Local Vermont author Steven Silver will present his new book One Guy’s Handbook for Romance. In this book, Silver Draws on 27 years of experience with his wife, Gretchen, to lay out practical strategies for any man who wants to learn the true art of romance. Whether it’s finding the right birthday gift or finding your way to the laundry room, Silver’s simple, tried-and-true tips will give you the tools you need to blow her away, brighten her day, and make you her hero. Just in time for a romantic Valentine’s weekend, this book is sure to give couples a more exhilarating, fun-filled, and, above all, romantic relationship.

Steven Silver has been a registered architect for 10 years in the field of aviation. His major accomplishments include the design and construction of airline terminals at JFK, LAX, Miami, and San Bernadino International Airports. His work was featured in Mateo Pericoli’s book World Unfurled. Silver volunteers his design and construction management experience to Give Kids the World Village in Kissimmee, Florida as well as to the Sacramento Building Association assisting high school students learn the basics of building technology. A native of Long Island, Silver and his wife currently live in Vermont.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see one of the books printed with our Print On Demand Espresso Machine and hear straight-forward advice from a real-life romantic.

In Gray Land: Soldiers on War photographer Barry Goldstein set out to capture professional soldiers’ experiences in arresting combat photographs, formal portraits, and their own riveting words. No one knows war like soldiers. No one can indict war so succinctly, and no one can so eloquently express the reasons to serve despite those indictments. Granted extraordinary access by the U.S. Army, Goldstein spent two years photographing and interviewing actively serving members of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team: forty men and women, ranking from specialist to command sergeant major, lieutenant through colonel. He followed them in their life at Fort Benning, Georgia; at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California; and for two month-long embeds during which he lived and patrolled with the unit in Iraq. Gray Land is an essential glimpse into the often-isolated world of the military, a compassionate and humane exploration of the individuals who have chosen to put themselves in harm’s way for us. These are not simple war stories. For the soldiers who fight them, wars are never black or white but always, painfully, gray.

Barry Goldstein is a professor at the University of Rochester and at New York University. He is the author of Being There: Medical Student Morgue Volunteers Following 9/11. He lives in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Don't miss the Valentine's Day Kids Party at Northshire Bookstore upstairs in the Children’s department! Celebrate with fun activities for kids ages 4-7. There will be cookie decorating, Valentine’s stories, a heart-themed craft, and all around fun.

Author and illustrator Lee Harper will join Northshire Bookstore’s Storytime with his new picture book Snow! Snow! Snow!

Snow! Snow! Snow! is the first book that Harper both wrote and illustrated. It tells the story of three animal friends who wake up to discover that a big storm the night before has made the world a winter wonderland just ready for the perfect sledding day. Told in pleasingly spare text with vibrant watercolor illustration, Snow! Snow! Snow! will enchant parents and children alike.

Lee Harper is the illustrator of two children’s books, Woolbur by Leslie Helakoski and Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. Lee Harper has just completed the artwork for a fourth picture book; Looking for the Easy Life by Walter Dean Myers and is currently in the development stage of two more. He lives and works in Doylestown, Pennsylvania with his wife Krista and their two sons Will and Dan.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to hear a beautiful story read by the author and illustrator.

Local Vermont builders Alan Benoit, Keith Dewey, and Scott Thompson will present this month’s Sustainable Living presentation, Green Design and Building.

Keith Dewey of Dewey & Associates has been at the leading edge of “green” architecture in Vermont since its inception. He will be talking about his involvement with the Vermont Green Building Association, Building for Social Responsibility, and the US Green Building Council as well as showing some examples of sustainable projects he has participated in over the years. Scott Thompson is a local builder who not only understands the benefits of building “green”, but also is dedicated to going the extra mile during construction to make everything he builds even better. He will present and discuss examples of the things he does that really make a difference.

Don’t miss this opportunity to be a part of Vermont’s shift toward sustainability.

