The New York Times Bestselling author Linda Fairstein appears In Conversation with Vivien Jennings, Founder & President of Rainy Day Books and Jean Peters Baker, Jackson County, Missouri, Prosecutor to discuss in-depth Linda's life, work and new Book Night Watch on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary.

If at night you like to watch the TV Show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), then you should read Linda Fairstein.  She ran the SVU at the Manhattan District Attorney's office for 25 Years.

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Lilly Ledbetter appears to discuss her own true story Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond on Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary.

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Sportswriter Joe Posnanksi appears to discuss his new biography Paterno on Wednesday, September 12, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary. 

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CNN's Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin appears to discuss his new Book The Oath: The Obama White House v. The Supreme Court on Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary. 

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William Kent Krueger appears to discuss his new Cork O'Connor mystery Trickster's Point on Saturday, September 29, 2012 at 2:00 PM at Rainy Day Books in The Fairway Shops.

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Kansas City native Gennifer Albin appears to discuss her highly anticipated debut young adult novel Crewel on Monday, October 15, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary.

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Matt Inman, AKA: The Oatmeal, appears to discuss his hilarious new comic collection How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You on Monday, October 22, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary.

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Kate Morton returns! The New York Times Bestselling author of The House at Riverton and The Distant Hours travels all the way from Australia to Kansas City.  Kate appears to discuss her new novel The Secret Keeper on Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary.

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Shadow of Night

Deborah Harkness

Viking Adult 

OUR MOST REQUESTED TITLE LAST TUESDAY!

Deborah Harkness exploded onto the literary scene with her debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, Book One of the magical All Souls Trilogy and an international publishing phenomenon. The novel introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont; together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches' cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew's old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows

Brian Castner

Doubleday

Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. Days and nights he and his team-his brothers-would venture forth in heavily armed convoys from their Forward Operating Base to engage in the nerve-racking yet strangely exhilarating work of either disarming the deadly improvised explosive devices that had been discovered, or picking up the pieces when the alert came too late. They relied on an army of remote-controlled cameras and robots, but if that technology failed, a technician would have to don the eighty-pound Kevlar suit, take the Long Walk up to the bomb, and disarm it by hand. This lethal game of cat and mouse was, and continues to be, the real war within America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But The Long Walk is not just about battle itself. It is also an unflinching portrayal of the toll war exacts on the men and women who are fighting it. When Castner returned home to his wife and family, he began a struggle with a no less insidious foe, an unshakable feeling of fear and confusion and survivor's guilt that he terms The Crazy. His thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book immerses the reader in two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror and excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within-the haunting memories that will not fade, the survival instincts that will not switch off. After enduring what he has endured, can there ever again be such a thing as "normal"? The Long Walk will hook you from the very first sentence, and it will stay with you long after its final gripping page has been turned.

Gold

Chris Cleave

Simon & Schuster Books/Putnam

KATE AND ZOE met at nineteen when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling-a sport that demands intense focus, blinding exertion, and unwavering commitment. They are built to exploit the barest physical and psychological edge over equally skilled rivals, all of whom are fighting for the last one tenth of a second that separates triumph from despair. Now at thirty-two, the women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose. Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her eight-year-old daughter Sophie dreams of the Death Star and of battling alongside the Rebels as evil white blood cells ravage her personal galaxy-she is fighting a recurrence of the leukemia that nearly killed her three years ago. Sophie doesn't want to stand in the way of her mum's Olympic dreams, but each day the dark forces of the universe seem to be massing against her. Devoted and self-sacrificing Kate knows her daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last frenzied months of training, might she be blind to the most terrible prognosis? Intense, aloof Zoe has always hovered on the periphery of real human companionship, and her compulsive need to win at any cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate-and her own sanity. Will she allow her obsession, and the advantage she has over a harried, anguished mother, to sever the bond they have shared for more than a decade?

A Door in the Ocean: A Memoir

David McGlynn

Counterpoint

On a warm September night in 1991, in a quiet neighborhood north of Houston, Texas, David McGlynn's closest friend and teammate on the high school swimming team is found murdered on his living room floor. As the crime goes unsolved and his friends turn to drugs and violence, McGlynn is vulnerable, rootless, searching for answers. He is drawn into the eccentric and often radical world of evangelical Christianity-a journey that leads him to a proselytizing campus fellowship in Southern California, on a mission to Australia, and to Salt Lake City, where a second swimming-related tragedy leaves him doubting the authenticity of his beliefs. In his post-evangelical life, he finds himself exiled from his parents, plunged into financial chaos, and caught off-guard by the prospect of fatherhood. A new job offers hope for a new beginning, until the possibility of losing his newborn son forces him to confront the nature of everything he believes.

The Last Policeman

Ben H. Winters

Quirk Books

What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway? Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There's no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact. The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job-but not Hank Palace. He's investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week-except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares. The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace's investigation plays out under the shadow of 2011GV1, we're confronted by hard questions way beyond "whodunit." What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?

Seraphina

Rachel Hartman

Random House Books for Young Readers

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high. Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered-in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.