Wednesday, March 31, 2010

New Meyer on horizon!


Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will publish Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella on Saturday, June 5. One dollar for each copy sold from the first printing will be donated to the American Red Cross International Response Fund.

Learn more at the book's official web site.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

A moment of silence for a literary legend

Heidi Durrow, author of The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, reminds us today that 46 years ago, her literary muse, Nella Larson, died. Read Heidi's beautiful memorial on her blog.

In The Green Kitchen available for pre-order


Alice Waters has been a champion of the sustainable, local cooking movement for decades. To Alice, good food is a right, not a privilege. In the Green Kitchen presents her essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart plus more than 50 recipes—for delicious fresh, local, and seasonal meals—from Alice and her friends. She demystifies the basics including steaming a vegetable, dressing a salad, simmering stock, filleting a fish, roasting a chicken, and making bread. An indispensable cookbook, she gives you everything you need to bring out the truest flavor that the best ingredients of the season have to offer.

Contributors: Darina Allen * Dan Barber * Lidia Bastianich * Rick Bayless * Paul Bertolli * David Chang * Traci Des Jardins * Angelo Garro * Joyce Goldstein * Thomas Keller * Niloufer Ichaporia King * Peggy Knickerbocker * Anna Lappé & Bryant Terry * Deborah Madison * Clodagh McKenna * Jean-Pierre Moullé * Joan Nathan * Scott Peacock * Cal Peternell * Gilbert Pilgram * Clair Ptak * Oliver Rowe * Amaryll Schwertner * Fanny Singer * David Tanis * Poppy Tooker * Charlie Trotter * Jerôme Waag * Beth Wells

Pre-order here: http://bit.ly/a8muof

Monday, March 29, 2010

Yeah Betsy! We completely agree!


"Not only are locally owned independent businesses the economic backbone of this country and of each and every community in which they exist, they are also the key to economic recovery. On a national level, small firms have generated 60% to 80% of new jobs annually over the last decade and employ almost half of all private-sector employees. Let's quit looking for the pot of gold at the end of some corporate rainbow and realize we have the keys to the kingdom in our hands already--the locally owned independent businesses in our state that run our economic engine and keep our communities alive and connected."--Betsy Burton, co-owner of the King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, and co-chair of Local First, Utah, writing in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Beer and the Single Man


For years, beer connoisseur Streeter McClure’s culinary repertoire, like many single men, consisted of boxed dinners and ramen noodles.

After one particularly long night of debauchery, he opened the fridge and was faced with an onion, a tomato, a leftover cheeseburger, and two cans of beer. Frustrated and starving, he did what any guy in his situation would do: threw all of the ingredients together in a pan with the intention of feeding himself and his equally ravenous friends. To his total surprise, it was delicious!

This realization, along with his love for beer and desire to impress the ladies, led him to create a cookbook that single men everywhere can incorporate into their everyday cooking. The Single Man’s Guide to Cooking with Beer includes such recipes as Spring Break Beer Fish, Brew Stew, No Date Saturday Night Beef Stroganoff, Beer Battered Onion Rings, and Man Slaw.

Full of deliciously inventive recipes, The Single Man’s Guide to Cooking with Beer is an essential item for single men to impress on any occasion, from Super Bowl parties, to roommate dinners, to cooking for a date.

Available for pre-order here: http://bit.ly/aaGGnY

Sunday, March 28, 2010

March 28 is National Children's Picture Book Day!

Here are some great ones, on our shelves NOW!





This New York Times Bestseller, from award-winning author Carmen Agra Deedy, is a true story of hope and generosity about a gift from a small Kenyan village to the people of America. This children's book was done in collaboration with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah and features stunning illustrations by Thomas Gonzalez.


A classic Golden Book, with lots of kid appeal, is back in print!

