SF LAUNCH for Daniel Handler w/Dan Stone / Bottle Grove

The Bindery hosts a special evening to celebrate Daniel Handler‘s new novel Bottle Grove. With him in conversation is Dan Stone, and we’ll have specialty cocktails created by Alembic, inspired by the book. Please join us!

Please note:

>  This is a free event, but seating is limited and advance tickets are recommended. Tickets are available here, with the option of ordering a discounted cocktail and/or book.

>  Directly preceding this event, The Bindery will be hostingSilent Reading Party, presented by Misters Handler & Stone.

This is a story about two marriages. Or is it? It begins with a wedding, held in the small San Francisco forest of Bottle Grove — bestowed by a wealthy patron for the public good, back when people did such things. Here is a cross section of lives, a stretch of urban green where ritzy guests, lustful teenagers, drunken revelers, and forest creatures all wait for the sun to go down. The girl in the corner slugging vodka from a cough-syrup bottle is Padgett — she’s keeping something secreted in the woods. The couple at the altar are the Nickels — the bride is emphatic about changing her name, as there is plenty about her old life she is ready to forget.

Set in San Francisco as the tech-boom is exploding, Bottle Grove is a sexy, skewering dark comedy about two unions — one forged of love and the other of greed — and about the forces that can drive couples together, into dependence, and then into sinister, even supernatural realms. Add one ominous shape-shifter to the mix, and you get a delightful and strange spectacle: a story of scheming and yearning and foibles and love and what we end up doing for it — and everyone has a secret. Looming over it all is the income disparity between San Francisco’s tech community and . . . everyone else.

Daniel Handler is the author of the novels We Are Pirates, The Basic Eight,Watch Your Mouth, Adverbs, and Why We Broke Up, a 2012 Michael L. Printz Honor Book. He is responsible for many books for children, including the thirteen-volume sequence A Series of Unfortunate Events and the four-book series All the Wrong Questions. He is married to the illustrator Lisa Brown, and lives with her and their son in San Francisco.

Dan Stone first met Mr. Handler while working as a program manager and documentary producer at the National Endowment for the Arts, during which time he produced 25 radio shows on classic American novels, interviewing more than 200 prominent writers, actors, artists, musicians, and public figures. Stone and Handler later reconnected across the bar at the Alembic, where Stone worked with legendary barman Daniel Hyatt.How Money Became Dangerous, Stone’s forthcoming book, is about how the world of modern money became so complicated and contentious. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Radio Silence, a magazine of literature and rock & roll, and cohosts the Silent Reading Party with Handler, a monthly event at the Bindery. Stone owns North Light in Oakland, a hybrid of a bar, book shop, and record store.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

This is an all ages event. The bar opens at 6:00pm for Silent Reading Party; event starts at 7:45pm.

As with all of our events, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Bottle Grove, order below and put your request in the comments field; to order a signed copy of any of Daniel’s other books, order here and be sure to include your request in the comments field.

RSVP appreciated but not required.