Being a mother to a young son with Down Syndrome meant Barbara Ali had to always be on the lookout for new adventures and activities that would engage his interests and energy. As it became clear that Omar fostered a great love of nature, Ali spent increasing amounts of time exploring area parks in ways that would be both affordable and fun. A longtime blogger and photographer, she carefully documented their discoveries and, in time, accumulated enough material to put together a book which could encourage other families to also find new things to do together: 101 Things to Do in Milwaukee Parks.

101 Things to Do in Milwaukee Parks promotes Milwaukee's year-round recreation stations, with nontraditional avenues for enjoying the generous public spaces. While biking, picnics, and playgrounds are mainstays, Ali touts lesser-known opportunities like fossil hunting, geocaching, birding, dog sledding, and even diving for shipwrecks. Journalist and local author Bobby Tanzilo writes, "covering everything from archery to bike polo to Civil War reenactments to pedal boats to sand sculptures to yoga, Ali's easy to navigate book can direct you to the perfect green space in Milwaukee for your chosen recreation."

Join us for an evening with Barbara Ali, featuring special guest Boo Boo, one of the Door County Sled Dogs, on Friday, February 7, 7 pm, at Boswell.   

Despite rampant scientific innovation in nineteenth-century America, traditional medicine still adhered to ancient healing methods such as induced vomiting and bleeding, blistering, and sweating patients. Facing such horrors, many patients ran with open arms to burgeoning practices promising new ways to cure their ills: Hydropaths promised cures using "healing tubs." Franz Anton Mesmer applied magnets to a patient's body, while Daniel David Palmer restored a man's hearing by knocking on his vertebrae. Phrenologists emerged, claiming the topography of one's skull could reveal the intricacies of one's character.

Bizarre as these methods may seem, many are the predecessors of today's notions of health and are all documented in the new book, Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine. We have the nineteenth-century practice of "medical gymnastics" to thank for today's emphasis on daily exercise, and hydropathy's various water cures gave us the notion of showers and the mantra of "eight glasses of water a day." Erika Janik (photo credit Dutcher photography) tells the colorful stories of these "quacks," whose shams, foils, or genuine wish to heal helped shape and influence modern medicine.

Erika Janik has lovingly embraced Wisconsin as home, as evidenced by her books, A Short History of Wisconsin and Odd Wisconsin: Amusing, Perplexing, and Unlikely Stories from Wisconsin's Past. Her work has also appeared in Wisconsin Trails, the Wisconsin State Journal, and The Onion. When she's not writing, she is producer, editor, and consulting historian for the Wisconsin Public Radio series, Wisconsin Life.

The first defining moment of Harbinger (Harry) Jones' life: the day the neighborhood goons tied him to a tree during a lightning storm when he was 8 years old, and the tree was struck and caught fire. Harry was badly burned and has had to live with the physical and emotional scars, reactions from strangers, bullying, and loneliness that instantly became his everyday reality.

The second defining moment: the day in 8th grade when the handsome, charismatic Johnny rescued him from the bullies and then made the startling suggestion that they start a band together. Harry discovered that playing music transported him out of his nightmare of a world, and he finally had something that compelled people to look beyond his physical appearance.

In the new novel, The Scar Boys, Harry writes about these moments in his college application essay, which goes beyond the requested 250 words and becomes the novel which we are reading. In a voice both humorous and heart-wrenching, he describes how he came to learn about personal power, friendship, first love, and how to fit into the world.

Len Vlahos is a book industry executive and now a debut novelist. He was the guitarist in a punk rock band in the mid-1980s, The Woofing Cookies, and was an on-air personality for a commercial radio station in Atlantic City. This event is co-sponsored by 91.7 WMSE radio. Don't forget about their Rockabilly Chili fundraiser on Sunday, March 2. 

Before she became a writer of teen fiction, Ilsa J. Bick was a forensic psychiatrist who worked with children and adolescents. Through the dystopian thrillers she now creates, Bick still manages to address complex psychological issues affecting young people. Now she's a bestselling novelist, and she'll be speaking at Boswell, in conjunction with the publication of White Space: Book One of The Dark Passage. 

In a 2011 essay, titled "The Monsters in Us All: In Defense of YA Literature," Bick wrote "....many, many children do live in hell. ...if you do want to know about some kids like that, talk to a very wise librarian I met a few weeks ago at ALA. She works in Anaheim, and the population she serves lives with violence, gangs, drugs, rape, incest ... Know what those kids like to read? They devour contemporary novels that accurately depict their reality. And you know why? Because, in those novels, the kids triumph. They find a way out of hell. These books are quite hopeful because the teens in them do succeed where their parents and society have failed. These novels are journeys of growth from and through darkness toward the light."

Bick's books aim to do just that, such as in The Sin Eater's Confession, which explores the emotional life of a young gay man serving as a medic in Afghanistan and the bigotry he faced back home in his small Wisconsin hometown that led to his being falsely accused of a brutal murder. Her newest novel, White Space, is the first in a new YA trilogy in the mind-bending tradition of The Matrix and Inception: where realities are fluid and nightmares live in a lost world between the lines.

Publishers Weekly calls Bick's new book an "ambitious meta-textual adventure, which invokes Stephen King levels of psychological and physical horror, while defying readers' perceptions of reality at every turn." Hear more on February 18, 7 pm, at Boswell.  

Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family-and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood and has become the acclaimed memoir, After Visiting Friends, now in paperback.

Roughly the age his father was when he died, and now a seasoned reporter himself, Hainey set out to learn what happened that night. Died "after visiting friends," the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael's all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity, with a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father's buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he'd imagined with the one he comes to know-and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother.

