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Greetings, summer Readers!
As you will see right away, we are experimenting with the layout of the newsletter a little bit. This one looks similar to last week's, though there are few little things here and there that I've tweaked. Content-wise, we've got the jigsaw puzzle back, and information about how you can participate in the Darkside Kickstarter campaign below. Plus, two new book displays are up in the store for wedding season and summer cooking. The Hachette vs. Amazon battle ensues (read about Stephen Colbert's two very big cents on the issue), aaaaaand books, books, and more excellent books.
Anticipate a few additional visual changes to our format here on the Reader, but only in ways that enhance its aesthetic appeal and your reading enjoyment--something to make your current book news a little easy on the eyes. Stay tuned on that, and keep reading.
Yours in summer smoothies and indie bookstore affection,
Jenny |
| New Hardcovers | |
Silkworm (Cormoran Strike Novel)
Robert Galbraith
|  "As we all know, Galbraith's first Cormoran Strike novel won great reviews but not great sales until it was revealed that Galbraith was actually J.K. Rowling. Wouldn't you know a famous novelist is at the heart of this second Strike outing. When Owen Quine disappears, his wife assumes that he's on one of his little escapades and asks Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike discovers, Quine has just finished a novel full of nasty portraits of people he knows, and one of them may have wanted to finish him off." -Library Journal
Hardcover; $28.00 Publisher: Mulholland Books; ISBN: 9780316206877 |
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book
Peter Finn and Petra Couvee
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 "The derring-do-packed history of 'one of the first efforts by the CIA to leverage books as instruments of political warfare.' In the 1940s, poet and translator Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) set out to write an epic of the 'incredible time' during the years surrounding Russia's revolution. The result was Doctor Zhivago, 'a sad, dismal story,' as he put it, about a poet-physician and his personal and political trials during four decades of upheaval and repression. Washington Post national security editor Finn and teacher and translator Couvee chronicle the intrigue over the book's publication in Europe, its initial reception and the vociferous opposition it generated in the Soviet Union. . . " - Kirkus ReviewsHardcover; $26.95
Publisher: Pantheon Books; ISBN:9780307908001
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Flying Shoes
Lisa Howorth
|  ". . . Mary Byrd Thornton gets word that her presence is required in Richmond, Virginia, to meet with detectives who have new theories about the decades-old case of her stepbrother's murder. The trouble is, Mary Byrd lives in Mississippi, hates to fly, and needs to get out of town before an early spring ice storm shuts everything down. . . Mary Byrd must also organize her householdher attitude-enhanced teenage daughter, Eliza; her space-geeky son, William; and her mostly absent husband, Charles, to function in her absence. . . It's all par for the course in the secretive, volatile Deep South for Howorth, who mined a tragic episode from her own personal history as dark inspiration for this buzz-worthy debut." -Booklist
Hardcover; $26.00 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; ISBN:9781620403013 | |
Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels)
Janet Evanovich
|  New Jersey criminal Jimmy Poletti, recently out of jail on bail, has missed his court date. As bounty hunter Stephanie Plum sets out to look for him, days tick by, leads die, and so do people. The renown cop Joe Morelli is even at a loss for possible answers to all investigation questions. Plum's last resort becomes her only option: protecting Randy Briggs, Morelli's inconsequential bookkeeper, holder of all dark secrets. Naturally this means Briggs is next to die, while Plum finds herself caught up in tangential murder plots concerning people she's most close to.
Hardcover; $28.00 Publisher: Bantam; ISBN:9780345542922 | |
Carsick
John Waters
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 ". . . This, [John] Waters's seventh book, is a travelogue of his experiences bumming rides all the way from his home in Baltimore to his apartment in San Francisco. Waters idiosyncratically cuts to the core of American diversity, finding the good (and bad) in any situation with biting wit. The unlikely friendship Waters forms with a young Republican politician is an unexpected twist, and a timely tale of bromance in the midst of hardship. If a dyed-in-the-wool conservative and the pope of Trash can have an adventure in Reno together, aren't all things still possible in this world? Fans will delight in the two [embedded] novellas, with Waters at his campiest and most ludicrous, that precede the nonfiction third act. . . " - Publishers WeeklyHardcover; $26.00
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; ISBN:9780374298630
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| New Paperbacks | |
Longbourn
Jo Baker
|  The servants take center stage in this irresistibly imagined below-stairs answer to Pride and Prejudice. While Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters fuss over balls and husbands, Sarah, their orphaned housemaid, is beginning to chafe against the boundaries of her class. When a new footman arrives at Longbourn under mysterious circumstances, the carefully choreographed world she has known all her life threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended. Mentioned only fleetingly in Jane Austen's classic, here Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Regency England and, in doing so, uncovers the real world of the novel that has captivated readers' hearts around the world for generations.
