SEPTEMBER 2001

Saturday, September 1 at 10:45 am
Bilingual Story Time with Billie Harris and Brett Taylor

We invite children and adults alike to join us for a grand time. Billie Harris and Brett Taylor--both of KUSP fame--join us to read some delightful new tales in English and Spanish.

---

 

Tuesday, September 4 at 7:30 pm
Denise Osborne
A Deadly Arrangement (Berkeley Prime Crime)

There is good feng shui...then there is bad. Salome Waterhouse knows how to tweak the vibe to fix a problem, but when a housecall for feng shui help places her as the suspect in a murder, she's got more than bad energy to redirect. Acclaimed local author Denise Osborne is kicking off her new mystery series as well as her national book tour at the Book Café. Join us for a night of intrigue and pick up good tips on how to make your home more harmonious with real feng shui advice.

---

 

Wednesday, September 5 at 7:30 pm
Denise Hamilton
The Jasmine Trade (Scribner)

A veteran reporter for the LA Times, Denise Hamilton knows the brutal realities of cultural tensions, racial discriminations, street gangs, and organized crime in the Asian communities of Los Angeles and its elite suburbs. She brings her investigative skill as a journalist and sharp insider's eye to her gripping debut mystery. In it we meet a compelling new crime-fighting heroine, Eve Diamond, a tough young reporter who fights to learn the truth behind a brutal teen murder in a wealthy suburb. Of Hamilton's debut Michael Connelly says, " [It] is more than a good crime story. It is the crime novel as sociological study. [She] delivers a gripping narrative with a busload of intriguing characters. And all the while she points her flashlight into one of the dark corners of our world."

---

 

Thursday, September 6 at 7:30 pm
Jim Toner
Serendib (University of Georgia)

"I didn't invite him. The idea was all my father's, my seventy-year-old father who had never been outside America and who suddenly thought that Sri Lanka, where I was a Peace Corp volunteer, would be a jolly place to visit." Soon Jim Toner's father is bathing in a river along side cows and both men watch in awe as impoverished children learn without books or even paper. This colorful memoir is a treasure of multiple discoveries - of an old man exploring deep within himself, of a father and son becoming more than strangers, and of two radically different cultures coming together on uncommon ground.

---

 

Monday, September 10 at 7:30 pm
Jim Trelease
The Read Aloud Handbook (Penguin)

Every child can become an avid reader, and this million-copy bestseller shows how to make it happen. Jim Trelease explains how to read aloud to spark imagination and improve language skills by providing a treasury of 1,500 children's book for all reading levels. The Washington Post says, "This book is about more than reading aloud. It's about time that parents, teachers, and children spend together in a loving, sharing way."

---

 

Tuesday, September 11 at 7:30 pm
David Engwicht
Street Reclaiming (New Society Publishers)

David Engwicht, considered a world authority in using resource management techniques to reduce traffic, works as a consultant in the UK, Italy, Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia. In Street Reclaiming: Creating Livable Streets and Vibrant Communities, he proposes a radical new design process for our streets so they once again become places for community building, places that feed the creative wealth of the city, and places that are the engine-room of a robust local economy. Join us for a thoughtful discussion on the future of Santa Cruz County.

---

 

Tuesday, September 18 at 7:30 pm
Philip L. Fradkin
Wildest Alaska (UC Press)

We're pleased to welcome back the noted environmental historian to the Book Café. Of his newest work, Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz, says "Readers beware: Fradkin's history of the sinisterly beautiful Lituya Bay is to Alaska travelogues as Kubrick's The Shining is to hotel commercials. After finishing this unnerving take of Tlingit monsters, kilometer-high waves, mystery bears and inexplicable murders, I looked under my bed to make sure the Land Otter Man wasn't lurking there. A gothic tour de force by America's finest environmental journalist."

---

 

Wednesday, September 19 at 7:30 pm
Wei Hui
Shanghai Baby (Pocket Books)

Banned and burned in China, this incendiary and seductive novel about a taboo-busting young woman in contemporary Shanghai has become a best-selling phenomenon worldwide. An author of numerous short story books and a popular weekly column for a Hong Kong newspaper, this daughter of a Chinese army officer, despite a government-administered muzzle, continues to push against the tradition and rigidities of her homeland. "I just write the truth", Wei Hui says.

---

 

Thursday, September 20 at 7:30 pm
Sabrina Wood Harrison
Brave On the Rocks (Villard)

Sabrina Wood Harrison's first book, Spilling Open, is the creative expression of one young woman's attempt to understand herself as she grows into adulthood. The colorful collages and telling prose remind us of the work of SARK, but the heart inside Spilling Open is uniquely her own. Now, with Brave on the Rocks, Harrison talks to us about the incredible reaction to her first book. Overwhelmed by all the attention, Harrison moved to Italy to reconnect with herself. In her latest work, she probes the meaning of womanhood and the lessons she learned from fellow travelers. Part journal, part art collage, and part spiritual guide, Brave on the Rocks reveals new observations on life with true bravery.