Now an editor at GQ, Hainey (photo credit Mark Seliger) will share the story of After Visiting Friends on Thursday, February 20. Boswell's Jannis offers this recommendation: "Haunting, fascinating and elegiac, I thoroughly enjoyed this book." 

The friendship between Mary and Nix chronicled in Gina Frangello's new novel, A Life in Men, had endured since childhood, a seemingly unbreakable bond, until the mid-1980s, when the two young women reunited for a summer vacation in Greece. It was a trip instigated by Nix, who had just learned that Mary had been diagnosed with a disease that would inevitably cut her life short. Nix, a free spirit by nature, was determined that Mary have the vacation of a lifetime, but by the time their visit to Greece was over, the ties between them had unraveled, and when they said goodbye, it was for the last time.

Three years later, Mary returns to Europe to try to understand what went wrong, in the process meeting the first of many men she will spend time with and travel with throughout the world. Through them she experiences not just a sexual awakening but a spiritual and emotional awakening that allows her to understand how the past and the future are connected, and to appreciate how important it is that she live her life to the fullest.

Gina Frangello, cofounder of Other Voices Books and the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown, will be appearing at Boswell to read from and discuss her new novel A Life in Men  . Here's Caroline Leavitt in her blog discussing Frangello and her new novel.  

Wisconsin-raised writer Elizabeth Eulberg returns to her home state to launch her fifth YA novel, Better Off Friends. She is the author of The Lonely Hearts Club, Prom & Prejudice, Take a Bow, and Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality.

In Eulberg's newest, Levi moves to Wisconsin from California and meets Macallan, and it is friends at first sight. They hang out after school and share tons of inside jokes, their families are super close, and Levi even starts dating one of Macallan's friends. They are platonic and happy that way. Eventually they realize they're best friends-which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't keep getting in each other's way. Guys won't ask Macallan out because they think she's with Levi, and Levi spends too much time joking around with Macallan, and maybe not enough time with his date. They can't help but wonder...are they more than friends or are they better off without making it even more complicated?

I hope you are as excited as we are about the upcoming appearance of Michio Kaku, in conjunction with the publication of  The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind. This is a free event at Boswell, but we're expecting a full house. Expect a crowd like David Sedaris or Jim Gaffigan and the same rule will be in effect. You are not able to reserve seats and then leave the store--when we hit capacity, the doors close for the event, and open up again when the signing begins. If you want to be here for the talk, please arrive by 6:30 pm.   

In the new book, Michio Kaku tackles the most fascinating and complex object in the known universe: the human brain. The Future of the Mind gives us an authoritative and compelling look at the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world-all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics. Dr. Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, giving us not only a solid sense of how the brain functions but also how these technologies will change our daily lives. He even presents a radically new way to think about "consciousness" and applies it to provide fresh insight into mental illness, artificial intelligence and alien consciousness.

Michio Kaku is the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, a leader in the field of theoretical physics, and cofounder of string field theory. He is the author of several widely acclaimed science books, including Parallel Worlds, Visions, Beyond Einstein, Hyperspace, and The Physics of the Impossible, and the host of two radio programs, Explorations and Science Fantastic.

Longtime Milwaukee community activist Paul Geenen, whose previous books looked at the histories of the Bronzeville and Sherman Park neighborhoods, takes on a new decade and a new community: the South Side in the era of Civil Rights. His new book is called Civil Rights Activism in Milwaukee, and we'll be hosting an event with Geenen on Thursday, February 27, 7 pm, at Boswell.  

In the early 1960s, as members of Milwaukee's growing African American population looked beyond their segregated community for better jobs and housing, they faced bitter opposition from the real estate industry and union leadership. In an era marked by the friction of racial tension, the south side of Milwaukee earned a reputation as a flashpoint for prejudice, but it also served as a staging ground for cooperative activism between members of Father Groppi's parish, representatives from the NAACP Youth Council, students at Alverno College and a group of Latino families. Paul Geenen chronicles the challenges faced by this coalition in the fight for open housing and better working conditions for Milwaukee's minority community.

Sunday, March 2, 3 pm, at Boswell: Historical Middle Grade Fiction Panel, with Gayle Rosengren, author of What the Moon Said, Wendy McClure, author of Wanderville, and Rebecca Behrens, author of When Audrey Met Alice

Monday, March 3, 7 pm, at Boswell: Lorrie Moore, author of Bark and Birds of America.

Wednesday, March 5, 6:30 pm, at the Hales Corners Library, 5885 S 116th St. 53130: Joelle Charbonneau, author of The Testing and Independent Study.

Thursday, March 6, 7 pm, at Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall, 733 N. 8th Street, 53233: Charles Krauthammer (pictured), author of Things that Matter.

Friday, March 7, 7 pm, at Boswell: Michael Parker, author of All I Have in This World, along with Murray Farish, author of the short story collection Inappropriate Behavior.

Saturday, March 8, 2 pm, at Boswell: Denise Mina (pictured), author of The Red Road and The End of the Wasp Season.

Tuesday, March 11, 7 pm, at Boswell: Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs, the #1 Indie Next Pick for March 2014.

Wednesday, March 12, 7 pm, at Boswell: Cara Black, author of Murder in Piaglle, the 14th Aimée Leduc investigation.

Saturday, March 15, 2 pm, at Boswell: Sanford Stein, author of Retail Schmetail: One Hundred Years, Two Immigrants, Three Generations, Four Hundred Projects.

Tuesday, March 18, 7 pm, at Boswell: Joanne Fluke (pictured), author of the Blackberry Pie Murder.

Wednesday, March 19, 6:30 pm,  at the North Shore Library, 6800 N. Port Washington Rd, Glendale 53217: Shannon Hale, author of Dangerous and Princess Academy.