Rainy Day Books, Inc.


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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/Thu/Fri 10 to 6 and Saturdays 10 to 5
Sundays we are Home with our families and friends when we read and rest!

In This Newsletter
Tuesday: Laura Wells McKnight
Wednesday: Dorothea Benton Frank
Thursday: Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr.
Friday: Leonard Pitts, Jr.
Great New Books arriving this Week!
At a glance, our complete Author Events Calendar, watch for changes and updates!

 

JUNE

 

6/26  Laura Wells McKnight 

 

6/27  Dorothea Benton Frank 

 

6/28  Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr. 

 

6/29  Leonard Pitts, Jr.

 

JULY

 

7/12  James Rollins

 

7/19  Linda Fairstein 

 

AUGUST

 

8/6  Emily Giffin

 

8/7 Julie Garwood  

 

Volume 590June 25, 2012

Greetings!  

 

Summertime can be an exciting adventure with good Books!  

 

Laura Moriarty took our readers back to 1922 from Wichita to New York City with 15 year old future silent-film star Louise Brooks in The Chaperone.

 

Joseph Kanon took our readers on an intriguing journey into the shadow world of post World War II in the Istanbul Passage. 

 Laura Moriarty and Joseph Kanon Events 

TUESDAY NIGHT: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 7:00 PM.  Join us for a GOOD GIRLS' NIGHT OUT with Laura Wells McKnight: Cereal for Dinner, Cake for Dessert
Laura McKnight

 

Laura Wells McKnight, celebrates the launch of her new Book Cereal for Dinner, Cake for Dessert: A True Story to Inspire You to Be Yourself.

 

This Event is Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

 

Our Event is sponsored by Her Life Magazine and will include Q & A conversation with Laura, treats, goodie bags and prizes.  Cereal for Dinner, Cake for Dessert: A True Story to Inspire You to Be Yourself Book sales and special promotions like this Event support a number of Local and National Charities including: KidsAndCars.org, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Girls on the Run, Down Syndrome Guild of Greater Kansas City and Variety of Greater Kansas City.

 

Read full details about this Event on our Website

WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 7:00 PM: Dorothea Benton Frank discusses Porch Lights
DorotheaBentonFrank

 

Dorothea Benton Frank, The New York Times Bestselling author of Sullivan's Island andLowcountry Summer, appears to discuss her new novel Porch Lights.

 

Read an interview with Dorothea Benton Frank in The Charleston City Paper

 

This Event is Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Rainy Day Books.  Seating is limited.

 

Read full details about this Event on our Website

THURSDAY NIGHT: Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 6:30 PM: Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr., discusses Entrepreneurs + Mentors = Success: 22 Convincing Stories
Barnett and Vivien

 

Author and businessman Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr., and The Kansas City Public Library Director R. Crosby Kemper, III, will hold a Public Conversation with 4 of the local entrepreneurs profiled in Barnett's new Book Entrepreneurs + Mentors = Success: 22 Convincing Stories.  A Booksigning will follow the Conversation.

  

This Event is Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 6:30 PM at The Kansas City Public Library, Central Library, Helzberg Auditorium, 14 W 10th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64105.

 

Read full details about this Event on our Website

FRIDAY NIGHT: Friday, June 29, 2012 at 7:00 PM: Leonard Pitts, Jr., discusses Freeman: A Novel
Leonard Pitts

 

Leonard Pitts, Jr., appears to discuss his new novel Freeman.

 

Leonard Pitts, Jr., was born and raised in Southern California and now lives in suburban Washington, DC, with his wife and children.   He is a columnist for the Miami Herald and won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, in addition to many other Awards.

 

This Event is Friday, June 29, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Community Christian Church, 4801 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

 

Read full details about this Event on our Website

Great New Books arrive on our shelves every Week!  Be the first to discover something new and wonderful!

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind

Alex Stone

Harper 

 

When Alex Stone was five years old, his father bought him a magic kit--a gift that would spark a lifelong love. Years later, while living in New York City, he discovered a vibrant underground magic scene exploding with creativity and innovation and populated by a fascinating cast of characters: from his gruff mentor, who holds court in the back of a rundown pizza shop, to one of the world's greatest card cheats, who also happens to be blind. Captivated, he plunged headlong into this mysterious world, eventually competing at the Magic Olympics and training with great magicians around the globe to perfect his craft. From the back rooms of New York City's century-old magic societies to cutting-edge psychology labs; three-card monte on Canal Street to glossy Las Vegas casinos; Fooling Houdini recounts Stone's quest to join the ranks of master magicians. As he navigates this quirky and occasionally hilarious subculture, Stone pulls back the curtain on a community shrouded in secrecy, fueled by obsession and brilliance, and organized around a single overriding need: to prove one's worth by deceiving others. But his journey is more than a tale of tricks, gigs, and geeks. In trying to understand how expert magicians manipulate our minds to create their astonishing illusions, Stone uncovers a wealth of insight into human nature and the nature of perception. Every turn leads to questions about how the mind perceives the world and processes everyday experiences. By investigating some of the lesser-known corners of psychology, neuroscience, physics, history, and even crime, all through the lens of trickery and illusion, Fooling Houdini arrives at a host of startling revelations about how the mind works--and why, sometimes, it doesn't.

