Untitled Document

October 2003

Please let us know at least 7 days in advance if you would like an autographed copy. This will allow us sufficient time to have enough copies of the book in stock. Thank You.

Wednesday, October 1st at 7:30 p.m.
Frances Itani
Deafening (Grove Atlantic)

Set on the eve of the Great War, Deafening is an exquisite tale of love and war and an ode to language: how it can console, imprison, and bridge the chasms of geography and experience. Young Canadian Grania O'Neill, deaf after a childhood illness, is sent away to school where, protected from the unforgiving hearing world, she learns sign language and speech. She also meets Jim Lloyd, a hearing man who creates with her an emotional vocabulary that encompasses both silence and sound. The brutalities of war separate the two lovers and together they are pulled into the bloody world events that will alter civilization forever.

Thursday, October 2nd at 7:30 p.m.
Michael Perry
Population 485 (Harper)

Nominated for the Booksense Book of the Year Award, this aching, riotous and quirky look at one man's hometown is not a book to miss. Returning to New Auburn, Wisconsin, prodigal son Michael Perry enlists alongside his mother as an EMT and volunteer firefighter and sets out the meet his fellow citizens, all 485 of them, one siren at a time. By turns fiery and funny, violent and gentle, this true account of a search for roots in a place from the past tells us all about that thorny four-lettered word: home.

Tuesday, October 7th at 7:30 p.m.
Thomas Steinbeck
Down to a Soundless Sea (Ballantine)

A noble addition to the Steinbeck legacy, Thomas Steinbeck, son of John, draws on folklore, historical research, and tales heard during childhood in his collection of stories celebrating the early lore of Monterey County, CA. Set in the dusky past of horse trails, grizzly bears, and small fishing villages and ranging forward to the early 1930s, they portray humble people living in a beautiful but often unforgiving environment.

Wednesday, October 8th at 7:30 p.m.
Meredith Maran
Dirty: A Search for Answers Inside America's Teenage Drug Epidemic (Harper San Francisco)

Dirty is the first book of its kind to expose the suffering, ecstasy, terrors and thrills that an adolescent experiences on the road to addiction--or the elusive rainbow's end, recovery. Why do teenagers use drugs? What do we do for them when they do? Does any of it work? And what does teenage drug use tell us about what's wrong in America? Dirty answers these questions by following three very different teenagers in and out of three very different drug rehab programs. Combining powerful on-the-street reportage, sociological analysis, and Meredith's own mothering story, Dirty is a must read for every parent and anyone who works with children or teenagers. "Meredith Maran makes us fall in love with the teenagers she writes about, challenges us to give our kids what they deserve, then illuminates our path so we can give it to them. Maran is a gifted, fearless writer and everyone should read this book." -Anne Lamott, best-selling author of Traveling Mercies

Thursday, October 9th at 7:30 p.m.
Susan Choi
American Woman (Harper)

American Woman, this gifted writer's second book following The Foreign Student, is a novel of even greater scope and dramatic complexity, about a young Japanese-American radical caught in the militant underground of the mid-1970s. When 25-year-old Jenny Shimada steps out of the Rhinecliff train station in New York's Hudson Valley, the last person she expects to see is Rob Frazer, a shadowy figure from her previous life. On the lam for an act of violence against the American government, Jenny agrees to take on the job of caring for three younger fugitives whom Frazer has spirited out of California. One of them, the granddaughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate in San Francisco, has become a national celebrity. Kidnapped by a homegrown revolutionary group, Pauline shocked America when she embraced her captors' ideology, denouncing family and class to enlist in their radical cell. Of Susan Choi's remarkable novel Joan Didion says, "In this second novel [Choi] proves herself a natural -- a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability. I couldn't put American Woman down, and wanted when I finished it to do nothing but read it again."

Friday, October 10th at 7:30 p.m.
Christian Parenti
Soft Cage: Surveillance in America (Basic Books)

From the popular historian and journalist Christian Parenti comes a vivid and chilling history of surveillance in American life. The Soft Cage is the first book to detail the continuum of surveillance in the making of the U.S. -- from the slave pass to the Social Security number all the way to the many forms of computerized monitoring now shaping the post-9/11 world. Parenti explores not just the history but also the politics of everyday surveillance, and explains to readers why the question of who is watching and listening is of utmost importance today. Parenti details how seemingly benign technologies present opportunities for a reconfiguration of the balance of power between the individual and the state. Under the aegis of security and convenience, Parenti argues, corporations and the U.S. government, often working together, have, without any oversight, substantially eroded civil liberties -- including the right to privacy -- that Americans have long taken for granted.

