Upcoming Events

Join us for an event with two local authors. Chuck Galle will read from Stories I Never Told My Daughter.  Wayne W. Whicher will read from Sunset over the Hermes.  

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We love teachers! If you're a teacher, stop by the store between 5-7 pm, and enjoy 20% off of everything in the store! Find out about our educational discount for teachers, win some prizes, and have some treats.

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Novelists Jess Walter and Sean Ferrell will read from their new novels, The Financial Lives of the Poets and Numb. 

"When it comes to explaining to me my own too often baffling nation, there's no one writing today whom I trust as completely as Jess Walter.  His intelligence and sympathy and great wit inform every page—indeed every sentence—of his terrific new novel, The Financial Lives of the Poets."  —Richard Russo

About Sean Ferrell's novel, Numb, Kirkus Reviews says: "He's an accident-prone amnesiac, the lead, but his inability to feel pain brings him celebrity; Ferrell's eye-catching debut is a mordant take on contemporary culture."

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RiverRun Bookstore is thrilled to be hosting National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Franzen at South Church (292 State Street in Portsmouth, NH) on Friday, September 10th at 7pm. Franzen is the author of one of the most anticipated novels of the fall season, Freedom.

This event is free and open to the public, but those who wish to meet the author and get their book personalized must pre-purchase the author’s new novel.  RiverRun is selling 150 backstage passes to meet him, and these will sell out, so get them now! The backstage pass is the cost of the novel, $28.00.  Call 603-431-2100 to get a backstage pass.  Flat-signed copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. 

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In a dystopian 1930s America, a chilling series of events leads three men down a path to uncover their city's darkest secret.

At the height of the most corrupt administration in the City’s history, a mysterious duplicate file is discovered deep within the Vaults---a cavernous hall containing all of the municipal criminal justice records of the last seventy years. From here, the story follows: Arthur Puskis, the Vault’s sole, hermit-like archivist with an almost mystical faith in a system to which he has devoted his life; Frank Frings, a high-profile investigative journalist with a self-medicating reefer habit; and Ethan Poole, a socialist private eye with a penchant for blackmail.

All three men will undertake their own investigations into the dark past and uncertain future of the City---calling into question whether their most basic beliefs can be maintained in a climate of overwhelming corruption and conspiracy.

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RiverRun Bookstore and the Asperger’s Association of New England (AANE) will be hosting author Shonda Schilling at RiverRun Bookstore. The author will be talking about her book, The Best Kind of Different.

In The Best Kind of Different, Shonda Schilling, wife of retired Boston Red Sox All-Star pitcher Curt Schilling, shares the painful and joyous story of her son Grant's struggle with Asperger's Syndrome, how it changed the lives of her and her husband, and what other parents can learn about this increasingly common diagnosis.

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In celebration of forty years of publishing, Peter E. Randall Publisher will host a party on September 16 at RiverRun Bookstore from 7:00pm to 8:30pm.

The event is open to the public, but RSVPs are appreciated to plan for refreshments. There will be a print from Peter Randall given away in a drawing at the end of the event and several books given away as door prizes. Authors will be signing books and available for questions about their process. Paul Wainwright will bring his large format camera for a
demonstration. Peter and Deidre will speak briefly about the pleasure they share in working with authors to publish quality, award-winning books. Visit http://www.perpublisher.com to sign up for an email invitation or offer an RSVP,  or call 603-431-5667.

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Local Authors Night: Darcy Scott wil read from Hunter Huntress, and Rae Francoeur will read from Free Fall. 

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The iconic Canadian author again showcases her extraordinary storytelling talents with her long awaited new novel, The Year of the Flood, a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power. Margaret Atwood is the next featured author for Writers on a New England Stage, a series at The Music Hall co-sponsored by RiverRun Bookstore, New Hampshire Public Radio, and Yankee Magazine.  This is a ticketed event. Tickets cost $13 for non-members, $11 for members. Tickets can be purchased at The Music Hall's website or by callling the box office: 603-436-2400. 

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RiverRun Bookstore and Seacoast Local present the next author in the "Making the Connection" speaker series: Juliet Schor, author of PLENITUDE: The New Economics of True Wealth.  The series serves as a catalyst for continuing education, community connections, and sustainable change for Seacoast residents. Among others, we have hosted Civic Economics researcher Dan Houston, renowned political-economic expert Kevin Phillips, "Slow Money" founder Woody Tasch, and agricultural journalist Lisa Hamilton. Previous speakers have included author and climate activist Bill McKibben, Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm, researcher Stacy Mitchell on "Big Box Swindle," and UNH professor John Carroll on building agriculture in New Hampshire.

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Join us for a night of Young Adult fiction with authors Cecil Castellucci and Natalie Standiford.  CECIL CASTELLUCCI is the highly acclaimed author of the novels Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool, and Beige, as well as the graphic novels The PLAIN Janes and Janes in Love. She is also a filmmaker, musician, composer, and artist. NATALIE STANDIFORD was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, the setting of her two Scholastic Press novels. Her first novel, How to Say Goodbye in Robot, was named a best young adult book of the year by Kirkus Reviews. She now lives in New York City.

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Everyone is welcome to join RiverRun Bookstore on the fourth Monday of the month for a lively town-hall style discussion using the Socratic Method.  The group will be following along with the topics being aired on New Hampshire Public Radio.  The meetings are interesting, thoughtful and complex as ideas surface and questions tangle into unexpected ways. The Socratic method is used in universities, at cafes and bookstores and by journalists and academics across the country in order to engage ideas.

RiverRun Bookstore's Socrates Exchange is moderated by Donna Kirk, a former intern of New Hampshire Public Radio and former member of UNH's Socratic Society. She is the director of The Seacoast Writers Circle and founder of The Workshop, A Studio For Writers. She studies literature, ethics, modern politics and is working on her first novel.

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Join us for a night of literary fiction with novelists Marcy Dermansky and Jessica Francis Kane. Marcy Dermansky is the author of Bad Marie. Jessica Francis Kane is the author of The Report.  MARCY DERMANSKY is a MacDowell fellow and the winner of the 2002 Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award and the 1999 Story Magazine Carson McCullers short story prize. Her 2005 novel Twins was widely praised by the New York Times, Denver Rocky Mountain News, Village Voice, and many others.  She is a film critic for About.com and belongs to New York Film Critics Online society. Dermansky lives in Astoria, New York, with her husband, the writer Jürgen Fauth, and their daughter Nina.
 JESSICA FRANCIS KANE is the author of the story collection Bending Heaven. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC radio and have appeared in a many publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her essays and humor pieces have appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Morning News.org, where she is a contributing writer. She lives in New York with her husband and their daughter and son. The Report is a finalist for the 2010 First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction.

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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. Before the railroads necessitated the creation of the standard time zones in 1883, timekeeping was a local affair. Small towns set their own pace according to the rising and setting of the sun. Our sudden interconnectedness, both physically and through inventions like the telegraph, changed our concept of time and place forever.

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The best-selling author of The Long Emergency returns with a gripping sequel to his novel World Made by Hand, which Alan Cheuse of National Public Radio called “brilliant.”

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RiverRun Bookstore is thrilled to announce an event with bestselling author Bill Bryson at South Church on Sunday, October 17th at 4pm. Bryson will be talking about his latest nonfiction book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

This event is free and open to the public, but those who wish to meet the author and get their book personalized must pre-purchase the author’s new book, At Home.  The backstage pass is the cost of the book, $28.95.  Call 603-431-2100 to get a backstage pass.  Flat-signed copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. 

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