In-Store: Jessica M. Goldstein: Retro w/ Casey Scieszka at Books Are Magic Montague – Brooklyn, NY

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/I2H6JAUIn0Y
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we’ll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.

An out-of-work actress gets a job as a tour guide for an ultra-luxury time travel company—only to discover her trips to the past could upend her present—in this sharp, speculative debut novel.

When Ash spots an ad for Retro during a depressing Instagram scroll—she’s in debt and unemployed; everyone else is, evidently, thriving—she’s surprised the algorithm sent it her way. She’s heard of recreational time travel, but it’s way out of her budget. Then she sees the caption: Come away with us! We’re hiring.

So begins Ash’s life as a Time Travel Agent, leading wealthy tourists on vacations to historical hotspots. She takes bachelorette parties to live out their cowboy-romance fantasies in the Old West and throws “’20s for your twenties” birthday bashes at speakeasies; she smiles politely as rich Wall Street guys give prospecting a shot in the Gold Rush. It’s all thrilling, outrageous, and totally surreal. Bygone America is just a Retro Metro ride away.

Despite Ash’s tendency toward cynicism, she finds herself swept up in her dazzling new job. Sure, Ash isn’t the actress she always dreamed she’d be. But isn’t this so much better? It’s like Ash’s life is a movie, complete with an impossible love triangle. How is she supposed to choose between her mysterious office crush and the handsome private eye pursuing her in 1937?

For the first time in years, Ash’s life feels enviable—so she’d really rather not pay attention to the strange things happening to her memory and relationships outside Retro. But as her trips threaten to unravel her real life, she confronts an unsettling truth: “escaping” into the past was never really an escape at all.

Jessica M. Goldstein is a journalist and humorist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vulture, Marie Claire, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and more. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she was born and raised in New Jersey and currently lives in Washington, D.C. Retro is her first novel.

Casey Scieszka is a born and raised Brooklynite who has lived in Beijing, San Francisco, Fez, and Timbuktu where she was a Fulbright Scholar. In 2013 she and her husband, artist Steven Weinberg, moved to the Catskill Mountains and opened the Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed & Bar, which runs an annual Artist Residency hosting world-renowned painters, bestselling authors, and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists. Her debut novel The Foutain was published in March 2026.