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Rainy Day Books
Rainy Day Books is located in
The Fairway Shops
2706 W 53rd Street
Fairway, Kansas 66205-1705
Phone: 913-384-3126

Store Hours:
Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri      10-6
Thursday                   10-7
Saturday                    10-5
Sunday we rest and read! 

In This Newsletter
Next week in Kansas City, a full schedule!
IndieNext Book of The Week: The Last Werewolf
Article Headline
Staff picks of the week!
At a glance, our complete author events schedule, watch for changes and updates!

JULY

Jim Butcher, author of Ghost Storyappears on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza.

Maggie Stiefvater, author of Forever, appears on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza.

Melanie Benjamin, author of The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, appears on Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 7:00 PM at Rainy Day Books. 

AUGUST

Julie Garwood, author of The Ideal Man, appears on Tuesday, August 9, 2011.

SEPTEMBER

Nina Revoyr, author of Wingshooters, appears on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at Johnson County Library.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of The Language of Flowers, appears on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at Unity Temple on The Plaza.

David Stokes, author of The Shooting Salvationist, appears on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at Johnson County Library.

Ellen Hopkins, author of Perfect, appears on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at Johnson County Library.

Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life, appears on Thursday, September 15, 2011 at Unity Temple on The Plaza.

Calvin Trillin, author of Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin, appears on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at Unity Temple on The Plaza.

OCTOBER

Candice Millard, author of The Destiny of The Republic, appears on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at Unity Temple on The Plaza.

Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus, appears on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at Unity Temple on The Plaza.

Daniel Woodrell, author of Outlaw Album, appears on Saturday, October 8, 2011 at Johnson County Library.

Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, appears on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at Linda Hall Library.

 

Plus watch for details on Stephan Pastis, Alton Brown, Tony Horwitz, Adam Winkler, Martha Stewart and many more!  

 

   
Support your local independent bookseller: Shop for competitively priced E-Books for your e-reader from Rainy Day Books. Shop local, read mobile.
Rainy Day Books offers you e-books through our partnership with Google eBooks. All our e-books are competitively priced.

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Volume 541July 18, 2011

Greetings!

 

We're taking a much-needed break from our author events schedule this week. Next week features a full lineup of speakers, come beat the heat with some of the coolest people around! 

Next week in Kansas City: Jim Butcher, Maggie Stiefvater, Melanie Benjamin 


   

Jim Butcher  

Maggie Stiefvater   

Melanie Benjamin  

 IndieNext Book of the Week

Each week we spotlight one book from the month's IndieNext List (a collection of recommendations by indie booksellers across the country). Ask for a copy of the IndieNext newsletter at our front counter or click to browse them online

 

The Last Werewolf The Last Werewolf
Glen Duncan

Hardcover, Knopf IndieNext

 

"With this novel, Duncan has reinvented a genre. Jake Marlowe is literally the last werewolf in existence, and after 200 years he has resigned himself to a date with his executioner at the next full moon. That is, until everything changes. Duncan's razor-sharp writing combines all the gory raunchiness of classic horror with the elegance of top literary fiction, while also managing to include a considerable amount of hip pop culture. This is a smart and engaging thriller that is not to be missed."

 

-- Katherine Osborne, Kennebooks, Kennebunk, ME

 

Click here for more about this book.

NEW AND NOTABLE BOOKS,
ON OUR SHELVES NOW!

Staff Picks of the week

Each week we like to showcase a few of the great books on our shelves. Here are just a few titles we think are special:

 

Fiction

 

The Gap YearThe Gap Year     Bookseller Seal
Sarah Bird

Hardcover, Knopf 

 

In The Gap Year, told with perfect pitch from both points of view, we meet Cam Lightsey, lactation consultant extraordinaire, a divorc�e still secretly carrying a torch for the ex who dumped her, a suburban misfit who's given up her rebel dreams so her only child can get a good education. We also learn the secrets of Aubrey Lightsey, tired of being the dutiful, grade-grubbing band geek, ready to explode from wanting her "real" life to begin, trying to figure out love with boys weaned on Internet porn. When Aubrey meets Tyler Moldenhauer, football idol-sex god with a dangerous past, the fuse is lit. Late-bloomer Aubrey metastasizes into Cam's worst silent, sullen teen nightmare, a girl with zero interest in college. Worse, on the sly Aubrey's in touch with her father, who left when she was two to join a celebrity-ridden nutball cult. Read more.

 

Never Knowing Never Knowing

Chevy Stevens  

Hardcover, St Martin's Press

 

All her life, Sara Gallagher has wondered about her birth parents. As an adopted child with two sisters who were born naturally to her parents, Sara did not have an ideal home life. The question of why she was given up for adoption has always haunted her. Finally, she is ready to take steps and to find closure. But some questions are better left unanswered. After months of research, Sara locates her birth mother---only to be met with horror and rejection. Then she discovers the devastating truth: Her mother was the only victim ever to escape a killer who has been hunting women every summer for decades. But Sara soon realizes the only thing worse than finding out about her father is him finding out about her. Read more. 

 

 

We All Fall DownWe All Fall Down

Michael Harvey   

Hardcover, Knopf

 

When a lightbulb falls in a subway tunnel, it releases a pathogen that could kill millions. While the mayor postures, people begin to die, especially on the city's grim West Side. Hospitals become morgues. L trains are converted into rolling hearses. Finally, the government acts, sealing off entire sections of the city-but are they keeping people out or in? Meanwhile, Michael Kelly's hunt for the people who poisoned his city takes him into the tangled underworld of Chicago's West Side gangs and the even more frightening world of black biology-an elite discipline emerging from the nation's premier labs, where scientists play God and will stop at nothing to preserve their secrecy. Read more. 

