Join us as #1 Bestselling Author Jeff Kinney introduces Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel (Book 7) and Author Autographs Books for readers & fans.  This Special Diary of a Wimpy Kid experience will offer photo opportunities with life-size characters, a dance party with a live DJ and treats! 

This Event is Tuesday, November 13, 2012 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

Read full details about this Event on our Website.

Author and Editor-at-Large at TIME Magazine David Von Drehle will discuss his New Book Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America's Most Perilous Year.

C-SPAM2 BookTV will be recording this Author Presentation for future broadcasts! 

This Event is Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 7:00 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Charles Fillmore Chapel, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

Read full details about this Event on our Website.

Camille Paglia, America's premier intellectual provocateur returns to the subject that brought her fame, the great themes of Western Art.  Camille Paglia will discuss her New Book Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars.  Co-sponsored by Rainy Day Books & The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  

This Event is Wednesday, November 14, 2012 at 7:00 PM at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Atkins Auditorium, 4525 Oak Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64111.   Please enter through the Bloch Building doors from the Parking Garage.

Read full details about this Event on our Website.

Mike Huckabee, Former Arkansas Governor and Host of HUCKABEE on the Fox News Channel and Cumulus Media Networks' Syndicated Radio Program, The Mike Huckabee Show, will Meet & Greet readers & fans and Author Autograph his New Book Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett: A Grandfather's Thoughts on Faith, Family, and the Things That Matter Most.  This Event is Co-Sponsored by Rainy Day Books and KCMO Talk Radio 710 AM.

This Event is Friday, November 16, 2012 at 3:30 PM at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

Read full details about this Event on our Website.

The Heat of the Sun

David Rain

Henry Holt and Co.

With Sophie Tucker belting from his hand-crank phonograph and a circle of boarding-school admirers laughing uproariously around him, Ben "Trouble" Pinkerton first appears to us through the amazed eyes of his Blaze Academy schoolmate, the crippled orphan Woodley Sharpless. Soon Woodley finds his life inextricably linked with this strange boy's. The son of Lieutenant Benjamin Pinkerton and the geisha Madame Butterfly, Trouble is raised in the United States by Pinkerton (now a Democrat senator) and his American wife, Kate. From early in life, Trouble finds himself at the center of some of the biggest events of the century-and though over time Woodley's and Trouble's paths diverge, their lives collide again to dramatic effect. From Greenwich Village in the Roaring Twenties, to WPA labor during the Great Depression; from secret work at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to a revelation on a Nagasaki hillside by the sea-Woodley observes firsthand the highs and lows of the twentieth century and witnesses, too, the extraordinary destiny of the Pinkerton family.

She Loves Me Not: New and Selected Stories

Ron Hansen

Scribner

In this new volume, comprising twelve new stories and seven pieces selected from Nebraska, the subjects of Hansen's scrutiny range from Oscar Wilde to murder to dementia to romance, and display Hansen at his storytelling best: the craftsman described as "part Hemingway and part Garc�a M�rquez . . . an all-American magic realist in other words, a fabulist in the native grain." Readers will thrill to Hansen's masterful attention to the smallest and most telling details, even as he plunges straight into the deepest recesses of desire, love, fury, and loss.

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection

A. J. Jacobs

Simon and Schuster

Hospitalized with a freak case of tropical pneumonia and ashamed of a middle-aged body best described as "a python that swallowed a goat," A.J. Jacobs felt compelled to change his ways and get healthy. To accomplish this epic task, he consulted an army of experts and subjected himself to dozens of different workouts, diets, and devices-from Finger Fitness to Strollercize sessions, veganism to extreme chewing. The story of his transformation is not only brilliantly entertaining, but it just may be the healthiest book ever written. It will make you laugh until your sides split and endorphins flood your bloodstream. It will move you emotionally and get you moving physically in surprising ways. It will serve you up today's best health advice. And it will give you occasion to reflect on the body's many mysteries and the ultimate pursuit of health: a well-lived life. 

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

Ray Kurzweil

Viking Adult

Ray Kurzweil is arguably today's most influential-and often controversial-futurist. In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization-reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world's problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan

Free Press

One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a strange hospital room, strapped to her bed, under guard, and unable to move or speak. A wristband marked her as a "flight risk," and her medical records-chronicling a monthlong hospital stay of which she had no memory at all-showed hallucinations, violence, and dangerous instability. Only weeks earlier, Susannah had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: a healthy, ambitious college grad a few months into her first serious relationship and a promising career as a cub reporter at a major New York newspaper. Who was the stranger who had taken over her body? What was happening to her mind? In this swift and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her inexplicable descent into madness and the brilliant, lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn't happen. A team of doctors would spend a month-and more than a million dollars-trying desperately to pin down a medical explanation for what had gone wrong. Meanwhile, as the days passed and her family, boyfriend, and friends helplessly stood watch by her bed, she began to move inexorably through psychosis into catatonia and, ultimately, toward death. Yet even as this period nearly tore her family apart, it offered an extraordinary testament to their faith in Susannah and their refusal to let her go.

Kafka in Love

Jacqueline Raoul-Duval

Other Press

Kafka was an attractive, slender, and elegant man--something of a dandy, who captivated his friends and knew how to charm women. He seemed to have had four important love affairs: Felice, Julie, Milena, and Dora. All of them lived far away, in Berlin or Vienna, and perhaps that's one of the reasons that he loved them: he chose long-distance relationships so he could have the pleasure of writing to them, without the burden of having to live with them. He was engaged to all four women, and four times he avoided marriage. At the end of each love affair, he threw himself into his writing and produced some of his most famous novels: Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle.

Dear Life: Stories

Alice Munro

Knopf

Alice Munro's peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but always spacious and timeless stories is once again everywhere apparent in this brilliant new collection. In story after story, she illumines the moment a life is forever altered by a chance encounter or an action not taken, or by a simple twist of fate that turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into a new way of being or thinking. A poet, finding herself in alien territory at her first literary party, is rescued by a seasoned newspaper columnist, and is soon hurtling across the continent, young child in tow, toward a hoped-for but completely unplanned meeting. A young soldier, returning to his fianc�e from the Second World War, steps off the train before his stop and onto the farm of another woman, beginning a life on the move. A wealthy young woman having an affair with the married lawyer hired by her father to handle his estate comes up with a surprising way to deal with the blackmailer who finds them out.

Puss in Boots

Jerry Pinkney

Dial

Jerry Pinkney, one of the country's most celebrated picture book creators, is a master at reimagining classic tales. Now he has turned his talents to Puss in Boots, and he is at his best with this lively, cinematic version. For generations, children have delighted in the tale of the clever cat who tricks both a king and a sorcerer in order to win a castle and a princess for his penniless master. The humor, the magic, and a lush Renaissance setting are all on glorious display, and a well-placed gatefold adds to the drama. This elegant new edition of Perrault's fairy tale will quickly join the list of essentials for every child's library..

Reached

Ally Condie

Dutton Juvenile

Cassia's journey began with an error, a momentary glitch in the otherwise perfect fa�ade of the Society. After crossing canyons to break free, she waits, silk and paper smuggled against her skin, ready for the final chapter. The wait is over. One young woman has raged against those who threaten to keep away what matters most-family, love, choice. Her quiet revolution is about to explode into full-scale rebellion. With exquisite prose, the emotionally gripping conclusion to the international-bestselling Matched trilogy returns Cassia, Ky, and Xander to the Society to save the one thing they have been denied for so long, the power to choose.