Paperback; $15.95 Publisher: Vintage Books; ISBN:9780345806970 |
The Lowland
Jhumpa Lahiri
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 "Lahiri's. . . haunting second novel crosses generations, oceans, and the chasms that despair creates within families. Subhash and Udayan are brothers. . . born in Calcutta in the years just before Indian independence and the country's partition. As children, they are inseparable. . . When Subhash moves to the U.S. for graduate school in the late 1960s, he has a hard time keeping track of Udayan's involvement in the increasingly violent Communist uprising taking place throughout West Bengal. The only person who will eventually be able to tell Subhash. . . what happened to his brother is Gauri, Udayan's love-match wife. . . Gauri and Subhash form their own relationship, one both intimate and distant, which will determine much of the rest of their adult lives. . . " - Publishers Weekly
Paperback; $15.95 Publisher: Vintage Books; ISBN:9780307278265 | |
The Silver Star
Jeannette Walls
|  It is 1970. 'Bean' Holladay is twelve and her sister Liz fifteen when their artistic mother Charlotte, a woman who 'flees every place she's ever lived at the first sign of trouble', takes off to 'find herself'. She leaves the girls enough money for food to last a month or two. But when Bean gets home from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz board a bus from California to Virginia, where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying antebellum mansion that has been in the family for generations.
Paperback; $16.00 Publisher: Scribner Book Company; ISBN:9781451661545 | |
Book Lovers: Sexy Stories from Under the Covers
Shawna Kenney
|  Proving that erotica and well-written, smart literature are not mutually exclusive fields, Shawna Kenney has created a daring anthology of exciting, sexy stories. Readers will encounter both fiction and non-fiction pieces covering ground from imaginary trysts with the likes of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, arousing retellings of Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," and coming-of-age tales dependent on 1950s pulp fiction. Characters and essayists swoon both bodily and mindfully in these pieces, and readers find pleasure in the sensual AND intellectual.
Paperback; $15.00 Publisher: Seal Press; ISBN:9781580055291 | |
The Wrong Dog Dream: A True Romance
Jane Vandenburgh
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 "Novelist and memoirist Vandenburgh ( Architecture of the Novel, 2010, etc.) tells the story of her relationships with two family dogs while exploring her own inner emotional landscapes. Whistler came into the author's uprooted life after she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C., from California. But the English springer spaniel soon went from being 'two warm and fluffy handfuls of the purest joy' to 'a fearful mass of jitters.' Vandenburgh attributed the nervousness to his pedigreed background, until she realized that he may have been picking up and mirroring her own anxieties. Living apart from all she had known, including her own teenage children, she felt fearful, lonely and as though '[she'd] lost some element in [her] sense of cosmic usefulness. . . '" - Kirkus ReviewsPaperback; $15.95
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC; ISBN:9781619023178
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New for Young Readers
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Three Bears in a Boat
David Soman
Ages 3 to 7
|  ". . . Dash, Theo, and Charlie, three young bears, have broken their mother's treasured blue shell in an attempt to reach the honey jar on the mantel. Rather than confess. . . they conspire to replace the shell before she gets home, setting off boldly to search for one in their sailboat. Their journey allows [David] Soman to paint both comic vignettes (the bears meet a dory called 'Melville' loaded with dogged-looking whalers and a harpoon) and breathtaking sea scenes as the bears get tossed by the huge green waves of a storm, meet some whales, and, in one particularly beautiful spread, sail along a glittering trail of light on the ocean waves. . . " -Publishers Weekly
Hardcover; $17.99 Publisher: Dial Books; ISBN:9780803739932 |
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A Day with Miss Lina's Ballerinas
Grace Maccarone
Ages 4 to 7
|  This is a charming book for children just starting out their reading (and dancing!) endeavors. The ballerinas at Miss Lina's studio seem to never stop dancing, or at least they can't stop thinking about it. With adorable pictures and simple, but pleasurable sentences, A Day with Miss Lina's Ballerinas gets kids excited for the spinning, twirling world of the young ballerina.
