Please join us on Sunday, April 10 at 4 pm when we will welcome Ellen Ruderman, author of Chasing the Red Car, to the store. Ellen will be reading from her book, will answer questions, and sign copies. There is no charge for this event.        

Transplanted from the Bronx to the burgeoning San Fernando Valley of 1947, Kim Lebow is faced with trouble on every side.  Her home life is emotionally unpredictable, while the McCarthy era communist witch hunts strike all around, threatening Kim's father and even reaching into her high school.

Drawing parallels between the political repression of the 1950s and the abuses of executive power after 9/11, Chasing the Red Car reminds us that all politics is personal, and that the truth of Santayana's maxim about history repeating itself can be seen all around us every day.

Chasing the Red Car has already garnered many favorable reviews, including one from Julia Harumi Mass, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California: "Chasing the Red Car brings the reader vividly into California's San Fernando Valley of the 1950's and brings alive the pervasive fear and disruption that ordinary families experienced under McCarthyism."

Ellen Ruderman is a practicing psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in Encino. She is a mental health consultant and educator and is the author of many academic publications. Chasing the Red Car is her first novel.

There will also be a special wine tasting at this event. The fine folks of Red Car Wine will be pouring their Tomorrowland Syrah (rated 91 points) from the Sonoma Coast. Sip some Tomorrowland and join the reception, reading, and discussion this Sunday!

On Sunday, April 17 at 4 pm we will welcome Victoria Patterson, author of This Vacant Paradise to the store. Victoria will read an excerpt from her book, answer questions, and sign copies. There is no charge for this event.

The 1990s -- Newport Beach, California. Money is god. A man's worth is judged by the size of his boat, the make of his car. A woman's value is assessed by the blank perfection of her quantifiable desirability: dress size, cup size, the whiteness of her teeth. And oh yes, her youth. Though Esther Wilson, the heroine of Victoria Patterson's debut novel, has the looks to marry well, things aren't going as planned. She's nearing her mid-30s and possibly aging out of the only role she's equipped to play: wife to a powerful member of the elite. Instead, Esther finds herself drawn to college professor Charlie Murphy, who challenges her and offers an alternative vision. 

This Vacant Paradise has received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and the book has been likened to a modern take on Edith Wharton's House of Mirth. And Kate Christensen from The New York Times Book Review had the following praise: "Patterson beautifully parses the consequences of one woman's fall in this memorable, penetrating, fully achieved novel." 

Victoria Patterson is the author of the story collection Drift, which was a finalist for the Commonwealth Club Award and the Story Prize. Her work has appeared in various publications and journals, including the Los Angeles Times, the Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Southern Review. She lives with her family in Southern California and teaches through the UCLA Writers Extension and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Riverside.

The long-awaited time is finally here! After the success of our very first city-wide reading program, we are so pleased to announce our next Laguna Reads event. Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 28 at 7 pm, when Laguna Beach Books and St. Mary's Episcopal Church will welcome Terri Cheney, author of The Dark Side of Innocence. The event will take place at St. Mary's, which is located at 428 Park Avenue in Laguna.

As a young girl, Terri Cheney's life looked perfect. Her family lived in a lovely house in a tranquil Los Angeles suburb where the geraniums never once failed to bloom. She was pretty and smart, an academic superstar and popular cheerleader whose father doted on her. But starting with her first suicide attempt at age seven, it was clear that her inner world was anything but perfect.

"There's something wrong with her," her mother would whisper, her voice quivering on the edge of despair. And indeed there was, although no one had a name for it yet. Hostage to her roller-coaster moods, Terri veered from easy A-pluses to total paralysis, from bouts of obsessive hypersexuality to episodes of alcoholic abandon that nearly cost her her life. Throughout Terri's chaotic early years, nothing was certain from day to day except this: whatever was so deeply wrong with her must be kept a secret.

Thirty years later, Terri wrote Manic, a harrowing memoir that revealed her adult struggle with bipolar disorder. It became an instant New York Times bestseller and received passionate critical acclaim. But it didn't tell the whole story. The mystery of Terri's childhood remained untouched- too troubling, too painful to fathom. The Dark Side of Innocence explores those tumultuous formative years, finally shattering Terri's well-guarded secret. It also provides a heart-rending, groundbreaking insider's look into the fascinating and frightening world of childhood bipolar disorder, an illness that affects a staggering one million children.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

Kurlansky, beloved author of the award-winning bestseller Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, offers a riveting new book for kids about what's happening to fish, the oceans, and our environment. Written by a master storyteller, World Without Fish connects all the dots-biology, economics, evolution, politics, climate, history, culture, food, and nutrition-in a way that kids can really understand. Interwoven with the book is a 12-page, full-color graphic novel.

Eaarth

Bill McKibben

$14.99

Bill McKibben has a stark and sobering message about our world: we've waited too long to stop the advance of global warming, and massive change is not only unavoidable but already underway. McKibben shows that we can't rely on old habits and the false promise of endless economic growth to address the binds and traps that characterize this new planet. Instead, our hope depends on building the kind of societies and economies that can allow us to weather trouble on a planet out of balance.

The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.