Corte Madera Store

Scott Snibbe with Derek Fagerstrom - How to Train a Happy Mind (Corte Madera Store)

Tuesday, March 12, 2024 - 6:00pm

Scott Snibbe
In conversation with Derek Fagerstrom 

How to Train a Happy Mind
A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment

Corte Madera Store
Tues., March 12th, 2024 • 6:00pm PT

This event is free to attend and will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.
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Please join us in welcoming Scott Snibbe joined in conversation with Derek Fagerstrom in celebration of Scott's guiding new work How to Train a Happy Mind. 

Co-sponsored by The Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies

 

“This book is a clear, well-lit path through the tangled thickets of psychological and spiritual ideas, tools, and advice—and it takes you directly to greater resilience, happiness, love and inner peace.

Honest and helpful, this book is a gem.”

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., author of Hardwiring Happiness, Neurodharma and Buddha’s Brain

“At last someone gives a simple and clear introduction, for regular spiritual seekers like any of us, to the most important of all meditations—beyond the healthy calm, the deeply transformative analysis to discover the reality of it all!” - Robert Thurman, Ph.D., author of Inner RevolutionEssential Tibetan Buddhism and The Tibetan Book of the Dead


TRAIN YOUR MIND TOWARD LASTING CONNECTION AND JOY

Eager to share the life-enhancing benefits he found in Buddhism, skeptic Scott Snibbe presents this 8-step programme that allows anyone to build positive mental habits. Inspired by the ancient Buddhist path to enlightenment yet firmly grounded in modern science, 
How to Train a Happy Mind is the first mainstream book to show how you can achieve happiness using analytical meditation. Working in much the same way as cognitive behavioural therapy, analytical meditation goes beyond the calm-inducing practice of mindfulness to actively train the brain through easy-to-follow narrative visualizations.

Breaking the path down into concise steps and written in a relatable tone with plenty of references to popular culture, this is the ideal book if you recognize your mind as both the source of your problems and the source of your solutions.


Scott Snibbe is a 25-year student of Tibetan Buddhism whose teachers include Lama Zopa Rinpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Inspired by his teachers, he hosts the Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment podcast, and leads meditations and retreats worldwide that infuse the pure lineage of the great Buddhist masters with science, humor, and the realities of the modern world. Over the course of his career as a new media artist, Snibbe has created bestselling art and music apps, and collaborated with musicians and filmmakers including Björk, James Cameron, and Philip Glass. His work been collected by both science and art museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. 

 

Derek Fagerstrom is a producer, curator, and editor based in Sonoma County. He was the co-founder, Executive Editor, and Director of Special Projects of Pop-Up Magazine, the popular live journalism event featuring writers, filmmakers, audio producers, and artists telling true stories on stage. He previously worked at Esquire, Interview, and Francis Ford Coppola's literary journal Zoetrope: All-Story.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scott Snibbe photo courtesy of the publisher. Derek Fagerstrom photo courtesy of the publisher.

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Jacqueline Winspear - The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs Series Finale) (Corte Madera Store)

Wednesday, June 5, 2024 - 6:00pm

Jacqueline Winspear

The Comfort of Ghosts
(Maisie Dobbs #18 – Series Finale)

Corte Madera Store

Wed., June 5th, 2024 • 6:00pm PT

This event will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.
 

We're honored to welcome the incomparable Jacqueline Winspear back to Book Passage in celebration of the series finale of her internationally bestselling series Maisie Dobbs. 

A reception will be held beginning at 5pm. Please join us in raising a glass to Jacqueline! 


A milestone in historical mystery fiction as Maisie Dobbs takes her final bow!

The Comfort of Ghosts completes Jacqueline Winspear’s ground-breaking and internationally bestselling series.

“An outstanding historical series.”—The New York Times

“Winspear is a brilliant writer, mixing the history and the mystery with the psychology of criminals and victims.”—The Historical Novel Society

Psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs unravels a profound mystery from her past in a war-torn nation grappling with its future.


London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group.

Maisie’s quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.

The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, readers drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but serves as a  fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War.

