The Collector’s Apprentice

Award-winning New York Times bestseller author B. A. Shapiro will debut her latest and eighth novel The Collector’s Apprentice, another unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance. Her previous novels include The Muralist, The Art Forger, The Safe Room, Blind Spot, See No Evil, Blameless and Shattered Echoes, four screenplays (Blind Spot, The Lost Coven, Borderline and Shattered Echoes) and the non-fiction book, The Big Squeeze.

B. A. will be in conversation with New York Times best-selling fiction writer Caroline Leavitt, author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You, as well as 8 other novels. Caroline is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Award in Fiction, and a Goldenberg Fiction Prize.

Thanks to our community partner,  Montclair Art Museum, this event will be held during their “Free First Thursday” programming. Registration to the evening is not required but please register here for this talk so we can provide updates or schedule changes via e-mail. (This event was rescheduled from 2018 so those prior event registrations have been saved.)

Thanks to our Series Sponsors, The Montclair Foundation and Investors Foundation, for their support. Watchung Booksellers will have copies of both authors’ books for sale and signing at the end of the event.…

Daniel Okrent, a journalist at The New York Times, will discuss his book THE GUARDED GATE: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America with Montclair author, reporter, columnist, TV Analyst and lecturer Jonathan Alter.

About the book: by the widely celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Last Call—the powerful, definitive, and timely account of how the rise of eugenics helped America close the immigration door to “inferiors” in the 1920s.

A forgotten, dark chapter of American history with implications for the current day, The Guarded Gate tells the story of the scientists who argued that certain nationalities were inherently inferior, providing the intellectual justification for the harshest immigration law in American history. Brandished by the upper class Bostonians and New Yorkers—many of them progressives—who led the anti-immigration movement, the eugenic arguments helped keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and other unwanted groups out of the US for more than 40 years.

Watchung Booksellers will have copies of the authors’ books on hand for purchase and signing.

All registered seats have claimed for this event. Please arrive at 3:30PM in the cafe area to join the standby ticket line. Seats will be released at 3:50PM as we always have seats available.

Thanks to our Series sponsors Investors Foundation and The Montclair Foundation, and our in-kind Sponsor Central Presbyterian Church of Montclair.…