How was the land that is now Chatham County formed? Did you know that Chatham has experienced earthquakes and that there are ancient volcanic rocks in the county? Or that unique fossils have been found here? What do you know about Chatham County coal, iron, or the history of mining in the county? What common Chatham rocks can you identify and how have some of them been used over the course of Chatham’s history? What do you know about groundwater hydrogeology and water wells in Chatham County? Join us for some answers to these and other questions! Professional geologist Christopher Palmer will be our guest speaker.

Remember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she’s become the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There’s the historic house, where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel under your old high school, and couldn’t resist going to see where it led. Sometimes a door will open into a new world, sometimes into the past. Putting on a costume might be the restart you are half hoping for. There are things buried here. You might want to save them. You might want to get out of the way. Butner’s allusive and elusive stories reach into the uncanny corners of life—where there are no job losses, just HCAPs (Head Count Allocation Procedures), where a tree might talk to just one person, where Death’s Fool is not to be ignored.

South Writ Large: Stories from the Global South is an anthology of personal essays, articles, poetry, and artwork that explores the culture of the U.S. South and its extensive connections to other regions of the world. The collection is composed of articles published over the past ten years in the online magazine South Writ Large, which examines the changing South in its symbolic and psychological complexity to stimulate conversation about the culture of the South at home and abroad.

They must have been followed. That’s the thought I return to after all these years . . . In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. The free-spirited and remarkable young couple had met and fallen in love the previous summer while working at a world-renowned outdoor program for women. During their final days in the park, they descended the narrow remnants of a trail and pitched their tent in a hidden spot. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found a scene of horror at their campsite, their tent slashed open, their beloved dog missing, and both women dead in their sleeping bags. The unsolved murders of Winans and Williams continue to haunt all who had encountered them or knew their story. When award-winning journalist and outdoors expert Kathryn Miles begins looking into the case, she discovers conflicting evidence, mismatched timelines, and details that just don’t add up. With unprecedented access to crucial crime-scene forensics and key witnesses—and with a growing sense of both mission and obsession—she begins to uncover the truth. An innocent man, Miles is convinced, has been under suspicion for decades, while the true culprit is a known serial killer, if only authorities would take a closer look. Intimate, page-turning, and brilliantly reported, Trailed is a love story and a call to justice—and a searching and urgent plea to make wilderness a safe space for women—destined to become a true crime classic.

Enjoy shopping for handmade crafts and local products during the beautiful month of May! The market will be hosting visiting farmers and craftspeople, along with our own amazing vendors! Great Mother's Day shopping! We are having the event over the course of three Saturdays in May. Check out the list of craft vendors for each week at https://www.chathammillsfarmersmarket.com/vendorpalooza/.

From the Booker Prize nominee and New York Times best-selling author of Great Circle, a piercing, irresistible first collection of short stories exquisite in their craft and audacious in their range. A love triangle plays out over decades on a Montana dude ranch. A hurdler and a gymnast spend a single night together in the Olympic village. Mistakes and mysteries weave an intangible web around an old man’s deathbed in Paris, connecting disparate destinies. On the slopes of an unfinished ski resort, a young woman searches for her vanished lover. A couple’s Romanian honeymoon goes ominously awry, and, in the mesmerizing title story, a former child actress breaks with her life in a Hollywood cult. In these and other stories, knockout after knockout, Maggie Shipstead delivers another “extraordinary” (New York Times) work of fiction and seals her reputation as a writer of “breathtaking range and skill” (Kirkus Reviews). Rich in imagination and dazzling in its shapeshifting style, You Have a Friend in 10A excavates the complexities of love, sex, and life in ways unsparing and hilarious, sharp-eyed and tender.

