French author Adrien Bosc explores the lives of the passengers of an ill fated 1949 Air France flight in his new book Constellation. Based on the real people aboard the plane, Bosc extrapolates fictionalized vignettes and narratives about their lives drawing from what they left behind. He spoke with David Samuels, the literary editor at Tablet, at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. The book was translated from the French by Willard Wood.

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Manuel Gonzales discussed his new novel The Regional Office is Under Attack with BuzzFeed Books Editor Isaac Fitzgerald at BookCourt last week. The novel centers around a coterie of deadly assassins, all women, and the plot against their organization known as the Regional Office.

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The New York City Reading Series Census is an ongoing project to catalogue the contemporary literary scene. Any reading series curator in the New York area can take the survey here.

What is the name of the series, and what is the significance or meaning of the series name?
Our series is called Franklin Electric Reading Series and takes its name from the co-working space it’s held in, Franklin Electric.

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Jennifer Haigh presented her latest novel Heat & Light at BookCourt in Brooklyn. The novel follows a family and other characters from Bakerton, Pennsylvania as they grapple with the shale gas bonanza. Bakerton is also the setting of a previous book Baker Towers, a novel that takes place in the middle of the last century as the town dealt with the decline of the local coal industry.

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Camille Perri launched her debut novel, The Assistants, at Barnes & Noble at 86th Street. The novel follows two young women, personal assistants for a wealthy media oligarch, who abuse their position to embezzle money to pay off their student loans. Perri was joined for a conversation with Elisabeth Egan, author of A Window Opens.

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Literary blog Largehearted Boy hosted Brendan Jones and Will Chancellor as part of the ongoing Literary BFFs series. Jones launched his debut novel The Alaskan Laundry last month about a young woman from Philadelphia heading to Alaska to work her way through the fishing industry. Chancellor’s novel, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, follows an injured Olympian as he runs away from the life planned for him by his father.

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The protagonist of J.R. Thornton’s debut novel, Beautiful Country, has a lot in common with the recent Harvard graduate. Chase Robertson is a fourteen-year-old tennis player training with the Beijing national team, a similar experience to Thornton’s own time playing tennis in China. The novel was first released there several years ago and recently brought to the United States by Harper Collins. Thornton launched the American version of the novel at Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn.

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Rebecca Schiff celebrated the launch of her debut collection of stories, The Bed Moved, last week at BookCourt in Brooklyn. The collection has won the adoration of the New York Times, with the paper stating that the collection has a “Nabokovian boldness and crispness of phrase.” Schiff read from a story from the collection before answering audience questions and signing copies.

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