Fountain Bookstore Events Meetup

This local mystery has haunted family and friends for decades. James will be talking with Andi about his research into the disappearance of Amy Bradley at the store. About the Book: In March 1998, the Bradley family—Ron, Iva, and their children, Amy and Brad—boarded the Rhapsody of the Seas for a week-long Caribbean cruise. The trip was a chance to celebrate Ron’s success at work and Amy’s college graduation. In the early hours of March 24, Amy Bradley—a pretty, athletic 23-year-old—returned to the family’s stateroom with Brad after dancing at the ship’s nightclub. Amy grabbed a blanket and went out to sleep on the balcony. A few hours later, her father awoke to find her gone. What happened to her remains a mystery. Now, acclaimed investigative journalist James Renner provides the first definitive account of Amy’s disappearance, enriched with his own personal narrative that explores themes of identity, loss, and the deeply human need to find meaning in tragedy. With empathy and a keen eye, Renner interviews witnesses who speak on record for the first time, offering fascinating new theories, and explores a little-known side of Amy’s life that may explain everything about her fate. About the Author: James Renner is an investigative journalist, podcaster, and critically acclaimed author of both nonfiction and fiction books, including True Crime Addict and The Man from Primrose Lane. Previously the host of Lake Erie’s Coldest Cases on ID Discovery, he currently hosts the podcasts “The Philosophy of Crime” and “True Crime This Week.” He is the Founder and Director of The Porchlight Project, a nonprofit that provides genetic genealogy for cold cases in Ohio. He lives in Akron with his wife and children and can be found online at open_in_newJamesrenner.com. About the Moderator: Andi escaped the corporate world and found her dream job of managing an indie bookstore in 2018. She's born and raised in RVA and reads just about anything, with particular favorites being Twisteries, YA, horror, and most any contemporary fiction. When she's not reading she can be found playing pinball and relaxing with her husband, her cats, and a nice cold local beer in her speakeasy home. Withfriends believes in building financial resilience for indie bookstores through community support.

About the Book:
Someone you love, maybe the person you love most in the world, is drowning. Should you jump in the water? Will you be able to bring both of you back to shore?

One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been brutally beaten, just steps from their home.

She jumped in the water.

Eubanks dove into the responsibilities of caregiving. In the weeks, months, and years that followed, she and her partner, J., struggled to stay afloat as they faced wave upon wave of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and, for J., a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, a second case. Eubanks herself developed what is known as collateral PTSD, a condition common among caregivers but rarely discussed.

She scanned the horizon for help.

A reporter and an activist, Eubanks turned to reliable sources for guidance: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn’t until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found advice that actually helped. Inspired by its lessons, she signed up for instruction in wilderness first aid, kayak self-rescue, Winter Survival 101, map and compass navigation, bushwhacking, and lifeguarding. She went out in search of other people’s stories and interviewed experts—everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. She gathered skills and knowledge that made her feel strong, competent, better prepared for the challenges ahead.

Disarmingly funny and quietly wise, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is the story—heart-wrenching and all too relatable—of how one woman tried to rescue her beloved and learned that she would also have to rescue herself. Built from both loss and connection, it is a moving, hopeful love story about two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. It asks that we reconsider the ways in which we tend to our loved ones and ourselves, and remember the communities of care that sustain us. It reminds us: no one survives the wilderness alone.

About the Author:
Virginia Eubanks is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, Nature, and Scientific American. She is the author of Automating Inequality: How HighTech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor and A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival: A Memoir. She is an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. When not sleeping in her truck in the Adirondacks, she lives in Troy, New York.

Kelly Justice is our fearless leader and an omnivore of a reader who will try almost any type of book at least once. She has been an indie bookseller since 1989, came to Fountain in 2000, and took over in 2008. She has served on countless bookseller boards and committees nationally and internationally but recently has scaled back on those activities to spend more time on the bookstore and personal passions like travel, cooking, and being with important people in her life and the cat.
Withfriends believes in building financial resilience for indie bookstores through community support.

Join us at The Poe Museum on Thursday, September 17th for a Tell-Tale Talk with author Lyndsay Faye, who will discuss her upcoming novel, RAVEN, to be released in October.
About RAVEN:
An orphaned young woman in antebellum Maryland is pulled into a maelstrom of passion, pain, and occult power in this Gothic homage to the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe.
I died a fortnight ago this coming Thursday. It was a terrifically unpleasant experience—being murdered, I mean to say.
Raven Helen Allan has always been haunted by witchcraft. Since the death of her beloved mother, she has soothed herself by speaking words into spells—a proclivity enhanced by time spent with her aunt’s library of occult books. She also finds a self-destructive solace in transmuting the pain in her heart onto her flesh.
After an itinerant childhood spent first with her mother’s traveling theater troupe and then being passed around from relative to relative, Raven is relieved to finally settle down with Aunt Berenice in her Baltimore townhouse—even if her aunt spends most evenings in a laudanum haze. There she finds a long-sought sense of belonging with the family of enslaved workers in her aunt’s household, especially the brilliantly odd youngest daughter Pym. Raven’s infatuation with her friend only grows more intimate as the girls become women together. But when the household is threatened with financial ruin, Raven must set out to earn her own living.
Taking a job as a paid companion, Raven arrives at the crumbling Moldavia Manor. Her charge is a delicate young invalid named Lenore Legrand who haunts the Gothic structure like a phantom. Living with them is Lenore’s devoted older cousin Travanion, who shares Raven’s interest in the occult and devotes his days to searching ancient texts for an Elixir of Life that might cure his cousin. Raven finds herself inexorably drawn to both cousins as well as to the secrets hidden in the shadows of Moldavia Manor. Will she find the answers she seeks in Trevanion’s alchemical texts? What is the meaning of glowing green light emitted from the tower windows? And is Raven truly narrating this story from beyond the grave—if so, who murdered her?
Gothic and atmospheric, Raven is an aching tale of loss, freedom, death, and resurrection by the celebrated author of Jane Steele and Dust and Shadow.
Lyndsay Faye is the internationally bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed novels and two short story collections. She has been published in fifteen languages, nominated for two Edgar Awards, and received an American Library Association award for Best Historical Novel. A notable writer of Sherlock Holmes pastiches including Dust and Shadow and Observations by Gaslight, she also particularly enjoys upending classical literature, as in Jane Steele, which transforms Jane Eyre into a feminist serial killer. A true New Yorker in the sense that she was born elsewhere, Faye lives in Queens with her husband Nicholas and her cat Prufrock.
General Event Information:
SCHEDULE:
5:30 PM – Doors open
5:45 PM – Zoom meeting opens
6:00 PM – Talk begins
VIRTUAL LIVESTREAMS:
Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event. The Zoom invitation is also included in the confirmation email received upon purchase.
WEATHER:
This event takes place outdoors. Please dress according to the weather forecast. In case of inclement weather, an alternate location may be announced.
FOOD & DRINK:
One glass of wine included in in-person admission. Complimentary snacks and refreshments available.
PARKING:
The Poe Museum has a small gravel lot attached on 20th and Main Streets. If the lot is full, there is street parking available on surrounding streets.
OTHER:
Chairs provided. Exhibits remain open to explore before or after the talk.
Reserve your tickets below!
Thank you to Fountain Bookstore, who will sell books after the talk.
Can’t make it in person? The talk can be streamed virtually! Select the Livestream ticket option at check out. Virtual ticket holders will be sent a Zoom webinar link for the livestream the day of the event.