In the fall of 1978, teenager Theresa Allore went missing near Sherbrooke, Quebec. She wasn’t seen again until the spring thaw revealed her body in a creek only a few kilometers away. Shrugging off her death as a result of 1970s drug culture, police didn’t investigate. Patricia Pearson started dating Theresa’s brother John during the aftermath of Theresa’s death. Though the two teens would go their separate ways, the family’s grief, obsession with justice, and desire for the truth never left Patricia. Little did she know, the shockwaves of Theresa’s death would return to her life repeatedly over the next forty years. In 2001, John had just moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife and young children, when the cops came to the door. They had determined that a young girl had been murdered and buried in the basement. John wondered: If these cops could look for this young girl, why had nobody even tried to find out what happened to Theresa? Unable to rest without closure, he reached out to Patricia, by now an accomplished crime journalist and author, and together they found answers far bigger and more alarming than they could have imagined—and a legacy of violence that refused to end.

As Rune Saint John grapples with the challenges of assuming the Sun Throne, a powerful barrier appears around New Atlantis’s famed rejuvenation center. But who could have created such formidable magic . . . what do they want from the immortality clinic . . . and what remains of the dozens trapped inside? Though Rune and his lifelong bodyguard Brand are tasked with investigating the mysterious barrier, Rune is also busy settling into his new life at court. Claiming his father’s throne has irrevocably thrown him into the precarious world of political deception, and he must secure relationships with newfound allies in time to keep his growing found family safe. His relationship with his lover, Addam Saint Nicholas, raises additional political complications they must navigate. But he and Brand soon discover that the power behind the barrier holds a much more insidious, far-reaching threat to his family, to his people, and to the world. Now, the rulers of New Atlantis must confront an enemy both new and ancient as the flow of time itself is drawn into the conflict. And as Rune finds himself inexorably drawn back to the fall of his father’s court and his own torture at the hands of masked conspirators, the secrets that he has long guarded will be dragged into the light—changing the Sun Throne, and New Atlantis, forever. The climax of the first trilogy in the nine-book Tarot Sequence, The Hourglass Throne delivers epic urban fantasy that blends humor, fast-paced action, and political intrigue.

Due to anticipated thunderstorms, this event has been rescheduled for June 3. Stay tuned for a new flyer. Friday May the 13th, 4-8pm There's a party at The Plant, brought to you by Reclamation Vintage! Food Trucks, Beverages, Music, Vintage Vendors, Local Artisan Vendors, Music and much more! This time with better parking and a shuttle. Come join the fun!

• You asked for more special events like our sold-out Whiskey Class in April and we're here to deliver with Cocktail Classes. Learn about our elevated take on three classic cocktails. Enjoy chefs' pairings with Small Bites between rounds and complimentary champagne. Two seatings on Saturday June 4 at 5pm and 8pm. $75 per person. • Reservations for the classes accepted by phone only 919 704-8731. Limit 30 people per class. The restaurant is reserved exclusively for the Cocktail Classes and will not serve from the à la carte menu June 4.

• You asked for more special events like our sold-out Whiskey Class in April and we're here to deliver with Cocktail Classes. Learn about our elevated take on three classic cocktails. Enjoy chefs' pairings with Small Bites between rounds and complimentary champagne. Two seatings on Saturday June 4 at 5pm and 8pm. $75 per person. • Reservations for the classes accepted by phone only 919 704-8731. Limit 30 people per class. The restaurant is reserved exclusively for the Cocktail Classes and will not serve from the à la carte menu June 4.

This Sunday is our First Sunday Artist Reception with Randi Honeycutt, June 5, 2-4 pm! Gallery is open Noon to 4 pm.

