Author Events

Venue: Left Bank Books - Downtown These thirteen oral histories describe the daily struggle that pervasive racism in twentieth century demanded, but also share the tradition of self-respect that the African American community of St. Louis sought to build on its own terms. Vida "Sister" Goldman Prince has been researching, conducting and recording oral history interviews for the past 30 years and is chairman of the Oral History Project at the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center in St. Louis.

Venue: Maryville University Huttig Chapel Melissa Range, prize-winning poet and author of Horse and Rider, will be giving a reading of her work as part of the Sister Hildegarde Helmuth Poets' Series. Please join us for this event sponsored by Magnolia, The Medart Lectures, the Maryville University Library, and Left Bank Books. Refreshments will be served.

Venue: Schlafly Bottleworks St. Louis Poetry Center's Observable Readings series presents readings with poets Scott Cairns (Compass of Affection, The End of Suffering), Melissa Range (Horse and Rider), and Austin Segrest. For more information, visit stlouispoetrycenter.org/observable.

Venue: St. Louis County Library 

Harry and Madeleine Winslow play host to a coterie of close friends and acolytes eager to bask in their golden radiance. One such hanger-on is an enchanting young woman named Claire. But over the course of the summer, her reverence transforms into a dangerous desire. Indiscretion, as seen through the omniscient eyes of Maddy's childhood friend Walter; is an irresistably sensual page-turner that explores having it all and wanting more.

Venue: Left Bank Books - Central West End Join us for a paired reading with two fantastic writers! St. Louisan Susan McBride, author of Little Black Dress and The Cougar Club, gives us a deliciously emotional story of family, forgiveness, love and magic. In The Truth about Love and Lightning, the tornado that just ripped through Gretchen's land has nothing on the storm caused by the return of her pregnant daughter, a man with no memory showing up on their doorstep, and Gretchen's not-so-little white lie that's about to catch up with her. Jenny Milchman--a suspense author, popular blogger, and founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day--shows us that beneath the cover of snow lies a powerful conspiracy when Nora wakes up one wintry morning in her old mountain farmhouse to find that her husband has committed suicide. Unraveling his final days, Nora searches for answers--but meets with bewildering resistance from his best friend and partner, his fellow police officers, and his mother.

Venue: St. Louis County Library The St. Louis County Library presents "An Evening with Al Gore." With the same passion he brought to the challenge of climate change, and with his decades of experience on the front lines of global policy, Al Gore offers a sober, learned and ultimately hopeful assessment about the emerging forces reshaping our world. Ticket packages include a pre-signed copy of his new book, The Future. Left Bank Books will also have additional pre-signed copies for sale at the event. For more details or to purchase tickets, visit brownpapertickets.com or Library Headquarters.

Venue: St. Louis Community College - Meramec Left Bank Books and St. Louis Community College at Meramec present Alan S. Blinder. One of the wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers offers a masterful narrative of the financial crisis and its lessons. With bracing clarity, Blinder shows how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good, experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. Blinder currently teaches at Princeton University where he is the co-director of Princeton's Center for Economic Policy Studies. He was also President Clinton's first Council of Economic Advisors and the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

Venue: St. Louis Public Library, Schlafly Branch In the spirit of Loving Frank and The Paris Wife, acclaimed novelist Melanie Benjamin pulls back the curtain on the marriage of one of America's most extraordinary couples: Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Drawing on the rich history of the twentieth century and featuring cameos from Joseph Kennedy and Amelia Earhart, The Aviator's Wife is a vividly imagined novel of a complicated marriage.

Venue: Left Bank Books - Central West End Fifty years after Sylvia Plath's death by suicide at age thirty, Carl Rollyson gives us a biography that shows her as a powerful figure who embraced both high and low culture to become a Marilyn Monroe of modern literature, a writer who wanted nothing less than to become central to the mythology of modern consciousness. This is the first biography to use letters between Plath and Ted Hughes newly deposited in the Ted Hughes archive a the British Library.