EMAIL NEWSLETTER
MAY/ JUNE 2013

VROMAN'S  IN-STORE
BOOK CLUBS

  The meeting place for all reading groups is located near the Fiction section on the lower level of Vroman’s main store, except for the Books I Should Have Read Reading Group, which meets at
Vroman’s Hastings Ranch.

EVENTS AT
VROMAN'S HASTINGS RANCH

Join us for storytime at
Vroman's Hastings Ranch- every Sunday at noon!

Saturday, May 4, 11am
Cinco de Mayo Craft Day
Come create your own mini pinata & picado banner.

Saturday, May 11, 11am
Mother's Day Craft Day
Join in making something special for your mom that she will love and cherish!

Tuesday, June 18, 6pm
Game Night!
Come to VHR with a friend or join others to play board games. 
Board games provided!

EVENTS FOR KIDS & TEENS

Storytime with Mr. Steve!
Every Wednesday &
Saturday at 10am!

Saturday, May 11, 10:30am
Dan Krall presents & signs
The Great Lollipop Caper
Having adults love his acidic taste is not enough for Mr. Caper. He wants more. He wants the children of the world to love him—just as much as they love the sweet, saccharine Lollipop. And thus a plot is hatched: Caper-flavored lollipops are dispatched throughout the world...and everything goes horribly wrong. Will Mr. Caper find a way to repair the havoc he's wreaked by over-reaching? Maybe, if Lollipop helps save the day!

Saturday, May 11, 11am
Craft Time with Jen!
Join Jen as she teached you to create a tissue paper flower bouquet for your mom this Mother's Day!

Wednesday, May 22, 10:30am
John Rocco presents & signs
Super Hair-O and the
Barber of Doom
Every super hero gets his powers from somewhere. The young hero of this book, Rocco, thinks his abilities come from his shock of red hair, and the longer it gets, the stronger he becomes. He even has a posse of super friends with wild hair of their own. Our hero is unstoppable--until the day he's dragged to the super evil villain's lair and robbed of his powers. How will he face his friends? Will he ever regain his super hero-ness? A girl who has been watching all along offers the gang a chance to save the day and get their groove back.

Friday, May 24, 6pm
Soman Chainani discusses & signs
The School for Good and Evil
Welcome to the School for Good and Evil, where best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. With her glass slippers and devotion to good deeds, Sophie knows she'll earn top marks at the School for Good and join the ranks of past students like Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Meanwhile, Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks and wicked black cat, seems a natural fit for the villains in the School for Evil. The two girls soon find their fortunes reversed - Sophie's dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School for Good, thrust among handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and
Agatha really are?

Saturday, June 15, 10:30am
Craft Time with Jen!
Create a fun Father's Day "tie" with your own design on it for your dad this Father's Day!

Thursday, June 20, 7pm
Kristen Kittscher discusses & signs
The Wig in the Window
Best friends and seventh graders Sophie Young and Grace Yang have made a game out of spying on their neighbors. On one of their midnight stakeouts, they witness a terrifying, bloody scene at the home of their bizarre middle-school counselor Dr. Charlotte Agford (also known as Dr. Awkward). At least, they think they do. The truth is that Dr. Agford was only making her famous pickled beets. But when Dr. Agford begins acting even weirder than usual, Sophie and Grace become convinced that she's hiding something - and they're determined to find out what it is. Soon the girls are breaking secret codes, being followed by a strange blue car, and tailing strangers with unibrows and Texas accents. But as their investigation heats up, Sophie and Grace start to crack under the pressure. Will solving the case destroy
their friendship?

And In The Margins:
Book Club Schedule
Events for Kids and Teens
Events at Vroman's Hastings Ranch

Vroman's Ed
To sign-up for Vroman's Ed classes, please call Customer Service at (626)449-5320.  All classes will take place in the Vroman's Meeting Room located next door to Vroman's main store in the Atrium at 709 E Colorado Blvd., Suite 120.

