This weekend’s big visitor to Triangle area bookstores is David Wroblewski, author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which earned so many raves reviews last June (the Washington Post called it the “book of the year” when the year was only half over) and is earning a new batch of readers now that it’s out in paperback. Wroblewski will appear Friday evening, November 13, at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books and then again on Saturday at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village.
But while that visiting star may be burning the brightest, don’t let it eclipse two other local lights.
Larry Tise, the Wilbur and Orville Wright Distinguished Professor of History at East Carolina University, visits Manteo Booksellers on Saturday to discuss his new book, Conquering the Sky: The Secret Flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. Released just last month, the book explores a series of test flight from 1908 (five years after that First Flight) which prepared the flying machine for the military market — and truly began earning the invention worldwide fame.
Then early next week, Fred Chappell offers up his second new collection of the year. Following on the success of Shadow Box: Poems — an intricate and enjoyable collection — Chappell will read from Ancestors and Others: New and Selected Stories at four locations over four days, a whirlwind mini-tour: Tuesday, November 17, at the Bull’s Head Bookshop in Chapel Hill; Wednesday, November 18, at Durham’s Regulator Bookshop; Thursday, November 19, at Quail Ridge Books; and Friday, November 20. Basically, no excuse to miss this short story master looking back over a long and distinguished career.
For links to each of the bookstores and a more comprehensive listing of upcoming events, check out the full MetroBooks Calendar here.


Can’t wait for basketball season to begin? Well, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill has good news in store for you: Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court, a just-released memoir by Tar Heels coach Roy Williams, co-written by former Sports Illustrated writer Tim Crothers. The book features a foreword by John Grisham and a nice front-cover blurb by Michael Jordan. Bring out the big guns, why don’t you?

A.S. Byatt may be the big-name literary celebrity in the Triangle this week, but it’s a homegrown talent that’s really cause for celebration. Algonquin Books has recently published Jill McCorkle’s first short story collection in eight years, Going Away Shoes, and she’s once again proven herself a master of the form. I’ve long been a follower and a fan of McCorkle’s work, and while her novels are undoubtedly impressive, I’ll admit that I take the most joy out of her richly textured, densely packed shorter work — it’s simply a marvel how much life she’s able to pack into such a short amount of space. Even the briefest of the stories here, “View-master” (barely five pages), marks the intersection of several complete lives, and another of my favorites, “Intervention,” seamlessly weaves past and present — the weight of a lifetime of relationships — into the story of a single momentous evening, one that marks both a turning point and a reaffirmation. That story is also one of the most highly lauded in this collection, having appeared in Ploughshares before being selected both for the Best American Short Stories anthology and for New Stories from the South, and a second story, “Magic Words,” has recently been selected for the upcoming Best American Short Stories.
Two of my favorite folks will be at 