What happens when the local rag man sneezes? The kitten’s ears end up on the bunny. The bunny’s ears end up on the kitten. The dog meows, the cat barks. “No barnyard will have me!” crows the rooster, whose tail feathers now sprout out of his head. But with a little concentration—and a lot of pepper—the rag man tries to sneeze everything right: “Katchoo! Katchim! Katcham! Katchibble! Fumadiddle! Skedaddle! Fiddle-faddle!” Hilariously reillustrated by Bruce Ingman, this classic Golden Book will delight a new generation.



Take a magical journey OVER THE RAINBOW When all the world is a hopeless jumble and the raindrops tumble all around, Heaven opens a magic lane. When all the clouds darken up the skyway, there's a rainbow highway to be found, Leading from your window pane to a place behind the sun, just a step beyond the rain.

You may not immediately recognize these words...but you definitely know and love the song to which they belong. This is the introductory verse to "Over the Rainbow," sung with such memorable poignancy by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Although she actually recorded these opening lyrics, they were never used in the film. Now, this classic song has been transformed into a magnificent picture book and CD set. Breathtaking and magical artwork by Eric Puybaret will carry young readers from a little red farmhouse up over the rainbow, into the sky where bluebirds fly and castles rise high in the clouds, and beyond.The extraordinary soundtrack for this book is performed by Judy Collins, who has recorded what might be the very best version of "Over the Rainbow" ever sung. The winner of a Grammy Award, Collins's glorious voice is one of the most admired of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her version of this classic will delight and touch the heart of every parent and child who listens.

As an added bonus, the enclosed CD also contains two delightful additional songs recorded by Judy Collins: White Choral Bells and I See the Moon.


A dog, a cat, a bird, a fish
great pets to have. But if you had your wish
why not choose one out of the ordinary?
Why not a pet who's EXTRAordinary?

Acclaimed artist Barroux makes his Blue Apple Books debut with a book about an amazing array of animals. Cats are cuddly, but elephants? Exceptional! A Chihuahua is cute, but tarantulas? Terrific! Flaps cleverly transform everyday animals into exotic, one-of-a-kind, perfect pets.




Base's newest picture book will cleverly entice kids to love math and counting games--replete with a conservationist twist. The text is a moving and timely tale about how people unknowingly affect the environment and how one can always learn from mistakes and do things better.


Thank you, Mr President...


...for supporting local, independent book stores. In this case, it was the venerable Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Chris Moore at our Historic Lodo Store Tomorrow

Free tickets will be handed out starting at 1pm for Chris's 2pm event! Come early--it's gonna be a packed house!

Author portrait courtesy of Eric Piatkowski.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Stephen Cannell at our Colfax Avenue store TONIGHT!

book info:
http://bit.ly/8Y5fno

In his thirty-five-year career, Emmy Award-winning writer Stephen Cannell has created over forty TV series, including
The Rockford Files, Silk Stalkings, The A-Team, 21 Jump Street, Hunter, The Greatest American Hero, Renegade, Wiseguy, and The Commish. Cannell, also a perennial New York Times bestselling author, will read from and sign his new novel The Pallbearers ($25.99 St. Martin’s), a powerful new novel in which Detective Shane Scully, who grew up as an orphan, must revisit his painful childhood to find out who murdered the kind and charismatic man who became a father to him.

event info:
http://bit.ly/b5rkW1

Thursday, March 25, 2010

John McPhee at Tattered Cover Historic Lodo Tonight!


http://www.tatteredcover.com/book/9780374263737

John McPhee, acclaimed author and staff writer at The New Yorker, will read from and sign his new book Silk Parachute ($25.00 FS&G). The brief, brilliant essay “Silk Parachute,” which first appeared in The New Yorker a decade ago, has become John McPhee’s most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces collected here—highly varied in length and theme—McPhee ranges with his characteristic humor and intensity through a variety of themes, each containing somewhere a personal aspect in which McPhee suggests why he was attracted to write about the subject. Free numbered tickets for a place in line for the booksigning will be available at 6:30 pm. Seating for the presentation prior to the booksigning is limited, and available on a first-come, first-served basis to ticketed customers only.

