Celebrate the Launch of Ayelet Waldman's New Novel, A Perfect Hand

This event is FREE to attend. Seating is first-come, first-served. (RSVPs are optional, but encouraged for our planning purposes.)

Meet the author, find out about a terrific new book, ask questions, hear directly from the author, and get personalized signed books!

Bookshop West Portal is so excited to welcome Ayelet Waldman, author of the memoir A Really Good Day, the novels Love and Treasure and Red Hook Road, and the essay collection Bad Mother, to celebrate the launch of her new novel A Perfect Hand. Dive into nineteenth-century England, where a lady's maid strives for a bigger, fuller life. Please join us for an evening discussing this big-hearted, clever novel about ambition, desire, and women's place in the world. Ayelet will be in conversation with Yael Goldstein-Love, Overture, and The Passion of Tasha Darsky.

You don't need to have read the book beforehand to enjoy the event, but we do recommend reserving your copy ahead of time:

About the Book:

A richly drawn, captivating, and endlessly amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady's maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of nineteenth-century England.

"Ayelet Waldman's clever, fast-paced historical romp turned out to be not only great fun but also surprisingly stirring. This book is a pleasure." — Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion

Miss Alice Lockey, daughter of a tenant farmer, has by dint of hard work, innate intelligence, and a cunning ability to predict the moods of her betters, raised herself to the lofty status of lady's maid at Alderwick Park. Though her mother has advised Alice to work only until marriage, Alice has thus far resisted the temptations of matrimony among the neighboring widowers and pig farmers, more content to enjoy the fruits of her labor--or at least the portion of it her father will share after it is paid to him. Alice spends her days arranging Lady Jemima Alderwick's blond hair into the latest French styles, chignons and plaits, laundering her lady's surprisingly malodorous petticoats and drawers, and carefully sewing all manner of fripperies, ribbons, lace, and silk flowers, to her lady's bonnets and gowns.

But when a visiting servant, a valet named Charlie Wells, catches her eye, Alice begins to understand the constraints of her position. In a ploy to spend time with the object of her affection, Alice attempts to arrange a romance between Lady Jemima Alderwick and Charlie's employer, one Baronet Sir Nigel Wynstowe. If only they would fall in love--then Alice and Charlie might live together as man and wife! Challenged by Lady Jemima's love for another and Sir Wynstowe's eccentric personality, Alice must use all of her cunning to bring about this unlikely romantic union. Will this low-born servant successfully manipulate the hearts of these lords and ladies? Will Charlie and Alice ever improve their stations? Or, as the beginning of women's suffrage begins to percolate in the drawing rooms and salons of London, will Alice discover a different sort of path for herself?

A deliciously funny, gorgeously detailed, utterly enthralling novel, A Perfect Hand is a glorious novel of class, gender, and England on the cusp of enormous change.

About the Author:

Ayelet Waldman is the author of A Really Good Day, Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Daughter's Keeper, Bad Mother and the Mommy-Track Mystery series. She co-developed and was an Executive Producer on the Netflix series Unbelievable, which received a Peabody Award and Best Limited Series nominations at the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Primetime Emmys in 2020. Waldman lives in Berkeley, California with her husband Michael Chabon.

About the Conversation Partner:

Yael Goldstein-Love is the author of the novels Overture/The Passion of Tasha Darsky, described as “showing signs of brooding genius” by The New York Times, and The Possibilities, a “wildly inventive” (SF Chronicle), “powerful page-turner” (People) that turns the psychological transition to motherhood into an epic quest through the multiverse. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, and Slate, among other places. A graduate of Harvard University and The Wright Institute, she lives with her son and a very patient cat in Berkeley, CA. Currently a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, she maintains a private practice as a psychological associate. In another life, she was co-founder and Editorial Director of the literary studio Plympton, which aims to make the digital age a golden age for literature.

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