 

The Orphanmaster

The Orphanmaster

Jean Zimmerman

Penguin

 

It's 1663 in the tiny, hardscrabble Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now present-day southern Manhattan. Orphan children are going missing, and among those looking into the mysterious state of affairs are a quick-witted twenty-two-year-old trader, Blandine von Couvering, herself an orphan, and a dashing British spy named Edward Drummond. Suspects abound, including the governor's wealthy nephew, a green-eyed aristocrat with decadent tastes; an Algonquin trapper who may be possessed by a demon that turns people into cannibals; and the colony's own corrupt and conflicted orphanmaster. Both the search for the killer and Edward and Blandine's newfound romance are endangered, however, when Blandine is accused of being a witch and Edward is sentenced to hang for espionage. Meanwhile, war looms as the English king plans to wrest control of the colony.  

 

 

The World Without You

The World Without You

Joshua Henkin

Pantheon

 

It's July 4, 2005, and the Frankel family is descending upon their beloved summer home in the Berkshires. But this is no ordinary holiday. The family has gathered to memorialize Leo, the youngest of the four siblings, an intrepid journalist and adventurer who was killed on that day in 2004, while on assignment in Iraq. The parents, Marilyn and David, are adrift in grief. Their forty-year marriage is falling apart. Clarissa, the eldest sibling and a former cello prodigy, has settled into an ambivalent domesticity and is struggling at age thirty-nine to become pregnant. Lily, a fiery-tempered lawyer and the family contrarian, is angry at everyone. And Noelle, whose teenage years were shadowed by promiscuity and school expulsions, has moved to Jerusalem and become a born-again Orthodox Jew. The last person to see Leo alive, Noelle has flown back for the memorial with her husband and four children, but she feels entirely out of place. And Thisbe, Leo's widow and mother of their three-year-old son, has come from California bearing her own secret.

 

The Watch

The Watch

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

Hogarth Press

 

Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother's body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a lunatic, or is she what she claims to be: a grieving young sister intent on burying her brother according to local rites? Single-minded in her mission, she refuses to move from her spot on the field in full view of every soldier in the stark outpost. Her presence quickly proves dangerous as the camp's tense, claustrophobic atmosphere comes to a boil when the men begin arguing about what to do next.

 

Things That Are

Things That Are

Amy Leach

Milkweed Editions

 

Things That Are takes jellyfish, fainting goats, and imperturbable caterpillars as just a few of its many inspirations. In a series of essays that progress from the tiniest earth dwellers to the most far flung celestial bodies--considering the similarity of gods to donkeys, the inexorability of love and vines, the relations of exploding stars to exploding sea cucumbers--Amy Leach rekindles a vital communion with the wild world, dormant for far too long. "Things That Are" is not specifically of the animal, the human, or the phenomenal; it is a book of wonder, one the reader cannot help but leave with their perceptions both expanded and confounded in delightful ways.

 

Summer at Forsaken Lake

Summer at Forsaken Lake

Michael D. Beil

Knopf Books for Young Readers

 

With their father en route to Africa for Doctors Without Borders, city-kids Nicholas and younger twin sisters Haley and Hetty are off to spend the summer with their Great-Uncle Nick at his house on Forsaken Lake. Despite some initial doubts, Nicholas is right at home in the country: he learns to sail, learns about his father as a boy, and makes fast friends with a local-girl, the tomboy Charlie. The summer takes a turn toward the mysterious, though, when Nicholas discovers an old movie that his father made as a boy: it tells the story of the local legend, The Seaweed Strangler, but was never finished. Before long Nicholas wants answers both about the legend, and about the movie. Together, he and Charlie work to uncover the truth and discover some long-buried family secrets along the way.

 

 

Thank You for supporting Your Community Bookseller, Rainy Day Books

Since 1975, we have pursued our Legacy of Literacy: 37 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/Thu/Fri 10 AM to 6 PM, Sat 10 AM to 5 PM, and Sundays we read, rest and enjoy our families and friends.

 

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