Here is a fantastic interview with John done by thetakeaway.org:

http://www.thetakeaway.org/2010/mar/15/john-mchphee-silk-parachute/

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Congratulations to the 2009 Tiptree Award Winners!








In February of 1991 at WisCon (the world’s only feminist-oriented science fiction convention), award-winning SF author Pat Murphy announced the creation of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. Pat created the award in collaboration with author Karen Joy Fowler. The aim of the award is not to look for work that falls into some narrow definition of political correctness, but rather to seek out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating. The Tiptree Award is intended to reward those women and men who are bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles, a fundamental aspect of any society.

The award is named for Alice B. Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her impulsive choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between “women’s writing” and “men’s writing.” Her fine stories were eagerly accepted by publishers and won many awards in the field. Many years later, after she had written some other work under the female pen name of Raccoona Sheldon, it was discovered that she was female. The discovery led to a great deal of discussion of what aspects of writing, if any, are essentially gendered. The name “Tiptree” was selected to illustrate the complex role of gender in writing and reading.

Winners

Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales by Greer Gilman (Small Beer Press 2009)

Ooku: The Inner Chambers, volumes 1 & 2 by Fumi Yoshinaga (VIZ Media 2009)

Honor List

“Beautiful White Bodies” by Alice Sola Kim (online at Strange Horizons, 2009; published in two parts on 12-7 and 12-14)

Distances by Vandana Singh (Aqueduct Press 2008)

“Galapagos” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (in Eclipse 3 edited by Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books 2009)

Lifelode by Jo Walton (NESFA Press 2009)

“Useless Things” by Maureen F. McHugh (in Eclipse 3 edited by Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books 2009)

“Wives” by Paul Haines (in X6 edited by Keith Stevenson, coeur de lion 2009)

Sunday, March 21, 2010



A short excerpt from Erica Bauermeister's School of Essential Ingredients:

As Lillian's skill progressed over the years, she learned other, unexpected culinary lessons. She observed how dough that was pounded made bread that was hard and moods that were equally so. She saw that cookies that were soft and warm satisfied a different human need than those that were crisp and cooled. The more she cooked, the more she began to view spices as carriers of the emotions and memories of the places they were originally from and all those they had traveled through over the years. She discovered that people seemed to react to spices much as they did to other people, relaxing instinctively into some, shivering into a kind of emotional rigor mortis when encountering others. By the time she was twelve, Lillian had begun to believe that a true cook, one who could read people and spices, could anticipate reactions before the first taste, and thus affect the way a meal or an evening would go. It was this realization that led Lillian to her Great Idea.


2010 Evil Companions Literary Award

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Salman Ahmad Rocked The Colfax Avenue Store!





From a PBS interview Salman did with Jeffrey Brown:
JEFFREY BROWN
: Rock 'N' Roll Jihad. Now those are words that don't usually go together. What's it mean?

SALMAN AHMAD: Well, when I was thinking of a book title, I thought my passion is rock 'n' roll and the struggle to attain, sort of search for that passion is the Jihad and those two words together -- passion and struggle -- also expand into what's been happening in the world, you know, in my world. You know on 9/11 Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda hijacked the word Jihad and, you know, made it into another thing completely, which was ugly, you know, dark, fear inspiring, so I'm hoping that through this book journey, people will be able to see, you know, what Jihad means for me and perhaps for a lot of other Muslims as well.

JEFFREY BROWN: That message that you're talking about is one we don't see all that much. Or we don't hear about it. We hear more about clash. What do you see, you go back to Pakistan often now, what do you see happening there? You know, we talk about it on the program all the time with political analysts and politicians, generals sometimes, what do you see?

SALMAN AHMAD: Yeah, well, last year the Taliban circulated a cell phone video of a 17-year-old girl who's being flogged and, you know, it was a gruesome video and that was in a sense a question being put to the entire Pakistinian population, that this is the vision of Islam that these guys have. Are you good with this? And when that video was run on news channels in Pakistan, there was a moment where there is a general disgust, when people realize you know what these people don't speak for Islam, they don't speak for Pakistani culture. If you win the people, you win this war against the extremists. And I think President Obama's speech in Cairo, that's a hit song. People say, well, it's one speech, but you know the thing is words have great power, if he can put action to those words of mutual respect and mutual interest. That needs to be done much more I think.