Visit the Flyleaf Books event page to order your book, and please indicate in the comments if you’d like 1-2 seats held for you at the event! Passion. Horror. Betrayal. From the national bestselling author of the Lily Wong thriller series comes a “stunningly original” (F. Paul Wilson) dark journey into Brazilian mysticism about a desperate mother who rises from the slums to embrace Quimbanda magic amid her quest for the ultimate revenge. Across forty years, three continents, and a past incident in 1560 France, Serafina Olegario tests the boundaries of love, power, and corruption as she fights to escape her life of poverty and abuse. Serafina's quest begins in Brazil when she's possessed by the warrior goddess Yansã, who emboldens her to fight yet threatens to consume her spirit. Fueled by power and enticed by Exú, an immortal trickster and intermediary to the gods, Serafina turns to the seductive magic of Quimbanda. It’s dangerous to dance in the fire. But when you come from nothing, you have nothing to lose. Tori Eldridge is the national bestselling author and Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards finalist of the Lily Wong mystery thriller series—The Ninja Daughter, The Ninja's Blade, and The Ninja Betrayed. Her shorter works appear in the inaugural reboot of Weird Tales magazine and horror, dystopian, and other literary anthologies. Her horror screenplay The Gift—which inspired Dance Among the Flames—earned a semi-finalist spot for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Before writing, Tori performed as an actress, singer, dancer on Broadway, television, and film, and earned a 5th degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts. She is of Hawaiian, Chinese, Norwegian descent and was born and raised in Honolulu where she graduated from Punahou School with classmate Barack Obama. Tori's deep interest in world culture and religions has prompted her […]

Visit the Flyleaf Books event page to order your book, and please indicate in the comments if you’d like 1-2 seats held for you at the event! For fans of The Burning Girl by Claire Messud and Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi, a stunning, gut-punch of a novel that follows a young Indian American woman who, in the wake of tragedy, must navigate her family's expectations as she grapples with a complicated love and loss. On the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, Heera and her best friends, siblings Marie and Marco, are teasing the fun out of life in Raleigh, North Carolina, committing rebellious acts of teenage delinquency. They paint the town’s water towers with red anarchy symbols and hang out at the local bus station to pickpocket money for their Great Escape to New York. But no matter how much Heera defies her strict upbringing, she’s always avoided any real danger—until one devastating night changes everything. In its wake, Marco reinvents himself as Crash and spends his days womanizing and burning through a string of jobs. Meanwhile, Heera’s dream to go to college in New York is upended by a family illness, and she eventually finds herself trapped in an arranged marriage. Over the years, Heera’s and Crash’s paths cross and recross on a journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, and betrayals. Heart-wrenching, darkly funny, and buoyed by gorgeous prose, Circa is at once an irresistible love story and a portrait of a young woman torn between duty and her own survival, between what’s expected of her and what she desires. Devi S. Laskar is the author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues, winner of 7th annual Crook's Corner Book Prize (2020) for the best debut novel set in the South, winner of the 2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for […]

Visit the Flyleaf Books event page to order your book, and please indicate in the comments if you’d like 1-2 seats held for you at the event! A warm, keenly perceptive novel of sisterhood, heartbreak, home, and what it takes to remake a life at its halfway point, for fans of Ann Patchett and Emma Straub. Meet the Geller sisters: Beck, Claire, and Sophie, a trio of strong-minded women whose pragmatic, widowed mother, Marti, will be dying soon and taking her secrets with her. Marti has ensured that her modest estate is easy for her family to deal with once she’s gone––including a provision that the family’s summer cottage on Mount Desert Island, Maine, must be sold, the proceeds split equally between the three girls. Beck, the eldest, is a freelance journalist whose marriage looks more like a sibling bond than a passionate partnership. In fact, her husband Paul is hiding a troubling truth about his love life. For Beck, the Maine cottage has been essential to her secret wish to write a novel––and to remake the terms of her relationship. Despite her accomplishments as a pediatric cardiologist, Claire, the middle daughter, has always felt like the Geller misfit. Recently divorced, Claire’s secret unrequited love for the wrong man is slowly destroying her, and she’s finding that her expertise on matters of the heart unfortunately doesn’t extend to her own. Youngest daughter Sophie appears to live an Instagram-ready life, filled with glamorous work and travel, celebrities, fashion, art, and sex. In reality, her existence is a cash-strapped house of cards that may crash at any moment. Enter C.J. Reynolds, an enigmatic southerner ex-con with his own hidden past who complicates the situation. All is not what it seems, and everything is about to change. Therese Anne Fowler is the author […]