Events

Moms & daughters (recommended ages 8-14) are invited to join Rosalind Wiseman, an internationally-recognized author, mom and expert on teens & parenting for a fun-filled evening of mother-daughter bonding.  In addition to celebrating Rosalind’s latest books, the tour will feature an interactive discussion about confidence, friendships, sweat-inducing moments and common mother-daughter challenges. A Q&A session and book signing will follow. The two-hour event is sure to getmothers and daughters talking, laughing and connecting.

Tickets are $40 per mother-daughter pair and include admission to the event, one copy each of Rosalind's latest books, a one-year subscription to Family Circle Magazine, light refreshments and a gift bag!

Additional tickets may be purchased at $20 per person (also includes a book and gift bag).

Moms will receive Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World, and daughters will receive Rosalind's debut young adult novel Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials, along with a free sample of Dove Go Fresh deodorant.

Please call 314.367.6731 to purchase tickets.

This event is sponsored by Dove Go Fresh deodorant.

For more insight from Rosalind or information about Dove Go Fresh deodorant, visit www.dontfretthesweat.com and rosalindwiseman.com.  

The Holden Public Policy Forum at Webster University is teaming up with FOCUS St. Louis, the region's citizens league, to offer a new speaker series dedicated to downtown issues, aiming to get people to come downtown more often; foster a dialogue about downtown misconceptions, challenges and solutions; and realize the area's importance to the health of the entire St. Louis area. Members of the local media will serve as guest speakers for the program. Carol Daniel (KMOX-AM) will be the featured speaker at this event, and St. James Winery will provide wine for tasting following the program.

What the Eldredge bestsellers Wild at Heart did for men, and Captivating did for women, Love & War will do for married couples everywhere. John and Stasi Eldredge have contributed the quintessential works on Christian spirtuality through the experience of men and the experience of women and now they turn their focus to the incredible dynamic between those two forces. Walking alongside John and Stasi Eldredge, every couple can discover how their individual journeys are growing into a story of meaning much greater than they could do or be on their own.

 Tickets are only $15 per person and are available from Ransomed Heart Ministries. All proceeds from ticket sales go to support the work of Ransomed Heart Ministries.

Doors will open at 5:30, and the event will begin at 7:00. Copies of Love & War for signing will be available at Grace Church from Left Bank Books staff.

Join critically acclaimed author Wade Rouse for an intensive writing seminar designed to help you take your writing to the next level of success. Rouse guides you in "finding your voice, finding your way, and finding your agent!" Whether you are writing your first novel (or want to begin one) or have found your voice but need to find your way to the end of the book, Rouse offers tested suggestions for moving forward. Have a manuscript without a home? Rouse shares insights into finding the right agent for your writing and product, and tips for building long-term relationships that lead to success. This seminar is open to writers of all levels. The seminar is $150; please direct RSVPs and questions to Left Bank Books (314.367.6731, rsvp@left-bank.com). 
Wade Rouse is "laugh-out-loud funny" (NBC's Today Show), "wise, witty and wicked" (USA Today), and a writer whose "combination of honest emotion and evocative prose seems destined to be a hit!" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). He is the author of four memoirs, including America's Boy, Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream, and the newly-released It's All Relative. 

River Styx at Duff's presents Major Jackson (author of Hoops) and Brett Eugene Ralph (author of Black Sabbatical). 

Authorized by Willie Mays and written by New York Times best-selling author Jim Hirsch, this is the definitive biography of one of baseball's immortals. Willie Mays began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major Leage Buaseball's bold expansion to California. He was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Willie is perhaps best known for "The Catch," his breathtaking over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. But he was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. With meticulous research, and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a complex portrait of one of America's most significant cultural icons, revealing the man behind the player. 

Marcus and Eddie are the stars of Long Island City High School's basketball team. Marcus is black and Eddie is white, but they got past all that "racial crap" and have been best friends for years. Then one cold night, something goes wrong. Told in their two voices, Black and White is the gripping story of two boys who make a bad mistake. It's also a heartbreaking look at the realities of the urban criminial justice system. Black and White is the featured book for ReadMOre, an initiative of the St. Louis Public Library. Teens can pick up free copies of Black and White at library branches before the event.  Paul Volponi is a writer, journalist and teacher. For six years he taught incarcerated teens on Rikers Island to read and write, and for six years taught teens in drug day-treatment centers, influencing many of his novels. Volponi's other books, including his newest, Rikers High, will be available for purchase from Left Bank Books before and at the event.

CIA agent Jon Wells returns, in a cutting-edge novel of modern suspense from #1 New York Times best-selling writer Alex Berenson. Early one morning, a former CIA agent is shot to death in the street. That night, an army vet is gunned down in his doorway. The next day, John Wells gets a phone call. Come to Langley. Now. The two victims were part of an eleven-member interrogation team that operated out of a secret base in Poland called the Midnight House. Now Wells must find out who is killing them. As a reporter for The New York Times, Alex Berenson has covered topics ranging from the occupation of Iraq to the flooding of New Orleans to the financial crimes of Bernie Madoff. His previous novels include The Faithful Spy, winner of the 2007 Edgar Award for best first novel, and The Ghost War. 

Filled with first-rate scholarship, never-before-published photos, delightful anecdoetes, and memorable quotes, Michael Shelden's biography of Mark Twain's last years provides a remarkable portrait of the man himself, and the unforgettable era in American letters that he helped to created. Although Mark Twain has long been one of our most beloved literary figures, his final years have been largely misunderstood. Writing ceaselessly and always ready with one of his legendary quips, Twain would risk his fortune, become the willing victim of a lost-at-sea hoax, and pick fights with King Leopold of Belgium and Mary Baker Eddy.