 


Jacqueline Winspear is the author of eighteen novels in the award-winning, New York Times, national and international bestselling series featuring psychologist-investigator Maisie Dobbs. In addition, Jacqueline’s 2023 nonseries novel, The White Lady, was a New York Times and national bestseller, and her 2014 WWI novel, The Care and Management of Lies, was again a New York Times and national bestseller, as well as a Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist. Jacqueline has also published two nonfiction books, What Would Maisie Do? and an Edgar-nominated memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing.

 


Praise for the Maisie Dobbs series

“The wartime details . . . transport us with ease to a milieu where danger is omnipresent but—thanks to the presence of steadfast figures like Dobbs and her like-spirited colleagues—so is hope.”
The Wall Street Journal

“Taut, tense, beautifully written . . . What you may not expect is the inventiveness of Winspear’s twists, the on-edge excitement they provoke, or the philosophical issues and psychological depths they all allow her to explore.”
USA Today

“A detective series to savor.”
Time

“For readers yearning for the calm and insightful intelligence of a main character like P.D. James’s Cordelia Gray, Maisie Dobbs is spot on.”
Boston Globe

“Over sixteen novels spanning three decades, Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs has lived. In real life, her quiet bravery, compassion and dogged pursuit of the truth would have made her one of the Greatest Generation, a lesson in survival under the grimmest circumstances. The lessons are hard-won in The Consequences of Fear, set in the fall of 1941 but no less relevant today . . . Fans and newcomers to the series will root for Dobbs and the other well-drawn characters.”
Los Angeles Times

“[Catches] the sorrow of a lost generation in the character of one exceptional woman.”
Chicago Tribune

“Winspear’s protagonist is indomitable and vulnerable, brilliant and kind.”
—Chelsea Clinton in Entertainment Weekly

 

 

Jacqueline Winspear photo courtesy of the publicist.

 

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Nina Schuyler - Building a Story: Plot

Sunday, April 14, 2024 - 10:30am

Building a Story: Plot

Two Sundays, April 14 and 21
10:30AM -12:30PM

$125

Hybrid: Corte Madera store and via Zoom
Classes will be recorded and video replay will be available for a limited time. 

 
* Note that for all classes held on Zoom, registration closes at noon the day before the class begins.  Same-day registrations are not available, so please plan ahead.

 

In this two-day workshop, students will explore a different approach to plot each session: the causation plot and braided or episodic plot structure.

Session 1: At our first meeting, we’ll focus on causation plot. George Saunders calls this approach “the preferred, most efficient, highest-order form of energy transfer.” Causation plot resembles how we tell a story about ourselves. We string together events to create coherence and meaning. After reading and discussing a published short story that exemplifies causation, we’ll do in-class writing, using this plot’s energies to build a story.

Session 2: Sometimes the causation plot isn’t the right form. In the second session, we’ll explore the braided or episodic plot. This plot consists of discrete events not connected causally but loosely by imagery, theme, or something else. For this session, we’ll read and discuss examples of published stories using this plot, which will prepare you for in-class writing and building your own braided story.



Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature and will be published on July 2, 2024. Her novel, Afterword, was published in 2023 and was named a Top 100 Notable Book by Shelf Unbound and a Top May Book by Alta Journal.

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Nina Schuyler with Laura Cogan - In This Ravishing World (Corte Madera Store)

Saturday, July 13, 2024 - 11:00am

Nina Schuyler
in conversation with Laura Cogan

In This Ravishing World

Corte Madera Store

Sat., July 13, 2024 • 11:00am PT

This event will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.
 

In this Ravishing World is a sweeping, impassioned short story collection, ringing out with joy, despair, and hope for the natural world. Nine connected stories unfold, bringing together an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis. An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his bleak urban reality. A scientist working to solve the plastic problem grapples with whether to have a child. A ballet dancer endeavors to inhabit the consciousness of a rat. In this Ravishing World is a full-throated chorus— with Nature joining in— marveling at the exquisite beauty of our world, and pleading, raging, and ultimately urging all of its inhabitants toward activism and resistance.

 


Nina Schuyler’s novel, Afterword, was published in 2023. Her novel, The Translator, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her novel, The Painting, was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Her nonfiction book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, is a bestseller. She teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies and the University of San Francisco. She lives in California.


 

In This Ravishing World also won The Prism Prize for Climate Literature. ... Not only does it cover every facet of the climate issue and the ongoing efforts at dealing with or denying/undermining what needs to be done. Nature's presence embraces the entire narrative and leads a sense of enchantment. ... This book made me laugh and cry, and gave me a ray of hope.