Wednesday, October 15th at 7:30 p.m.
Jodi Cobb
Through the Lens (National Geographic)

National Geographic, which has set the standard for excellence for nature, culture, and wildlife photography for over a century, is publishing the largest single volume of world-class images ever compiled by the Society. Through the Lens features 250 images chosen from the National Geographic's archive of 10.5 million photographs, both published and unpublished, and features 84 of its celebrated photographers. The six chapters range from Europe to Asia, Africa and the Middle East to the Americas, from the islands and the realm beneath the sea to space and space exploration. This event will include a slide show.

Friday, October 17th at 7:30 p.m.
Karol Griffin
Skin Deep (Harcourt)

When she walked into the Body Art Workshop in Laramie, Wyoming, Karol Griffin found what she was looking for: a culture on the fringe of polite society, complete with outlaw signature. Soon she was a tattoo artist, a tattooed woman and an occasional outlaw who fled the encroaching suburban culture and mass commodity of hip tattoos by going even farther to find the authentic and dangerous outsiders she romanticized. Part ode to the disappearing rugged West and part kick-ass memoir about art and angst, Skin Deep is a clear-eyed memoir of a life lived on the edge.

Monday, October 20th at 7:30 p.m.
David Prete
Say That to My Face (Norton)

David Prete's debut novel centers around Joey Frascone and his family and friends in the tense, violent, racially divided Yonkers of the Seventies and Eighties. His childhood segmented between four homes and his teenage dreams pulling him towards the challenge and excitement of New York City, Joey is a handsome kid whose intense and conflicting loyalties threaten to tear him apart. "To read David Prete is to read a fiction of effortlessness: his use of colloquial speech and simple language rather than self-consciously literary syntax, his preference for subtle truths over fancy artifice, above all his ability to get hold of real feeling -- his gifts call to mind those of Raymond Carver. Only a profound talent can write stories that are at once simple and deep." -- Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and The Real McCoy

Tuesday, October 21st at 7:30 p.m.
Leonard Shlain
Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution (Viking)

From the best-selling author of Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess comes a provocative new book that will change our views of human sexuality and evolution. In his latest book, he proposes an original thesis that variations in female sexuality changed the course of human evolution. Throughout Sex, Time & Power, Shlain offers carefully reasoned, and certain to be controversial discussions on such subjects such as menstruation, orgasm, puberty, circumcision, male aggression, menopause, baldness, left-handedness, the evolution of language, homosexuality, and the origin of marriage. Written in a lively and accessible style, Sex, Time & Power is certain to generate heated debate.

Wednesday, October 22nd at 7:30 p.m.
Anne Garrels
Naked in Baghdad (FSG)

You hear her voice on NPR, now come hear the war stories in person. With bombs falling and the threat of sniper fire everywhere, Garrels reported each day, alone with no production crew, researchers, or glitzy graphics. One of only 16 un-embedded American journalists who stayed in Baghdad's now-legendary Palestine Hotel throughout the American invasion of Iraq, she was at the very center of the storm. Garrels' words give us the sights, sounds, and smells of our latest war with unparalleled vividness and immediacy. Tom Brokaw says Garrels "is one of America's most insightful and courageous journalists."

Thursday, October 23rd at 7:30 p.m.
Peter Elbling
The Food Taster (Penguin)

When Ugo DiFonte and his teenaged daughter Miranda are snatched from their farm and spirited away to Duke Federico Basillione DiVincelli's estate, Ugo thinks life can't get any worse...until he is forced to replace the recently de-tongued royal food taster. Now Ugo must stay alive -- a difficult prospect considering the prince's myriad of enemies and their poisons -- to protect Miranda from her suitors and desires, and somehow hold the unruly court together. A bestseller in ten countries, in this novel of gastronomical delight and brilliant wit Peter Elbling remarkably captures the sights, sounds, and tastes of sixteenth-century Italy with the story of a peasant rising to extraordinary and death-defying acts of grace. Peter Elbling is a writer, actor, and director who has worked in television, film, and theater.

