write Short guides writers to crafting brilliant prose, even in 140 characters.

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.

Reading Minds delves into books about the brain. Our readings take us through different genres, dark valleys, uplifting stories, and new strategies for understanding our minds. We meet every other month, on the first Thursday, at 7 p.m. For now, we'll be meeting virtually. There is no cost to join.  

For our May meeting, our reading selection is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb.

"Every year, nearly 30 million Americans sit on a therapist’s couch—and some of these patients are therapists. In her remarkable new book, Lori Gottlieb tells us that despite her license and rigorous training, her most significant credential is that she’s a card-carrying member of the human race. “I know what it’s like to be a person,” she writes, as a crisis causes her world to come crashing down.

Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives—a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys (even one from the waiting room)—she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb reveals our blind spots, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.”

Our facilitator is local mental health counselor and social worker Lindsey Epperson. To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com . 

Up next, we'll be reading Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski in July.

Tombolo Books is thrilled to announce our first in person event of the year! For this special occasion, we are welcoming bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews to our courtyard to celebrate the release of her latest book set in Treasure Island, The Newcomer! 

Andrews will personalize books starting at 5:30pm. At 7pm, critically acclaimed local author, Lisa Unger will join Andrews for a conversation and Q&A. Light refreshments will be served, and masks are required for entry. Social distancing measures will be in place. 

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.

May’s selection is Peter Matthiessen’s Killing Mister Watson (1990)—the first of three novels inspired by the frontier years of South Florida.

In Killing Mister Watson, Matthiessen weaves historical fact with fictional artistry to portray the rise and fall of Edgar J. Watson (1855-1910), an outlaw-turned-entrepreneur who lived in the Florida Everglades at the turn of the twentieth century. As a New York Times review put it: “Aggressive and gregarious, without ethics or introspection, both hugely talented and dangerously addicted to untamed power, Edgar Watson finally seems to represent great potential gone awry, or America at its worst. Exploratory and exciting, handsomely researched and written, attuned to the necessary preservation of the heart and soul of the world, Killing Mister Watson represents Peter Matthiessen at his best.

Join us as we venture into the wilds of Florida history with an acclaimed American novelist and nature writer!

To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, please email bookclubs@tombolobooks.com, or use this simple form.

Next month (June), we will be reading Susan Cerulean’s I Have Been Assigned The Single Bird: A Daughter’s Memoir — featuring a guest visit from the author herself!

Tombolo Books is heading to the rink for this exciting event! Author Angie Bullaro will be with us to talk about her picture book Breaking the Ice: The True Story of the First Woman to Play in the National Hockey League. Bullaro will be joined by Manon Rhéaume whose incredible life and hockey career is told in the book. 

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 your copy of the book HERE!

“One day, a woman will play in the National Hockey League. If no one prevents her,” said a twelve-year-old Manon Rhéaume. Manon always dreamed of playing hockey. So, when the team her father coached needed a goalie, five-year-old Manon begged for the chance to play. She didn’t care that she’d be the only girl in the entire league or that hockey was considered a “boys’ sport” in her hometown of Lac-Beauport, Quebec, Canada. All she cared about was the game. After her father gave her that first chance to play, she embarked on a spectacular, groundbreaking career in hockey.

At every level of competition, Manon was faced with naysayers, but she continued to play, earning her place on prestigious teams and ultimately becoming the first woman to play a game in the NHL. Including an afterword written by Manon herself, Breaking the Ice is the true story of one girl’s courage, determination, and love for the sport.
 

Stories have always been an important part of Angie Bullaro’s life. Whether writing tall tales perched in her favorite climbing tree or soaking up family stories around the loud Italian kitchen table every Sunday, Angie has always been immersed in the written and spoken word. This love of stories fueled her desire to be an actress and writer from an early age.
 

Angie has been is numerous films, TV shows, commercials, and plays. Recently, she combined her love of acting and writing by penning the screenplay for Between the Pipes, a feature film based on the true story of Manon Rhéaume — the first and only woman to play in the National Hockey League. Angie stars in the film as Manon. 