– Gail Collins-Ranadive, author of Dinosaur Dreaming, Our Climate Moment

"With astonishing dexterity and deep empathy, Schuyler takes the readers on a capacious journey with people from all walks of life: environmentalists, families, children, dancers, workers, hackers, and many more. Her spellbinding prose and unflinching vision overwhelm me with contrition for our prodigal past, trepidation for our fraught present, and hope for our perilous future on Mother Earth." 

Yang Huang, author of My Good Son and My Old Faithful

"In This Ravishing World, by Nina Schuyler, captures varied respones to impending environmental catastrophe: denial, depression, anger, panic. Radicals, computer nerds, artists, disenfranchised youth, environmentalists, and the top .01 percent are all brought together in a collection of linked stories that become one magnificent story of hope and despair, love and fear, and the ongoing quest for personal and planetary survival. Both scientifically accurate and emotionally compelling, this book is necessary, timely, and wise."

– Lucille Lang Day, author of Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place and coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California

 

Laura Cogan is Editor at Large at ZYZZYVA and a freelance editor and nonprofit consultant. Until 2023, she served as the Editor and Executive Director of ZYZZYVA for over 10 years. During her tenure, work from the journal was frequently recognized by the Best American series, and the Pushcart and O.Henry Prize anthologies, and the journal was awarded a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ Firecracker Award for Best Magazine, and the Recognition Award from the Northern California Book Awards. Laura has been an invited speaker and panelist at numerous conferences and schools, including The Community of Writers, Saint Mary’s College, Whittier College, USF, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Litquake, CLMP, and The LA Times Festival of Books. She serves on the board of New Literary Project, and holds a B.A. and an M.A. from New York University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nina Schuyler photo courtesy of author. Laura Cogan photo credit Christopher Michel

 

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Brigit Binns - Rottenkid: A Succulent Story of Survival (Corte Madera Store)

Sunday, March 24, 2024 - 2:00pm

Brigit Binns

Rottenkid
A Succulent Story of Survival

Corte Madera Store

Sun., March 24, 2024 • 2:00pm PT

This event is free to attend and will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.
 

A memoir sauteed in Hollywood stories, world travel, and always, the need to belong

Prolific cookbook author Brigit Binns’ coming-of-age memoir—co-starring her alcoholic actor father Edward Binns and glamorous but viciously smart narcissistic mother—reveals how simultaneous privilege and profound neglect lead Brigit to seek comfort in the kitchen, eventually allowing her to find some sense of self-worth. 

In the old Hollywood of her childhood, Brigit seems to live in an elite world. But when her parents eventually divorce—her father flees and her mother sends her off to boarding school so she can more easily conduct her decades-long romance with a married California governor—Brigit racks up seven schools and a host of bad decisions before the age of 16. 

Marriage to an Englishman takes her across the pond and to professional cooking school. But when that life comes crashing down, she returns heartbroken and alone to Los Angeles eighteen years after vowing never to return. Here she thrives, cold pitching herself to top chefs as co author for their cookbooks. Peppered with humor and seasoned with optimism, Brigit’s story is an entertaining tribute to female resilience.  


Brigit Binns' cookbook Eating up the West Coast was her 29th. A prolific cookbook author, her titles have sold over 100,000 copies. In addition, she's helped some of the U.S.A.'s most respected chefs, like New York's Michael Psilakis and Los Angeles' Joachim Splichal, turn their cookbook dreams into reality. During the 10 years she lived in Europe, Brigit graduated from England's Tante Marie cooking school, lived and catered in Spain, and edited the Costa del Sol's English-language magazine. Brigit and her dishes have been featured on The Today Show multiple times. She now lives full-time in California's Central Coast wine country with her dog and fabulous husband, Casey, (aka the Wine Spectator-award-winning Paso Wine Man). 


