Harry Dresden Lives! His new adventure begins this week!

New York Times Bestselling Author Jim Butcher celebrates the Publication of his New Dresden Files Book Cold Days. 

This Event is Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 7:00 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.

Happiness is a Warm, Ooey-Gooey Cinnamon Roll!

Judith Fertig, author of the charming I Love Cinnamon Rolls!, will be sampling warm, ooey-gooey pastries at a special signing and tasting on Saturday, December 1, 2012 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM at Rainy Day Books in The Fairway Shops.

Learn easy ways to make 50 different cinnamon roll recipes, have her personalize books for those on your list, and reward yourself with a homemade treat!

Read full details about this Event on our Website.

Raise a glass and celebrate the history of Wine Making!

Randall Heskett and Joel Butler, authors of the New Book Divine Vintage: Following the Wine Trail from Genesis to the Modern Age, will discuss their Book accompanied by a wine tasting on Monday, December 3, 2012 at 6:00 PM at Seasons 52 Fresh | Grill on The Country Club Plaza, 340 Ward Parkway, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.

Learn the origins of wine, how wine-making transformed history, and why wine has always been believed to have mystical powers!

Read full details about this Event on our Website.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil will give a Multimedia Presentation and will discuss his New Book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.

Co-Sponsored by Rainy Day Books and Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology. 

This Event is Thursday, December 6, 2012 at 7:00 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.

Calvin Trillin, author of the weekly column Uncivil Liberties, has been acclaimed in fields of writing which are remarkably diverse.  Having published solidly reported pieces in The New Yorker for more than twenty years, Trillin has been called "perhaps the finest reporter in America."  His antic commentary on the American scene has earned Calvin Trillin renown as " a classic American humorist."  His books chronicling his adventures as a "happy eater" caused Business Week to say, "Trillin is to food writing what Chaplin was to film acting."  In whatever sort of writing he does, Calvin Trillin has an unadorned point of view that is deeply rooted in a Midwestern upbringing.  He was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, and he has never stopped writing about his hometown.

Calvin Trillin will discuss his New Book Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse.  Co-sponsored by Rainy Day Books & The Jewish Community Center.  

This Event is Sunday, December 9, 2012 at 1:30 PM at The Jewish Community Center, 5801 W 115th Street, Overland Park, Kansas 66211.

Read full details about this Event on our Website.

Always Looking: Essays on Art

John Updike

Knopf

Always Looking opens with "The Clarity of Things," the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 2008. Here, in looking closely at individual works by Copley, Homer, Eakins, Norman Rockwell, and others, the author teases out what is characteristically "American" in American art. This talk is followed by fourteen essays, most of them written for The New York Review of Books, on certain highlights in Western art of the last two hundred years: the iconic portraits of Gilbert Stuart and the sublime landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, the series paintings of Monet and the monotypes of Degas, the richly patterned canvases of Vuillard and the golden extravagances of Klimt, the cryptic triptychs of Beckmann, the personal graffiti of Mir�, the verbal-visual puzzles of Magritte, and the monumental Pop of Oldenburg and Lichtenstein. The book ends with a consideration of recent works by a living American master, the steely sculptural environments of Richard Serra. John Updike was a gallery-goer of genius. Always Looking is, like everything else he wrote, an invitation to look, to see, to apprehend the visual world through the eyes of a connoisseur.

The Black Box

Michael Connelly

Little Brown and Company

In a case that spans 20 years, Harry Bosch links the bullet from a recent crime to a file from 1992, the killing of a young female photojournalist during the L.A. riots. Harry originally investigated the murder, but it was then handed off to the Riot Crimes Task Force and never solved. Now Bosch's ballistics match indicates that her death was not random violence, but something more personal, and connected to a deeper intrigue. Like an investigator combing through the wreckage after a plane crash, Bosch searches for the "black box," the one piece of evidence that will pull the case together. Riveting and relentlessly paced, The Black Box leads Harry Bosch into one of his most fraught and perilous cases.

