Find out when and where your favorite authors will be visiting your local independent bookstore. Just click the store icon to see events by store or the calendar icon to see events by date! Don't know who you want to meet and greet? Check out this week's SoCal Indie Bestsellers. Read on for special news, Authors On Tour Now and recent Author Sightings!
Want to find out how you can support your local independent bookstore? Visit IndieBound.
Fireworks? Who needs fireworks when The Mystery Bookstore has Robert Crais on hand to rile things up? Be there at 5 p.m. for a meet/greet, food, fun, raffles and contests--earlier if you want to buy his lastest book, "Chasing Darkness," to get signed. (See quick synopsis of the Chasing Darkness below.)
Diesel, a Bookstore, with stores in Oakland and Malibu, plans to open a new location in Brentwood at the Brentwood Country Mart. John Evans and Alison Reid, Diesel's co-owners and independent booksellers since 1980, said the new store will have floor-to-ceiling shelves with a wide selection of books and a staff interested in passionate engagement with customers. Diesel is known for its author events and an eclectic mix of books from university and small publishers, as well as bestsellers. For those who like to get a celebrity fix along with their books, Brentwood Country Mart is frequented by locals like Jennifer Garner (and Violet), Ben Affleck, Naomi Watts, Keri Russell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Beal, Mary-Kate Olsen and Helen Hunt.
Don't miss two crime thrillers based in L.A., one set in 1949, the other present day. Denise Hamilton wows us with "The Last Embrace," a sexy, seductive read featuring Lily Kessler, a former OSS spy, fearlessly treading Hollywood's meanest streets in search of her late fiancé's actress sister, Kitty Hayden, who's gone missing while seeking juicy parts and wealthy lovers. Robert Crais takes a different approach in "Chasing Darkness" with fan favorite PI Elvis Cole going from hero to zero; he clears an innocent man of a murder charge, but when that innocent man is found dead three years later holding photos of the victim, Elvis is the one on trial, and Elvis is none too happy about it. Meet both authors this summer at an independent bookstore near you. (Click pix to enlarge.)
Hello, people! Junie B. Jones met the bestest fans ever when she stopped at Mrs. Nelson's Toy & Book Shop recently and shared treasures from her Big Pink Trunk of Junk. See the pix! And don't forget that summertime is a great time to take your kids to your local independent bookstore. Many, like A Whale of a Tale, Blue Chair Children's Books, Children's Book World, Mysterious Galaxy, Vroman's, Warwick's and Yellow Book Road, have fun kid-oriented activities and author visits. (Click pix to enlarge.)
Selected by SCIBA independent booksellers, here are our SCIBA Book Award Winners. Reflecting the diversity of the Southland, the SCIBA Book Awards celebrate the eloquent literary voices who define what it means to be a Southern Californian. To be eligible for consideration, the author and/or illustrator must reside within the SCIBA geographic region which extends from the Central Coast to the Mexican border.
Fiction Winner
Peony in Love by Lisa See
Set in 17th-century China, See's fifth novel is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. The novel's plot mirrors that of the opera, and eternal themes abound: an intelligent girl chafing against the restrictions of expected behavior; fiction's educative powers; the rocky path of love between lovers and in families.
Non-Fiction Winner
An Alphabetical Life by Wendy Werris
Werris grew up in Los Angeles while her often-absent comedy-writer father, Snag Werris, sustained a 20-year association with Jackie Gleason. During the summer of 1970, Wendy, age 19, strolled into Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard, a renowned venue that attracted street people as well as celebrities, intending to buy a Charles Bukowski collection, and walked out not only with the book but also with the job that would set her life's course. Werris now tells the story of her peripatetic and gutsy book-selling career in a matter-of-fact memoir that eulogizes expert and eccentric independent booksellers of yesteryear and chronicles the rise of the discount chains. Werris also adds a chapter to the story of women in the workforce as she remembers her demanding years on the road as a publisher's rep when few women traveled sales circuits solo.
Mystery Winner
L.A. Noir by Denise Hamilton
In 2004, New York-based Akashic Books launched an audacious noir series with each anthology comprised of new fiction set in one locale. With Brooklyn, Miami, London, San Francisco and others by the wayside, now comes Los Angeles Noir, which makes the mean streets of L.A. a little meaner not to mention a lot more diverse than they were portrayed during the era of J. Edgar Hoover, well-worn fedoras, and three-martini lunches at the Brown Derby. These short stories from 17 writers we all love (Connelly, Fitch, Rice, Hamilton, Tobar, Hirahara, Wagman, etc.) are cinematic, violent little gems of contemporary crime fiction that are a must-read for any true fan of noir.
Children’s Novel Winner
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Here’s a true masterpiece - an artful blending of narrative, illustration and cinematic technique, for a story as tantalizing as it is touching. Twelve-year-old orphan Hugo lives in the walls of a Paris train station at the turn of the 20th century, where he tends to the clocks and filches what he needs to survive. Hugo’s recently deceased father, a clockmaker, worked in a museum where he discovered an automaton: a human-like figure seated at a desk, pen in hand, as if ready to deliver a message. After his father showed Hugo the robot, the boy became just as obsessed with getting the automaton to function as his father had been. Throw in some excellent chase scenes and you’ve got a riveting page-turner you can’t put down.
Children’s Picture Book Winner
Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser
Fancy Nancy Clancy, the charming child who likes beads, baubles and big words, returns for another fanciful adventure that will please her adoring audience. As in the first entry in the series, Nancy dresses to the nines, uses sophisticated vocabulary and tries valiantly to elevate her family's tastes from practical to fantastic. In this sequel, the Clancy family is planning to buy a puppy, and Nancy wants a French papillon like Jewel, the pampered pooch owned by their next-door neighbor. When Nancy and her family arrange to dogsit for Jewel, they realize that such a tiny, delicate breed doesn't fit their lifestyle after all. Enter Frenchy from the pound who doesn’t mind getting all frou-frou and frilly. A very fun read-aloud!
You have other things to read, but in brief, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association is a non-profit organization made up of independent booksellers and industry professionals doing business in Southern California, Southern Nevada and Arizona. For more information, click here.
