Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present…

An Evening with Steve Almond

In conversation with Tom Finkel

discussing

All the Secrets of the World: A Novel

(Zando, $28)

Friday, May 6, 7:30 PM

RSVP REQUIRED

This event is FREE and open to the public. Please RSVP only if you intend to join us.

Books will be available for sale at the bookstore before, during and after the conversation.

Books & Books is excited to present an evening with Steve Almond as he discusses his book All the Secrets of the World (Zando, $28) in conversation with Tom Finkel.

***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Ave. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event. Want your copy early or can’t make it in-person? Order your copy online here.

About the Book:

The scorpion hunts while the rest of us dream. That’s why he knows all the secrets of the world.”

It’s 1981 in Sacramento, and thirteen-year-old Lorena Saenz has just been paired with Jenny Stallworth for the science fair by a teacher hoping to unite two girls from starkly different worlds. Lorena begins to spend time at the Stallworth residence and finds herself seduced, not just by Jenny but her parents: Rosemary, her glamorous, needy mother, and Marcus, a scorpiologist who recognizes Lorena’s passion for learning and her confused desires.

When Lorena’s troubled older brother, Tony, picks her up at the Stallworth mansion late one night, he and Marcus exchange tense words—an encounter that draws the Saenz family into the dark heart of America’s criminal justice system. To uncover the truth, Lorena must embark on an unforgiving odyssey into the desert and through the gates of a religious cult in Mexico. As she stalks a fate guided by forces beyond her reckoning, shocking secrets explode into view.

Filled with pathos, humor, and a dash of the zodiac, All the Secrets of the World is a shape-shifting social novel that offers an unflinching vision of the powerful and powerless colliding. This long-awaited book is a propulsive tour de force—the sheer scope, moral complexities, and piercing insights mark a writer at the height of his powers.

BUY THE BOOK

About the Author:

Steve Almond is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica. Almond is the recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He cohosted the Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed for four years, and teaches Creative Writing at the Neiman Fellowship at Harvard and Wesleyan. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his family and his anxiety.

About the Moderator:

Tom Finkel began his journalism career in Miami in 1989, when New Times, then a fledgling weekly, hired him as a proofreader. He left as managing editor nine years later, only to return in 2019, having served in the meantime as editor-in-chief of City Pages in Minneapolis, Riverfront Times in St. Louis, and the Village Voice in New York City.