Books & Books at The Betsy Hotel Presents An Afternoon with Diana McCaulay

Join us for the third installment of the Books & Books at The Betsy Monthly Literary Series with a riveting afternoon with esteemed author and environmental activist Diana McCaulay for the launch of her new book, A House For Miss Pauline.

🎟 Free & open to the public · RSVP recommended · Books will be available for purchase at the event. Can't make the event?

The series marks the return of Books & Books’ beloved literary programming to Miami Beach, following the closure of its Lincoln Road location during the pandemic. It also champions a 20 year partnership between Betsy co-owner Jonathan Plutzik and bookstore entrepreneur Mitchell Kaplan, both pacesetting leaders of distinguished South Florida business concerns – with a profound commitment to the power of literature to build community.

Events will take place on the last Sunday of every month at 4 p.m. in Bbar, The Betsy’s intimate underground art-filled venue. Each salon-style gathering will feature a visiting author - selected by Books&Books in partnership with major publishers -, and an audience Q&A. Admission is free with RSVP. Signed copies of books will be available for purchase. Valet and street parking will be available.

Starring an unforgettably fierce ninety-nine-year-old Jamaican heroine, this “profound and beautiful novel” transports readers to the heart of rural Jamaica with a tender and urgent story about who owns the land on which our identities are forged (Julia Alvarez).
When the stones of her house begin to rattle and shift and call out mysterious messages to her in the middle of the night, Pauline Sinclair, age ninety-nine, knows she will not make it to her one-hundredth birthday. She has lived a modest life in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village, educating herself with stolen books, raising her two children, surviving by becoming a successful ganja farmers in the area, and experiencing both deep passion and true loss with her beloved baby father, Clive.
Behind this seemingly benign façade, however, Miss Pauline has buried many secrets. To avenge her enslaved ancestors, she has built her house, stone by stone, from the ruins of a plantation on her land. And she knows more than she has told about the disappearance of Turner Buchanan—a white American man who came to Mason Hall decades ago to claim her land. The whispering stones, Miss Pauline realizes, are telling her that she must make peace with the past before she dies.
With help from her American granddaughter, Justine, and Lamont, a teenager she enlists to help her navigate the mysteries of the Internet, she searches for those she has wronged. But as the people and stories of her past come to invade her present, she discovers that there are shocking secrets even she could not have anticipated.
Lyrical, funny, eerie, and profound, infused with the patois and natural beauty of Jamaica, A House for Miss Pauline tells a timely and nuanced story about identity, colonialism, and land—and introduces an unforgettable heroine who is a model for living life on her own terms.

Diana McCaulay is a much nominated and awarded Jamaican writer, environmental activist and a lifelong resident of its capital city Kingston. She has written six novels - DOG-HEART (March 2010), HURACAN (July 2012), both published by Peepal Tree Press in the United Kingdom, GONE TO DRIFT (February 2016), published by Papillote Press from Dominica and the UK and Harper Collins US, the self-published, WHITE LIVER GAL (May 2017), DAYLIGHT COME (September 2020) published by Peepal Tree Press. She has also written a children's book, FINNY THE FAIRY FISH (2020), published by Collins Big Cat. Her most recent release is A HOUSE FOR MISS PAULINE, published by Dialogue Books in the UK and Algonquin Books in the US in February 2025.
Diana was a popular newspaper columnist for The Gleaner (1994-2001) and her short fiction has been published by Granta Online, Adda Stories, Eleven Eleven, The Caribbean Writer, Afro-Beat, Lifestyle Magazine and the Jamaica Observer’s literary supplement, Bookends. She won the regional Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2012 and again in 2022 and her short story, PICKING CRABS IN NEGRIL, won the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez prize September 2024.

Infused with her love of the island itself with all its beauty and tragedy, Diana’s novels celebrate Jamaica’s unique spirit and complexity. Hers is a uniquely authentic voice from a background which usually turns away from all that she unflinchingly faces.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Betsy Hotel, 1440 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, United States

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