Richard Russo at the Cambridge Public Library

Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Richard Russo—acclaimed author of ten novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Empire Falls—for a discussion of his new novel, Under the Falls.

RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a copy of Under the Falls and pick it up at the event. Following the presentation will be a book signing.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns with a spellbinding page-turner about a crime in a small town that exposes long-held secrets and betrayals among a group of lifelong friends.
When Tyler Sinclair left Stone Mountain at eighteen, he had no plans of returning. With only a duffel bag full of clothes, a few bucks stolen from his father’s dresser, and a guitar, his most prized possession, Tyler disappeared without so much as a goodbye. Eighteen years later, Tyler, now the frontman of a famous band aptly named Stone Mountain, finds himself returning to his hometown for a one-night-only benefit concert to support his old friend, Doc, who lost feeling in his legs following a childhood accident. As Tyler ascends the mountain, memories of his childhood come rushing back—memories of his abusive father and despondent mother, of the friends he left behind—and he quickly learns that, for many people on Stone Mountain, the past does not feel like so long ago, and not everyone has been eagerly awaiting Tyler’s return.
At the concert, resentment simmers just beneath the surface, and Tyler finds himself confronted with faces new and old: there’s Curt, Tyler’s childhood best friend, now Stone Mountain’s chief of police, and his star officer, Deb, an out-of-towner who may have bitten off more than she can chew by accepting a job in Stone Mountain. And then there’s Freddi, Curt’s wife and Tyler’s former lover, a woman whose questionable dealings and fraught history with Tyler will become the catalyst for a tragedy that will upend each of their lives and threaten to validate Tyler’s worst fear: that “Stone Mountain is the kind of place you might escape from once, if you’re lucky, but not twice.”
Under the Falls is at once a propulsive thriller, a gut-wrenching portrait of a tight-knit rural community undone by the sins of its past, and an unflinchingly honest depiction of how porous the line between right and wrong, good versus evil, can become. This is a stunning, deeply empathetic novel, one that takes Russo’s penchant for character-driven drama to thrilling new heights.

Richard Russo is the author of ten novels, most recently Somebody's Fool, Chances Are . . ., Everybody’s Fool, and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of stories; the memoir Elsewhere; and the essay collection Life and Art. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody’s Fool, won multiple awards for its screen adaptation, and in 2023 his novel Straight Man was adapted into the television series Lucky Hank. In 2017 he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Port­land, ME. Photo Credit: Elena Seibert

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