Thursdays, May 2- June 6, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Boot Camp for Beginning Writers
This class will be the most generous gift you give yourself this spring. Writers Boot Camp is a challenging, yet supportive workshop – a systematic approach to writing that makes the best use of creative prompts, craft technique and friendly group critiques. This workout for writers will tone the muscles of our imaginations for prose writers (memoir, essay and fiction all welcome) with a fun and inspiring workshop designed to transform the shape of each individual writer's journey into a long and rewarding vocation. Like any boot camp, commitment is everything, but so is reasonableness. Day one you will set a modest goal and my job will be to help you meet it. After sign up, please email me to receive a scintillating article on description and a fun worksheet you can use to help you establish your class outcomes. Schwartz0505@gmail.com.

Leslie Schwartz is the author of two award-winning, best-selling novels. She has won numerous grants, residency awards and contests. Her second novel Angels Crest was published in 13 languages and debuted in 2012 as a film – now a Netflix fav. In addition to her to novels (number three on the way) she has written countless short stories, essays and articles for national magazine and newspapers.
Instructor: Leslie Schwartz
Fee: $250.00 per person

Saturday, June 15, noon-4pm
Traditional Bookmaking with Wendy Poma
Come join book design artist Wendy Poma for an afternoon of creativity. You will be making a beautiful and useful codex book. This is the type of book you think of when taking a book off a shelf. It is a hard covered book with a spine and sewn signatures. You will also learn how to make a headband, which is also part of the book. This is one of Wendy's students’ favorites so sign up early to reserve a space. All materials are supplied by the instructor. No previous bookmaking experience is required for this class.
Instructor: Wendy Poma
$40.00 per student

AUTHOR EVENTS

May
Wednesday, May 1, 7pm
Gustavo Arellano discusses & signs Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America
When salsa overtook ketchup as this country's favorite condiment in the 1990s, America's century-long love affair with Mexican food reached yet another milestone. In seemingly every decade since the 1880s, America has tried new food trends from south of the border—chili, tamales, tacos, enchiladas, tequila, bacon-wrapped hot dogs, and so many more—loved them, and demanded the next great thing. As a result, Mexican food dominates American palates to the tune of billions of dollars in sales per year, from canned refried beans to frozen margaritas to ballpark nachos. It's a little-known history, one that's crept up on this country like your Mexican neighbors—and left us better for it. Now, Taco USA addresses the all-important questions: What exactly constitutes “Mexican” food in the United States? How did it get here? What's “authentic” and what's “Taco Bell,” and does it matter? What's so cosmic about a burrito? And why do Americans love Mexican food so darn much? Tacos, alas, sold separately.

Thursday, May 2, 7pm
Fabio Viviani discusses & signs Fabio's Italian Kitchen
When Fabio Viviani was growing up in a housing project in Florence, Italy, the center of his world was the kitchen, where his mother, grandmother, and especially his great-grandmother instilled in him a love for cooking and good food. Now he shares the best of Italian home cooking while telling the story of his hardscrabble childhood, his success as a chef in the United States, and the women in his family who inspired him. In more than 150 delicious recipes, Viviani takes us from his family home, where his great-grandmother taught him to make staples like Italian Apple Cake and Homemade Ricotta, to the kitchen of a local trattoria, where he honed his craft cooking restaurant favorites like Gnocchi and the Perfect Tiramisu, and then across Italy where he studied each region's finest recipes, from Piedmont's Braised Ossobuco to Emilia Romagna's Perfect Meat Sauce.

