For the past twenty-five years, Donna Stoneham has worked as an executive coach, transformational leadership consultant, and educator, helping both for-profit and not-for-profit leaders, teams, and organizations, including Hewlett-Packard, Comcast, The American Medical Association, and UC Berkeley, unleash their power to thrive through her company, Positive Impact, LLC. Dr. Stoneham has written for the International Journal of Coaches in Organizations and Presence, and is a certified Integral Coach.

At her event, Stoneham is going to talk about The Thriver's Edge: Seven Keys to Transform the Way you Live, Love and Lead. Her thesis is that a major reason why people aren't thriving is that they are focused on the wrong things, or as she calls it, keeping up instead of waking up. Her mission is to help people uncover the beliefs and fears that hold clients back from more fully expressing their gifts and unleashing potential. 

Using a model developed by Stoneham, a master executive coach and transformational leadership expert, folks can explore their relationship to the seven keys that lead to thriving - trust, humility, resilience, inner direction, vision, expansiveness, and responsibility. Powerful reflection questions and practices guide the journey to taking the risks to thrive and pay it forward. Stoneham has lots of personal stories, anecdotes from clients, and examples of people who have discovered the secrets of thriving, with the end result of unleashing potential, living with purpose, and making a difference in the lives of others. Get ready to thrive on Wednesday, August 5, 7 pm, at Boswell.

It's Storytime with Boswellian Jannis, who will read Melissa's Octopus and Other Unsuitable Pets by Charlotte Voake. 

This month, Boswellian Jannis presents a pet-themed Sunday morning, featuring Melissa's Octopus and more. Perfect for ages 18 months and up, this month's Storytime includes rhymes and finger play and might give you a handle on exactly how difficult it is to clean the litter box of an elephant.

Please join us for a Parisian-themed evening featuring Little Known Facts author Christine Sneed, who will read from and sign copies of her latest novel, Paris, He Said, a novel about desire, beauty, and its appreciation, and of finding yourself presented with the things you believe you've always wanted, only to wonder where true happiness lies.

Jayne Marks is questioning the choices she made in the years since college. But of all her regrets, the worst is that she's not painting. Until she meets Laurent Moller, who owns and operates two successful art galleries, one in New York and one in Paris, who becomes Jayne's lover and benefactor, and who offers Jayne the chance to move to Paris with him. There, she'll live in Laurent's opulent apartment, where she'll have time and financial support to begin her career as a painter. Laurent, however, seems to have other women in his life, and he refuses to explain his whereabouts when he's not with her. Jayne, too, has an ex-boyfriend, much closer to her own age, whom she still has feelings for. Bringing Paris gloriously to life, Paris, He Said is a psychologically adept novel about romance and art-and Paris-from the award-winning author of Little Known Facts, Christine Sneed.

Philip Graham in The Millions recently wrote an essay exploring the thematic connections of Sneed's work.  He writes: "Making art can gnaw at you, wake you up in the middle of the night, and promise you too many paths or none at all. Christine Sneed is a writer who, from the beginning of her career, has been drawn to characters who attempt art, whether it's painting, acting, screenwriting, or sculpture. What adds a distinctive depth to her work is this added complication: in her stories and novels she reveals the changes that occur from this quest in not only the artist's life, but in the lives of surrounding friends and family." Intrigued? Hear more on Tuesday, August 11, 7 pm, at Boswell.

Boswell is proud to co-sponsor Jenna Blum as the next keynote speaker for the Women's Speaker Series at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, located at 2145 West Brown Deer Road. Tickets are $25 ($22 for members), include admission for one and an autographed copy of Those Who Save Us, and are available online at: their website

Celebrating its tenth anniversary of paperback publication, Those Who Save Us has touched the hearts of readers everywhere. For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

The Women's Speaker series is presented by Milwaukee Reads, with sponsorship from Bronze Optical. Light refreshments are provided by MKELocalicious. The ticket includes admission to the grounds, which is a better selling point in August than it is in February. And don't forget that P.S. Duffy comes to the Lynden Sculpture Garden on September 29 for her novel, The Cartographer of No Man's Land.

As everyone knows, Irish Fest has a mission to "promote and celebrate all aspects of Irish, Irish-American, and Celtic cultures, and to instill in current and future generations an appreciation of their heritage." One of the highlights is the Hedge School lectures and Literary Corner, which is sponsored by Little Read Book. If you love Irish heritage and culture, this is the place to go.