---

Thursday, September 20 from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm
Writing Group

Every third Thursday of the month, join Book Cafe's Wendy Mayer as she leads our writer's group. Due to the limited amount of time, the group will focus on short exercises rather than group critique.

---

 

Saturday, September 22 at 7:30 pm
** Garrison Keillor
Lake Wobegon Summer: 1956 (Viking)

Garrison Keillor. Need we say more? This heralded, American treasure is back with his first novel in four years. With his trademark gift for treading "a line as delicate as a cobweb between satire and sentiment" (Cleveland Plain Dealer), Keillor brilliantly captures a newly minted postwar America and delivers an unforgettable comedy about a writer coming of age in the rural Midwest. This host of the nationally popular radio show Prairie Home Companion will be appearing at Cabrillo College Theater.

**Please Note: This event will be off-site and ticketed. With every purchase of Lake Wobegon Summer: 1956 at the Book Cafe, you will receive two free tickets to the event. Seating is limited, so reserve your copies now. The event will take place at the Cabrillo College Theater, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos, CA 95003.

---

 

Monday, September 24 at 7:30 pm
Molly Gloss
Wild Life (Mariner Books)

Set along the fringe of Northwest frontier in the early 1900's, freethinking, cigar-smoking, trouser wearing Charlotte Bridger Drummond supports her five boys by penning women's adventure stories. In a search for a missing girl, this hard-hitting woman becomes lost in the wilderness and has a wild adventure like no other. Molly Gloss, Oregon writing professor and award winning author of The Jump-Off Creek, has crafted a rare blend of "heady cerebral satisfaction, gorgeous prose, and page-turning adventure" (Karen Joy Fowler) in her literary, wild mystery.

---

Tuesday, September 25 at 7:30 pm
Robert Sward
Rosicrucian in the Basement (Black Moss Press) and Three Dogs and a Parrot (Small Poetry Press)

Professor at Cornell University, Iowa Writer's Workshop, and now at UC Santa Cruz Extension, Robert Sward is launching his newest literary successes with the Book Café. Revered for his agile, straightforward, insightful poetry, join him for an evening of humor and ingenious wordplay. As Ellen Bass says, "Prone to barking myself, I felt right at home. Enjoyable in the moment, the poems continue to reverberate with much-needed wisdom."

---

Thursday, September 27 at 7:30 pm
Larry Wonderling
San Francisco Tenderloin (Cape Foundation Publications)

The notorious San Francisco Tenderloin is a place of myth and rich history, a place full of heroes, angels and demons. In this remarkable book, Larry Wonderling combines his experiences as a psychotherapist with the Tenderloin's past one hundred years of history. In the process, we meet the real people who make up the Tenderloin. It is a striking, personal book, full of Wonderling's experiences and his unique perceptions after serving this San Francisco community for decades.

---

 

Sunday, September 30 at 7:30 pm
Kelly James
Dancing with the Witchdoctor (Morrow)

Kelly James, an international private investigator, has spent the last twenty years searching for adventure, as well as the occasional missing person. In her travels, she has witnessed the relentless brutality and delicate beauty of Africa in a way few people ever will. In this stunning new collection, James transports readers to some of Africa's most politically explosive regions---its deepest jungles and biggest cities---and explains how amidst the chaos, she never fails to be amazed by the resilience of the human spirit and heroism of ordinary women.

---

 

Monday, October 1 at 7:30 pm
Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections (FSG)

We're proud to host Mr. Franzen for what will surely be the biggest novel of the season. The pre-publication reviews have been marvelous; eager booksellers are praising Mr. Franzen left and right. Publisher's Weekly calls The Corrections "a masterpiece" while Kirkus Reviews believes it is " one of the most impressive American novels of recent years." Like bookends of the past half-century, the two generations of the Lambert family represent two very different aspects of America. Alfred, the patriarch, is a distant, puritanical company man; he is also slipping into Parkinson's-induced dimensia. His wife, Enid, is a model Midwestern housewife, at once deferential and controlling. Their three children, Gary, Chip and Denise, have little time for their parents. But when Enid calls for one last Christmas at the family home, the trajectories of five American lifetimes converge.

---

 

Tuesday, October 2 at 7:30 pm
Elizabeth Rosner
The Speed of Light (Ballantine)

Elizabeth Rosner's debut is a moving story about sorrow and loss, woven around the sad histories of war-torn Central America and the Holocaust. For most of their lives, Julian Perel and his sister Paula lived in a house cast in silence, witnesses to a father struggling with a secret so devastating that he took it to the grave. As adults, Julian now lives an ordered life of seclusion as a scientist governed by numbers and logic. In contrast, Paula, an aspiring opera singer, is always smiling, always buoyant with song. Before embarking on a European tour, Paula asks her housekeeper, Sola, to watch over Julian. Soon revelations surface which help all three learn how to both surrender and revere the shadows that have followed them for so long. This small masterpiece will stay with its readers for years to come.