Friday, May 3, 7pm
Kristen Hannah discusses & signs Fly Away
Tully Hart has always been larger than life, a woman fueled by big dreams and driven by memories of a painful past. She thinks she can overcome anything until her best friend, Kate Ryan, dies. Tully tries to fulfill her deathbed promise to Kate - to be there for Kate's children - but Tully knows nothing about family or motherhood or taking care of people.  Sixteen-year-old Marah Ryan is devastated by her mother's death. Her father, Johnny, strives to hold the family together, but even with his best efforts, Marah becomes unreachable in her grief. Nothing and no one seems to matter to her . . . until she falls in love with a young man who makes her smile again and leads her into his dangerous, shadowy world. Dorothy Hart - the woman who once called herself Cloud - is at the center of Tully's tragic past. She repeatedly abandoned her daughter, Tully, as a child, but now she comes back, drawn to her daughter's side at a time when Tully is most alone. At long last, Dorothy must face her darkest fear: Only by revealing the ugly secrets of her past can she hope to become the mother her daughter needs. A single, tragic choice and a middle-of-the-night phone call will bring these women together and set them on a poignant, powerful journey of redemption. Each has lost her way, and they will need each one another - and maybe a miracle - to transform their lives.

Saturday, May 4, 4pm
Kevin Powers discusses & signs The Yellow Birds: A Novel
"The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year-old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined. A National Book Award Finalist.

Monday, May 6, 7pm
Frank C. Giradot discusses & signs Name Dropper: Investigating the Clark Rockefeller Mystery
Depending on who you ask, Clark Rockefeller is either a psychopathic con man and cold-blooded killer or an erudite art lover and doting father. These descriptions from police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, friends and acquaintances all describe a man whose real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. A German national who came to the United States on a student visa in the late 1970s, Rockefeller's rise to near aristocracy led him to prominence in some of the nation's most elite communities - Wall Street, Greenwich, San Marino, and Boston's Beacon Hill. He fancied himself an international man of mystery. Author Frank Girardot began following Rockefeller's story in 2008, the same year Rockefeller was arrested for abducting his own daughter. As a journalist, Girardot wrote several newspaper articles and was the first to report Rockefeller's connections to a forgotten San Marino couple that vanished in 1985, piecing together the story in a series of articles for The Pasadena Star-News.

Tuesday, May 7, 7pm
Urban Waite discusses & signs The Carrion Birds
Set in a small town in the Southwest, a soulful work of literary noir rife with violence, vengeance, and contrition from a fresh voice in fiction - the author of the highly acclaimed The Terror of Living.

Wednesday, May 8, 7pm
Lian Dolan discusses & signs Elizabeth the First Wife
Elizabeth Lancaster, an English professor at Pasadena City College, finds her perfectly dull but perfectly orchestrated life upended one summer by three men: her movie-star ex-husband, a charming political operative, and William Shakespeare. Until now, she'd been content living in the shadow of her high-profile and highly accomplished family. Then her college boyfriend and one-time husband of seventeen months, A-list action star FX Fahey, shows up with a job offer that she can't resist, and Elizabeth's life suddenly gets a whole lot more interesting. She's off to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for the summer to make sure FX doesn't humiliate himself in an avant-garde production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Thursday, May 9, 7pm
Lee Smolin discusses & signs Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe
One of our foremost thinkers and public intellectuals offers a radical new view of the nature of time, and explores its implications for everything from physics and cosmology to economics and climate change. Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist who has made influential contributions to the search for a unification of physics. He is a founding faculty member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His previous books include The Trouble with Physics, The Life of the Cosmos, and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.

Sunday, May 12, 4pm
Peter Lovesey discusses & signs The Tooth Tattoo
Peter Diamond, head of the Criminal Investigation Division in scenic Bath, England, is investigating the murder of a young woman whose body has been found in the canal, the only clue to her identity a tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth. For Diamond, who wouldn't know a Stradivarius from a French horn, the investigation is his most demanding ever. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing violist Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by a very elite classical quartet - one whose previous violist disappeared without a trace. Despite the mystery shrouding the group, the chance to join is too good to pass up, and Mel finds himself in a cushy residency at Bath Spa University with the quartet - and embroiled in the unusually musical murder investigation. As the story unfolds in fugue-like counterpoint, Peter and Mel both learn frightening secrets about fandom and about what it takes to survive in the cutthroat world of professional musicians.

