Upcoming Events
During 2024-2025, we were honored to welcome, among many others:
Louise Penny, Heather Cox Richardson, Ellen Baker, Shannon Bowring, Rich Cohen, Brock Clarke, Ron Curie, Paul Doiron, Tess Gerritsen, Jessica Berger Gross, Ann Hood, Lily King, Christina Baker Kline, Michael Koryta, Sam Sifton, Tony Scott, Catherine Newman, Thomas Ricks, Lewis Robinson, Richard Russo, Elizabeth Strout, Simon Van Booy, Chris Van Dusen, and Martin Walker.
If you'd like to get advance notice of our 2026 events, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter.
Free Event: Talk & Book Signing
TESS GERRITSEN, The Shadow Friends
and PAUL DOIRON, The Storm Tide
WHEN: August 25, 2026 at 7pm
Two of Maine's leading mystery writers in conversation for the first time, celebrating the release of Tess's latest Martini Club book!
August 25 is the release date of The Shadow Friends, the latest installment in Tess's wildly popular Martini Club mysteries set in mid-coast Maine. Joining her is Paul Doiron who, in June, released The Storm Tide, the sixteenth book in his wildly popular mystery series featuring Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch.
Tess and Paul have crafted compelling protagonists that readers around the world have come to know, care about, and love.
In The Shadow Friends, Tess continues captivating readers with the escapades of The Martini Club, five retired CIA operatives who live in mid-coast Maine. It's another page-turner that takes several of the club members to Amsterdam to track down a killer.
In The Storm Tide, Mike Bowditch investigates a series of brutal killings that take him through frozen harbors, trackless forests, and remote islands, far from rescue. Meanwhile, he's facing a disciplinary hearing that could end his career and his wife Stacey, just weeks from giving birth, is being stalked by a stranger.
This is the first time these two masters of mysteries have been in conversation for a discussion about their craft, where in the world they come up with these plot lines, and what's next for the Martini Club members and Mike Bowditch. Tess and Paul will be signing copies of their books following their conversation.
Copies of The Shadow Friends, The Storm Tide, and selected backlist titles from both authors will be available for purchase at the event. To purchase in advance, contact us!
Free Event: Talk & Book Signing
JUDY SANDLER, What Kind of Mother: A Reckoning
WHEN: Tuesday, September 8 at 7pm
WHERE: Left Bank Books
Reservations are strongly encouraged. Seating is limited.
Please join us to celebrate “launch day” with midcoast Maine writer Judy Sandler as she debuts her memoir, What Kind of Mother, the powerful story that reckons with her son's descent into severe mental illness. What appeared to be substance use disorder in high school later became a dual diagnosis as bipolar disorder emerged. Judy’s son grew disillusioned with prescribed pharmaceuticals and participated in a residential treatment program that assisted people in forgoing medication altogether. However, the program ultimately ejected him for the very behaviors that medicine once managed. What Kind of Mother chronicles Judy's initial denial of her truth, her painful awakening to mental illness in her family, and her eventual acceptance that she cannot save her son—only he can save himself.
Joining Judy in conversation will be Maine author (Landslide, Elsy Come Home, The Foremost Good Fortune) Susan Conley.
“What Kind of Mother is a poignant, brilliantly-written evocation of what it means to come to terms with a child's addiction and mental illness, and in the process one's own struggles and history overcoming secrecy and shame, and how they conspire to destroy families from within. Absolutely unforgettable—this is a story that will stay with me forever. "
—Elissa Altman, author
Free Event: Author & Illustrator Talk & Book Signing: The Duck Can’t Sleep, by E.B. White
Art by Melissa Sweet, Foreword by Martha White
WHEN: Tuesday, September 1 at 7pm
WHERE: Left Bank Books
Such a special evening! Even the most restless reader will find peace and quiet in this breathtakingly illustrated book about the magic of nature, nighttime, and a duck who can’t sleep. Inspired by a poem by the legendary writer E.B. White, his granddaughter, Martha, and two-time Caldecott Honoree Melissa Sweet, have joined their formidable talents to create The Duck Can’t Sleep.
As Martha writes in the Foreword, her grandfather “was a man who worked out his word tangles or life’s conundrums by perambulating, and he was never a sound sleeper…He loved to find solitude and undisturbed nature in the midst of the urban landscape.” In 1928, White wrote a poem originally titled “Natura in Urbe” (“Nature in the City,”) which was published in The New Yorker. The poem tells the enchanting story of White’s walking around the reservoir in New York City’s Central Park and observing “a little duck swim by.”
Melissa’s colorful, whimsical, collage-like illustrations are spellbinding. The cover art alone “demands” that The Duck be displayed face out on a bookshelf. Melissa’s work graces every page of this small book and invites readers to linger, listen, and look.
The Duck Can’t Sleep is a small, comforting, huggable, and exquisitely illustrated love letter to nature in unlikely places and a testament to the power of imagination. We predict The Duck Can’t Sleep will be one of our shop’s most popular holiday gifts.
Wall of Fame
We are deeply grateful to the hundreds of authors — of local, national and international acclaim — who have taken time to visit our bookshop, meet our faithful customers, speak about their work, and sign their books.
Thank you!
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