JEFFREY BROWN: And your way is through and will continue to be through rock 'n' roll.

SALMAN AHMAD: Absolutely. And writing.

See the whole interview, with video, at: http://to.pbs.org/dwUGl4

Oh, Mario, Mario, Mario....



Check out this hilarious trailer for Mario Acevedo's new book Werewolf Smackdown, then come meet the man himself Monday, March 22 at 7:30 at our Colfax Avenue store. Don't forget to ask him what he REALLY wanted the title of the book to be.





http://www.tatteredcover.com/book/9780061567186

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Great News for Manga Fans!

Fantagraphics Steps into Manga Publishing

Fantagraphics plans a literary manga line

Kai Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 3/15/2010 7:15:50 PM

Drunken Dream coverIndie comics publisher Fantagraphics Books is the latest comics house to add manga publishing to its list. The Seattle-based company known for such artists as the Hernandez Bros, creators of the acclaimed Love and Rockets series, and for historical collections like The Complete Peanuts, will roll out a new manga line starting in September. Matt Thorn, Japanese translator, manga talent scout and professor at Kyoto Seika University, will secure Japanese licenses, oversee translations and will also act as editor for the line.

To debut the new line of Fantagraphics manga, the publisher will release, Drunken Dream, a collection of short stories from 1971-2007 by mangaka and pioneer of shojo manga Moto Hagio. Fantagraphics joins such notable U.S. indie comics publishers as Top Shelf and Drawn & Quarterly that also publishing manga.

The Fantagraphics manga line will publish four releases per year, with print runs projected to fall between 6000-8000 copies. "My approach is to publish smart, artistic, but accessible work that is well translated and has high production values," Thorn said. Thorn said he has grown weary of manga's current place in the U.S. market as disposable entertainment. The manga line will follow in Fantagraphics's tradition of publishing comics with literary merit.

"There is a vast mount of [manga] material out there for intelligent adults," Thorn said, "and yes, I think there is a market. In fact, I think it will become a major market." Fantagraphics president and co-publisher, Gary Groth, is also unconcerned about catering to an established market. "Our publishing philosophy is, if we publish something good, and we market it well, it will find a readership."

Wandering SonFantagraphics has published manga in the past; in 1995 they released an anthology of underground manga titled Sake Jock and roughly eight years ago they published Anywhere but Here, a collection of comic strips by Tori Miki. However, manga has been largely in Groth's peripheral vision, and both Groth and Fantagraphics were slow to warm to the c category. Groth said his reluctance to publish manga was due to his perception that commercial manga lacked "literary worth."

However, the more Groth learned of the medium and of mangaka Moto Hagio, who Thorn interviewed for The Comics Journal, Fantagraphics publication of comics criticism, the more his opinion of manga changed. In 2005, the idea of publishing manga grew into a reality. Hagio, who helped reshape the comics industry in Japan and was the beginning of Japan's current system of women creating comics for girls and women, will be the guest of Fantagraphics at this summer's San Diego Comic-Con International.

Thorn plans to publish more of Hagio's work in the future, making her a pillar in Fantgraphics's manga line. Fantagraphics will also publish the nine volume series Wandering Son by Shimura Takako, the story of two middle schoolers grappling with gender identity.

"The initial release may give the impression that we're just targeting women," Thorn said. "But we are aiming for a gender balance, as well as a balance of mainstream and more Fantagraphics-like underground work. The common thread is well-crafted stories for thinking adult readers."

(used with permission from Publisher's Weekly) http://www.publishersweekly.com/

Hollywood thinks booksellers are sexy! Don't you?