Monday, May 13, 7pm
Merrill Joan Gerber discusses & signs The Hysterectomy Waltz
The Hysterectomy Waltz (surely a contradiction) reflects what is told to the women in the novel who are about to undergo this surgery: "You will still be able to waltz the night away with your husbands," and "You don't need all that equipment once you've used it to have kids." The book itself is full of irony, cynicism, humor, and sexuality.

Tuesday, May 14, 7pm
Liza Palmer discusses & signs Nowhere But Home: A Novel
Queenie Wake has just been fired from her job as a chef for not allowing a customer to use ketchup...again. Now the only place she has to go is North Star, Texas, the hometown she left in disgrace. Maybe things will be different this time around. After all, her mother - notorious for stealing your man, your car, and your rent money - has been dead for years. And Queenie's sister, once the local teenage harlot who fooled around with the town golden boy, is now the mother of the high school football captain. Queenie's new job, cooking last meals at the nearby prison, is going well . . . at least the inmates don't complain. But apparently small-town Texas has a long memory for bad reputations. And when Queenie bumps into Everett Coburn, the high school sweetheart who broke her heart, she wishes her own memory was a little spottier. But before Queenie takes another chance on love, she'll have to take an even bigger risk: finding a place to call home once and for all.

Wednesday, May 15, 7pm
Dan O'Shannon discusses & signs What Are You Laughing At?: A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event
What Are You Laughing At? presents an entirely new approach to comedy theory. It challenges long-held beliefs and shows how the three main theories of comedy (incongruity, superiority, and relief) are not in conflict; but rather, work as parts of a larger model. There are many examples pulled from the author's own experiences, writing for shows such as Cheers, Frasier, and Modern Family. By the end, you'll have an understanding of just what happens when man meets comedy. It will change the way you hear laughter.

Thursday, May 16, 7pm
Anchee Min discusses & signs The Cooked Seed
An immigrant story that takes Min from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path. It is a hard and lonely road. She teaches herself English by watching Sesame Street, keeps herself afloat working five jobs at once, lives in unheated rooms, suffers rape, collapses from exhaustion, marries poorly, and divorces. But she also gives birth to her daughter, Lauryann, who will inspire her and finally root her in her new country. Min's eventual successes - her writing career, a daughter at Stanford, a second husband she loves - are remarkable, but it is her struggle throughout toward genuine selfhood that elevates this dramatic, classic immigrant story to something powerfully universal.

Saturday, May 18, 4pm
Paul Theroux discusses & signs The Last Train to Zona Verde
Theroux first came to Africa as a twenty-two-year-old Peace Corps volunteer, and the pull of the vast land never left him. Now he returns, after fifty years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself.  His odyssey takes him northward from Cape Town, through South Africa and Namibia, then on into Angola, wishing to head farther still until he reaches the end of the line. Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from both the itineraries of tourists and the hopes of postcolonial independence movements. 

Sunday, May 19, 4pm
Walter Mosley discusses & signs Little Green
Easy Rawlins is back (almost literally from the dead after the car wreck that ended Blonde Faith, his last outing) and cruising the streets of the Sunset Strip circa 1967, in search of a young black man who has gone missing—and maybe of his own rebirth.

Monday, May 20, 7pm
Brian Switek discusses & signs My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs, with their awe- inspiring size, terrifying claws and teeth, and otherworldly abilities, occupy a sacred place in our childhoods. They loom over museum halls, thunder through movies, and are a fundamental part of our collective imagination. In My Beloved Brontosaurus, the dinosaur fanatic Brian Switek enriches the childlike sense of wonder these amazing creatures instill in us. Investigating the latest discoveries in paleontology, he breathes new life into old bones.

Tuesday, May 21, 7pm
Joanna Hershon & Hilary Reyl discuss & sign A Dual Inheritance and Lessons in French
A Dual Inheritance - Autumn 1962: Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard. Ed is far removed from Hugh's privileged upbringing as a Boston Brahmin, yet his drive and ambition outpace Hugh's ambivalence about his own life. These two young men form an unlikely friendship, bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances. But in just a few short years, not only do their paths diverge—one rising on Wall Street, the other becoming a kind of global humanitarian—but their friendship ends abruptly, with only one of them understanding why.

