Turning Pages with Mary - Live!

Join us at Phoenix Books Essex on Thursday, November 19 at 5:30 PM for a special Turning Pages with Mary featuring an author appearance! We will be discussing Upstate with Mary of Star 92.9's Mike and Mary as well as the author of Upstate, Kim van Alkemade. Receive a 15% discount on this month's book when you mention "Turning Pages with Mary" in your order or at checkout! 

About the book: A grieving writer. An abandoned bookshop. A secret love story hidden in letters. From New York Times bestselling author Kim van Alkemade comes an unforgettable novel about found family, healing, and the power of the past to reshape the present. 

Thirty-four-year-old writer Audrey Beacon is grieving alone during lockdown when a post about a bookshop for sale in upstate New York pops up in her social media feed like a lifeline. Enthralled by the historic house and the massive barn bursting with books, Audrey impulsively makes an offer. Soon, she's cashing out her savings, loading her possessions into her dead husband's van, and fleeing Manhattan for the village of Schuywich, determined to outrun the ghosts of her past.

In 1956, it's love at first sight when Schuywich librarian Hazel MacIntyre meets dashing magazine writer Evelyn Cabot at a summer camp in Maine that discreetly promoses a "different vacation for professional women." By summer's end, Evelyn has left Greenwich Village to move into an old farmhouse she's bought in Hazel's hometown. In her new column, "A Woman's Place," Evelyn writes about her adventures renovating a house, tending to sheep, and opening a bookshop in her barn with help from the women readers know only as her "roommate." Privately, Hazel chronicles their six-decade love story in a series of letters that abruptly end when they're forced to abandon the bookshop in 2015. 

Reopening the bookshop in the summer of 2020 attractcs a quirky community of villagers who continuously interrupt Audrey's solitude: An unemployed Broadway set designer. An ambitious teenage entrepreneur. A story-telling Adirondack grandmother. Then there's Sam Rensselaer, the distractingly handsome representative of the agriculture extension. Past and present begin to converge when Audrey finds "A Woman's Place," in a stack of old magazines, but it's the discovery of Hazel's letters that brings hidden love and long-buried family secrets to light. Will Audrey find the courage to heal the wounds of the past--including her own? 

DATE: Thursday, November 19, 2026 from 5:30PM - 6:30 PM 

LOCATION: Phoenix Books Essex, 2 Carmichael Street, Essex Junction, VT 

RSVP: Phoenix Books has adopted a free, RSVP-based system for our in-store events. By RSVPing, you reserve your space at the event and help our staff plan for spatial needs. You can RSVP through the Seven Days Tickets website. 

BOOKS: Copies of Upstate by Kim van Alkemade are available for purchase at Phoenix Books locations and online. Receive a 15% discount on this month's book when you mention "Turning Pages with Mary" in your order or at checkout!