A star in the new film Remember Me, directed by Allen Coulter, is Robert Pattinson, who plays Tyler Hawkins, who happens to be an employee at the Strand Bookstore, New York City. Here is Pattinson in a still taken during filming this past June at the store. The last time the Strand was featured in a film was in Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron's 2009 movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Sneak Peak at April's #1 Indie Pick

Coming out April 13, 2010

Paul is going through a mid-life crisis. He's trying to deal with his recent divorce and his father's even more recent stroke. He relies on his drinking buddies at the local bar to cheer him and make him forget his loneliness. He relies on companionship from his girlfriend, who is in an "open relationship" with him and one other man. And he relies on his ancient dog Stella to help him ruminate over life's issues. He's not the first human to ever talk to their pet, but Stella might just be the first dog who talks back. But only to Paul. She proves to be quite insightful, both in offering rather impartial views of what is going on in Paul's life and in how she innocently questions why humans make the choices they do. This is a quirky tale of letting go and moving on, of figuring out what you want life to be for you, of relationships and communication told in a placid but fresh voice worth listening to.

--Jackie


See if these opening lines grab you:

"In the winter of 1998, at the close of the twentieth century, in a small college town on the Connecticut River, on the sidewalk outside a house close enough to the railroad tracks that the pictures on the walls were in constant need of straightening, not that anybody ever straightened them, Paul Gustavson, having had a bit too much to drink, took the glove off his right hand, wedged it into his left armpit, and fumbled in his pants pocket for his house keys....

"I'm home," Paul said, letting himself in and closing the door to keep out the cold.

"I thought you were dead," the dog said. Her name was Stella, and she was a mixed breed, half German shepherd and half yellow Labrador, but favoring the latter in appearance. Fortunately, she'd also gotten her personality from the Labrador side of the family, taking from the Germans only a certain congenital neatness and a strong sense of protectiveness…

"Once again, I'm not dead."

"Joy unbounded," she said dryly."

You can preorder this book here.

Rock Star Author has sold 25 Million Albums!!!

And you can meet him, TONIGHT, at our Colfax Avenue store, 7:30 pm!!!!

Nina Sankovitch of huffingtonpost.com blogs about books featuring "Heroic Mothers"


Nina Sankovitch

Three very different portraits of motherhood are presented in Jodi Picoult's House Rules and Gabrielle Burton's Impatient with Desire and Searching for Tamsen Donner; what all three books have in common is a vibrant portrayal of mother as hero. House Rules is tidily-built with a fast plot, rich characters both good and evil, and a conclusion that will make the legions of Picoult's mom-fans feel good about themselves (especially when the mom in the book gets the hot younger guy). Impatient with Desire and Searching for Tamsen Donner reach further and do more: Burton leads her readers to heights of awe, admiration, and inspiration through her fictional but well-researched account of Tamsen Donner's fateful journey west and her memoir of taking her own daughters on the same journey, trying to find both the woman who was Tamsen Donner and herself.

In Jodi Picoult's House Rules, Emma Hunt has a child with Asperger's syndrome. A single mom, she alone bears the load of keeping Jacob's life on an even and predictable keel, which is essential to his well-being. When Jacob is accused of a violent crime and forced into the criminal justice system, the load becomes even heavier and Emma must work even harder to save her son, hold onto her own sanity, and keep her other son from falling off the map. Picoult does a good job presenting the facts and fictions about autism and illustrating the barriers to understanding autism that make care of autistic children a full-time job for their parents.

Gabrielle Burton's Impatient with Desire is a beautifully written fictional account of the Donner party's epic journey of 1846. It is a journey whose tragic and gruesome finale is familiar to most Americans. Burton uses years of solid research and a disciplined imagination to fill in the less sensational but still moving details of the trip that began in Illinois and ended in the snow-bound Sierra Nevada. Burton gives us a flesh and blood Tamsen Donner, brave, independent, kind, and determined to make her way west both for the adventure of it all and for the advantages she was sure awaited her family in California. The party of George Donner, Tamsen, their five children, and eighty other pioneers traveled by wagon going west across miles of meadows, mountains, and deserts. Tamsen's journal entries and letters to her sister back east, imagined by Burton, describe the journey west in all its hardships and its pleasures. Although only two of Tamsen's letters while on the trail still exist and her journal was never recovered, Burton uses the facts she does have to evoke the heart and soul of Tamsen, and to record her motivations in beginning the trip, her delights in the journey, and her heroism in the snows of Truckee Meadows. Tamsen kept her five children alive and sane through a regimen of hygiene, chores, and meals (only at the very end was human meat prepared and then it was only for the youngest of the group). In addition to taking care of their bodily needs as best she could, Tamsen inspired them -- and now, us -- with her own unquenchable spirit, her awe and gratitude for the beauty she saw while crossing the country, and her firm sense of destiny as one who would settle the United States for future generations.