"This picture book is a pleasure to read aloud and a beguiling choice for any young dancer." -Booklist, Starred review
Paperback; $3.99 Publisher: Square Fish; ISBN:9781250047175 |
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The Glass Sentence (Mapmakers Trilogy #1)
S.E. Grove
Ages 10 to 14
|  In 1891, in a world transformed by 1799's Great Disruption--when all of the continents were flung into different time periods--thirteen-year-old Sophia Tims and her friend Theo go in search of Sophia's uncle, Shadrack Elli, Boston's foremost cartologer, who has been kidnapped.
". . . debut author Grove wraps the complex central premise of this series opener in lavish detail and brisk plot turns to sweep readers along through her fascinating, fully realized fantasy world. . . " -Booklist
Hardcover; $17.99 Publisher:Viking Children's Books; ISBN:9780670785025 |
New Music
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Felice Brothers
Favorite Waitress
|  This New York state act's early albums were recorded live and on the fly, with a couple tracks actually set to tape in a chicken coop. Years later, their sound has tightened, though a loose, improvisational spirit still drives their alt.country.
Pop/Rock; $13.95 |
David Gray
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 The singer-songwriter's 8th album is produced by Andy Barlow, who has worked with a number of electronic artists over the years. While Gray's production seems more polished, his intimate folk-pop songs remain as thoughtful and melodic as ever. Pop/Rock; $13.95
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Willie Nelson
|  While many of the country legend's recent albums have featured covers and rehashes of older material, Nelson co-wrote the majority of the new tunes featured here. The Red Headed Stranger and his band come across as newly energized and engaged on a collection that even features a couple upbeat numbers. Pop/Rock; $11.95 | |
Various Artists
Red Hot + Bach
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This interesting project combines the worlds of pop, world, and classical music for a unique hybrid. The eclectic list of artists includes Chris Thile, Kronos Quartet, and jazz legend Ron Carter.
Classical; $11.95 
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| Store Events | |
Tuesday, June 24 at 7 p.m.
Jana Zvibleman, Rick Borsten, Ann Staley
The Knotted Bond
Grass Roots Books & Music
227 SW 2nd Street, Corvallis
|  Sisters are sometimes born into the same family; they can be also be chosen over time and space. In this anthology, sisters of all types share or withhold nurturing and secrets; they celebrate and miss each other; they witness each other's moods, successes, and deaths. Most of the poets in this anthology are, naturally, women, yet Kim Stafford and other brothers reveal relationships with their sisters. The laughing toddlers, knobby kneed girls, defiant teens, regretful adults, and proud elders in this book can touch us all.
Corvallis poets represented are Rick Borsten, Ann Staley, and Jana Zvibleman; others include outgoing Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen, Dorianne Laux, Penelope Scambly Schott, and Ingrid Wendt.
Thursday, June 26 at 7 p.m.
Rebecca Gordon Mainstreaming Torture
Grass Roots Books & Music
227 SW 2nd Street, Corvallis
|  In Mainstreaming Torture Rebecca Gordon argues that institutionalized state torture remains as wrong today as it was on the day before the terrible attacks of September 11. Furthermore, U.S. practices during the "war on terror" are rooted in a history that began long before September that day, a history that includes both support for torture regimes abroad and the use of torture in American jails and prisons.
Torture is still an urgent moral issue. This is a book for anyone who cares about how institutionalized torture affects its victims, its practitioners, and the nation that gives it a home.
Rebecca Gordon teaches Ethics at the University of San Francisco Prior to her academic career, she spent a few decades working in various national and international movements for peace and justice: for women's liberation and LGBT rights; for racial justice in the United States and the anti-apartheid movement in the United States and South Africa; and against U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is also the author of Letters from Nicaragua, about the six months she spent living in the war zones of Nicaragua in 1984. | |
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| In the Community | |
Darkside Kickstarter Announcement:
The Darkside needs to buy a digital projection system to stay in business. Show your support by donating to the Darkside Cinema Kickstarter or donating at the snack bar.
Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing campaign, so the goal must be met by Saturday, July 12. Be a part of the Darkside future, and please help spread the word!
Darkside Showtimes for 6/20-6/26
-The Grand Budapest Hotel
-R Wes Anderson once again using ornate visual environments to explore deeply emotional ideas.
-We Are The Best!
