Events on Monday, June 25, 2012

Original Room

$18 adv, $20 dos

 
Luis Negron's debut collection reveals the intimate world of a small community in Puerto Rico joined together by its transgressive sexuality. The writing straddles the shifting line between pure, unadorned storytelling and satire, exploring the sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking nature of survival in a decidedly cruel world. (Seven Stories Press)
"Hilarious and heart-wrenching, provocative and pitch-perfect, each story is a tiny, transgressive explosion. I feel inadequate to the task of expressing just how wonderful this book is...read it slowly, and listen close; here is a master storyteller at his finest."--Justin Torres, author of "We the Animals"
Mr. Negron will be joined by the book's translator Suzanne Jill Levine
SUZANNE JILL LEVINE's acclaimed translations, which include works by Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Three Trapped Tigers) and Manuel Puig (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), have helped introduce the world to some of the icons of contemporary Latin American literature. She is also editor of Penguin Classics' essays and poetry of Jorge Luis Borges and the author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction. She is the winner of PEN USA's Translation Award 2012 for her translation of Jose Donoso's The Lizard's Tale.

Belly Room

$22.50 adv, $25 dos

Original Room

Belly Room

Original Room

Belly Room

Original Room

Decades in the making, On the Run With Bonnie & Clyde is a fast moving and gut-wrenching, highly original exploration into the personalities of the star-crossed lovers and "public enemies" Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. A thoroughly researched, in-depth study of the true natures of these notorious outlaws, by an acclaimed author well versed in the dark fields of violence, On the Run With Bonnie & Clyde breaks away from the usual police-blotter procedurals on these outlaw lovers. Delving deep into their character in his unique and uncompromising style, Gilmore places the reader squarely inside a stolen 1932 V-8 with the desperadoes on a dusty, two-year, devil-take-the-high-road spree of robberies, shoot-outs and murder. Through the dark windshield of legend, the short lives of these outlaw desperadoes on a relentless ride to an infamous end-in a torrent of blood and bullets-emerges as an essential and compelling narrative of these undying icons of American crime lore. On the Run With Bonnie & Clyde includes a controversial critical perspective of the unlawful ambush murder of Bonnie Parker, who was never officially accused of a violent crime. Heavily illustrated with rare photos from the author's collection.

Main Room

Original Room

$21 child, $34.50 senior, $42.50 adult

$10 adv, $12 dos

Belly Room

Belly Room

$10 adv, $12 dos

A woman goes on the run in this intense and cinematic thriller by an award-winning writer. To escape the awful life she has descended into, Luz plans carefully. She takes only the clothes on her back, a Colt .45, and all the money in her husband's safe. The corpses in the hallway weren't part of her plan. Luz needs to find the daughter she left behind years earlier, but she knows she may die trying. Her husband isEl Principe, a key player in a high-powered drug cartel, a business he runs with the same violence he has used to keep Luz his perfect, obedient wife. With the pace and relentless force of a Scorsese film, Angel Baby is the newest masterpiece from one of the most ambitious and talented crime novelists at work today.

Belly Room

Belly Room

$15 adv, $17.50 dos

 
Group event presenting and signing We Got the Power!: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California
Participants: Tony Adolescent, Jack Brewer, David Markey, Jordan Schwartz, Jennifer Schwartz, Janet Housden, Chuck Dukowski and Daniel Weizmann
In 1979, punk was over . . . but by 1981, hardcore was born. As teenagers in 1981, David Markey and his best friend Jordan Schwartz founded We Got Power!,  a fanzine dedicated to the first-generation hardcore punk music community in their native Los Angeles. Their text captured the early punk spirit of Black Flag, the Minutemen, Social Distortion, Suicidal Tendencies, and Husker Du at the height of their powers. Meanwhile, their amazing photographs captured the dilapidated houses, abandoned storefronts, and disaffected youth culture of the early Reagan era. Never before seen, except in crude fanzine form, these detailed and richly narrative photos are now collected to present an intimate document a uniquely fertile creative moments. (Bazillion Points Publishing)

$10 adv, $15 dos

Main Room

$10 adv, $15 dos

Original Room

It's 1930. The stock market crashed. The Great Depression is beginning. Hollywood is starting to rot underneath its glamour and lights. Nobody knows this better than producer Paul Russell. He has to save a movie studio from financial ruin. All he has at his disposal are a stack of horror scripts, some old sets, and unknown actors. The Hollywood pecking order applies to people as much as studios. Actress Lillian Nelson learned this lesson shortly after arriving in Los Angeles. Although she is dating Paul, she refuses to let him give her parts at his studio. She wants to make it on her own. Her attempt to overcome obstacles in order to insert herself into the public's heart is the stuff dreams and nightmares are made of in Hollywood. James Cagney, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Louis Brooks, and Jack Warner act as your guides while Take Her for a Ridepeels back the skin of Hollywood's most glamorous age to reveal a core of talented businessmen, competent directors, and radiant stars. (Crucson Publishing)

$15

Belly Room

$22.50 adv, $25 dos

$10 adv, $12 dos

$20 adv, $25 dos

$15 adv, $20 dos

$20 adv, $25 dos

Original Room

$15

When twenty-three-year-old Emily Cavenaugh's marriage to her abusive high school sweetheart ends, she trades in her dull small town life for an all-access pass to see the world as a flight attendant. Hoping for a new start, she moves to San Francisco to bunk with six other new flight attendants. Among them is KC Valentine, a free spirit who encourages Emily to shed her mousy ways and start collecting experiences as exciting as her passport stamps. Emily soon follows KC's advice a little too well, falling in love with an older, married co-worker named Tien, a father to two young girls. But as Emily and Tien become more deeply entangled, KC grows distraught. Neither her friends nor co-workers know the real reason she became a flight attendant: to find her father who abandoned her as a child. As Emily and KC fly from Vegas to Boston, San Francisco to London, Chicago to Delhi, each searching for love and acceptance, they're torn between passion and moral conviction, freedom and belonging. An assured debut from a former flight attendant, Love Me Anyway deftly captures the complexities of love, friendship, and family, the excitement and loneliness that come from living everywhere and nowhere, and the surprising detours life can take when you set out to discover the world. (Thomas Dunne Books)

Original Room

In Middle Men, Stegner Fellow and New Yorker contributor Jim Gavin delivers a hilarious and panoramic vision of California, portraying a group of men, from young dreamers to old vets, as they make valiant forays into middle-class respectability. The men in Gavin's stories all find themselves stuck somewhere in the middle, caught half way between their dreams and the often crushing reality of their lives. A work of profound humanity that pairs moments of high comedy with searing truths about life's missed opportunities, Middle Men brings to life a series of unforgettable characters learning what it means to love and work and be in the world as a man, and it offers our first look at a gifted writer who has just begun teaching us the tools of his trade. (Simon & Schuster)

Main Room