Monday, June 19, 7:00 pm, at Milwaukee Public Library’s Loos Room at Centennial Hall, 733 N Eighth St:
Louis V. Clark, author of
How to Be an Indian in the 21st Century.
In deceptively simple prose and verse, Louis V. "Two Shoes" Clark III shares his life story, from childhood on the reservation, through school and the working world, and ultimately to, life as an elder, grandfather, and poet.
How to Be an Indian in the 21st Century explores Clark's deeply personal and profound take on a wide range of subjects, from schoolyard bullying to workplace racism to falling in love. Warm, plainspoken, and wryly funny, Clark's is a unique voice talking frankly about a culture's struggle to maintain its heritage. His poetic storytelling style matches the rhythm of the life he recounts what he calls, "the heartbeat of my nation."
Louis V. Clark was born and raised on the Oneida Reservation in northeastern Wisconsin. Clark turned to poetry to continue the oral tradition of his tribe, the People of the Standing Stone. A member of the Iroquois Confederacy, his family is of the Bear clan. He received a Fellowship Award for his work from the Oneida Nation Arts Program and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
Two Shoes was Clark’s first chapbook.
Tuesday, June 20, 6:30 pm, at Tippecanoe Library, 3912 S Howell Ave:
Bob Buege, author of
Borchert Field: Stories from Milwaukee’s Legendary Ballpark.
Anyone lucky enough to live on Milwaukee’s near north side between 1888 and 1952 could experience the world without ever leaving the neighborhood. Nestled between North Seventh and Eighth Streets and West Chambers and Burleigh, Borchert Field was Milwaukee’s major sports venue for 64 years. In this rickety wooden stadium (originally called Athletic Park), Wisconsin residents had a close-up view of sports history in the making, along with rodeos, thrill shows, and even the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius.
In
Borchert Field, baseball historian Bob Buege introduces the famous and fascinating athletes who dazzled audiences in Milwaukee’s venerable ballpark. All the legendary baseball figuresthe Great Bambino, Satchel Paige, Ty Cobb, Joltin’ Joe, Jackie Robinson, the Say Hey Kid - played there. Olympic heroes Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrikson, and Jesse Owens displayed their amazing talents in Borchert. Knute Rockne’s Fighting Irish competed there, and Curly Lambeau’s Green Bay Packers took the field 10 times. Buege tells stories of other monumental moments at Borchert as well, including a presidential visit, women ballplayers, the arrival of television broadcasting, the 1922 national balloon race, and an appearance by scat-singing bandleader Cab Calloway. Borchert Field is long gone, but every page of this book takes readers back to the sights, sounds, and spectacle of its heyday.
Bob Buege is the author of
The Milwaukee Braves: A Baseball Eulogy and
Eddie Mathews and the National Pastime. He is president of the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association, director of the Wisconsin Old Time Ballplayers Association, and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research.
Tuesday, June 20, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Susan Silver, author of
Hot Pants in Hollywood: Sex, Secrets and Sitcoms.
As the lyrics from the iconic
Mary Tyler Moore Show said, “She made it after all!” Susan Silver left Milwaukee with all its 60’s values and normalcy, and went on to the big lights and fame of Hollywood. As one of the first women writers for TV sitcoms, Silver has been a trailblazer for the field.
Garry Marshall, director of
Happy Days and
Pretty Woman says, “Susan Silver examines everything funny, including her own life. A talented writer whose book should be read by those who like to laugh.”
Susan Silver was raised in Whitefish Bay. As a comedy writer and cultural commentator, Susan Silver has also written for
The Bob Newhart Show, Maude, The Partridge Family and
Square Pegs. She has appeared on CNN, HLN, and
The Today Show, and has written for
The New York Times and Refinery 29.
Wednesday, June 21, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Cara Black, author of
Murder in Saint-Germain and Stuart Neville writing as Haylen Beck, author of
Here and Gone, in conversation with
Crimespree Magazine's Jon Jordan
A night filled with thrilling mysteries and great conversation with two authors and Jon Jordan of
Crimespree Magazine.
What a thrilling evening we have planned! We're welcoming back Cara Black, author of the Aimée Leduc series, as well as Stuart Neville, writing his first American-set thriller under the pen name Haylen Beck, both in conversation with Jon Jordan of
Crimespree Magazine and Murder + Mayhem Milwaukee. If you love the conversations that make up this famous annual mystery conference (this year's is on Saturday, November 4, at the Irish Cultural Center), you'll love this event.