-NR Sweet, empathetic, and shot through with a palpable joy,
We Are the Best! offers a tender tribute to the bittersweet tumult of adolescence.
-Words And Pictures
-PG-13 Resonates with a clever and endearing energy that harkens back to the days when Doris Day and Rock Hudson dominated the box office. Clive Owen, Juliette Binoche.
Literary Events
Meditative Journaling Workshop
Saturday, June 21 | 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. | Corvallis-Benton County Public Library; Join Dr. Mary Ann Iyer as she leads individuals into a quiet introspective place of self-awareness and poses relevant questions. Insights often arise that are new and illuminating. We will then journal with this material. As Dr. Iyer says, "They are delicious groups to be a part of!" Please bring paper and pens and be prepared to reflect deeply within yourself. Advanced registration is requried for this free workshop; please call 541-766-6793 or email askalibrarian@corvallisoregon.gov, or stop by the 2nd floor reference desk to register
Corvallis Library Sunday Opening Celebration
Corvallis Library Sunday Opening Celebration Sunday, June 22 | 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. | Corvallis-Benton County Public Library Thanks to the voters who passed the Local Option Levy last November, the Corvallis Public Library Branch will reopen on Sundays from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m., beginning June 22.
In celebration, the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library Board will sponsor an event that day, June 22, at the Corvallis location featuring a scavenger hunt for library treasures, library "back room" tours, photos, coloring pages for the kids, music in the courtyard by Sax Trax, and refreshments. Members of the Library Board will be on hand to greet patrons, thank them for their support, and get feedback from the community. The Library Board consists of five city and five county representatives appointed to advise the City Council on all matters pertaining to the operation, expansion and level of service provided by the Library.
For more information, contact the library at 541-766-6928.
David Sedaris at Powell's!
Friday, June 27th @ 6pm Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, A guy walks into a bar car and. . . from here the story could take many turns. When the guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless, but the result is always the same: he will both delight you with twists of humor and leave you deeply moved. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (Back Bay) shows again why Sedaris is widely considered "the funniest writer in America" (O, the Oprah Magazine).
Opportunities
- Drunken Boat Poetry Book Contest Online submission deadline: June 25, 2014. Drunken Boat is accepting submissions of poetry, hybrid poetry, and poetry in translation for our inaugural book contest, judged by Forrest Gander. Deadline: June 25. Prize: $500, publication, 20 copies, and a launch at AWP. Manuscripts should be between 30 and 120 pages. Details here!
- The Black Box Poetry Prize Email submission deadline: June 30, 2014; Rescue Press invites submissions for the 2014 Black Box Poetry Prize, a contest for full-length collections of poetry open to poets at any stage in their writing careers. Submissions will be accepted during the month of June 2014. This year's judge is Maggie Nelson; see our website or blog for submission guidelines and previous winners.
- The Crazy-shorts! Contest Online submission deadline: July 31, 2014From July 1st to July 31st, Crazyhorse will accept entries for our annual short-short fiction contest. Submit three short-shorts of up to 500 words each through our website. 1st place will win $1,000 and publication; 3 runners-up will be announced. All entries will be considered by our editors for publication, and the $15 entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Crazyhorse.
- 2014 NANO Prize Online submission deadline: September 1, 2014 The sixth annual NANO Prize, awarding publication and $500 to a previously unpublished work of fiction 300 words or fewer, is open and this year's contest will be judged by Kim Chinquee! All entrants will receive a one-year subscription to NANO Fiction and winners will be announced in mid-September. Visit website here
- Black Warrior Review Contest Online Submission deadline: September 1, 2014 announcing Black Warrior Review's Tenth-Annual Contest for Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry! Grand prize in each genre: $1000 and publication; Runner-up prize in each genre: $100 and publication. Cost to enter: $20 (comes with one-year subscription). This year we are honored to have Richard Siken (Poetry), Lily Hoang (Fiction/Prose), and Kiese Laymon (Nonfiction) as our guest judges. The entry fee covers one 7,000 word fiction or nonfiction submission, or one packet of up to three poems. Send us your best work today; we can't wait to read it! Visit our website here.
