Paul Dorrell, artist, author, and owner of Leopold Gallery, presents an abbreviated version of his career workshop based on his book Living the Artist's Life.

This Event is Next Monday, September 27, 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.

Jeffrey Toobin, Senior Legal Analyst for CNN and author of the Bestselling Book The Nine: Inside The Secret World of the Supreme Court, appears In Conversation for his new Book The Oath: The Obama White House v. The Supreme Court.

It is one of the central issues of the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election.  It will determine the course of legal history for decades.  It is the story of two men, both students of Constitutional history, and both commanding a branch of the federal government.  Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin now takes us inside the Beltway, inside the inner circles of power, behind The Oath.

This Event is Next Thursday, September 27, 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.

Jim Butcher, The New York Times Bestselling author of The Harry Dresden Books and many more, returns for his New Book Cold Days: A Novel of The Dresden Files. 

This Event is Thursday, November 29, 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.

Winter of the World: Book Two of the Century Trilogy

Ken Follett

Dutton Adult 

Ken Follett's Fall of Giants, the first novel in his extraordinary new historical epic, The Century Trilogy, was an international sensation, acclaimed as "sweeping and fascinating, a book that will consume you for days or weeks" (USA Today) and "grippingly told and readable to the end" (The New York Times Book Review). "If the next two volumes are as lively and entertaining as Fall of Giants," said The Washington Post, "they should be well worth waiting for." Winter of the World picks up right where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families-American, German, Russian, English, Welsh-enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, up to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs.

The Oath: The Obama White House v. the Supreme Court

Jeffrey Toobin

Doubleday

From the moment John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, blundered through the Oath of Office at Barack Obama's inauguration, the relationship between the Supreme Court and the White House has been confrontational. Both men are young, brilliant, charismatic, charming, determined to change the course of the nation-and completely at odds on almost every major constitutional issue. One is radical; one essentially conservative. The surprise is that Obama is the conservative, a believer in incremental change, compromise, and pragmatism over ideology. Roberts and his allies on the Court seek to overturn decades of precedent: in short, to undo the ultimate victory FDR achieved in the New Deal. This ideological war will crescendo during the 2011-2012 term, in which several landmark cases are on the Court's docket, most crucially, a challenge to Obama's controversial health-care legislation. With four new justices joining the Court in just five years, including Obama's appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, this is a dramatically and historically different Supreme Court, playing for the highest of stakes. No one is better positioned to chronicle this dramatic tale than Jeffrey Toobin, whose prize-winning bestseller The Nine laid bare the inner workings and conflicts of the Court in meticulous and entertaining detail. As the nation prepares to vote for President in 2012, the future of the Supreme Court will also be on the ballot.

San Miguel

T.C. Boyle

Viking Adult

On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new lives and pursue dreams of self-reliance and freedom. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of T. C. Boyle's haunting new novel. Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year's Day 1888 to restore her failing health. Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her. Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted. And then in March 1930, Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. As the years go on they find a measure of fulfillment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts. But will the peace and beauty of the island see them through the impending war as it had seen them through the Depression?

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Tom Reiss

Crown

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo - a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature. Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution, in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East - until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat. The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world's first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

The Vanishing Act

Mette Jakobsen

W. W. Norton and Company

On a small snow-covered island so tiny that it can t be found on any map lives twelve-year-old Minou, her philosopher Papa (a descendent of Descartes), Boxman the magician, and a clever dog called No-Name. A year earlier Minou 's mother left the house wearing her best shoes and carrying a large black umbrella. She never returned. One morning Minou finds a dead boy washed up on the beach. Her father decides to lay him in the room that once belonged to her mother. Can her mother 's disappearance be explained by the boy? Will Boxman be able to help find her? Minou, unwilling to accept her mother 's death, attempts to find the truth through Descartes philosophy. Over the course of her investigation Minou will discover the truth about loss and love, a truth that The Vanishing Act conveys in a voice that is uniquely enchanting.

The Diviners

Libba Bray

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Evie O'Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City--and she is pos-i-toot-ly thrilled. New York is the city of speakeasies, shopping, and movie palaces! Soon enough, Evie is running with glamorous Ziegfield girls and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is Evie has to live with her Uncle Will, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult--also known as "The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies." When a rash of occult-based murders comes to light, Evie and her uncle are right in the thick of the investigation. And through it all, Evie has a secret: a mysterious power that could help catch the killer--if he doesn't catch her first.