Monday, July 7, 2014

Boswell Monday Event Post--Maggie Stiefvater, Kate Southwood, Elizabeth Gilbert, Michael Edmonds and a Preview of Michael Mair.

Note: we will be closed to the general public for our ticketed event with Elizabeth Gilbert on Wednesday, July 9, from about 6 pm to about 8:30 pm.

Tuesday, July 8, 6:30 pm, from Franklin Public Library, 9151 W. Loomis Rd. 53132:
Maggie Stiefvater, author of Sinner, Shiver, The Raven Boys, and The Scorpio Races.

“I am a werewolf in L.A.” This is the first sentence of Maggie Stiefvater’s latest young adult novel featuring rockstar/werewolf Cole St. Clair and emotional assassin Isabel Culpeper from the Shiver trilogy, Sinner. Everybody thinks they know Cole's story. Stardom. Addiction. Downfall. Disappearance. But only a few people know Cole's darkest secret—his ability to shift into a wolf. One of these people is Isabel. At one point, they may have even loved each other. But that feels like a lifetime ago. Now Cole is back. Back in the spotlight. Back in the danger zone. Back in Isabel's life. Can this sinner be saved?

Maggie Stiefvater is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Shiver, Linger, and Forever. Her novel The Scorpio Races was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book by the American Library Association, while Publishers Weekly selected Maggie's The Raven Boys as a Best Book of the Year. She is in the midst of a multi-city author tour, traveling the country in her Camaro, named "Loki."

From Valerie Tejeda's interview with Maggie Stiefvater in the Huffington Post blog. "If you haven't yet acquainted yourself with Maggie, you need to change that immediately. Hailed as one of the best talents in young adult literature, Maggie Stiefvater is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling Shiver Trilogy.  And as if writing books isn't enough, this author is also a musician, an artist, a wife, and a mom. Read the rest here.

Tuesday, July 8, 7 pm, at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, 2145 W. Brown Deer Road, 53217: a ticketed event with Kate Southwood, author of Falling to Earth.$22 tickets ($18 for members) includes admission, refreshments, and a copy of the book. Reception starts at 7, talk at 7:30 pm.

March 18, 1925. The day begins as any other rainy spring day in the small town of Marah, Illinois. But the town lies directly in the path of the worst tornado in US history, which will descend without warning midday and leave it in ruins. By nightfall, hundreds will be homeless and hundreds more will lie dead or injured in the streets.

Only one man, Paul Graves, will still have everything he started the day with –– his family, his home, and his business all miraculously intact.

Based on the historic Tri-State Tornado, Falling to Earth follows Paul Graves and his young family in the year after the storm as they struggle to comprehend their own fate and the fate of the devastated town around them, as they watch the town resurrect itself from the ruins, and as they miscalculate the growing resentment and hostility around them with tragic results.

Kate Southwood received an M.A. in French Medieval Art from the University of Illinois, and an M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts Program for Poets and Writers. Born and raised in Chicago, she now lives in Oslo, Norway.

The Women's Speaker Series is produced by Margy Stratton of Milwaukee Reads, and is supported by series sponsor Bronze Optical and treats sponsor MKE Localicious. Here's a link to tickets.

Wednesday, July 9, 7 pm, a ticketed event at Boswell: Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Signature of All Things, in conversation with Bonnie North of WUWM's Lake Effect.

Boswell Book Company and Milwaukee Public Radio are proud to welcome award-winning author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, for a ticketed event to discuss her latest novel, The Signature of All Things, with WUWM Lake Effect's Bonnie North. Tickets are $18; this price includes all taxes and fees, admission for one, and an autographed paperback copy of The Signature of All Things.

The Signature of All Things is earning her rave reviews as "the most ambitious and purely imagined work of her twenty-year career" (Wall Street Journal) and "The novel of a lifetime" (O Magazine), and an "unhurried, sympathetic, intelligent novel by an author confident in her material and her form" (Publisher's Weekly). Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globefrom London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond.

Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, whoborn in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolutionbears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.

Elizabeth Gilbert is an award-winning writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Her short story collection, Pilgrims, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her novel, Stern Men, was a New York Times Notable Book. Her 2002 book, The Last American Man, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is best known for her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which has been published in more than thirty languages. Her most recent book, the memoir Committed: A Love Story, appeared in 2010. In 2008, Time magazine named Gilbert one of the most influential people in the world. Tickets still available at Brown Paper Tickets until 2 pm Wednesday. After that, walk ups may be available if we have not sold out.

Ms. Gilbert will personalize, and after the signing is over, she will pose for photos.

Saturday, July 12, 2 pm, at the Milwaukee Public Library Rare Books Room, 2nd floor, 814 W. Wisconsin Ave. 53233: Michael Edmonds: Author of Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader. Please register for this event at (414) 286-3011.

In the 44 original documents in Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader, you'll read SNCC and CORE workers and volunteers’ letters, eavesdrop on their meetings, shudder at their suffering, and admire their courage. You'll witness the final hours of three workers murdered on the project's first day, hear testimony by black residents who bravely stood up to police torture and Klan firebombs, and watch the liberal establishment betray them. These vivid primary sources, collected by the Wisconsin Historical Society, provide both first-hand accounts of this astounding grassroots struggle as well as a broader understanding of the Civil Rights movement. The selected documents are among the 25,000 pages about the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Most have never been published before.

Michael Edmonds is Deputy Director of the Library-Archives at the Wisconsin Historical Society and curator of its online collection of more than 25,000 pages documenting Freedom Summer. A 1976 graduate of Harvard University, he earned an MS degree at Simmons College in 1979 and taught part-time at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The author of several articles and books, Edmonds has won national awards from the American Folklore Society and the American Association for State and Local History.

Sunday, July 13, 11 am, at Boswell: Fly on down to Boswell for Story Time! This month, Boswellian Jannis will read Froodle by Antoinette Portis, and a few more stories on the theme of birds. Perfect for ages 18 months and up, spread your wings with this month’s Story Time.

Monday, July 14, 7 pm, at Boswell: Michael Mair, author of Kaiten: Japan’s Secret Manned Suicide Submarine and the First American Ship It Sank in WWII.

In November 1944, the U.S. Navy fleet lay at anchor in Ulithi Harbor, deep in the Pacific Ocean, when the oiler USS Mississinewa erupted in a ball of flames. Japan’s secret weapon, the Kaiten—a manned suicide submarine—had succeeded in its first mission. Please join us for a talk and signing with Michael Mair, son of a USS Mississinewa survivor, and co-author of Kaiten: Japan’s Secret Manned Suicide Submarine and the First American Ship It Sank in WWII.

The Kaiten was so secret that even Japanese naval commanders didn’t know of its existence. And the Americans kept it secret as well. Embarrassed by the shocking surprise attack, the U.S. Navy refused to salvage or inspect the sunken Mighty Miss. Only decades later would the survivors understand what really happened at Ulithi, when a diving team located the wreck in 2001. In Kaiten, Michael Mair and Joy Waldron tell the full story from both sides, from the strategic importance of the USS Mississinewa to newly revealed secrets of the Kaiten development and training schools. U.S. Navy survivors recount their gripping experiences in the wake of the attack, as well as the harrowing recovery efforts that came later. Japanese pilots reveal their terrifying experiences training to die for their country and Emperor, never knowing when their moment of doom would come.

Michael Mair is the son of a USS Mississinewa survivor. He began research for this book in 1995, including extensive interviews with other survivors and naval personnel stationed in the Pacific at the crucial time in 1944. He has appeared on various History Channel programs, served as a consultant for the Canadian television program Sea Hunters, and contributed to Naval History magazine. He lives in Platteville, Wisconsin.

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