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Store News
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New Poet Laureate
|  Congratulations to retired University of Virginia professor Charles Wright, named our new Poet Laureate last week! Read the interview highlights featured on NPR, or listen to the whole story here. |
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Weddings, weddings, weddings!
|  As the weather warms, so does wedding season. Even in my own small circle I can count off five weddings coming up! If you find yourself in the throes of this particularly special and exciting time (or are close to someone else who is), consider a visit to Grass Roots, where we are carrying a new supply of wedding and engagement cards, located right next to our wedding book display. For books, we are stocked in marriage how-tos, like Harriet Lerner's Marriage Rules: A Manual For the Married and the Coupled Up. Perhaps the more tender side suits your needs and you're looking for poetry, like Roger Housden's Twenty Poems to Bless You Marriage. OR maybe you are in the market for photo ideas covering how to capture the whole shebang. You'll probably want to take a look at Brett Florens' One Wedding: How to Photograph from Start to Finish, in that case. Congrats on this happy time, and consider consulting our selection for gifts, guides, and inspiration! |
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Summer Fixin's
|  One of my favorite parts of the bookstore is our cooking section-it is so vibrant, colorful, and enticing in its variety of cooking options. Therefore I'm super excited for our summer cooking display, located near our fiction section. We have interesting and fun suggestions for updating your cookbook selection, now that you might have more time to explore your culinary horizons. Maybe give Put 'Em Up: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook. If you are in the savory market, why not attempt Southeast Asian cuisine with Simple Thai Food, replete with beautiful pictures to match stunning recipes? However, you might simply be looking for sparkling, fun cocktails. Try Market-Fresh Mixology for everything from a Plum Sour to a Savory Avocado Cocktail. All so tantalizing! |
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Colbert Bump
|  The ongoing Hachette vs. Amazon saga escalates thanks to Stephen Colbert's indie bookstore and first-time writer endorsement on his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report. If you missed Sherman Alexie's interview with Colbert on this very issue, watch the clip at the bottom of this Paste Magazine article. To hear Colbert's challenge to the American people to support Edan Lepucki's debut novel California by purchasing her book via indie bookstores, see the clip at the bottom of this Salon story! THANKS, COLBERT! |
Jigsaw Puzzle!!!
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It's baa-aa-ck
|  Click the link here to find out most recent jigsaw puzzle. It's a little different this week...beware.
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Grass Roots Reading Group
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Tuesday, July 1, 6:30-8:00 p.m.
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro.
Grass Roots Books & Music
227 SW 2nd Street, Corvallis
|  Jenny will be leading our July reading group discussion with Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham-an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. The children there were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there? It is only years later that Kathy, now aged 31, finally allows herself to yield to the pull of memory. What unfolds is the haunting story of how Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, slowly come to face the truth about their seemingly happy childhoods-and about their futures. Never Let Me Go is a uniquely moving novel, charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of our lives.
Paperback; $15.95 Paperback; $15.95 Publisher: Vintage Books; ISBN: 9781400078776 On sale for $13.56 until June 30, 2014. |
| Night Stands | |
Kendall
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
|  By now, you have heard about this book and either you're thinking "I should get around to reading that" or "I am never ever going to read that." In either case, you are wrong. You need to read it immediately. Ignore its classification as a young adult novel and dive into this brilliant, genuine, important story. John Green is exactly the kind of person who should be writing books for our next generation, and he does it wonderfully. You will speed through this novel, until you're held up by blurry eyes, but it will be worth it.
Paperback; $12.99 Publisher: Speak; ISBN:9780142424179 |
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Claire
Son
Lois Lowry
|  Son brings back the story of The Giver with a new perspective and brought the back-story I never knew I needed. While the original gave us Jonas's perspective of life in the Community without choice, Son goes further to show us what happens when Gabriel's mother, Claire, takes control of her own future and escapes. Wonderful, both for those
nostalgic for the story they read when they were younger, and for young adults reading the series for the first time.
Paperback; $9.99 Publisher: Harcourt Brace and Company; ISBN:9780544336254 |
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Erika
Ghost Stories
Coldplay
|  Coldplay has finally done it again! If you loved their earlier albums, such as Parachutes and A Rush of Blood To the Head, you will certainly enjoy their newest Ghost Stories. I had to take a break from them because I wasn't clicking with X & Y or Mylo Xyloto... I was so glad to listen to this album and be reminded of the reason I loved their music in the first place: beautiful melodies and lyrics of poetry, and this album is pleasantly upbeat compared to their first two.
CD; $18.95 Pop/Rock |
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Grass Roots Books and Music
227 SW 2nd Street
Corvallis OR 97333
541-754-7668
Send us an email. Visit our website: www.grassrootsbookstore.com 
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