Searching for Tamsen Donner is Burton's riveting memoir of the trip she took one summer tracking both the trail of the Donner party across the United States and the personal story of Tamsen Donner. Burton's journey took her to Newburyport Massachusetts, where Tamsen was born, south to North Carolina where she taught school, married, had two children, and then lost all three; and north to Springfield, Illinois where Tamsen met George Donner and from where they began their westward migration. Burton followed the old Oregon-California Trail up to the Truckee Meadows, where she slept out beneath the tree then believed to be the tree against which the Donners built their winter shelter over a century earlier. Burton undertook the massive cross country trip with her husband and five children and her details of life on the road interspersed with facts and questions about the Donner party and memories from Burton's own life as a writer, mother, and feminist combine to make this an inspiring memoir of fully-engaged motherhood, a riveting history of self-discovery, and a further homage to the spirit and the legacy of Tamsen Donner.

From October 2008 through October 2009, Nina Sankovitch read one book a day and wrote about the 365 books she read on her website, www.readallday.org. Now that the book-a-day project has ended, Sankovitch will keep up the reading and reviewing at a slower pace, and is writing a book for HarperStudio about how comfort, pleasure, joy, and knowledge are available to anyone who can pick up a book and take some time to start reading it. Great good comes from reading great books.

See the original article at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nina-sankovitch/heroic-mothers-tamsen-don_b_484358.html

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A New Release from Garth Stein!


This is a slightly updated re-release of Stein's first novel originally published in 1996
and out of print for some time. Don't expect any Enzo-like characters here--this book is TERRIFYING, a flat out, brilliantly crafted horror story. Stein is a "blood quantum verified" registered member of the Tlingit Indian Tribe of Alaska (his great-grandmother was full blooded Tlingit), and he has taken one of their more terrifying legends and brought it to the modern world.

This is a story about Kushtakas, otter spirit shapeshifters who steal souls from people found alone in the woods and waters near Klawock and Wrangell Alaska. Two years ago when Jenna's young son drowned in Thunder Bay, she had not heard the legends. But with her world falling apart around her in Seattle, Jenna decides to go back to Alaska and try to find peace. What she finds is a nightmare that leaves her fighting for her own life and soul. The writing in this book is masterful--I spent no small amount of time curled up in a ball keeping a wary eye on the windows and door locks while reading it. And the last 40 pages--I pretty much forgot to breathe. Yes, it's THAT good.

--Jackie

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister


I have been in love with this book for more than a year now. This is a glorious book. It's about food as a touchstone and a means for memory, community, nurturing, healing, loving, seduction, sustenance, pleasure, joy, beginning, endings--life. It is the story of a cooking class that learns far more than culinary skills at the hands of a chef whose wisdom is not limited to food stuffs. The language is lush and decadent, rolling off the page and into your mind like a drug. I could taste, smell, see and feel everything as if I was indeed standing at the prep table myself. This is Bauermeister's first novel, but the power and magic in her prose tells me that it is far from her last.

Fans of Harris's Chocolat will be crazy about this book, but I would recommend it for foodies of any sort, and really just about anyone--this book casts a powerful spell that makes you see, feel and taste the world, even your memories, in a new, deep, consuming way.

Erica is going to be speaking TONIGHT, at 7:30, at our Highlands Ranch store. I'll be there, and hopefully so will YOU!