As fans of Black's series know, Leduc's adventures are not quite playing out in real time. In Murder in Saint-Germain, it's still July of 1999. Private investigator Aimée Leduc is walking through this Paris neighborhood when she is accosted by Suzanne Lesage, a Brigade Criminelle agent on an elite counterterrorism squad. Suzanne has just returned from the former Yugoslavia, where she was hunting down dangerous war criminals for The Hague. Back in Paris, Suzanne is convinced she's being stalked by a ghost - a Serbian warlord her team took down. She's suffering from PTSD and her boss thinks she's imagining things. She begs Aimée to investigate - is it possible Mirko Vladic could be alive and in Paris with a blood vendetta?
Here's a little more about
Here and Gone, a tense thriller about a mother's desperate fight to recover her stolen children from corrupt authorities. It begins with a woman fleeing through Arizona with her kids in tow, trying to escape an abusive marriage. When she's pulled over by an unsettling local sheriff and is taken into custody, things soon go awry. When she gets to the station, her kids are gone and the cops say they never saw any kids with her. If the kids are gone, she must have done something with them.
Of
Here and Gone, Booklist writes in their starred review: "Good news. Here's the perfect handoff for fans desperate for something like Lee Child, Harlan Coben, and Lisa Gardner...Don't be surprised if this one becomes the thriller everybody is reading this summer." Lee Child himself says, "A fantastic thriller - a lone woman, a nightmare scenario, high stakes, breathless suspense, and a satisfying conclusion. It doesn t get better than this.." And Murder in Saint-Germain earned great advance reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. It's a great Crimespree-worthy evening, all happening Wednesday, June 21, 7 pm, at Boswell.
Cara Black is the author of seventeen books in
The New York Times bestselling Aimée Leduc series. She has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, and her books have been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.
Haylen Beck is the pen name of internationally acclaimed, prize-winning crime writer Stuart Neville. Neville won the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his Serena Flanagan detective series.
Wednesday, June 21, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
YA Pizza Party with Adele Griffin, author of
Be True to Me.
A riveting tale of romantic suspense set against the backdrop of the iconic Bicentennial summer, where "It girl" Jean and girl-next-door Fritz find themselves competing for the love of the handsome and mysterious Gil within the gates of a Fire Island colony of the super-rich. In addition to this exciting author event, delicious pizza will be served as well... The idea of there being a gate separating the two different communities, juxtaposing convention against the bohemian and artistically free, made Fire Island such a strange place. A strange place to be young. A strange place to be gay."
From
School Library Journal: “An atmospheric and engaging piece of historical fiction, this work will haunt and resonate with readers long after it ends. An excellent selection for YA collections.”
Adele Griffin and Sara Grochowski talked about
Be True to Me for
Publishers Weekly. Why 1976? Why Fire Island? Griffin answers: "I had read a book called
Tom Bianchi: Fire Island Pines: Polaroids 1975-1983, which was about the gay experience in the 1970s. It had beautiful pictures of men who would leave New York City for Fire Island, where they could be free to be out in a time when you couldn’t be out. It was so different from the very socially conventional communities on Fire Island. I thought it would be interesting to set one community against the other, then create all kinds of suspicion and unease."
Adele Griffin is the acclaimed author of many books for young readers, most recently T
he Unfinished Life of Addison Stone. Griffin is also a two-time National Book Award finalist.
This event is best for ages 13 and up
Friday, June 23, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Christina Ward, author of
Preservation: The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation and Dehydration.
More than a cookbook,
Preservation: The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation and Dehydration demystifies the scientific concepts that inform the methods of food preservation in an easy to understand way. Taking Julia Child as her inspiration, certified Master Food Preserver Christina Ward has collected and translated scientific and experiential information that has long been the sole domain of academic scientists and elite chefs.
Fueled by her mission to correct online misinformation and scientifically outdated materials, Ward guides readers through a comprehensive survey of methods that will ensure your preservation projects are safe and delicious. Included are highly adaptable recipes that demonstrate every method and technique of preservation.
Here's Ward in the Fork Spoon Life column of the
Journal Sentinel, as reported by Kristine M. Kierzek: "Canning, the more you do it, the more confidence you build. You can do everything 100% right and still have something go wrong. When I was trying to figure out the new steam canners, I was swearing up a storm. The first few batches, I could not get those jars to seal."
Christina Ward is a Wisconsin native and Master Food Preserver for Milwaukee County. She writes about food history and preservation for numerous publications, including:
Edible Magazine, Remedy Quarterly, and
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Sunday, June 25, 2:00 pm at the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, 6255 N Santa Monica Blvd:
A ticketed event with Scott Turow, author of
Testimony in conversation with
Lake Effect's Mitch Teich
The Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center and Boswell Book Company present a ticketed appearance with Scott Turow, the #1
New York Times bestselling author, returning with a page-turning legal thriller about an American prosecutor's investigation of a refugee camp's mystifying disappearance.
