On Thursday, January 13 we were so pleased to host Emmy Award-winning writer and media personality Teresa Strasser, who spoke about her new book, Exploiting My Baby.

Teresa had the crowd in stitches as she related stories and also shared a Q&A with good friend Cynthia Jenkins. Cynthia is also a LBB regular and first approached us about the event with Teresa. It was a fun evening for everyone who attended and we're hoping that Teresa will come back to LBB for her next book tour. Below are a few photos from the event.

On Saturday, January 29 from 5 to 7 pm we are pleased to welcome Miles Corwin, author of Kind of Blue. This event is co-sponsored by the Laguna Beach Assistance League and Laguna Beach Books. It will be catered by Chef Bijan of Picayo and the cost is $15.

When a legendary ex-cop is mudered in L.A, the pressure is on to find the killer. Lt. Frank Duffy needs his best detective on the case, but his best detective, Ash Levine, quit a year ago. A tenacious, obsessive detective, Ash resigned after Latisha Patton, the witness in a homicide case he was working, was murdered. Without his job, Ash is left unanchored -- and consumed with guilt that he somehow caused Latisha's murder.

Corwin, a former crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is the author of three nonfiction books: The Killing Season, a national bestseller; And Still We Rise, the winner of the PEN West award for nonfiction and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; and Homicide Special, a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Kind of Blue is his first novel. Corwin lives in Altadena with his family and teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

This event will take place at the Assistance League Chapter House at 547 Catalina Street. Parking is available at 526 Glenneyre. Please RSVP to Judy Sterner at 949-661-2374.

Also, Picayo is offering a special discount of 15% off dinner after the event. Restaurant reservations are appreciated and can be made by calling 949-497-5051.

Join us for the third annual reading of local author Barbara DeMarco-Barrett (Pen on Fire; Orange County Noir) and her private writing workshops on Sunday, January 30 at 4 pm. Free food and drink will be served.

On Wednesday, February 2 at 6 pm we will welcome Pamela Madsen, author of Shameless: How I Ditched the Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure... and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner. This book is scheduled to be released on January 18.

At age 43, Pamela Madsen had a successful career as a nationally-renowned fertility advocate, was mother to two teenage boys, and was happily married to the man she fell in love with as a teenager. On the surface, she had it all. Yet, Pamela felt a growing sexual restlessness that wouldn't let up, despite her lasting love for her spouse. Deep down, she knew that she needed something more. But what possibilities were available to her, outside of cheating on her husband, something she refused to do? 

Shameless is not just another book about sex -- it's an intimate examination of how Pamela's experiences healed lifelong issues with food and body image and, most important, helped her weave the disparate roles -- daughter, friend, partner, mother and workplace wonder -- that she played, that all women play in one way or another, into one integrated being. That was the last thing that she expected but the best surprise of all.

Pamela Madsen is the founder of the American Fertility Association and one of the nation's most outspoken fertility and sexuality educators and advocates. Her daily blog, The Fertility Advocate, is a breakfast essential for reporters, writers, and policymakers who want to know what is happening in the world of reproductive health and fertility. She has also participated in more than 1,500 interviews with print, online, and broadcast media including appearances on Oprah, Dateline NBC, Today, and 60 Minutes.

On Sunday, February 13 at 5 pm we will welcome Lisa Napoli, author of Radio Shangri-la: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. This book is scheduled to be released on February 8.

Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolitan Los Angeles for a new adventure in the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan -- said to be one of the happiest places on earth.

Thousands of miles away from everything and everyone she knows, Lisa creates a new community for herself. As she helps to start Bhutan's first youth-oriented radio station, Kuzoo FM, she must come to terms with her conflicting feelings about the impact of the medium on a country that had been shielded from its effects. Immersing herself in Bhutan's rapidly changing culture, Lisa realizes that her own perspective on life is changing as well -- and that she is discovering the sense of purpose and joy that she has been yearning for.

On Sunday, February 20 at 4 pm we will welcome Cliff Shiepe, author of Cliff Falls, to the store.

The night of his eighteenth birthday, Clay Grant, exploited child star of 80's sitcom hit "Little Guy Mike", disappears after a mysterious fire destroys the Hollywood studio backlot. Chased by the media and haunted by his past, he's been on the run for fifteen years, until a fight with a determined photographer lands him in jail ending his self-imposed exile.

Just when the media is descending, motivational pastor Reagan Mitchell shows up in Clay's cell and offers him a deal to buy his freedom. Unsure if he can trust Reagan, but out of options, Clay arrives in majestic Cliff Falls under an overcast sky and quickly discovers no one escapes life. What happens when you run into everything you've been running from?

In a world where entertainment has become our religion and religion our entertainment, Cliff Falls wrestles with the question of what does it mean to be truly human; comfortable in your own skin when everyone wants you to be someone or something else? What Clay discovers will change his life and perhaps yours.

We wanted to let you know about St. Mary's Reads Aloud, a monthly event that our community partner, St. Mary's Episcopal Church, is hosting on the third Thursday evening of every month. The next event will be on Thursday, February 24 from 7 to 8 pm and they will discuss The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan. And we just received word that the author will be attending the book club discussion!

We were fortunate enough to host an event with Sandy a couple of years ago, and it was an illuminating evening spent discussing this moving, well-crafted book. In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust.

On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR's Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.

This event will be held at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, located at 428 Park Avenue in Laguna Beach. For more information, check out their website.

 
Golden Richards, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, is having the mother of all midlife crises. His construction business is failing, his family has grown into an overpopulated mini-dukedom beset with insurrection and rivalry, and he is done in with grief. Brady Udall, one of our finest American fiction writers, tells a tragicomic story of a deeply faithful man who, crippled by grief and the demands of work and family, becomes entangled in an affair that threatens to destroy his family's future.

 
The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar's Poker.

 See what's been selling this month. Visit our Top Sellers Page.