Join us in person to welcome Steve Almond discussing his book All the Secrets of the World in conversation with Matthew Klam! This event is IN STORE, it is free and open for all to attend! Please RSVP here
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.
About the Author:
Steve Almond is the author of a dozen books, including “Candyfreak” and “Against Football,” which were both on the New York Times’ Bestseller list for about four seconds. He’s the recipient of an NEA grant for 2022 and teaches at Harvard and Wesleyan. His work has been published in the Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mysteries, and the New York Times Magazine. After 30 years of writing terrible novels, he finally wrote one that doesn’t suck. All the Secrets of the World will be out May 3!
About the Moderator:
MATTHEW KLAM is the author of the novel, Who Is Rich?, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, nominated for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and Sam the Cat, winner of the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection, and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, First Fiction. He's a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts. His writing has been featured in such places as The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The O' Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction. He's currently a Visiting Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Stony Brook University.