Tickets are $30 and include admission, a copy of Turow's novel
Testimony, and all taxes and fees. $5 of every admission goes back to the JCC.
In
Testimony, former prosecutor Bill ten Boom has walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his law career, his wife, Kindle County, even his country. Still, when he is tapped by the International Criminal Court - an organization charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity - he feels drawn to what will become the most elusive case of his career. Over ten years ago, in the apocalyptic chaos following the Bosnian war, an entire Roma refugee camp vanished. Now for the first time, a witness has stepped forward: Ferko Rincic claims that armed men marched the camp's Gypsy residents to a cave in the middle of the night - and then with a hand grenade set off an avalanche, burying 400 people alive. Only Ferko survived.
Boom's task is to examine Ferko's claims and determine who might have massacred the Roma. His investigation takes him from the International Criminal Court's base in Holland to the cities and villages of Bosnia to secret meetings in Washington, DC, as Boom sorts through a host of suspects, ranging from Serb paramilitaries, to organized crime gangs, to the US government itself, while also maneuvering among the alliances and treacheries of those connected to the case.
A master of the legal thriller since his first novel,
Presumed Innocent, and continuing through his most recent work, Identical, Scott Turow now returns with his most irresistibly confounding and satisfying novel yet.
Scott Turow is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including
Identical, Innocent, and
Presumed Innocent, and two nonfiction books, including
One L, about his experience as a law student. His books have been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into movies and television projects. He has contributed essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as
The New York Times, Washington Post, and
Vanity Fair.
Mitch Teich is the executive producer of
Lake Effect. He brings over 25 years of broadcasting experience from radio stations across the country - in Iowa, Minnesota, New York, and Arizona.
Monday, June 26, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Stefanie Chambers, author of
Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus: Immigrant Incorporation in New Destinations
In the early 1990s, Somali refugees arrived in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Later in the decade, an additional influx of immigrants arrived in Columbus, Ohio. These refugees found low-skill jobs in warehouses and food processing plants and struggled as social “outsiders,” often facing discrimination based on their religious traditions, dress, and the misconception that they are terrorists. The immigrant youth also lacked access to quality educational opportunities.
Stefanie Chambers provides a cogent analysis of these refugees in Midwestern cities where new immigrant communities are growing. Her comparative study uses qualitative and quantitative data to assess the political, economic, and social variations between these urban areas. Chambers examines how culture and history influenced the incorporation of Somali immigrants in the U.S. and recommends policy changes that can advance rather than impede incorporation.
Stefanie Chambers is the Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of
Mayors and Schools: Minority Voices and Democratic Tensions in Urban Education.
As I know that Bri is friends with Chloe Benjamin from Madison, I brought out The Immortalists galley (on sale January 9, 2018) and oohed and ahhed over how beautiful it was. But then I noted that her novel plays into another trend, ultra bright botanicals on a black background. Now I read The Immortalists with no jacket image, but I am immediately attracted to it a book I'd want to read, and I think these images speak to our customers. I don't know why. They skew female, for sure, but somehow they seem in the sweet spot between commercial and literary. That makes sense for an acclaimed literary (and also middle grade) writer like Maile Meloy, who's new novel, Do Not Become Alarmed, ventures into psychological suspense territory. And The Chalk Artist plays on the book's title a bit, but veers away from the breakout chalk artist Valerie McKeehan, whose work, though I think is beautiful, might be too sweet and commecial a tone. Read my review of Allegra Goodman's novel on our webpage, and Sharon's got a recommendation for Meloy.
Here's another trend I've noticed. It's what I call the unfinished canvas. I'm noticing a lot of black and white images that almost look like sketches. Sometimes there's a hint of color, but there's in general, there's a purposeful underdoneness. I first noticed it on Don Lee's Lonesome Lies Before Us, because I obsessed about everything about this wonderful novel. I read a manuscript, with no jacket image, and then I got a galley and wondered if this was the final image. And it was. And I've gotten several compliments from customers on the book's jacket. It's raw and authentic. I consider it a funny book, but this jacket plays down the funny, unlike by beloved bushel of Brussels sprouts on Wrack and Ruin's hardcover. I was glad to know that Lee prefers the sprouts to the elephant on the paperback, which could have ridden the Brussels wave we just lived through.