"Brigit Binns may have had a hard-drinking actor for a father and a mother of dangerous exuberance, but she is the star of her life story. This child of Hollywood writes with an observant honesty, telling of hard times and harrowing psychological troubles with surprising humor and heart. You will come away from this book with great admiration for her spirit and great affection for her." —Rick Kogan, Legendary Chicago Tribune columnist, radio personality, and noted author

"Binns offers a memoir about reckoning with the legacyof difficult parents. The author grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s, thedaughter of actor Edward Binns and his second wife, Marcia Legere Binns,described as the 'ultimate sophisticate.' Binns’ self-aware and wry writingwill interest readers who grew up with angry, self-involved parents. A groundedremembrance of an outwardly glittering Hollywood upbringing."—Kirkus Reviews

“A brave, delicious, and often darkly funny tale of growing up in the Hollywood of the 60’s and 70's, Rottenkid is Brigit’s story of breaking free from parental disapproval and finding herself. I loved reading this deftly crafted, insightful memoir by my childhood friend.” —Cecilia Peck, Emmy-nominated filmmaker; daughter of Gregory Peck

 

Brigit Binns - photo courtesy of the publicist.

 

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Maggie Mertens - Better Faster Farther (Corte Madera Store)

Tuesday, June 25, 2024 - 6:00pm

Maggie Mertens 

Better Faster Farther
How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women

Corte Madera Store
Tues., June 25th, 2024 • 6:00pm PT

This event will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.
 

Award-winning journalist Maggie Mertens uncovers the story of how women broke into competitive running and how they are getting faster and fiercer every day—and changing our understanding of what is possible as they go.

More than a century ago, a woman ran in the very first modern Olympic marathon. She just did it without permission.

Despite women proving their abilities on the track time and again, men in the medical establishment, media, and athletic associations have fought to keep women (or at least white women) fragile—and sometimes literally tried to push them out of the race (see Kathrine Switzer, Boston Marathon, 1967). Yet before there were running shoes for women, they ran barefoot or in nursing shoes. They ran without sports bras, which weren’t invented until 1977, or disguised as men. They faced down doctors who put them on bed rest and newspaper reports that said women collapsed if they ran a mere eight hundred meters, just two laps around the track. Still today, women face relentless attention to their bodies: Is she too strong, too masculine? Is she even really a woman?

Mertens transports us from that first boundary-breaking marathon in Greece, 1896, to the earliest “official” women’s races of the twentieth century to today’s most intense ultramarathons like the infamous Spine Race, whose current record holder is a woman. By a lot.

For readers of Good and MadBorn to Run, and Fly Girls
Better Faster Farther takes us inside the lives and the victories of the women who have redefined society’s image of strength and power.
 

 


Maggie Mertens is a writer, journalist, and editor located in Seattle. Her essays and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, NPR, Sports Illustrated, ESPNw, Deadspin, VICE, The CutGlamourPacific Standard, Refinery29, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her work has also appeared in The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021 (Triumph Books)Women and Sports in the United States (The University of Chicago Press), and has been nominated for the 2021 Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. She earned a B.A. in English Literature and Italian Studies from Smith College, and an M.F.A. in Creative-Nonfiction Writing from The New School.

 


"It is hard and frustrating—and ultimately inspiring—to read about how women have continually been dismissed throughout our sport's history. This book shows and credits so many of them, who hurdled roadblocks and continued to fight for their place. Better Faster Farther is a look behind the curtain that all women who love running and sport should read.”—Kara Goucher, Olympic runner and New York Times-bestselling author of The Longest Race

“From foot-binding to corsets, patriarchal societies have found ways to immobilize women, but now, marathoners and Olympians are proving that women can run like the wind!” —Gloria Steinem

Better Faster Farther traces the history of scrutiny over women's bodies and capabilities as runners at the intersections of race, gender identity, and sex development making clear just how little we actually know (and care to know) about them. An essential read to normalize women's existence, excellence and humanity within the sport of running.”—Alison Mariella Désir, author Running While Black

 

 

Maggie Mertens - photo credit Jeff Scott Shaw.

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Trivia Night! (Corte Madera Store)

Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm

TRIVIA TIME! RSVP BELOW

Trivia Night

Book Passage (Corte Madera Store)


Thurs., March 28, 2024 • 6:00pm PT

 
This event is free to attend and will be hosted live at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding live events.
 

We’re thrilled to announce Book Passage’s very first Trivia Night! Join us for a fun filled night where you will compete for glory, bragging rights, and some seriously cool prizes. Whether you're a bookworm or just in it for the thrill of the game, everyone's welcome!

Grab your squad or fly solo! Form a team of up to 4 friends and dominate the competition, or brave the challenge alone and prove your trivia prowess!