After a career of many firsts, journalist Gerald M. Boyd shattered the color barrier of the white establishment's most exclusive media giant, the New York Times, and became its first black managing editor. Boyd's tale provides a rare inside view of power and behind-the-scenes politics at the nation's premier newspaper during one of its tumultous periods. Before the New York Times, Boyd was at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he worked his way up from copyboy to White House correspondent. A native of St. Louis, Boyd attended the University of Missouri under a Post-Dispatch scholarship program and Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. He died in November 2006 at the age of 56.  Robin D. Stone, who was married to Boyd, is an independent journalist who has edited for several publications, including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Essence Magazine. She is the author of No Secrets, No Lies: How Black Families Can Heal from Sexual Abuse, and she will be speaking about Boyd's book, My Times in Black and White, at this event.

The Don Connors Chapter of Veterans for Peace, St. Louis and Left Bank Books are pleased to present David Swanson for a discussion and book signing of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. A lot more has gone wrong over the last eight years than meets the eye, and it will take more than a new president to create the kind of change that is necessary. Daybreak is a thorough investigation of how Bush/Cheney altered the way American government works and deteriorated the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It includes clear plans for how we may reclaim democracy, declare our rights, and truly set out for a new America. David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org, Washington director of Democrats.com, and a board member of Progressive Democrats for America. He served as press secretary for Dennis Kuckinch's 2004 presidential campaign and has been a leading voice for the prosecution of Bush and Cheney for war crimes. 

Vividly capturing Mongolia's timeless elements and natural beauty, When Things Get Dark is Matthew Davis's deeply honest account of living and working among the people of this large, underpopulated country. Set within a small, western Mongolia provincial capital called Tsetserleg, When Things Get Dark documents the rapid changes this town is experiencing from its traditional existence in the countryside to a more urban, modern identity. Natural disasters killed millions of animals and forced herders into cities. The Internet arrived. And Mongolians balanced their nomadic roots, their communist past, and their democratic, free-market future. Matthew Davis was born in Chicago and attended the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tsetserleg, Mongolia, and lived for a year in the Mongolian capitoal of Ulaanbaatar. 

Raised by an opera singer and the family maid in Augusta, Georgia, Eli runs away with a draft dodger. When things don't go according to their plans, she must go live with her disc jockey and anit-war activist father in Webster Groves, Missouri, with a new wife and two young sons. Witnessing and sometimes participating in the protests, drug use, and musical fervor of the times, Eli learns about love, forgiveness, and survival.

Janet Kirchheimer is a poet whose work has appeared in a variety of publications both in the U.S. and abroad. Her moving collection of poems about the Holocaust, How to Spot One of Us, is described by author and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel as “poignant and evocative of times of darkness and despair. Their warmth is communicative and necessary.”

Clifton Taulbert will discuss education and his life, as well as signing books, at this special library event. Taulbert and his Building Community Institute are dedicated to ensuring organizational effectiveness at all levels and focusing on the power of community. He is the author of Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, his autobiography of life in the segregated South, and Eight Habits of the Heart, which shows how to strengthen families, schools, and communities through a collection of exercises for reflection and practice.

Written with the same boldness and brilliance that made Buddhism Without Beliefs a classic in its field, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist is Stephen Batchelor's account of his journey through Buddhism, which culminates in a groundbreaking new portrait of the historical Buddha. The more Batchelor read about the Buddha, the more he came to believe that the way Buddhism was being taught and practiced was at odds with the actual teachings of the Buddha himself. Charting his journey from hippie to monk to lay practitioner, teacher, and interpreter of Buddhist thought, Batchelor reconstructs the historical Buddha's life, locating him within the social and political context of the world, showing a man who looked at human life in a radically new way for his time.

From Ali Eteraz's schooling in a "madrassa" in Pakistan to his teenage years as a Muslim American in the Bible Belt, and back to Pakistan to find a pious Muslim wife, this lyrical, penetrating saga captures the heart of our universal quest for identity. Astonishingly honest, darkly comic, and beautifully told, Children of Dust is an extraordinary adventure that reveals the diversity of Islamic beliefs, the vastness of the Pakistani diaspora, and the very human search for home.  Ali Eteraz also writes the award-winning blog, Islamophere. This Medart Lecture Series event is free and open to the public and includes a 6:30pm reception and 7:00pm talk.

It seems unlikely that James Naismith, who grew up playing "Duck on the Rock" in the rural community of Almonte, Canada, would invent one of America's most popular sports. But Rob Rains and Hellen Carpenter's fascinating, in-depth biography, James Naismith: The Man Who Invented Basketball, shows how this young man--who wanted to be a medical doctor, or if not that, a minister (in fact, he was both)--came to create a game that has endured for over a century. Rob Rains is a former National League beat writer for USA Today's Baseball Weekly and for three years covered the St. Louis Cardinals for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He is the author or co-author of autobiographies or biographies of Tony La Russa, Ozzie Smith, Mark McGwire, Jack Buck, Red Schoendienst, and many other sports celebrities. Hellen Carpenter is the granddaughter of James Naismith, and her more than 300 documents from Naismith's files were instrumental in crafting this biography. 

Jennifer Brown tackles another hard subject for teens in her novel, Hate List. After Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opens fire on their school cafeteria, Val is shot trying to stop him, but is implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. Now, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Jennifer Brown is the two-time winner of the Erma Bombeck Global Humor Award and a humor columnist for The Kansas City Star (winning the Missouri Writer's Guild 2008 Conference Award for Best Newspaper Column).