Lessons in French - It's 1989, the Berlin Wall is coming down, and Kate has just graduated from Yale, eager to pursue her dreams as a fledgling painter. When she receives a job offer to work as the assistant to Lydia Schell, a famous American photographer in Paris, she immediately accepts. It's a chance not only to be at the center of it all, but also to return to France for the first time since she was a lonely nine-year-old girl, sent to the outskirts of Paris to live with cousins while her father was dying.  As Kate rediscovers Paris and her roots there, she begins to question the kindness of the people to whom she is so drawn as well as her own motives for wanting them to love her.

Thursday, May 23, 7pm
Matt Coyle discusses & signs Yesterday's Echo
Rick Cahill was never convicted of his wife's murder, but he was never exonerated either. Not by the police. Not by the media. Not even by himself. Eight years later, police suspicion and his own guilt remain over his responsibility in his wife's death. When he meets Melody Malana, a beautiful yet secretive TV reporter, he sees a chance to love again. When she is arrested for murder and asks Rick for help, he reluctantly agrees. But Rick's attempt to help turns terribly wrong, and he becomes a suspect in the murder and the target of a police manhunt. On the run, Rick encounters desperate people who'll kill to keep their pasts buried. Before Rick can save himself and bring down a murderer, he must confront the truth about his own past and untangle his feeling for a woman he can never fully trust.

Sunday, May 26, 4pm
Local Author Day | Vroman's presents Robert Diemer, Beverly Magid, & Barbara Jacobs
Robert Diemer discusses and signs The Widow's Son: A Tropical Island Mystery
For a lawyer practicing in paradise, Drake Burnham has a betel nut basket packed with problems. Burnham agrees to defend a nightmare client, Jangle Elwell, before Maximum Max Coleman, a hanging judge. But Burnham's initial troubles pale when Jangle is murdered.

Beverly Magid discusses and signs Sown in Tears
Set in Czarist Russia, 1905, a time of turbulence and rampant anti-Semitism. After a brutal attack on her village, Leah Peretz is left alone to care for her two young children; life is complicated by the attentions of Captain Ivan Vaselik, who is drawn to her despite his antipathy towards Jews.

Barbara Jacobs discusses and signs Second Chances
The remarkable story of a charmed life that takes you from New York to an Indian burial ground in Oklahoma to the canals of Venice, leaving you to wonder whether guardian angels really do exist.

Wednesday, May 29, 7pm
Emma Brockes discusses & signs She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me
“One day I will tell you the story of my life,” promises Emma Brockes' mother, “and you will be amazed.” Brockes grew up hearing only pieces of her mother's past—stories of a rustic childhood in South Africa, glimpses of a bohemian youth in London—and yet knew that crucial facts were still in the dark. Looking to unearth the truth after her mother's death, Brockes begins a dangerous journey into the land—and the life—her mother fled from years before.

Thursday, May 31, 7pm
Jan-Philipp Sendker discusses & signs The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father's past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader's belief in the power of love to move mountains.

June
Saturday, June 1, 4pm
John Vorhaus discusses & signs The Texas Twist
After pulling world-class cons in California and New Mexico, Radar Hoverlander and his crew, including girlfriend and grift artist Allie Quinn and their hapless buddy Vic Mirplo, are back in action, this time in Austin. So many rich fools to bamboozle—but is Radar having a crisis of conscience? A smart, fast-paced, funny work—crime caper fiction at its best.

Monday, June 3, 7pm
Stephen Rodrick discusses & signs The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into His Father's Life
On November 28, 1979, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick died when his plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. He was just thirty-six and had been the commanding officer of his squadron for 127 days. Eight thousand miles away on Whidbey Island, near Seattle, he left behind a grief-stricken wife, two daughters, and a thirteen-year-old son who would grow up to be a writer - one who was drawn, perhaps inevitably, to write about his father, his family, and the devastating consequences of military service.

