For years Mamie Künstler, ninety-three-years-old, as clever and glamorous as ever, has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie's grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City. Like many a twenty-something, he has come to seek his fortune in […]

In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, they unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma: the "magic of the marketplace." In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: […]

Performance jitters lead to some imaginative what ifs before a little girl finds her confidence. Hannah loves to play her violin--as long as no one is watching. On the day of the recital, she's wishing something wild would happen so she won't have to go. Perhaps a dolphin will jump out of the fountain and carry her […]

Auriane DeSombre, in conversation with Marisa Kanter, discusses The Sister Split A pair of soon-to-be stepsisters creates a plan that will stop their parents from getting married--but they soon learn that matters of the heart can surprise you! This is a fresh sister story evocative of The Parent Trap with LGBTQ themes for the modern reader. Autumn is […]

Elizabeth McKenzie and Yxta Maya Murray discuss their respective new releases, The Dog of the North and God Went Like That. Elizabeth McKenzie Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she's quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her […]

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman's only option, the future seems bleak. Until the […]

Arielle Estoria is known for her moving and empowering words that encourage women and all people to be confident in who they are, compassionate about where they've been, and loving about who they are becoming. In this stunning collection of essays, poems, and meditations, beautifully illustrated in earth tones, Estoria tenderly reveals the places in […]

It begins in the highlands of Scotland in 1746, at the Battle of Culloden, the last desperate stand of the Stuart 'pretender' to the throne of the Three Kingdoms, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and his rabidly loyal supporters. Vanquished with his comrades by the forces of the Hanoverian (and Protestant) British crown, the novel's eponymous hero, […]

My family prepared me for the end of the world, but I know how to survive on what the earth yields. As a child, Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. She was born into an ultra-religious cult--or the Field as they called it--started in the 1930s by her grandfather, […]

Co-presented by Alliance Française de Pasadena October 1942: it's been two years since Kate Rees was sent to Paris on a British Secret Service mission to assassinate Hitler. Since then, she has left spycraft behind to take a training job as a sharpshooting instructor in the Scottish Highlands. But her quiet life is violently disrupted when […]