What to Expect:

  • Test your knowledge with four rounds of trivia questions. Rounds include: Books, Music, Movies, and Sports.
  • Purchase fun alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks and snacks from our cafe.
  • Win unique prizes, including Advanced Reader Copies of upcoming unreleased books after each round, and a grand prize of FREE tickets to an upcoming ticketed event of your choice!

Mark your calendars and get ready for a night to remember. Let the games begin!

 

 

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Brian Copeland with Michael Krasny - Outraged (Corte Madera Store)

Sunday, April 28, 2024 - 4:00pm

Brian Copeland
In conversation with Michael Krasny

Outraged

Corte Madera Store
Sun., April 28th, 2024 • 4:00pm PT

This event will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.

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Join us in celebration of Brian Copeland's debut crime thriller Outraged! Brian will be joined in conversation with the Bay Area's own Michael Krasny.

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A TV investigative reporter and his sister, a San Francisco PD homicide detective, look into the slayings of Bay Area cops who have shot unarmed African Americans yet faced no repercussions in this debut crime thriller


Distinguished award-winning author, playwright, and television comedian Brian Copeland, in partnership with Black Odyssey Media, is thrilled to unveil his debut crime thriller, Outraged. Set against the dynamic backdrop of the Bay Area, Copeland’s novel intricately weaves together a gripping narrative that explores the repercussions of police shootings, blending action, mystery, and insightful social commentary.

The story develops with the shocking murder of San Francisco Police Officer Mickey Driscoll. As the investigation unfolds, led by TV investigative reporter Topher Davis and his sister, SFPD Homicide Detective Lynn Sloan, the siblings find themselves immersed in a world of mystery and danger. With a looming deadline and escalating stakes, they navigate through a complex web of grieving families, African American militias, corrupt cops, and the seedy underworld.
 

Praised by New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman as “an explosive revelation from an excitingly fresh voice 'of color' in the crime fiction arena,” Copeland's Outraged promises a thought-provoking exploration of societal issues while delivering an intense and enthralling reading experience.

 

Brian Copeland is an award-winning author, playwright, actor, television comedian, and radio talk show host. He is the author of Not a Genuine Black Man, the longest-running solo play in San Francisco theatrical history, and the critically acclaimed memoir based on that work. Brian lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family and Bichon Frisé.

 

Dr. Michael Krasny, Ph.D. is the former host of the award winning KQED Forum, a program discussing news and public affairs, current events, culture, health, business and technology. Dr. Michael Krasny’s abilities and reputation as one of the world’s finest interviewers are enhanced by his creative work as an author and educator. A former regular contributor to Mother Jones magazine, Dr. Krasny has published fiction, literary criticism and political commentary.

His popular books include Let There Be LaughterSpiritual Envy, and Off Mike.

His excellent podcast Grey Matter, features interviews with thinkers, historians, political figures, and authors.

 

 

 

 

Brian Copeland photo courtesy of the publisher; Michael Krasny photo courtesy of the author.

 

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Susan Eischeid with Alison Owings - Mistress of Life and Death (Corte Madera Store)

Monday, March 11, 2024 - 6:00pm

Susan Eischeid
In conversation with Alison Owings 

Mistress of Life and Death
The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz- Birkenau

Corte Madera Store
Mon., March 11th, 2024 • 6:00pm PT

This event is free to attend and will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.
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The first-ever biography of SS Overseer Maria Mandl, the highest-ranked woman in the Nazi killing machine and one of the few female perpetrators of the Holocaust.

With new details and previously unpublished photographs, this gripping, unflinching examination charts her transformation from engaging country girl to “The Beast” of Auschwitz.


By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands, and for the torture and suffering of countless more.

In this riveting biography, Susan J. Eischeid explores how Maria Mandl, regarded locally as “a nice girl from a good family,” came to embody the very worst of humanity. Born in 1912 in the scenic Austrian village of Münzkirchen, Maria enjoyed a happy childhood with loving parents—who later watched in anguish as their grown daughter rose through the Nazi system.

Mandl’s life mirrors the period in which she lived: turbulent, violent, and suffused with paradoxes. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, she founded the notable women’s orchestra and “adopted” several children from the transports—only to lead them to the gas chambers when her interest waned. After the war, Maria was arrested for crimes against humanity. Following a public trial attended by the international press, she was hanged in 1948. 

