ROCKLAND — Maine author Hilary E. Bartlett will be signing copies of her new book, Mushroom Mania, on Saturday, Aug. 24, from 11 a.m. - 1 p. m., at Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop, 47 Maverick Street, Rockland. This is Bartlett’s second volume of non-fiction published by North Country Press.

Mushrooms are fruit bodies of fungi that support plant, forest and human health as well as Maine’s economy. Consumption of fresh mushrooms has boomed in recent years – sales of medicinal mushroom supplements have soared, according to Bartlett, in a news release. Enthusiasts are also scouring the woods to forage more mushrooms.

Bartlett started working on Mushroom Mania during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was the perfect project for the lockdown because it tapped into all of her passions – mushrooms, ecology, art, and cooking. Her book is full of health benefits, recipes, watercolors of Maine’s wild species, plus tips on foraging and how to grow mushrooms at home.

Bartlett was born and raised in postwar Liverpool, England, a predominantly Irish city where markets stocked a dozen varieties of potatoes, rarely mushrooms. She studied these fungal fruit bodies as part of her microbiology training and earned her doctorate from University College London. A summer science fellowship brought Bartlett to Midcoast Maine in 1975. Bartlett’s passion for mushrooms flourished when she first moved here. She stumbled upon a dapple-lit wonderland, Oven’s Mouth in Boothbay, where mushrooms poked through moss and leaf litter along steep banks of a tidal waterway.