Tuesday, June 4, 7pm
Chip Jacobs discusses & signs The Vicodin Thieves: Biopsying L.A.'s Grifters, Gloryhounds, and Goliaths
Investigative reporter Chip Jacobs goes deep into some of his most compelling journalism pieces of the last three decades with his signature spotlight on strange corruption, seedy individuals, megalomaniacs, bright ideas, and transgressive game-changers. Featuring in-depth and expanded stories previously published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and others, The Vicodin Thieves is an instant classic of crime, politics, and socio-analysis.

Wednesday, June 5, 7pm
Steph Cha discusses & signs Follow Her Home
Juniper Song knows secrets–how to keep them and how to search them out. As a girl, noir fiction was her favorite escape, and Philip Marlowe has always been her literary idol. So when her friend Luke asks her to investigate a possible affair between his father and a young employee, Juniper finds an opportunity to play detective. Driving through L.A.'s side streets, following leads, tailing suspects - it all appeals to Song's romantic ideal of the noir hero. But when she's knocked out while investigating a mysterious car and finds a body in her own trunk, Song lurches back to the real L.A., becoming embroiled in a crime that goes far beyond role play. A dazzling debut from fresh new talent Steph Cha, Follow Her Home takes readers through dangerous twists and turns, beyond the glittering high-rises and freeways of L.A., on a case that will stay with them long after the final page.

Thursday, June 6, 7pm
Ilana Edelstein discusses & signs The Patrón Way
This is the true story of how Patrón became the world's top-selling ultra-premium tequila, set against the backdrop of love, sex, celebrity, dizzying success and, ultimately, betrayal. It describes the founding and rapid development of Patrón. Ilana Edelstein was instrumental in the creation of Patrón Tequila and is the founder of IE Financial Services, now in its twenty-first year, which provides a range of financial and retirement services to teachers.

Friday, June 7, 7pm
Porter Gale discusses & signs Your Network is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections  for Wealth, Success, and Happiness
A new take on How to Win Friends and Influence People, Your Network Is Your Net Worth is an entertaining, straightforward guide filled with revealing case studies, practical tips, and original strategies for building your network. Using digital tools, this book teaches you how to harness social media to connect with your true passions. Author Porter Gale also outlines how to navigate many offline interactions, such as communicating in interviews or day-to-day conversations and working a party in order to connect with others who share your interests. Stories, illustrations, quizzes, checklists, and exercises will help you pinpoint your skills and interests and leverage them into not only building a bigger network, but finding the right career and life path.

Sunday, June 9, 3pm
Marvin Gapultos presents & signs The Adobo Road Cookbook: A Filipino Food Journey- From Blog, to Food Truck, and Beyond
Marvin Gapultos, a food blogger-turned-gourmet food trucker, brings the exotic—yet easy to make—flavors of the Philippines into your home. With a distinct lack of Filipino restaurants to be found, the road to great Filipino food begins and ends at home. In his debut cookbook, Marvin demonstrates that Filipino cuisine can be prepared in any kitchen—from Manila to Los Angeles and everywhere in-between. Marvin interprets traditional Filipino flavors with equal parts kitchen savvy and street smarts—providing easy-to-follow, tried-and-true recipes that serve as a guide to the pleasures of Filipino cooking. The nearly 100 recipes in these pages pave a culinary road trip that transports home cooks to the roadside food stalls, bars and home kitchens of the Philippines, to the hungry streets of L.A., and even into the kitchens of Marvin's grandmother, mother and aunties.

Monday, June 10, 7pm
Jeffery Deaver discusses & signs The Kill Room
It was a "million-dollar bullet," a sniper shot delivered from over a mile away. Its victim was no ordinary mark: he was a United States citizen, targeted by the United States government, and assassinated in the Bahamas.  The nation's most renowned investigator and forensics expert, Lincoln Rhyme, is drafted to investigate. While his partner Amelia Sachs traces the victim's steps in Manhattan, Rhyme leaves the city to pursue the sniper himself. As details of the case start to emerge, the pair discovers that not all is what it seems.