For two decades, Eischeid has excavated the details of Mandl’s life story, drawing on archival testimonies, speaking to dozens of witnesses, and spending time with Mandl’s community of friends and neighbors who shared their memories as well as those handed down in their families. The result is a chilling and complex exploration of how easily an ordinary citizen chose the path of evil in a climate of hate and fear.

 


Susan J. Eischeid is a performer and teacher specializing in the music of the Holocaust. Professor of Oboe at Valdosta State University, she was drawn to the Maria Mandl story through her involvement with members of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the course of twenty years devoted to her subject, she has been privileged to interview many survivors of the Holocaust, as well as dozens of persons with ties to Mandl including family members and perpetrators. Eischeid has also presented multiple recitals and lectures about music and musicians of the Holocaust period across the United States and in Europe. She can be reached at SusanEischeid.com.

 

Alison Owings launched her acclaimed book Frauen / German Women Recall the Third Reich (Rutgers) here at Book Passage. Following publication of Hey, Waitress! The USA from the Other Side of the Tray (California) and Indian Voices / Listening to Native Americans (Rutgers), this September she will introduce her latest work, Mayor of the Tenderloin / Del Seymour's Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco, which her publisher, Beacon Press, plans to nominate for an array of prestigious prizes, including the Pulitzer.  
 

 

 

 

 

 


 

“A masterful, deeply researched, and painstaking account of Maria Mandl’s life, her rise as head overseer of the women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and her eventual descent as a war criminal. Eischeid has drawn an indelible and detailed portrait of a terrifying enigma, giving us a timely biography at a moment when modern history threatens to repeat itself.” —Gina Roitman, author of Don’t Ask; subject of the award-winning documentary film "My Mother, the Nazi Midwife, and Me"

 

 Susan J. Eischeid photo courtesy of the publisher. Alison Owings photo credit Judy Dater.

Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Greg Sarris with Jane Ciabattari - The Forgetters (Corte Madera Store)

Sunday, April 7, 2024 - 1:00pm

Greg Sarris
In conversation with Jane Ciabattari

The Forgetters

Corte Madera Store
Sun., April 7, 2024 • 1:00pm PT

This event will be hosted in-person at Book Passage's Corte Madera Store. Please contact events@bookpassage.com with questions regarding events.
 

A tender, astonishing, and richly beautiful story cycle about remembering our shared histories and repairing the world.

"Greg Sarris once again tells us a story filled with stories that lift the spirits in troubled times. A wonderful read that transports us to a realm of beauty, kindness, and love of life." --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Perched atop Gravity Hill, two crow sisters--Question Woman and Answer Woman--recall stories from dawn to dusk. Question Woman cannot remember a single story except by asking to hear it again, and Answer Woman can tell all the stories but cannot think of them unless she is asked. Together they recount the journeys of the Forgetters, so that we may all remember. Unforgettable characters pass through these pages: a boy who opens the clouds in the sky, a young woman who befriends three enigmatic people who might also be animals, two village leaders who hold a storytelling contest. All are in search of a crucial lesson from the past, one that will help them repair the rifts in their own lives.

Told in the classic style of Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok creation stories, this book vaults from the sacred time before this time to the recent present and even the near future. Heralded as a "a fine storyteller" by Joy Harjo, Greg Sarris offers us these tales in a new genre of his own making. The Forgetters is an astonishment--comforting and startling, inspiring reveries and deepening our love of the world we share.

 


Greg Sarris is currently serving his sixteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and his first term as board chair for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. His publications include Keeping Slug Woman Alive (1993), Grand Avenue (1994, reissued 2015), Watermelon Nights (1998, reissued 2021), How a Mountain Was Made (2017, published by Heyday), and Becoming Story (2022, published by Heyday). Greg lives and works in Sonoma County, California. Visit his website at greg-sarris.com.

 

Jane Ciabattari is the author of the short story collection Stealing the Fire, is a former National Book Critics Circle president (and current NBCC vice president/events), and a member of the Writers Grotto and She is a columnist for Lit Hub. Her reviews, interviews and cultural criticism have appeared in NPR, BBC Culture, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, Bookforum, Paris Review, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greg Sarris - photo courtesy of the author. Jane Ciabattari - photo credit Sylivie Rosokoff

 

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