Award-winning journalist C.S. Manegold will present her new book of historical non-fiction Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North. C. S. Manegold is the author of In Glory's Shadow: The Citadel, Shannon Faulkner, and a Changing America. She was a reporter with The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Philadelphia Inquirer winning numerous national reporting awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.

In Manegold’s new book Ten Hills Farm, she investigates the history of slavery in New England, asking readers, "who in this century knows that slavery persisted in Massachusetts longer than it did in Georgia?" Telling the powerful saga of five generations of slave owners on a farm in colonial New England, Manegold digs deep to bring the history of the American slave trade full circle from concealment to recovery. Settled in 1630 by John Winthrop, famous for envisioning his ‘city upon a hill’ and lauded as a paragon of justice, Ten Hills Farm passed from the Winthrops to the Ushers, to the Royalls; each one a prominent dynasty tied to the Native American and Atlantic slave trades. Drawing from original documents, letters, shipping records, early American newspapers and more, Ten Hills Farm takes readers on a sea voyage to the New World in the early seventeenth century, leading us through history up to the early twenty-first century, from New England, through the South, to the sprawling slave plantations of the Caribbean.

Scholar and author Bevis Longstreth’s new historical novel Return of the Shade: A Novel of Ancient Persia puts us behind the royal screen to witness up close what absolute power combined with pride, ambition, and sibling rivalry wrought within the Achaemenid family of great Persian kings. A woman much maligned by Greek historians, Return of the Shade tells the story of Parysatis – daughter of one king, wife to another and mother of a third. This lush, hypnotic novel resonates with the passion and fury of its subject matter and pulls readers into a world beyond the walls of history.

The author of Spindle and Bow, Bevis Longstreth is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He is a former Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission and retired from the practice of law to teach at Columbia Law School and to pursue his passion for history and writing.

Don’t miss this intriguing opportunity to hear an imaginative writer and historian and get your book signed.

Local Vermont author and Newsweek journalist Michael Hastings will present his new non-fiction book I Lost My Love in Baghdad.

Michael Hastings spent two years reporting in Iraq as Newsweek's youngest-ever war correspondent. He had at his disposal a little Hemingway romanticism and all the apparatus of a twenty-first-century reporter -- cell phones, high-speed Internet access, digital video cameras, fixers, drivers, guards, translators. In startling detail, he describes this new kind of war: private security companies follow their own rules or lack thereof; soldiers in combat get instant messages from their girlfriends and families; members of the Louisiana National Guard watch Katrina's decimation of their city on a TV in the barracks.

Back in New York, Hastings had fallen in love with Andi Parhamovich, a young idealist who worked for Air America. A year into their courtship, Andi followed Michael to Iraq, taking a job with the National Democratic Institute. Their war-zone romance is another window into life in Baghdad -- they make plans for the future; they fight with each other, fearful for the other's safety; and they try to figure out how to get together, when it means putting bodyguards, drivers, and themselves in jeopardy.

Searing, unflinching, and revelatory, I Lost My Love in Baghdad is both a raw, brave, brilliantly observed account of the war and a heartbreaking story of one life lost to it. Michael Hastings has written four cover stories for Newsweek International and been published in Slate, Salon, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Times, filing stories from such locations as Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, Kurdistan, Vietnam, and Afganistan. He is now a contributing editor at GQ and lives in Vermont.

Howard Frank Mosher - Walking to Gatlinberg - Thursday, March 4 at 7 pm

New Armchair Philosophers group meets to discuss life's big questions and intellectual quandaries - Tuesday, March 9 at 6 pm

Jonathan Fine - A Refugee in Sudan - Friday, March 12 at 7 pm

Alice Lichtenstein - Lost - Saturday, March 13 at 7 pm

Annette Gordon-Reed - The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family - Saturday, March 20 at 7 pm

Chris Bohjalian - Secrets of Eden - Friday, March 26 at 7 pm