Steve Almond, All the Secrets of the World

This will be an in-store presentation and we will also live stream the evening on Zoom, please register to watch here.

Order All the Secrets of the World online here or call the store (505) 988-4226

Lorena Saenz has just been paired with Jenny Stallworth for a school project by a teacher hoping to unite two girls from starkly different backgrounds. Jenny is pretty and popular, and Lorena is quickly drawn into the family’s picture-perfect suburban lifestyle. Jenny’s mother, Rosemary, is glamorous, but needy—she treats Lorena like a friend, if only to break up the monotony of lonely afternoons. Jenny’s father, Marcus, spends his days teaching and his nights wandering the desert, absorbed in his research on the scorpions of Death Valley. Outwardly, they are the perfect family, poised for success in 1981 Sacramento at the dawn of a glorious American decade. Lorena finds her access intoxicating and alluring, a far cry from her life in the small apartment she shares with her single mother.

But the veneer is shattered when Marcus disappears. The prime suspect: Lorena’s troubled older brother, Tony.

To uncover the truth, Lorena must embark on an unforgiving odyssey into the desert, into the secrets and lies of the Stallworth family, and the dark heart of America’s criminal justice system. A shape-shifting social novel, All the Secrets of the World is a propulsive tour de force from a writer at the height of his powers.

The book has already been optioned for film.

About the Authors

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.

Robert Wilder is the author of two critically acclaimed books of essays–Tales From The Teachers' Lounge and Daddy Needs a Drink–and a novel, NICKEL. He lives in Santa Fe, NM.

The music of New Mexico-based singer-songwriter Boris McCutcheon is rooted in country and folk; his songs seem to drop from his imagination into an off-kilter magical high-desert landscape populated with rogues and friendly yearners. His band Boris & the Salt Licks have grown a loyal international following, sharing McCutcheon’s character-driven stories of “salt-cured New Mexicana.” Locally, he is best known for his off-the-grid trilogy Bad Road, Good People (2008), The Wheel of Life (2010), and the blockbuster finale Might Crash! (2013). Boris is currently touring his self-produced album, Pocket Hang Glider (2022), which follows up on the popular “low-rider album” As Old As Española (2020). Boris is humbled to have made an appearance in Steve Almond’s Rock and Roll Saved My Life (Random House, 2010), and counts Almond as an o.g. Salt Lick. (www.borismccutcheon.com)