Our Fiction Group:

Tues, June 11 @ 6pm

I Have Some Questions for You

by Rebecca Makkai

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past--the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers--needs--to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought--if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

Our Nonfiction Group:

Tues, June 25 @ 6pm

Braiding Sweetgrass

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise". Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth and learn to give our own gifts in return.

From The Los Angeles Times, "Horror authors on their convention".



"A century after his death Franz Kafka is still in the zeitgeist". From the Economist.

From The Smithsonian, "What Does George Orwell's '1984' Mean in 2024?".

Last, from The Guardian, "Rose Tremain: 'Sex scenes are like arias in opera. They have to move the story forward'".

Mahalo and a hui hou.

Joy and Brenda (owners)

Kinsey, Loki, and Chloe (cats)

Open hours:

Monday-Friday: 10am - 6pm

Saturday: 10am - 5pm

Sunday: 11am-5pm

ks@konastories.com