The Week @ Book Passage

Among Bay Area bookstores, Book Passage in Corte Madera has one of the most active schedules going of author events, readings, classes and other literary happenings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for more than one or two author talks to take place at the store on just about any given day. Additionally, many of these events have a local connection. Looking to the week ahead, here are three events readers won’t want to miss.

Jacqueline Winspear reads from Elegy for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel
-- Wednesday, March 28 at 7:00 pm

Maisie Dobbs — psychologist, investigator and "one of the great fictional heroines, equal parts haunted and haunting" (Parade) — returns in a chilling new adventure, the latest installment in Jacqueline Winspear's bestselling Maisie Dobbs series. In Elegy for Eddie (Harper), its early 1933: to the costermongers of Covent Garden — sellers of fruit and vegetables on the streets of London — Eddie Pettit was a gentle soul with a near-magical gift for working with horses. When Eddie is killed in a violent accident, the grieving street peddlers are skeptical about the cause of death. Who would want to kill Eddie — and why? The answer may well lead Maisie from the working-class neighborhoods of London to England’s highest circles of power.

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the New York Times bestsellers A Lesson in Secrets, The Mapping of Love and Death, Among the Mad, and An Incomplete Revenge, as well as four other popular novels in the Maisie Dobbs series. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the Agatha, Alex, and Macavity awards for the first book in the series, Maisie Dobbs, which was also nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Originally from the United Kingdom, she now lives in Northern California. Winspear is the co-chair of the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference.

Terry Bisson, in conversation with Peter Coyote, discuss Any Day Now
-- Thursday, March 29 at 7:00 pm

Acclaimed author Jonathan Lethem had this to say about Terry Bisson’s new novel, Any Day Now (Overlook), a poignant excursion into the last days of the Beats and the emerging radicalized culture of the sixties. "Someone once said everybody has a book inside them, but it takes a writer to get it out. The truth is, not many writers ever even manage it like this. Bisson just wrote his personal masterpiece, a book which will drop you through the floor of your assumptions about coming of age inside the politics and counterculture of the Vietnam era and into a fresh new-old world, in which you'll live, for the duration of this book, as your own." Join Book Passage for a special event in which Bay Area writer Terry Bisson discusses his new novel —  as well as fiction, art, culture and just about anything else that might come up with Bay Area actor and activist Peter Coyote.

Terry Bisson is an award-winning writer. He is the author of seven novels, and his short fiction has appeared in Playboy and Harper's, among other magazines. He previously worked as an auto mechanic and as a magazine and book editor. Bisson lives in Oakland, California.

William J. Broad discusses The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards
-- Saturday, March 31 at 1:00 pm

In this compelling and much discussed work of investigative journalism, William J Broad exposes the “scientific” claims made about yoga to scientific scrutiny — including yogasms and its much-vaunted healing powers. Five years in the making, The Science of Yoga (Simon & Schuster) draws on more than a century of painstaking research to present the first impartial evaluation of a practice thousands of years old. It celebrates what’s real and shows what’s illusory, describes what’s uplifting and beneficial and what’s flaky and dangerous — and why.

William J. Broad has practiced yoga since 1970. A bestselling author and senior writer at The New York Times, he has won every major award in print and television during more than thirty years as a science journalist. With New York Times colleagues, he has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, as well as an Emmy and a DuPont. He is the author or coauthor of seven books, including Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, a #1 New York Times bestseller. He lives in the New York area with his wife and three children, and enjoys doing Sun Salutations.

MORE INFO: Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., in Corte Madera. Call (415) 927-0960 or visit www.bookpassage.com for details.

A Fly on the Wall at the Mystery Writers Conference

I always sign on to work the summer conferences at BP. During conferences, our role as booksellers expands to include serving food and wine at the conference dinners, moving furniture and audio-visual equipment about for various seminars, handling crowds at the public events with speakers like Elizabeth George, John Lescroat, and Robert Crais with Michael Connelly. Elaine made us laugh as we bused tables one night and she asked if we ever thought the "bookseller" job description included such duties. It does at Book Passage-- we wear many hats!

But the real payoff is to be a fly on the wall as the seminars happen, or the evening speaking engagements are going on. I heard Connelly and Crais describe how to work with helpful, encouraging police officers when they research their books, and haunting the courthouse to speak to police, criminal attorneys, or judges for information they would later include in their stories. I heard Elizabeth George and Jacqueline Winspear discussing the writer's life ("Did I really complete that novel? How did I do it? Can I ever do it again?") and the joys and challenges a writer faces every time they sit down to compose. And many, many more great tidbits as I worked the registers, or filled a wineglass, or straightened chairs in the Event Room.

As we tidied the bookstore and cleared away the last Mystery Writers Conference materials on Sunday, I sneaked a peek at the feedback forms from the students. Of course, the educational structure and speakers at the Conference are all in the brilliant hands of Sheldon Siegel, Jacqueline Winspear, and Kathryn Petrocelli and not my work, but I couldn't help wondering if the students learned as much as I did, or had as good a time. They sure did! They all left just buzzing with the knowledge they'd gained, the support and encouragement, the feeling that they can complete their projects and get them published. They loved the speakers, the food, the workshops, their consultations with the experts. The comments about the nature and usefulness of the Conference were really gratifying.

So did they have any complaints? Well, our folding chairs caused some sore bottoms, and there was this giant poodle taking up seating space. I think we can handle these challenges. [grin]