Tuesday, June 11, 7pm
Brian Fagan discusses & signs The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels
The past fifteen thousand years - the entire span of human civilization -have witnessed dramatic sea level changes, which began with rapid global warming at the end of the Ice Age, when sea levels were more than 700 feet below modern levels. Over the next eleven millennia, the oceans climbed in fits and starts. These rapid changes had little effect on those humans who experienced them, partly because there were so few people on earth, and also because they were able to adjust readily to new coastlines. Since 1860, the world has warmed significantly and the ocean's climb has accelerated. The sea level changes are cumulative and gradual; no one knows when they will end. The Attacking Ocean tells a tale of the rising complexity of the relationship between humans and the sea at their doorsteps.

Wednesday, June 12, 7pm
Philipp Meyer discusses & signs The Son
An epic of the American West and a multigenerational saga of power, blood, land, and oil that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the to the oil booms of the 20th century.

Thursday, June 13, 7pm
Jason Matthews discusses & signs Red Sparrow
In today's Russia, dominated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, state intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the CIA's most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers, trained in their respective spy schools, collide in a charged atmosphere of tradecraft, deception, and inevitably, a forbidden spiral of carnal attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America's valuable mole in Moscow.

Tuesday, June 18, 7pm
Daniel James Brown discusses & signs The Boys in the Boat
The Boys in the Boat tells the story of the University of Washington's 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic Games in Berlin, 1936.

Thursday, June 27, 7pm
Julie Sarkissian discusses & signs Dear Lucy
Lucy is a young woman with an uncommon voice and an unusual way of looking at the world. She doesn't understand why her mother has sent her to live with old Mister and Missus on their farm, but she knows she must never leave or her mother won't be able to find her again.  Also living at the farm is a pregnant teenager named Samantha who tells conflicting stories about her past and quickly becomes Lucy's only friend. When Samantha gives birth and her baby disappears, Lucy arms herself with Samantha's diary—as well as a pet chicken named Jennifer—and embarks on a dangerous and exhilarating journey to reunite mother and child.

Sunday, June 30, 4pm
Vroman's presents Alyce Stevens Rohrer, Miceala Shocklee, & Fiorella Patri Dandekar
Alyce Stevens Rohrer discusses and signs Heaven Sent
When Lithia is Heaven Sent to Earth on special assignment, she is not sure she is the one for the job but accepts it anyway. Born on Earth to a Mormon family, she learns about the practice of polygamy both past and present and rejects the entire idea as one not right for the country she loves.

Miceala Shocklee discusses and signs Drop Dead Gorgeous
“This is not a pretty book. It is a book that contains all the mess and grunge of a real life. My life - with an eating disorder. This is a look from the inside. Written while I am still recovering, this book is an attempt to give all those who have never had to live within the war zone of an eating disorder a real look at the battleground.”

Fiorella Patri Dandekar discusses and signs The Fear of Surrender
“Life and death... we are born and yet we are marked to die. Why is it that we all have to go? Even though my parents died a while ago, I still feel a great sense of loss and emptiness. I still don't know the details of life after death, but through my near-death experiences, I can say that my spirit was alive and traveling upwards someplace...”

VROMAN’S BOOKSTORE
695 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91101
626-449-5320

HOURS:
M-Th: 9am-9pm
F-S: 9am-10pm
Su: 10am-8pm
NEWSSTAND HOURS:
M-Th:  7am-9pm
F:  7am-10pm
S:  8am-10pm
Su:  9am-8pm

Free 90 minute parking in lot behind building

VROMAN’S BOOKSTORE
HASTINGS RANCH
Hastings Ranch Shopping Center
3729 E. Foothill Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91107
626-351-0828

HOURS:
M-S: 9am-8pm
Su: 10am-7pm

Free parking in front of building