 Manon Rhéaume is a retired Canadian   hockey player and Olympian. She became   the first and only woman to play   in the NHL, and is the only woman to play
 in any of the four major American sports   leagues when she took the ice for the   Tampa Bay Lightning in 1992.

Join us in person or virtually for our free, monthly gathering of The Body Electric Book Club. 
 
Matthew McConaughey's Greenlights is a book about finding oneself by a process of elimination. Unlike many other autobiographies, the anecdotes he chooses to tell are not picked to generate headlines, but to give an insight into how he has become the man he is.
 
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.

With the crime travel book club, we travel the world with some of the world's best contemporary crime writers as our guides. We read crime fiction from a different country each month. We'll be scouring the globe for new voices, new motives, and all the familiar satisfaction of a well-crafted mystery novel.

Our May read is The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason, a thriller set in Iceland.
   
A deeply compassionate story of old crimes and their consequences, The Shadow District is the first in a thrilling new series by internationally bestselling author Arnaldur Indridason.

THE PAST
In wartime Reykjavik, Iceland, a young woman is found strangled in 'the shadow district', a rough and dangerous area of the city. An Icelandic detective and a member of the American military police are on the trail of a brutal killer.

THE PRESENT
A 90-year-old man is discovered dead on his bed, smothered with his own pillow. Konrad, a former detective now bored with retirement, finds newspaper cuttings reporting the WWII shadow district murder in the dead man’s home. It’s a crime that Konrad remembers, having grown up in the same neighborhood.

A MISSING LINK
Why, after all this time, would an old crime resurface? Did the police arrest the wrong man? Will Konrad's link to the past help him solve the case and finally lay the ghosts of WWII Reykjavik to rest?

To join the club and receive a Zoom link, please fill out this form.

In collaboration with The Writing Barn, Little Bee Books, and GLADD Tombolo Books is inviting you to join us for a virtual launch celebration of Two Grooms on a Cake: The Story of America’s First Gay Wedding, a picture book biography written by local author Rob Sanders and illustrated by Robbie Cathro!

Rob and Robbie will be joined by special guests Michael McConnell and Jack Baker, America’s first legally married gay couple and the inspiration for the book, as well as Anthony Ramos, a representative from GLAAD.

To register for the event on The Writing Barn's website, click HERE! You can pre-order your signed copies of Two Grooms on a Cake HERE! 

Long before marriage equality was the law of the land, two grooms stood on a wedding cake with their feet firmly planted in fluffy white frosting. That cake belonged to Jack Baker and Michael McConnell, who were wed on September 3, 1971, becoming the first same-sex couple in America to be legally married. Their struggle to obtain a marriage license in Minnesota and their subsequent appeals to the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of the United States is an under-told story of LGBTQ+ history. This beautiful book celebrates the love story of two pioneers of marriage equality for all through the baking of their wedding cake!

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. This year Rob will release TWO GROOMS ON A CAKE: THE STORY OF AMERICA’S FIRST GAY WEDDING (Little Bee Books) and STITCH BY STITCH: CLEVE JONES AND THE AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT (Magination Press). His 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. He is represented by Rubin Pfeffer.

 Robbie Cathro is an Illustrator & Storyteller living   in Bristol, UK, who loves to make fun, colourful   and charismatic work for kids books and   magazines. All of which are inspired by the stories   he’s read, the animation he loves or the small   stories you find in the corners of your day-to-   day. He aims to make the sorts of work that   didn’t exist when he was younger, stories that let   kids know that they’re seen. He loves limited   palettes, atmospheric textures and lively   characters. His first picture book, ‘Be Your Own Man’ (written by Jess Sanders) – a unique book that encourages young kids that identify as a boy to broaden their ideas about what it means to be a boy, supporting them to feel free and proud to be who they truly are – was released in 2020 with Five Mile Books. And his new book ‘Two Grooms on a Cake’ (written by Rob Sanders), telling the real life story of America’s first gay wedding, is released in Summer 2021 with Little Bee Books.

