Writers at the Wrecking Bar | Christopher Swann & Amy Bonnaffons
A Cappella Books presents Writers at the Wrecking Bar, a monthly fiction series at our neighborhood brewpub.
Join us and mingle with other fans of contemporary fiction each month, check out the Wrecking Bar's own unique beer selection, wine, and specially crafted cocktails. Enjoy complimentary snacks and meet and engage with some of today's most celebrated novelists and short story writers.
Each program includes authors in conversation with local book critics, audience Q&A, and a book signing. The bar opens at 7 p.m., with the author conversation starting at 7:30 p.m.
All events are free and open to the public.
If you are unable to attend this event, you may still pre-order a signed copy below.
About "Shadow of the Lions" by Christopher Swann
“My lungs began to burn as I started sprinting. It wasn’t just that I wanted to catch Fritz. I had the distinct feeling that I was chasing him, that I had to catch up with him, before something caught up with me.”
How long must we pay for the crimes of our youth? That is just one question Christopher Swann explores in this compulsively readable debut, a literary thriller set in the elite—and sometimes dark—environs of Blackburne, a prep school in Virginia. When Matthias Glass’s best friend, Fritz, vanishes without a trace in the middle of an argument during their senior year, Matthias tries to move on with his life, only to realize that until he discovers what happened to his missing friend, he will be stuck in the past, guilty, responsible, alone.
Almost ten years after Fritz’s disappearance, Matthias gets his chance. Offered a job teaching English at Blackburne, he gets swiftly drawn into the mystery. In the shadowy woods of his alma mater, he stumbles into a web of surveillance, dangerous lies, and buried secrets—and discovers the troubled underbelly of a school where the future had once always seemed bright.
A sharp tale full of false leads and surprise turns, "Shadow of the Lions" is also wise and moving. Christopher Swann has given us a gripping debut about friendship, redemption, and what it means to lay the past to rest.
About "The Wrong Heaven" by Amy Bonnaffons
Fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell will love this "amazing, wildly inventive" (according to Kevin Wilson, author of "The Family Fang") collection of stories that straddles the line between the real and the fantastical.
In "The Wrong Heaven," anything is possible: bodies can transform, inanimate objects come to life, angels appear and disappear.
Amy Bonnaffons draws us into a delightfully strange universe, in which her conflicted characters seek to solve their sexual and spiritual dilemmas in all the wrong places. The title story's heroine reckons with grief while arguing with loquacious Jesus and Mary lawn ornaments that come to life when she plugs them in. In "Horse," a short story originally heard on "This American Life," we enter a world in which women transform themselves into animals through a series of medical injections. In "Alternate," a young woman convinces herself that all she needs to revive a stagnant relationship is the perfect poster of the Dalai Lama.
While some of the worlds to which Bonnaffons transports us are more recognizable than others, all of them uncover the mysteries beneath the mundane surfaces of our lives. Enormously funny, boldly inventive, and as provocative as they are deeply affecting, these stories lay bare the heart of our deepest longings.