 

 

The Return Of Captain John EmmettThe Return of Captain John Emmett
Elizabeth Speller

Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin Hardcover   

 

London, 1920. In the aftermath of the Great War and a devastating family tragedy, Laurence Bartram has turned his back on the world. But with a well-timed letter, an old flame manages to draw him back in. Mary Emmett's brother John-like Laurence, an officer during the war-has apparently killed himself while in the care of a remote veterans' hospital, and Mary needs to know why. Aided by his friend Charles-a dauntless gentleman with detective skills cadged from mystery novels-Laurence begins asking difficult questions. What connects a group of war poets, a bitter feud within Emmett's regiment, and a hidden love affair? Was Emmett's death really a suicide, or the missing piece in a puzzling series of murders? As veterans tied to Emmett continue to turn up dead, and Laurence is forced to face the darkest corners of his own war experiences, his own survival may depend on uncovering the truthRead more.

 

FlashbackFlashback
Dan Simmons

Hardcover, Reagan Arthur Books   

 

The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result. Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the pastRead more.

 

Nonfiction

 

Triple AgentTriple Agent 

Joby Warrick

Hardcover, Doubleday

 

In December 2009, a group of the CIA's top terrorist hunters gathered at a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising superspy: Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double-agent who infiltrated the upper ranks of al-Qaeda. For months, he had sent shocking revelations from inside the terrorist network and now promised to help the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden's top deputy. Instead, as he stepped from his car, he detonated a thirty-pound bomb strapped to his chest, instantly killing seven CIA operatives, the agency's worst loss of life in decades. In The Triple Agent, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick takes us deep inside the CIA's secret war against al-Qaeda, a war that pits robotic planes and laser-guided missiles against a cunning enemy intent on unleashing carnage in American cities. Flitting precariously between the two sides was Balawi, a young man with extraordinary gifts who managed to win the confidence of hardened terrorists as well as veteran spymasters. With his breathtaking accounts from inside al-Qaeda's lair, Balawi appeared poised to become America's greatest double-agent in half a century-but he was not at all what he seemed. Combining the powerful momentum of Black Hawk Down with the institutional insight of Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, Warrick takes the readers on a harrowing journey from the slums of Amman to the inner chambers of the White House in an untold true story of miscalculation, deception, and revenge. Read more. 

 

 

Second Reading: Notable Neglected Books Revisited Second Reading: Notable Neglected Books Revisited  

Jonathan Yardley

Paperback, Europa Editions  

 

This collection of reviews and reevaluations by Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Jonathan Yardley considers lesser-known works from renowned authors and underappreciated talents, and offers fresh takes on old favorites. Yardley's reviews of sixty titles include fiction by Gabriel Garcia M�rquez, John Cheever, and Henry Fielding; the autobiography of Louis Armstrong; essays by Nora Ephron; and Margaret Leach's history of Washington during the Civil War. Second Readings is also the memoir of a passionate and lifelong reader told through the books that have meant the most to him. Playing the part of both reviewer and bibliophile, Yardley takes on Steinbeck and Salinger, explores the southern fiction of Shirley Ann Grau and Eudora Welty, looks into a darker side of Roald Dahl and praises the pulp fiction of William Bradford Huie and the crime novels of John McDonald. Read more.  

 

Children's Books: 

 

Postcards From CampPostcards From Camp

Simms Taback   

Hardcover, Nancy Paulsen Books  

 

This fabulously creative book by Caldecott Award winner Simms Taback features handmade postcards and funny letters that readers will enjoy pulling out of their envelopes. Michael is new to sleepaway camp, and it's not going so well. He thinks his counselor is an alien, his bunkmates are pranksters, and it's constantly raining. So he sends his dad a series of urgent notes pleading for rescue. His dad is quick to reply, but encourages Michael to stick it out, reminding him that he met some of his best buddies at camp. Eventually there is a subtle change in Michael's tone - and a mention of a friend or two. Before you know it, Michael's a happy camper who's planning a longer stay next time. Read more. 

 

  

Would you like even more book news, plus weekly review of books? Subscribe to Shelf Awareness! 


Shelf Awareness  





Thank You for supporting Your Community Bookseller, Rainy Day Books

We celebrated 35 years of bookselling on November 4, 2010.  It is a celebration of our Legacy of Literacy: 35 years of helping match readers to great books, bringing famous and soon-to-be-famous names to Kansas City, and enjoying the excitement of sharing so many experiences.

Take the time to tell someone new about Rainy Day Books.  Each book that you purchase at Rainy Day Books makes Rainy Day Books a place authors ask to visit, a vibrant part of Kansas City's arts community, and a bookstore where people love books enough to talk about them all day long.  Please encourage your fellow readers to sign up for this E-Newsletter.  We have an exciting schedule of upcoming Author Events, and this is the first place to hear about them!  We also take Orders for Author Autographed Books, so your friends far and wide can share in the experience.

 

Rainy Day Books is located in The Fairway Shops, at the intersection of Shawnee Mission Parkway and Belinder Road.  Our address is 2706 W 53rd Street, Fairway, Kansas (KS) 66205.

 

Get directions to Rainy Day Books and our Event venues by clicking here. 

 

Store Hours: Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri 10 AM to 6 PM, Thu 10 AM to 7 PM, Sat 10 AM to 5 PM, and Sundays we rest and read.

 

When you shop at Rainy Day Books you're a part of our Legacy of Literacy for Kansas City.  We provide full service, knowledgeable recommendations and priceless Author Event experiences, all at a fair price.  To our customers, 

thank you for your support.

 

We look forward to seeing you soon!

 

Vivien Jennings & Roger Doeren  


Vivien, Roger, and all of your friends at Rainy Day Books