Friday, October 24th at 7:30 p.m.
Ann Rule
Heart Full of Lies: A True Story of Desire and Death (Free Press)

In perhaps the most profound character portrait she has ever drawn, America's best-selling true-crime writer, Ann Rule, asks, Can the female really be deadlier than the male? In Heart Full of Lies, she answers that question in a riveting story of seduction, betrayal, and murder. Liysa and Chris Northon seemed the epitome of idyllic lovers. But it wasn't long before Chris saw a side of Liysa that he hadn't glimpsed before. The marriage seemed to be unraveling, but Chris struggled to hold it together, afraid he'd be separated from their son Bjorn and from Liysa's son, Papako. And then the worst happened. On a sunny morning in October 2000, Chris Northon lay dead in a sleeping bag at a campsite beside a pristine river, while his wife drove four hours to a friend's house, sobbing inconsolably. Was Chris's death a tragic accident or a deliberate homicide? Was Liysa involved? Ann Rule became involved with the mystery of Chris's death when one of his fellow pilots at Hawaiian Airlines contacted her, and only later did she learn that the ranking Oregon State Police investigator had thought of her to tell this bizarre story. A book that leads the reader from Hawaii to the Northwest to Hollywood, Heart Full of Lies is an extraordinary character study as well as a brilliant investigative report that will keep you enthralled to the very last page.

Saturday, October 25th at 7:30 p.m.
Diana Gabaldon
Lord John and the Private Matter (Delacorte)

The best-selling author of Fiery Cross, Dragonfly in Amber and the rest of the Outlander series launches a spellbinding trilogy at the Book Cafe! Starring Lord John Grey, one of her most beloved characters, Gabaldon's trademark rich, historical tale dips into mystery and intrigue, placing her lead at the center of a murder and inadvertently entangling him in a betrayal that crosses the lines of class, custom and decency! "One of Gabaldon's gifts is her ability to lead the reader beyond the question of credibility. The short explanation to her success is that she's a careful and expert storyteller." - The Denver Post on The Fiery Cross

Sunday, October 26th at 2:30 p.m. *
David Baldacci
Split Second (Warner)

From best-selling writer David Baldacci comes a new thriller reminiscent of his phenomenal debut, Absolute Power. It was only a split second--but that's all it took for Secret Service agent Sean King's attention to wander and his "protectee," third-party presidential candidate Clyde Ritter, to die. King retired from the Service in disgrace, and now, eight years later, balances careers as a lawyer and a part-time deputy sheriff in a small Virginia town. Then he hears the news: Once again, a third-party candidate has been taken out of the presidential race--abducted right under the nose of Secret Service agent Michelle Maxwell. King and Maxwell form an uneasy alliance, and their search for answers becomes a bid for redemption as they delve into the government's Witness Protection Program and the mysterious past of Clyde Ritter's dead assassin. But the truth is never quite what it seems, and these two agents have learned that even one moment looking in the wrong direction can be deadly.
*Please Note Time

Monday, October 27th at 7:30 p.m.
Victor Davis Hanson
Ripples of Battle: How Wars Fought Long Ago Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think (Doubleday)

"Like any good classicist, Victor Davis Hanson accepts the primacy of military history in human affairs. In Ripples of Battle, a sequel of sorts to his masterful Carnage and Culture, he shows the fascinating repercussions of three lesser-known battles. You cannot fully understand Hiroshima, the bitterness of the Old South, or the Golden Age of Athens without reading this gem of a book." --Robert D. Kaplan

Tuesday, October 28th at 7:30 p.m.
Daniel Bergner
In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa (FSG)

Sierra Leone is the world's most war-ravaged country. There, in a West African landscape of spectacular beauty, rampaging soldiers--many not yet in their teens--have made a custom of hacking off the hands of their victims, then letting them live as the ultimate emblem of terror. In the Land of Magic Soldiers follows both a set of white would-be saviors--a family of American missionaries, a mercenary helicopter gunship pilot, and the army of Great Britain--and a set of Sierra Leoneans, among them a father who rescues his daughter from rape, loses his hands as punishment, then begins to rebuild his life; a child soldier and sometime cannibal; and a highly Westernized medical student who claims immunity to bullets and a cure for H.I.V. Kirkus Reviews calls Bergner's book, "Remarkable...First-class reporting and storytelling...A memorable, scarifying portrait of a country in terminal turmoil."