Events

The celebrated pioneer in the field of no-punishment dog training and author of the bestseller Don’t Shoot the Dog! Explains her innovative training method that has changed the lives of millions of animals in Reaching the Animal Mind. Karen Pryorwas a founder of Sea Life Park in Hawaii, where she pioneered many dolphin-training techniques. She is the author of numerous papers and several books, and shehas served on the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission.  Tickets are $25. Register at www.hsmo.org by clicking on “Events and Programs” or call 314.951.1545.  This event is co-sponsored by the St. Louis Zoo and the Humane Society of Missouri.

Three Cups of Tea is the astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard. Greg Mortenson was a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, became inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished moutain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth.

In this remarkable history of father-son relationships in his family, Alexander Waugh exposes the dynamic fraught with love and strife that has produced a succession of successful authors. Based on the recollections of his father and on a mine of hitherto unseen documents relating to his grandfather, the book skillfully traces the threads that have linked father to son across a century of war, conflict, turmoil, and change.

Chicago politics—past, present and future—take center stage in New York Times best-selling author Sara Paretsky’s brilliant new V.I. Warshawski novel. Chicago’s unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slowpitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century.  But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball.  V.I. Warshawski is asked to find a man who’s been missing for four decades, a search she figured would be futile becomes lethal in Hardball.  PLUS! Join us for a lunchtime reading group event with Sara Paretsky at our Downtown store!  RSVP to danielle@left-bank.com or call 314.367.6731; tickets include the new book (which Paretsky will sign) and a box lunch from City Grocer.

Lunchtime reading group, featuring each month's book at 20% off and a box lunch from CityGrocer on the discussion date.  Please order your box lunch at least 48 hours before each discussion by calling our downtown store at 314-367-6731 or email Kris at kris@left-bank.com. 

New YorkTimes best-selling author Kimberla Lawson Roby returns with the moving story of a family who learns to overcome betrayal and secrets with courage and love. On the outside, twelve-year-old Jillian Maxwell is the perfect child. Butinside, Jillian harbors a terrible secret. Too frightened to tell, convinced that her friends and loved ones, especially her mother, won't understand--and worse, will blame her--Jillian endures her pain in silence, believing that things will get better. With sensitivity and grace, Kimberla Lawson Roby addresses a very real and serious issue, while delivering the inspiring tale of one family's mission to shed light into the darkest corner of their lives.

New York Times best-selling author and St.Louis's own John Lutz brings back veteran homicide detective Frank Quinn in agruesome new page-turner, and masterfully keeps the pressure pounding throughsavage twists and turns that are sure to captivate thriller fans. Thisedge-of-your-seat thriller will appeal to fans of Harlan Coben, John Sandford,and TV's CSI and Law and Order. A multiple Edgar and Shamus Awardwinner--including the Shamus Lifetime Achievement Award--John Lutz is theauthor of over forty books.

In the opening pages ofJamie Ford's stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet,Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once thegateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now thenew owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanesefamilies, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps duringWorld War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol, whichHenry is sure belonged to his friend Keiko in the 1940s, during a time whenHenry's father was obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow upAmerican. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie ford has created an unforgettable duo whosstory teaches us the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

The new novel by the Pulizer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is set in the underworld. Its main character, Hatcher McCord, is an evening-news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He is not the only one to suffer this fate--in fact, he's surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including Humphrey Bogart, William Shakespeare, and almost all of the popes and most of the U.S. presidents. Each inhabitant's fate and afterlife in Hell is appropriately and ironically dealt. Robert Olen Butler's description of Hell is original, intelligent, and fiercely comic, a book Dante might have celebrated.

Jane Smiley, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres, makes her debut for young readers with this novel set on a California horse ranch in the 1960s,where a girl finds refuge from her problems with the horses. Seventh grader Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. With all the stress at school (the Big Four have turned against Abby and her friends) and home (her brother Danny is gone--for good, it seems--and now Daddy won't speak his name), Abby seeks refuge with the Georges (the geldings) and the Jewels (the mares). Jane Smiley, who grew up in St. Louis, returns with what Publishers Weekly calls, "a lyrical meditation on horses, families and the vicissitudes of peer relationships among girls."

Left Bank Books and The Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association cordially invite you to a book signing and honey tasting!

C. Marina Marchese is founder and owner of Red Bee Honey, which sells honey and natural products to gourmet food shops and fine restaurants all over the United States.  Certified by the American Apitherapy Society, she has trained as a honey judge at the University of Georgia and serves on the board of Back Yard Beekeepers Association of Connecticut.  Marina has written for Bee Culture magazine and The Journal of the American Apitherapy Society, and Red Bee Honey was the cover story of the American Bee Journal in 2004.  Marina lives and tends bees in Weston, Connecticut. 

Geoffrey Canada created the Harlem Children's Zone, a 97-block laboratory in central Harlem, tohelp change the lives of poor children. Paul Tough, an editor at the New YorkTimes and one of America's foremost writers on poverty, education and theachievement gap, presents an inspired portrait of Geoffrey Canada and the parents and children who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds, in Whatever It Takes. What would it take to change the lives ofpoor children--not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide?The question led Geoffrey Canada to create the Harlem Children's Zone, where heis testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America.  Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.