The Legend of Broken

Caleb Carr

Random House

Some years ago, a remarkable manuscript long rumored to exist was discovered: The Legend of Broken. It tells of a prosperous fortress city where order reigns at the point of a sword-even as scheming factions secretly vie for control of the surrounding kingdom. Meanwhile, outside the city's granite walls, an industrious tribe of exiles known as the Bane forages for sustenance in the wilds of Davon Wood. At every turn, the lives of Broken's defenders and its would-be destroyers intertwine: Sixt Arnem, the widely respected and honorable head of the kingdom's powerful army, grapples with his conscience and newfound responsibilities amid rumors of impending war. Lord Baster-kin, master of the Merchants' Council, struggles to maintain the magnificence of his kingdom even as he pursues vainglorious dreams of power. And Keera, a gifted female tracker of the Bane tribe, embarks on a perilous journey to save her people, enlisting the aid of the notorious and brilliant philosopher Caliphestros. Together, they hope to exact a ruinous revenge on Broken, ushering in a day of reckoning when the mighty walls will be breached forever in a triumph of science over superstition.

Extinct Boids

Ralph Steadman, Ceri Levy

Bloomsbury USA

When Ceri Levy asked Ralph Steadman to produce one piece of art representing an extinct bird for a recent exhibition, Ghosts of Gone Birds, Ralph said 'yes'. Then 'yes' again ... and again ... and again.An astonishing 100 paintings later, Extinct Boids was born.Ralph got carried away by the birds, taking Ceri with him ... this book details the discoveries they made on their travels through the savage seas of extinction. After stumbling on the previously hidden Toadstool Island,where the extinct birds of the world live on in secretive harmony, the duo spent nearly a year in close proximityto a host of fantastical avian creatures. Ralph documents them all in this series of remarkable paintings, featuring unique interpretations of well-knownbirds such as the Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon and Dodo, along with less familiar members of the feathersome firmament - Snail-eating Coua, for example, or the Red-moustached Fruit Dove - and a variety of bizarre beasts including the Gob Swallow, the Long-legged Shortwing and the Needless Smut. All are captured in a riot of expression and colour, with a slice of trademark Steadman humour.Based on emails, diary entries and phone conversations, Ceri's accompanying text provides a running commentary, detailing the unfolding madness behind the creation of each piece in Ralph's extraordinary work. Things got tough as the pair discovered just how many amazing birds have been lost from our world forever."But," as Ralph said "it did, after all, make a nice change from drawing politicians"

City of Dark Magic

Magnus Flyte

Penguin Books

Once a city of enormous wealth and culture, Prague was home to emperors, alchemists, astronomers, and, as it's whispered, hell portals. When music student Sarah Weston lands a summer job at Prague Castle cataloging Beethoven's manuscripts, she has no idea how dangerous her life is about to become. Prague is a threshold, Sarah is warned, and it is steeped in blood. Soon after Sarah arrives, strange things begin to happen. She learns that her mentor, who was working at the castle, may not have committed suicide after all. Could his cryptic notes be warnings? As Sarah parses his clues about Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved," she manages to get arrested, to have tantric sex in a public fountain, and to discover a time-warping drug. She also catches the attention of a four-hundred-year-old dwarf, the handsome Prince Max, and a powerful U.S. senator with secrets she will do anything to hide.

Little Cub

Olivier Dunrea

Philomel

A darling companion to Old Bear and His Cub from the New York Times bestselling creator of the Gossie books. What's an Old Bear to do when he finds a Little Cub all alone and afraid of the dark? Adopt him, of course! And help him try to get over his fears. In this book we see the father and son from Old Bear and His Cub meet for the first time--and grow to love one another. With the same bold art and humorous twist on parenting, Olivier Dunrea's tumbling bears will melt your heart and show how strong the bond is between any father and son pair.