For those who want a taste, or who might not be able to attend the talk/reading, due to other musical commitments, Boswell offers an Irish Fest Preview, featuring Mary Pat Kelly, author of Galway Bay and its just-released sequel, Of Irish Born. Since Irish Fest does not begin until 4 pm, we're not conflicting with any other events.

It's 1903. Nora Kelly, twenty-four, is talented, outspoken, progressive, and climbing the ladder of opportunity, until she falls for an attractive but dangerous man who sends her running back to the Old World her family had fled. Nora takes on Paris, mixing with couturiers, artists, and "les femmes Americaines" of the Left Bank such as Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach. But when she stumbles into the centuries-old Collège des Irlandais, a good-looking scholar, an unconventional priest, and Ireland's revolutionary women challenge Nora to honor her Irish blood and join the struggle to free Ireland.

In addition to her novels, Mary Pat Kelly has produced award-winning documentaries for PBS, and wrote and directed the feature film Proud, starring Ossie Davis in his last film role. She worked as a screenwriter for several studios and as an associate producer at Good Morning America . She is a frequent contributor to Irish America magazine and has been twice named one of the top 100 Irish Americans. Meet Kelly on Friday, August 14 for a special 2 pm event at Boswell and then head to Irish Fest for a great evening.

At the end of The Getaway God, the previous novel in Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series, Stark meets a man who identifies himself as Death. That's not the worst news. Someone has ripped out the heart of the body Death is inhabiting. He comes to Stark because he thinks Sandman Slim is the only one who can solve his murder. Killing Pretty picks up just a few days later, following Stark as he tracks down Death's killer. The trail leads him from vampire-infested nightclubs to talent agencies specializing in mad ghosts, from Weimar Republic mystical societies to LA's sleazy supernatural underground fight and sex clubs. Along the way, Stark enlists the help of the real girl with the graveyard eyes, the only person who ever outwitted Death and escaped her own demise-with dire consequences for this world and others. 

At the heart of Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim novels lies a profound respect and admiration for the noir mystery greats: from Richard Stark to Raymond Chandler; Jim Thompson to James M. Cain. Kadrey's novels provide countercultural homage to the dark, seamy worlds inhabited by the hardboiled crime solvers of yore. And no city runs quite as blearily into the noir landscape as Los Angeles, home to Kadrey's protagonist, the aptly named James Stark (a.k.a. Sandman Slim) - who certainly "isn't your average Sam Spade." (per The Lansing City Pulse.) Read this profile of Kadrey in SFF World

Bestselling author Richard Kadrey is the author of ten novels, including Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha from Hell, Devil Said Bang, Kill City Blues, The Getaway God, Butcher Bird, and Metrophage, and more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short story "Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye" was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and Butcher Bird was nominated for the Prix Elkabin in France. Meet Kadrey on Monday, August 17, 7 pm, at Boswell. He'll also be at Mystery One between 5 and 6 pm.

Wisconsin psychotherapist, grief counselor, and author (affectionately known as "The Grief Lady"), Marian L. Freund, is coming to Boswell to discuss her debut memoir Our Final Melody: Teaching My Dying Father How to Love Me, a compelling story about living, not dying.

Even though we know it will happen, no one wants to talk about what really goes on when a parent is dying. Do you know how to live in the face of death? Do you know where to draw strength during times of powerlessness? Do you know how to emotionally support your loved one without imposing your own agenda? Do you know how to create closeness that will sustain you forever? Written in touching diary format, Our Final Melody brings to life the art of navigating a parent's dying process with dignity and integrity with the beautiful story of how a daughter, unwittingly and unknowingly, teaches her father how to love her.

Marian L. Freund received her master's degree in counseling psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. For the past fifteen years, she has been a licensed psychotherapist, offering workshops and coaching on topics such as moving through the dying process, creating a family legacy, and using effective communication skills.

Please join us for an entertaining conversation with Chicago-area writers Aleksandar Hemon and Rebecca Makkai. Aleksandar Hemon's previous works have been finalists for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and he's also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Hemon's new novel, The Making of Zombie Wars, follows Josh Levin, who teaches ESL in Chicago while honing his screenwriting skills. He's got a lot of great ideas (not) but his most promising work in progress concerns a zombie invasion triggered by a chemical weapon gone horribly wrong. Real life is not so great either, particularly when a dalliance begins with one of his students. Read David Gilbert's review in The New York Times Book Review. And we'll probably also get a preview of Hemon's forthcoming work of nonfiction, Behind the Glass Wall: Inside the United Nations, coming in October.

