Patrick Radden Keefe discusses London Falling on Wednesday, April 8th

welcomes on Wednesday, April 8th at 7pm at The Old Pine Church (412 Pine Street) for a discussion of , a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface.

He will be joined in conversation by Miwa Messer for a live taping of B&N's Poured Over podcast.

PLEASE NOTE: This B&N event will be held off-site at the Old Pine Church located at 412 Pine Street in Old City, Philadelphia.

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To make this event safe and enjoyable for all attendees, please read the guidelines below before purchasing a ticket so that you know what to expect on the day of the event.

TICKET INFORMATION

Single Ticket Admission: $37.80(Admission for one person + one pre-signed copy of ) **LIMITED QUANTITY AVAILABLE**:

A ticket PER PERSON includes:

• One pre-signed copy of (published 04/07/2026)
• Admission for one person into the event space with at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. Seating is first-come, first-served.
• Ticket holders will be admitted into the event beginning at 6pm on the day of the event.
• Please have a copy of your ticket available either printed out or on your phone for check-in.
• All books will be pre-signed.
• This event will be held off-site at the Old Pine Church located at 412 Pine Street in Old City, Philadelphia.

GUIDELINES:

• Due to health and safety and space limitations, those without a ticket will not be permitted into the event space.
• Please note that Eventbrite is the only authorized dealer for this event. Each person must have a ticket to enter.
• All event guidelines are subject to change.
• The exact time at which the event ends will be determined on the night of the event. To avoid disappointment, we strongly advise you to arrive on time for the event.
• Barnes & Noble may cancel this event at any time with or without notice to the ticket holders.

If you have any additional questions, please call the store directly at: 267-234-9790.

REFUNDS

• Attendees can receive refunds up to 1 day (24 hours) before the 7 PM event start time.
• If you are unable to attend the event, Barnes & Noble - Philadelphia, PA will hold your books for seven days after the event. Please contact the store to arrange your pickup

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PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize), and Say Nothing, which received a National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of the Twenty Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Book Review. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award, and the Orwell Prize. He served as an executive producer on the award-winning FX series Say Nothing. He is also the creator and host of the podcast Wind of Change, which The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly named the #1 podcast of 2020.

About

In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river.
In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: her son was dead.
In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter-ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji, and a murderous gangster known as “Indian Dave.” As the Brettlers set about investigating their son’s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they’d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac’s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable—or unwilling—to bring the perpetrators to justice.
In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.

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