Aggie Blum Thompson & Jennifer Pashley in conversation w/ Johanna Copeland

Join us on Monday, July 13, at the bookstore for a special event with authors Aggie Blum Thompson, Jennifer Pashley, and Johanna Copeland to discuss their books, , , and .

Following the discussion, all three authors will stick around to sign copies of their books.

About THE NEIGHBORS ARE WATCHING
From the "master of suburban scandal" (Samantha M. Bailey) comes a scandalous twisty thriller about obsession, betrayal, and the price of perfection
Just outside Washington, DC, sits Eastbrook, Bethesda—a leafy suburb with top schools, pristine landscapes, and perfect neighbors. It’s not the kind of place where nannies are killed during robberies gone wrong. And in this picture-perfect neighborhood, someone is desperate to plaster over the cracks in that façade.
A year after the unsolved neighborhood M**der, Caren, nearing fifty and staring down an empty nest, has one too many drinks at a graduation party and blacks out on her way home. At least, that’s what everyone says happened. Caren suspects she was drugged by someone. But who?
When Caren teams up with a new neighbor who is obsessed with figuring out who murdered his best friend, they start to uncover what Eastbrook has tried to forget. But in a place where appearances are everything, their search for the truth means not only shattering carefully curated perfection — but putting themselves squarely in the crosshairs of a killer.

About Aggie Blum Thompson
Before turning to fiction, AGGIE BLUM THOMPSON covered real-life crime as a newspaper reporter for a number of papers, including The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. Aggie is a member of Mystery Writers of America. She lives with her family in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

About THE GUEST HOUSE

An aspiring chef finds she has bitten off more than she can chew when her gig as a private cook to a bestselling author turns deadly in this propulsive, whip-smart suspense novel.
“Emma Cline’s The Guest meets Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid in this sexy, edgy, singular story."—Ashley Winstead, author of The Future Saints
Brett Novak is a young upstart chef, with real, raw talent—if only she could catch a break. After getting dumped by her married girlfriend and losing the perfect job offer, Brett accepts a temporary position as a live-in, personal chef of a reclusive, bestselling author, Carson Smart, who resides in a mansion on a secluded beach in Cape Cod.
Carson immediately seduces her, but things get complicated when Carson's wife, Vera, arrives home from her trip, and the love/hate relationship between the two spouses erupts, leaving Brett caught in the middle. Brett, starved for attention, craves Carson's affection and yet is oddly drawn to Vera's seductive and destructive charms.
As Brett becomes an unwitting pawn and weapon, she questions how far husband and wife will go to wound the other. With nowhere else to turn, she has no choice but to stay—even as her hold on reality begins to slip. Can she survive her employers’ dark appetites?

About Jennifer Pashley
JENNIFER PASHLEY is the award-winning author of two short story collections, States, and The Conjurer, as well as the novels The Scamp and The Watcher. Her stories have appeared widely in journals like Mississippi Review, PANK, and SmokeLong Quarterly, and she has been awarded the Red Hen Prize for Fiction, the Mississippi Review Prize for fiction, and the Carve Magazine Esoteric Award for LGBT Fiction. She lives in Syracuse, New York with a nine-person ska band.

About OUR KIND OF GAME

“A riveting and suspenseful debut. Copeland’s contemporary take on the balance of power in relationships, and the desire for control, is not to be missed.”—New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Karin Slaughter

A gifted new suspense writer makes her sizzling debut with this serpentine tale exploring all the ways in which men enact violence on women, how women try to reclaim their own sense of self, and the lingering effects on their children’s lives.

2019. Stella Parker has the life she’s always wanted: a loving husband, two happy children that she gave up her thriving law career to raise, and a beautiful house in the tony suburbs of Washington, DC. But when her neighbor Gwen shows up at her door, claiming to know things about her, Stella’s life is thrown into turmoil and she’s forced to reckon with the dark secret upon which she’s built her life.

1987. Julie Waits yearns to be a cheerleader—a gateway to a world of normalcy with best friends and sleepovers, and an escape hatch from life with her widowed mother, the terrible men she attracts, and the upheaval caused by their abrupt and constant moves. But when her mother decides those relationships are over, the past becomes a forbidden subject that Julie can never revisit.

As Stella probes deeper into what brought Gwen to her door, the answer—and who Julie is to her—become increasingly, terrifyingly, clear.

Filled with shocking twists and turns, this is a book that both asks what it means for a woman to be in control of her life while also highlighting the impact of small daily violences upon women, and the connection between physical and psychological harm.

About Johanna Copeland

JOHANNA COPELAND is the author of the 2024 breakout psychological thriller Our Kind of Game (Harper), which the New York Times hailed as a "rager" of a debut. Her work has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, selected as a Bookish book club pick, and served as the lead title for Spain’s International Women’s Day. With translations in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, her work explores the dark, universal intersections of ambition and betrayal. A native Oregonian, Johanna’s background informs the clinical precision of her plots. From interning at Marie Claire in Paris to navigating the world of corporate legal finance in Manhattan, her career has been a study in power dynamics and the masks people wear. Her essays and short-form work have appeared in many places including the Washington Post, Electric Literature and Stonecoast Review.