Music for Wartime is Rebecca Makkai's first collection of stories, following two acclaimed novels. For four years running, Makkai's work made it into Best American Short Stories, as well as Best American Nonrequired Reading, with all included stories represented in the new collection. A reality show producer manipulates contestants as her own love life disintegrates. A group of music students hole up when their city is shelled. And an actor's downward spiral is interrupted by a friend's intervention, but only temporarily. Read this profile by Kevin Nance in the Chicago Tribune.

Aleksandar Hemon and Rebecca Makkai share a friendship, an agent (Nicole Aragi), Chicago, and similar thematic interests. If you've only read Makkai's novels, that overlap will be made much clearer by reading Music for Wartime. But if you read The Hundred-Year House, you might enjoy our book club discussion and spoiler zone that we're hosting at the book club area at 6 pm. Got it? Book club at 6 for Makkai's novel, both authors at 7 discussing their latest hardcovers. See you on Thursday, August 20, 7 pm.

Equal Before the Law: How Iowa Led Americans to Marriage Equality tells the stories behind a critical battle in the fight for marriage equality and traces the decision's impact. The struggle began in 1998 with the easy passage of Iowa's Defense of Marriage Act and took a turn, surprising to many, in 2005, when six ordinary Iowa couples signed on to Lambda Legal's suit against the law. Their triumph in 2009 sparked a conservative backlash against the supreme court justices, three of whom faced tough retention elections that fall. 

Longtime, award-winning reporter Tom Witosky, along with coauthor Marc Hansen, talked with and researched dozens of key figures, including opponent Bob Vander Plaats, proponents Janelle Rettig and Sharon Malheiro, attorneys Roger Kuhle, Dennis Johnson, and Camilla Taylor, and politicians Matt McCoy, Mary Lundby, and Tom Vilsack, who had to weigh their careers against their convictions. Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the decision, as well as the six couples that were plaintiffs in the suit. Through these voices, Witosky and Hansen show that no one should have been surprised by the 2009 decision.  Just a year after Iowa became a state, its citizens adopted as their motto the phrase, "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain." And they still do today.

For thirty-three years, Tom Witosky covered Iowa politics, law, business, and sports for the Des Moines Register. He was raised in Hartland, went to Marquette University High School, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Welcome him back to Southeast Wisconsin on Friday, August 21, 7 pm.

Boswell is proud to welcome Milwaukee illustrator Bonnie Leick for her latest book, Go to School, Little Monster, in which Little Monster is nervous about going to school for the first time. Find out what happens throughout his first day - adventures with ogres, dragons, and his first academic story time!

Little Monster is going to school for the very first time. That means he'll be meeting all the other little monsters, including one who has really big teeth and draws scary pictures. Who will ride the ogres and dragons with Little Monster at recess, and listen with him during story time? And what happens when-gulp-Little Monster realizes he forgot his lunch? It's a good thing Mr. Drool is there to guide Little Monster the whole day through. Bonnie Leick's sweet watercolor illustrations create a reassuring first-day-of-school story that's perfect for little monsters everywhere.

Bonnie Leick grew up on a farm in Stratford, Wisconsin. She's the illustrator of Alien Invaders and her artwork appears in Highlights magazine and Highlights High Five. She received her BFA in Film/Video-Character Animation from the California Institute of Art and Design and has worked for companies like Disney, Creative Capers, and Warner Bros. 

Please join us at Boswell for a reading and signing with Obie Yadgar, voice of WFMR and author of Will's Music.

Will Baskin is a popular San Francisco deejay trying to make sense of what his life has become. 34 and divorced, his life has become a tedious climb up a greased flagpole. Playing classical music on his radio program, Will is a magnet for extraordinary characters who call him at the studio. The eccentric personalities he encounters on and off the air provide him with laughs, as well as deep insights, as he meanders day by day. That is, until the enchanting and fiery Mariette drifts into his life, sending his world into an emotional spin. Mariette has baggage of her own, but perhaps she can reignite the passion that Will has ignored. Find out if these two lost souls can overcome each other's struggles and rediscover love.

In his junior year of college, barely able to speak English, Obie Yadgar told himself he would become a novelist. After a tour of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Army combat correspondent, he drifted into radio, starting as a jazz program host in San Diego, before moving into adult contemporary in upstate New York, then onto St. Louis for jazz, big bands and classical. He finally settled in Milwaukee where his voice will always be associated with the legendary WFMR classical music station. Join us Tuesday, August 25, 7 pm.

