Shop locally throughout the year.  It's good for your community. 

Gibson's Bookstore is Concord's only independent bookstore. If you want to discuss John Banville's new novel, The Infinities, or talk through the arcane complexities of Michael Lewis's The Big Short, this is the place to do it.  We're a well-read bunch, we have an ambitious events schedule, we have over 20,000 books in stock and offer supernaturally fast special orders, and we have the best cafe in the world (thanks to Franz at Bread & Chocolate). Come visit.

This month's publisher in the spotlight is Harper Collins. Click here to learn about their massive list of classics and their great new offerings.

Our Summer Reading Kickoff was Thursday, June 17. Excite your kids about summer reading with our Young Readers' Summer 2010 Discount Card. Click here for details.

Concord Reads has chosen two great works by Firoozeh Dumas for 2010: Funny in Farsi, and Laughing Without an Accent. Keep track of their ambitious programming--and the author's personal appearance in Concord!--at the Concord Reads website. Both titles are 25% off at Gibson's.  

Become a fan of Gibson's on Facebook!

We have launched a Signed First Editions Club. Click here for details.

Great choices for your book club are here, and assorted musings on literature and life by our new events coordinator, Deb Baker, are here. 

Gibson's Bookstore, Concord's only independent bookstore , has a great selection of current and classic titles, and every book in the store has been chosen with our friends and neighbors in mind. We have poetry readings, lectures, author signings, and Concord's best cafe as a neighbor, with Bread and Chocolate in our old space. Walk up and down the ramp between us, indulging in Franz's fabulous baked goods and in the best in intellectual entertainment, without even having to go outdoors! News from the Store

