Actress & Author Jamie Lee Curtis appears for her New Children's Picture Book My Brave Year of Firsts: Tries, Sighs and High Fives on Friday, September 7, 2012 at 7:00 PM at The Village Presbyterian Church, Friendship Hall, 6641 Mission Road, Prairie Village, Kansas 66208.

Purchase your Family Admission Packages now because only 150 Packages are available for this Special Event. 

Co-Sponsored by Rainy Day Books, Head Start of Shawnee Mission and The Little House.

Read full details about this Event on our Website. 

Michael MacCambridge, author of the revealing new biography Lamar Hunt: A Life in Sports, appears on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

Read full details about this Event on our Website. 

David Von Drehle appears for his new biography Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America's Most Perilous Year on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

Read full details about this Event on our Website. 

One Last Thing Before I Go

Jonathan Tropper

Dutton 

You don't have to look very hard at Drew Silver to see that mistakes have been made. His fleeting fame as the drummer for a one-hit wonder rock band is nearly a decade behind him. He lives in the Versailles, an apartment building filled almost exclusively with divorced men like him, and makes a living playing in wedding bands. His ex-wife, Denise, is about to marry a guy Silver can't quite bring himself to hate. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter Casey has just confided in him that she's pregnant-because Silver is the one she cares least about letting down. So when he learns that his heart requires emergency, lifesaving surgery, Silver makes the radical decision to refuse the operation, choosing instead to use what little time he has left to repair his relationship with Casey, become a better man, and live in the moment, even if that moment isn't destined to last very long. As his exasperated family looks on, Silver grapples with the ultimate question of whether or not his own life is worth saving.

The Absent One

Jussi Adler-Olsen

Dutton

In The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen introduced Detective Carl Mørck, a deeply flawed, brilliant detective newly assigned to run Department Q, the home of Copenhagen's coldest cases. The result wasn't what Mørck-or readers-expected, but by the opening of Adler-Olsen's shocking, fast-paced follow-up, Mørck is satisfied with the notion of picking up long-cold leads. So he's naturally intrigued when a closed case lands on his desk: A brother and sister were brutally murdered two decades earlier, and one of the suspects-part of a group of privileged boarding-school students-confessed and was convicted. But once Mørck reopens the files, it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Looking into the supposedly solved case leads him to Kimmie, a woman living on the streets, stealing to survive. Kimmie has mastered evading the police, but now they aren't the only ones looking for her. Because Kimmie has secrets that certain influential individuals would kill to keep buried, as well as one of her own that could turn everything on its head.

You Are the Love of My Life

Susan Richards Shreve

W. W. Norton and Company

It is 1973 and Watergate is on everyone's lips. Lucy Painter is a children's book illustrator and a single mother of two. She leaves New York and the married father of her children to live in a tightly knit Washington neighborhood in the house where she grew up and where she discovered her father's suicide. Lucy hopes for a fresh start, but her life is full of secrets: her children know nothing of her father's death or the identity of their own father. As the new neighbors enter their insular lives, her family's safety and stability become threatened.

A Killing in the Hills

Julia Keller

Minotaur Books

What's happening in Acker's Gap, West Virginia? Three elderly men are gunned down over their coffee at a local diner, and seemingly half the town is there to witness the act. Still, it happened so fast, and no one seems to have gotten a good look at the shooter. Was it random? Was it connected to the spate of drug violence plaguing poor areas of the country just like Acker's Gap? Or were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted somehow? One of the witnesses to the brutal incident was Carla Elkins, teenaged daughter of Bell Elkins, the prosecuting attorney for Raythune County, WV. Carla was shocked and horrified by what she saw, but after a few days, she begins to recover enough to believe that she might be uniquely placed to help her mother do her job. After all, what better way to repair their fragile, damaged relationship? But could Carla also end up doing more harm than good-in fact, putting her own life in danger?

The Templeton Twins Have an Idea: Book One

Ellis Weiner, Jeremy Holmes

Chronicle Books

Suppose there were 12-year-old twins, a boy and girl named John and Abigail Templeton. Let's say John was pragmatic and played the drums, and Abigail was theoretical and solved cryptic crosswords. Now suppose their father was a brilliant, if sometimes confused, inventor. And suppose that another set of twins-adults-named Dean D. Dean and Dan D. Dean, kidnapped the Templeton twins and their ridiculous dog in order to get their father to turn over one of his genius (sort of) inventions. Yes, I said kidnapped. Wouldn't it be fun to read about that? Oh please. It would so. Luckily for you, this is just the first in a series perfect for boys and girls who are smart, clever, and funny (just like the twins), and enjoy reading adventurous stories (who doesn't?!).

Dog Loves Drawing

Louise Yates

Knopf Books for Young Readers

Dog loves books, but one day he receives a strange one in the mail-it's blank! Soon, Dog realizes that this book is not for reading, but for drawing. Before long, Dog is doodling and drawing himself into a new world, full of friends and surprises.