Boswell welcomes Australian journalist Rachel Hills, a bold new feminist voice, discussing The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Reality, a book that will change the way you think about your sex life. Equal parts social commentary, pop culture, and powerful personal anecdotes from people across the English-speaking world, The Sex Myth exposes the invisible norms and unspoken assumptions that shape the way we think about sex today.

"Rachel Hills has written a bracing and brave interrogation of contemporary assumptions about sex-how and with whom and why we have it, and what it means if we don't. Here is a fresh voice and a welcome perspective, cutting through attitudes that are supposed to be progressive and liberating, but can too often oppress and stifle us just as effectively as older taboos." -Rebecca Traister, author of Big Girls Don't Cry

The work of journalist Rachel Hills has been published widely both in print and online, in publications including Vogue, NYMag.com, Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and many others. Here is her recent column in The Huffington Post on why she writes about sex.  Her blog, Musings of an Inappropriate Woman, has more than 100,000 subscribers spanning the globe. 

"Who lives in that house? And who designed that house?" are things James Schnepf wondered as he started out on a four-year journey to document the fascinating residents and home designers in Palm Springs. Join us at Boswell for an evening with sometimes-Wisconsin-based photographer James Schnepf, sharing images from his latest book, Palm Springs Modern Living, filled with captivating photos and stories that showcase the unparalleled collection of Midcentury Modern architecture found in this iconic resort city. This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum.

More than fifty modernists, artists, builders, and architects were interviewed, including such Midcentury Modern luminaries as Donald Wexler, William Krisel, and Hugh Kaptur, and their stories and anecdotes provide a perfect complement to Schnepf's vivid photography. Together, they manage to bring Palm Springs to life in a way that most volumes of architectural photos could never hope to achieve. See more on Thursday, August 27, 7 pm, at Boswell

We're grateful to the Friends of the Villa Terrace for helping get out the word about this event. And if you're a fan of the decorartive arts, it's not too early to mark your calendar for the next Boswell-Friends collaboration, featuring Tim Whealon, author of In Pursuit of Beauty: The Interiors of Tim Whealon, scheduled for Thursday, November 19. You'll find details in an upcoming email newsletter. 

For the young adult or the many adults out there who are loving the young adult renaissance, Boswellian Jannis Mindel recommends Chasing Secrets, by Gennifer Choldenko, out today. She writes: "Lizzie Kennedy is a thirteen-year-old girl living in Gilded Age San Francisco. She has a curious mind - not well suited for a finishing school girl who's expected to learn how to become a society girl and not much else. When Lizzie accompanies her physician father on house calls and starts to hear rumblings about the plague and a quarantine in Chinatown she becomes curious. She questions the adults around her, including her Uncle Karl, a powerful owner of a newspaper, but to no avail. Lizzie takes matters into her own hands when Jing, her Chinese cook, doesn't return from a trip to Chinatown. This is historical fiction for middle grade readers at its best. Choldenko provides a glimpse into a little known period of history that is riveting and relevant to today's readers."

Interested in a very different kind of memoir? Daniel Goldin recommends Judy Brown's This is Not a Love Story. The review:  "Judy (in the book, her name is Menuchah) grew up with her family in Flatbush, a bit removed from most of the Ultra-Orthodox families in Borough Park. And maybe that was why some of the other Chasidic families were also a bit removed; most would not even come over to play, for fear of getting too close to Goys. But maybe it was also the curse, the knowledge that seemed to be in the community that her parents were a love marriage. And that curse manifested itself in Menuchah's younger brother Nachum, who wasn't quite right. That's an understatement; Nachum couldn't speak, he was prone to fits, he was enraged by sudden sounds and sights. While many Orthodox families sent such children away, as they were an impediment to getting their daughters married, his mom never gave up on him. It will not come as a surprise that the secret to Nachum's condition was Autism, and that once he was diagnosed, not only did he change but so did Menuchah's relationship with him. So that's the beauty of this doubly special family's memoir; maybe they weren't cursed after all; maybe they were even blessed."

And finally, science fiction fans will want to take note of Todd Wellman's review of Aurora, the new novel from  Kim Stanley Robinson: "If you have ever wondered what a book narrated by a computer is like, this is the novel for you. Hundreds of years before the main events of the book, humans sent a ship out to see if the inhabitants could populate another planet. Much of the book addresses conflicts that arise when the descendants of the original crew finally reach their destination. Eventually, the ship's computer takes control of maintaining the best order it can interpret for the remainder of the mission. Focusing on the hundreds of years that crew member Freya and some of her closest allies eventually live, the computer tries to sort through futility and hope and what to do when a problem is unanswerable, even by a quantum machine."