 Michael McConnell and Jack Baker are   America’s first legally married gay couple.   They were married in Minneapolis in   September 1971 in a small ceremony   officiated by a United Methodist minister,   with an official license issued by a rural   Minnesota county. They met in October 1966.   in Norman, Oklahoma. In 2010, Michael   retired from the Hennepin County Library system and Jack retired from his careers in law and engineering. They live in Minneapolis.

 Anthony Ramos serves as GLAAD’s Head of Talent   and official entertainment correspondent.  With   more than 15 years of experience in the   entertainment industry, Ramos also serves as   Supervising Producer of the GLAAD Media Awards.     Since his start with GLAAD in September 2017, Ramos   has secured A-list talent to help with GLAAD’s work   including:  Beyonce & JAY-Z, Madonna, Britney   Spears, Cher, Taylor Swift, Ricky Martin, Barbra   Streisand, Demi Lovato, Andy Cohen, Faith Hill & Tim   McGraw, Billy Porter, Adam Lambert, Sarah Jessica   Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ryan Murphy, Jim Parsons,   Ava DuVernay, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, and Janet Mock to name a few.  Prior to joining GLAAD, Ramos was an Emmy-nominated producer and correspondent for Access Hollywood and Access Hollywood Live. There, he produced and commented on content focusing on TV, music and fashion, and strategized to increase LGBTQ inclusion, bringing LGBTQ celebrities and stories to millions of viewers.

 

The Sci-fi Book Club reads KLARA AND THE SUN
Wednesday, May 26, 2021 | 6:30PM - 7:30PM
We will meet IN PERSON, outside, in our courtyard. 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE || ROBOTS || LOVE

Tombolo Books' Sci-fi Book Club debuts with its first pick, delving into Kazuo Ishiguro's enchanting & thrilling new release; Klara and the Sun. 

Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. 

She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara she is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In this luminous tale, Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

Tombolo Books' Sci-fi book club is here to take readers & skeptics alike beyond the realities of today and into the world of the improbable made possible. Follow us as we read picks across all sub-genres of science fiction written by a wide array of diverse authors. This club is welcome to ALL readers - whether you're a veteran or new to the genre! 

To join a book club, fill out this form to receive a Zoom link. 

After this, we will be reading This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar. Don't miss it!

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 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 May meeting, we'll be reading Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by the bestselling author of Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe.

It's a grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin.

The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.

   This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.  Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful.

      Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes.

Our facilitator is local librarian Mallory Arents. To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, please sign up on this form. 

Tombolo Books' Horror Book Club meets to discuss our latest foray into the genre, with Danielle Trussoni's The Ancestor.

After a DNA test reveals that Alberta “Bert” Monte is the sole heir of a wealthy noble family in the Italian Alps, she leaves New York to visit the family estate: Montebianco Castle, a centuries-old compound isolated in the mountains. What appeared to be a fairy tale inheritance, however, soon turns into a nightmare as Bert begins to uncover the dark legacy of her family: the truth about the abandoned village at the base of the castle; the whispers of stolen children; and the rumors of a legendary monster in the mountains.

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 a book club, fill out this form to receive a Zoom link. 

With the crime travel book club, we travel the world with some of the world's best contemporary crime writers as our guides. We read crime fiction from a different country each month. We'll be scouring the globe for new voices, new motives, and all the familiar satisfaction of a well-crafted mystery novel.

Our June read is Six Four by Japanese writer Hideo Yokoyama, hailed as a "literary master at the top of his form."

For five days, the parents of a seven-year-old Japanese schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter’s kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. And they would never see their daughter alive again.

Fourteen years later, the mystery remains unsolved. The police department’s press officer—Yoshinobu Mikami, a former detective who was involved in the original case and who is now himself the father of a missing daughter—is forced to revisit the botched investigation. The stigma of the case known as “Six Four” has never faded; the police’s failure remains a profound source of shame and an unending collective responsibility.

Mikami does not aspire to solve the crime. He has worked in the department for his entire career, and while he has his own ambitions and loyalties, he is hoping simply to reach out to the victim’s family and to help finally put the notorious case to rest. But when he spots an anomaly in the files, he uncovers secrets he never could have imagined. He would never have even looked if he’d known what he would find.

To join the club and receive a Zoom link, please fill out this form.