Upcoming Events
	David Herlihy, The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance Thursday, July 29, 7 PM Come meet one of our country's foremost authorities on bicycles--he has a fascinating story to tell! In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized "safety-bicycle" with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover twenty thousand miles over three continents as a correspondent for "Outing" magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg. He never made it. His mysterious disappearance in eastern Turkey sparked an international outcry and compelled "Outing" to send William Sachtleben, another larger-than-life cyclist, on Lenz's trail. Bringing to light a wealth of information, Herlihy's gripping narrative captures the soaring joys and constant dangers accompanying the bicycle adventurer in the days before paved roads and automobiles. This untold story culminates with Sachtleben's heroic effort to bring Lenz's accused murderers to justice, even as troubled Turkey teetered on the edge of collapse. David Herlihy is also the author of The Bicycle, a magisterial history of everyone's favorite two-wheeler. Please join us as he presents this fascinating material, signs books, and takes questions from the audience. more details...
	Karen Beaudin, A Child is Missing Tuesday, August 3, 5:30 PM (NOTE TIME) "It was a cold November night in 1971 when thirteen-year-old Kathy Lynn Gloddy went missing, only to have her beaten, bruised body found the next day on the cold ground. ..." Kathy Beaudin vividly recounts the horrifying revelation of her younger sister's death in A Child is Missing, the shocking true story of a family and a small New Hampshire town stunned by a brutal crime. Karen's story and her new book are the subject of a forthcoming feature article by Ray Duckler in The Concord Monitor. Her story has received national attention on CNN, ABC's 20/20, and Fox News. more details...
	Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World Wednesday, August 11, at 7 PM NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL BE IN THE SCREENING ROOM AT RED RIVER THEATRES "Old maps lead you to strange and unexpected places, and none does so more ineluctably than the subject of this book: the giant, beguiling Waldseemuller world map of 1507." So begins this remarkable story of the map that gave America its name. For millennia Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Africa, and Asia. They drew the three continents in countless shapes and sizes on their maps, but occasionally they hinted at the existence of a "fourth part of the world," a mysterious, inaccessible place, separated from the rest by a vast expanse of ocean. It was a land of myth--until 1507, that is, when two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France made it real. Columbus had died the year before convinced that he had sailed to Asia, but these scholars, after reading about the Atlantic discoveries of Columbus's contemporary Amerigo Vespucci, came to a startling conclusion: Vespucci had reached the fourth part of the world. To celebrate his achievement, Waldseemuller and Ringmann printed a huge map, for the first time showing the New World surrounded by water and distinct from Asia, and in Vespucci's honor they gave this New World a name: America. The Fourth Part of the World is the story behind that map, a thrilling saga of geographical and intellectual exploration, full of outsize thinkers and voyages. We're having this event with Toby Lester at Red River because there, with a multi-media presentation, he will be able to communicate more fully the wealth of material that went into this book. more details...
	Robert Darnton, The Case for Books Thursday, August 12, at 7 PM We're biased, but we think that the physical book is a technology that's superior to anything digital we've yet seen. But why should you listen to us? Like Woody Allen dragging Marshall McLuhan onto the screen to make his point in Annie Hall, we're going to bring Robert Darnton up from Harvard to make that case for us, and more besides. Robert Darnton is one of the world's foremost historians of the book in all its forms. Formerly a professor of history at Princeton, he is now the director of the Harvard University Library, the system of libraries, including Widener, that houses one of the most distinguished collections on Earth. His new work, The Case for Books, offers an in-depth examination of the book, from its earliest beginnings to its shifting role today in popular culture, commerce, and the academy. It's an entertaining review of the history and probable future of humanity's most enduring technology. more details...
	Anita Diamant, Day After Night Thursday, August 19, at 7 PM The author of The Red Tent is back with a powerful new novel--available just before our event in paperback--about four women, refugees from Nazi Europe, who find friendship, love, and salvation in a postwar British camp in Palestine. Day After Night was named a "best book of the year" by the Washington Post and The Salt Lake Tribune. more details...
	Jenna Blum, Stormchasers Thursday, August 26, 7 PM Blum (Those Who Save Us) visits Tornado Alley in this vivid second novel about a set of twins with a dark history. At home in Minnesota, Karena Jorge gets an unexpected call informing her that her twin brother, Charles Hallingdahl, whom she hasn't seen in the 20 years since something went very wrong during a storm chase, has been admitted to a Kansas mental hospital. Charles suffers from rapid cycling bipolar disorder, and all Karena knows is that he refuses medication, he can be a danger to himself and others, and he is still obsessed with storm chasing. When she rushes to the clinic and finds he has already left, Karena joins a professional storm-chasing tour company, hoping to find her brother in the caravan of watchers who follow major storms. In the course of the tour, Karena confronts the past and the way it has shaped her life. The unpredictable and dangerous storms provide a framework for an exploration of the bond between siblings (and its limitations), and Blum renders the stormy backdrop as richly as she does her nuanced characters. (Publishers Weekly) more details...
	Freddie Wilkinson, One Thousand Mountain Summits Thursday, September 2, at 7 PM An insider's account of one of the deadliest and most controversial tragedies in mountaineering history-the 2008 K2 disaster. When eleven men perished on the slopes of K2 in August 2008, it was one of the deadliest single events in Himalayan climbing and made headlines around the world. Yet none of the surviving western climbers could explain precisely what happened. Their memories were self-admittedly fogged by exhaustion, hypoxia, and hallucinations. The truth of what happened lies with four Sherpa guides who were largely ignored by the mainstream media in the aftermath of the tragedy, who lost two of their own during the incident, and whose heroic efforts saved the lives of at least four climbers. Based on his numerous trips to Nepal and in-depth interviews he conducted with these unacknowledged heroes, the other survivors, and the families of the lost climbers, alpinist and veteran climbing writer Freddie Wilkinson presents the true story of what actually occurred on the "savage" mountain. This work combines a criticism of the mainstream press's less-than-complete coverage of the tragedy and an insightful portrait of the lives of 21st-century Sherpas into an intelligent, white-knuckled adventure narrative. more details...
	Jonathan Franzen, Freedom Thursday, September 9, 7 PM, at the Capitol Center for the Arts Exciting news! Gibson's and the Capitol Center for the Arts are launching a new series called Writers in the Spotlight. We'll be bringing big-name authors to town and partnering to host their events at the CCA, where there will be room for large crowds to sit in comfort and later to meet the author. Our inaugural event will be with Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, whose new book, Freedom, will just be hitting the stores. Mr. Franzen will speak and sign books in the Spotlight Cafe, downstairs at the CCA. This will be a ticketed event, but the ticket price is only $6. Ticketed so we can get a head count, and $6 to offset fixed expenses associated with having the event at the CCA. Tickets will be on sale here at Gibson's and at the Capitol Center (just click here). Reserve your seat early! This will be an exciting event! We're still working on the schedule for Writers in the Spotlight, but mark your calendars: Jodi Picoult will be joining us at the CCA on April 6, 2011. more details...
	David Elliott, In the Wild Saturday, September 11, 3 PM This collection of 14 original poems by Warner's David Elliott captures the creatures of the wild in stunning woodcut illustrations, gloriously presented in full spreads that move from the searing Savannah to the freezing Arctic. By the stellar team who brought us On the Farm. This event will benefit the NH Nature Conservancy. Support great authors and great causes! As the publisher says ... From the lion standing alone on the African savannah to the panda in a bamboo forest, from the rhinoceros with its boot-like face to the Arctic polar bear disappearing in the snow, the earth is full of curious and wonderful animals, each more extraordinary than the next. David Elliott's pithy, lyrical verse and Holly Meade's stunning woodcut and watercolor illustrations reveal a world of remarkable beauty and wonder -- and offer an enticing introduction to both favorite animals and poetic forms. more details...
	Paul Harding, Tinkers Thursday, September 16, 7 PM Paul Harding won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year for this astonishing debut work. Come meet the author, hear him read, congratulate him, and add a very distinguished signed book to your collection. An old man lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature. more details...
	Archer Mayor, Red Herring Thursday, September 30, 7 PM Like the swallows to Capistrano, each year Archer Mayor returns to Concord with another exciting Joe Gunther mystery. This year, Joe and his team go through some changes as they try once again to keep Vermont safe for tourists and locals alike. (Sorry for the sketchy details--we haven't seen a galley yet!) more details...
	Howard Mansfield, Turn and Jump: How Time and Place Fell Apart Thursday, October 7, 7 PM Before Thomas Edison, light and fire were thought to be one and the same. Turns out, they were separate things altogether. This book takes a similar relationship, that of time and place, and shows how they, too, were once inseparable. Time keeping was once a local affair, when small towns set their own pace according to the rising and setting of the sun. Then, in 1883, the expanding railroads necessitated the creation of Standard Time zones, and communities became linked by a universal time. Here Howard Mansfield explores how our sudden interconnectedness, both physically, as through the railroad, and through inventions like the telegraph, changed our concept of time and place forever. Howard Mansfield writes about architecture and American history. He is the author of Cosmopolis: Yesterday's Cities of the Future. He has written for many national publications including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, American Heritage and Historic Preservation. He and his wife, writer Sy Montgomery, live in Hancock, New Hampshire. more details...
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Heard horror stories about the Storrs Street parking garage? Don't worry, it's really easy to use--and very convenient for shopping in our neighborhood. Once you've parked, you can step outside literally 10 feet from our bookstore.