--Jackie

And, as a special bonus, you can check out some of the recipes from the book at her website:
http://www.ericabauermeister.com/recipes.html

Twilight, The Graphic Novel is released today!



Get a preview of it courtesy of Entertainment Weekly:

Exclusive: Twilight, The Graphic Novel

Monday, March 15, 2010

The Man Behind the Pod(cast) Revealed!!!!




Meet Jeremy Brieske. He may seem familiar--he's at one Tattered Cover store or another at least 5 times a month, taping material that eventually becomes the amazing podcasts known as Authors On Tour, Live!. Published every Monday, this week's features Joshua Ferris talking about his book The Unnamed and is podcast #205!. You can listen to it here:
http://authorsontourlive.com/joshua-ferris-podcasts-the-unnamed/




You can find the entire library at http://authorsontourlive.com/

Jeremy works for Burst Marketing (http://www.burstmarketing.com/), a podcast publishing and social media marketing company that "bursts across the web and all devices" (including a free IPhone app coming out very soon) started by Denver native Rob Simon. They specialize in book, sports and health care related clients, though they are always willing to add more (you know we had to put a plug in for them). It is interesting to note that famed former Denver sportscaster Darin Foat does the voiceover work for AOTL and other projects for them.

We asked Jeremy what his very favorite author event/podcast was and he answered without hesitation: David Sedaris. You can listen to it here:
http://authorsontourlive.com/david-sedaris-podcasts-when-you-are-engulfed-in-flames/

Many, many, many thanks to Jeremy, Rob, Darin and everyone at Burst Marketing for featuring Tattered Cover authors in their amazing Authors on Tour Live! We are honored and grateful!

The Irresistible Henry House is exactly that!


I am utterly captivated with this book because it's premise is SO fascinating, especially since it's based in historical fact. Apparently, from the 1920s to the 1960s, there were collegiate level home economics classes that involved rotations in a 'practice house' taking care of a real live 'practice baby'. Orphanages literally "loaned" babies to these college programs for roughly two years per baby, and several women worked weekly rotations being in charge. If you don't believe me, check out Cornell's photo gallery of some of these women and the babies
(http://he-photos.library.cornell.ed/browse_results.php?sub=3). The whole program was
actually quite brilliant, since it was a quiet way of teaching women high level physics,
mathematics, mechanics, economics etc. under the guise of letting them earn their MRS degrees (example: one project was to dismantle and then reassemble a refrigerator). Grunwald takes us into that world, with a stern proctor named Martha, an unusually charming orphan named Henry and his 6 practice mothers. The book follows Henry from 3 months old to roughly 25 years old and shows what might have happened to a boy raised in such a way. Grunwald carefully weaves in actual psychological studies done on real "practice babies" as well as extremely clever character development of her own, generously spiced with the cultural details of the changes that happened throughout the 1950s and 60s to create a truly absorbing story. You've never read a book like this one. I guarantee it.

--Jackie

Tonight at our Historic Lodo store: An Evening of Western Writing with Mark Spragg & Laura Bell


Mark Spragg is the author of Where Rivers Change Direction, a memoir that won the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers award, and the novels The Fruit of Stone and An Unfinished Life, which was chosen by the Rocky Mountain News as the Best Book of 2004. Spragg will read from and sign his new novel Bone Fire ($25.95 Random House), a gripping story that contains, along with harsh truths and difficult consolation, moments of hilarity and surprise and beauty. No one writes more compellingly about the modern West than Mark Spragg, and in Bone Fire he is at the very height of his powers.


Laura Bell’s work has been published in several collections, and from the Wyoming Arts Council she has received two literature fellowships as well as the Neltje Blanchan Memorial Award and the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Bell will discuss and sign her new book Claiming Ground: A Memoir ($24.95 Random House). Brimming with careful insight and written in a spare, radiant prose, Bell’s story is a heart-wrenching ode to the rough, enormous beauty of the Western landscape and the peculiar sweetness of hard labor, to finding oneself even in isolation, to a life formed by nature, and to the redemption of love, whether given or received.