Out of ragtime, out of jazz, out of big band music and beyond, American music came into its own due to the talents and experiences of the musicians at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Included with the illustrated pages is a special compact disc of rare--and often some of the last recorded performances--recordings by St. Louis legends, including early blues masters Barrelhouse Buck, Speckled Red, Roosevelt Sykes, and many more. Devil at the Confluence tells the untold story of the profound connection between these historical blues artists and their ties to St. Louis. Artist Kevin Bellford combines years of scholarly research and discovery with his renowned artwork to present a book that chronicles various legendary talents that built the base for what is now called American popular music.

Two authors join us to discuss the gangster history of St. Louis.

Voted "Best Book by a Local Author" in the 2008 Riverfront Times "Best of St. Louis" edition, Ray Flynn's narrative reveals his experience with mob warfare in North St. Louis during the depression and prohibition and eventually into St. Louis's bloodiest underground crime war. His son, Mike Flynn, published his father's memoir, Confessions of a Mob Hitman, fulfilling one of his last requests. Mike writes, "This is the true story of St. Louis and Southern Illinois in the old days that no one else knew like my father." 

John Auble has been covering news and feature stories in St. Louis since 1967 when he came to work for the old St. Louis Globe. After a number of other media jobs in St. Louis, he joined the staff of FOX  2 in 1988. His book A History of St. Louis Gangsters is a chronology of mob activity in St. Louis, on both sides of the river, ranging from the Egan Rats to the last mob leader on record. 

Chicana. Goth. Dykling. Desiree Garcia knows she's weird and a weirdo magnet. To extinguish her strangeness, her parents ship her to Saint Michael's Catholic High School, then to Mexico, but neurology can't be snuffed out so easily: screwy brain chemistry holds the key to Desiree's madness. Combining the spark of Michelle Tea, the comic angst of Augusten Burroughs, and the warmth of Sandra Cisneros, Mexican American author Myriam Gurba has created a territory all her own. Dahlia Season not only contains the title novella, but also several of Gurba's acclaimed stories.

In his groundbreaking book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Dr. Chopra revealed the connection between health and consciousness. In Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, he takes the process a step further, showing how the body is actually a reflection of the mind. Deepak Chopra, the founder of the Chopra Center, is the preeminent teacher of Eastern philosophy to the Western world. He has been a best-selling author for decades, including his New York Times bestsellers Buddha and The Third Jesus. 

Tickets are $25 each plus tax, and they include a copy of Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul. Tickets/books are available from Left Bank Books. 

DO NOT ORDER THE BOOK ONLINE AT THIS POINT. We cannot guarantee tickets for any books purchased online as of now. Please call the stores to place your order: 314.367.6731.

Doors will open at 6:00pm. Deepak Chopra will speak from 7:00-8:00pm and then start the book signing. To ensure everyone has a chance to meet Deepak Chopra and have a book signed, each person may have one book signed. Photos are discouraged.  

Don't miss the gripping conclusion to R.A. Salvatore's New York Times best-selling trilogy! Whenthe Spellplague ravages Faerun, Drizzt and his companions are caught in thechaos. Seeking out the help of the priest Cadderly--the hero of the recentlyreissued series The Cleric Quintet--Drizzt finds himself facing his mostpowerful and elusive foe, the twisted Crenshinibon, the demonic crystal shardhe believed had been destroyed years ago. R.A. Salvatore is one of the fantasygenre's most succesful authors.

Lunchtime reading group - 20% off!  E-mail Kris Kleindienst at kris@left-bank.com to pre-order a Box Lunch from City Gourmet.

This event has been canceled due to the author's illness. 

Everything Matters. Indie bookstores matter. Author events matter. Ron Currie, Jr. and his new book, Everything Matters!, matter. Indie booksellers unite for one giant event to support Ron Currie, Jr. and his triumpant novel, Everything Matters! In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: a comet will obliterate life on Earth in thirty-six years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age in rural Maine grappling with the question: "Does anything I do matter?" Ron Currie, Jr., whose fiction has won several prizes, gets to the heart of character, and the voices who narrate this uniquely American tour de force leave an indelible, exhilerating impression. Join Pudd'nhead Books, Subterranean Books, Main Street Books, and Left Bank Books at this exciting collaborative event.

Finding your place in the world can be the longest trip home. In his debut bestseller, Marley & Me, John Grogan showed how a dog can become an extraordinary presence inthe live of one family. Now, in his highly anticipated follow-up, Grogan once again works his magic, bringing us the story of what came first. Before therewas Marley, there was a gleefully mischievous boy growing up in a devout Catholic home outside Detroit in the 1960s and '70s. Despite his loving parents' best efforts, John's attempts to meet their expectations failed spectacularly. The Longest Trip Home is a book for any son or daughter who ahssought to forge an identity at odds with their parents', and for every parentwho as struggled to understand the values of their children. With his trademark blend of humor and pathos that made Marley & Me beloved by millions, John Grogan traces the individual journey each of us must take to find our unique place in the world.