Marcy Cottrell Houle and Dr. Elizabeth Eckstrom join us to talk about their new book The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare. In this powerful blending of personal memoir and practical strategies, The Gift of Caring reveals the hidden side of modern healthcare practices for aging Americans. The book sheds new light on aging by weaving together the perspective of a daughter desperately seeking help for the parents she loves with that of a nationally recognized geriatrician and public health advocate who offers life-changing strategies than can protect our loved ones and ourselves. The book was recently honored with a Christopher Award, given annually to broadcasters, filmmakers, authors, and others whose work "affirms the highest values of the human spirit."

Marcy Cottrell Houle, MS, is a biologist and award-winning author. Her previous books include Wings for My Flight, The Prairie Keepers, and One City's Wilderness: Portland's Forest Park. Elizabeth Eckstrom, MD, MPH, is director of geriatrics in the division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at OHSU and cofounder of the OHSU Healthy Aging Alliance. Both authors live in Portland.

We are excited to be hosting an evening with Robert Hill in conversation with Rene Denfeld. Robert Hill's newly published novel The Remnants tells the story of the town of New Eden, a town peopled with hereditary oddities. As two near-centenarian citizens prepare for their annual birthday tea, a third vows to interrupt the proceedings with a bold declaration. The Remnants is published by Forest Avenue Press, a Portland-based publishing house. "With his signature wit and wordplay, Robert has created an ebullient ode to the last days of the last three residents of a small town," said Laura Stanfill, the publisher. "Robert's imagination, and the linguistic cartwheels he spins, elevate this equally dark and hilarious novel into a thing of wonder." Reviewer Stephanie Bonjack says "Hill's text reads like poetry spoken in a long Southern drawl."

Robert Hill, now an Oregonian, was born in New England. He has worked in advertising, entertainment, educational software, and not-for-profit fundraising. His debut novel, When All is Said and Done, was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award in 2007.

Rene Denfeld is a death penalty investigator who works with men and women facing execution. Her debut novel The Enchanted is set on death row in a corrupt prison. She has also written four nonfiction books and writes for a variety of publications.

We welcome back our good friend Brian Doyle to read from his newest book, Chicago. The novel, published by Thomas Dunne Books, is about a young college graduate who moves to the Second City on the last day of summer some years ago. The book tells the story of the five seasons he lives there, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed. It is a love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man's coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball.

Mr. Doyle's previous novels include the bestselling Mink River, The Plover, and Martin Marten, which just won an Oregon Book Award. He is also an award-winning essayist and poet and the editor of Portland Magazine, published by the University of Portland. He has published many, many books, and we love them all.

In the interest of trying something totally new, we welcome brothers Pauls and Steve Toutonghi to the store, who will each read from their new, completely different, books.

Pauls Toutonghi's new book, Dog Gone: A Lost Pet's Extraordinary Journey and the Family Who Brought Him Home, captures the story of Fielding Marshall and his dog Gonker, who goes missing while they're hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Gonker has Addison's disease and only has twenty-three days before a lack of medication could take his life. The search for Gonker involves the entire Marshall family and spins an epic tale of family and spiritual journey. Pauls, who has won a Pushcart Prize, writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Tin House. He teaches at Lewis and Clark College and lives in Portland.

Join, the debut novel by Steve Toutonghi, takes us to a world where you can live multiple lives simultaneously, have constant perfect companionship, and never die. The promise of Join, a revolutionary technology that allows minds to form a single consciousness and experience the world through multiple bodies, may be blinding the world to its horrors. Two best friends discover through a third person the dangers of promised immortality. Katherine Dunn, the recently deceased author of Geek Love, called Join "a searing, ballistic plunge into the mysteries of identity and mortality." Steve lives back in his hometown of Seattle, after earning a degree in anthropology from Stanford and working in Silicon Valley.

To follow up on our reading with brothers, we welcome the daughter/mother author team of Becky and Dena Taylor, who will read from their joint memoir, Tell Me the Number before Infinity: The Story of a Girl with a Quirky Mind, an Eccentric Family, and Oh Yes, a Disability
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This book is one-of-a-kind, told from two perspectives: of the mother and of her daughter, born with cerebral palsy and a gift for mathematics. Becky was one of the first children to be mainstreamed into public schools under the 1975 federal law.
The sixty short chapters are arranged chronologically, from Becky's birth in 1972 to age forty. They describe their family life and the realities of having a disability. Most of the chapters were written at the time they happened, so the reader gets a sense of what it was like for Becky, her sister, and her mom while Becky was growing up. The book includes photos and newspaper clippings from throughout Becky's life.

Becky Taylor is a Computer Science graduate from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She currently lives in Santa Cruz, where she is the vice chair of the Commission on Disabilities and is involved in other civic organizations. Dena Taylor, M.S.W., Rutgers University, is the mother of two grown daughters. She lives in California and is retired from careers in social work and education.

If you're looking for something a little more summery, take a look at the latest novel from Emma Straub: Modern Lovers. In this witty and tender story of former college friends and bandmates, now nearing their 50s and with college-age kids of their own but still trying to hold on to the identities of their youth, Straub packs wisdom, insight, and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions -- be they food, friendship, or music -- never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us. The daughter of horror and suspense novelist Peter Straub, her previous novel was The Vacationers. 

The Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes