Book Launch: Reclaiming the Apple by Adrienne Amundsen

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Reclaiming the Apple: Poems from Afghanistan by Adrienne Amundsen

Adrienne Amundsen

Saturday, January 25th, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

We have an extra launch event for you this month! Please do not miss this extraordinary celebration. Profits go to support Afghans 4 Tomorrow, a local NGO that supports women’s rights and girls’ education.

Poetic, journalistic, a call to transformation, Adrienne Amundsen’s new collection of poetry, Reclaiming the Apple: Poems from Afghanistan, will take you on a journey in which tragedy becomes hope, journey that enlightens and enriches.

Her poetry describes a country devastated by war, but people determined and resilient in impossible circumstances. Both Afghans and American soldiers are depicted in this journey  into a modern war zone. Adrienne’s poems transport us with their musicality, their sensuality,their mythic span and their political passion. She is mother, lover,“one of the Rock People.” She is Cassandra—the towers of Troy burning behind her—prophesying catastrophe. She is in love with the world she laments. Her poems are full of the energy of growing things—vines, desire, women’s bellies, and furious at endless wars, at “machines parading as men”, at “Gaia’s ruined body.”

Hers is a poetry that excites the senses, opens the heart, raises blood pressure. Beginning with song, ending with prayer, we the readers are with her all the way.

“Adrienne’s images are fierce and soft, alluring and alarming. They ask nothing and everything from the reader. They (more…)

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Book Launch: Dream Affimals by Elaine Bond

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Dream Affimals, Affirmations + Animals, Inspiration to Fulfill Your Wildest Dreams  by Elaine Bond

Elaine Miller Bond

Saturday, January 11th, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

What if a puma could spring from the grass and motivate you to ”Get more pounce to the ounce?” Or what if an electric eel could somehow zap you with the mindset to ”Be positive”? Such is the concept behind Dream Affimals–that animals can uplift your spirits, simply by doing what comes naturally. Forty animals share their wisdom in this book, from the snow leopard to the honeybee to the frillfin goby (a small jumping fish). And their affirmations come alive through beautiful illustrations and heartening, well-researched tales of the wild, like the loggerhead sea turtle, which hatches in a cramped pit dug into a Florida beach, then scampers by moonlight into the surf. The sea brings possibilities and the hope of reaching deep water, the Atlantic’s hiding place for tiny reptiles starting life with a journey covering thousands of miles. Intrepid little turtles and all the animals in this book make us feel good about our wildest dreams, as reachable, perhaps, as the nearest ocean.

”Animals can teach us so much, whether they are caring for their young, exhibiting altruism, communicating with each other, or just surviving. Elaine Miller Bond’s Dream Affimals is an inspiration and a lesson–from all creatures great and small to all readers young and old.”

—Michael Markarian, Chief Program and Policy Officer of The Humane Society of the United States (more…)

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Book Launch: One American Woman Fifty Italian Men by Lynne Ashdown

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  One American Woman Fifty Italian Men by Lynne Ashdown

Lynne Ashdown

Saturday, December 14th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

 When Lynne Ashdown, her new lover, and more than fifty Italian male cyclists departed Italy in June of 1990, no one had yet ventured into the long-closed reaches of Eastern Europe since the falling of the Iron Curtain more than forty years before. They would be cycling almost a thousand miles from Verona, across Northern Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Warsaw, in just ten days. Ashdown hadn’t realized she would be the only woman cycling with the fifty-four men.
One American Woman Fifty Italian Men tells not only of a sweeping journey of adventure, romantic disaster, and cultural collision, but also of a revelation of Ashdown’s identity, forged by her will in the constant pain of trying to (more…)
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Ferry Plaza Book Party: The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK by Mark Shaw

Mark Shaw

Monday, November 11th, 2013 || 6pm
Book Passage || San Francisco
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Focusing for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn’t killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory in his latest book The Poison Patriarch that leads directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby (Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer); Ruby’s attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.

Shaw addresses these tantalizing questions: Why, shortly after his brother’s death, did a grief-stricken RFK tell a colleague, “I thought they would get one of us . . . I thought it would be me”? Why was Belli, an attorney with almost no defense experience (but proven ties to the Mafia), chosen as Jack Ruby’s attorney? How does Belli’s Mafia connection call into question his legal strategy, which ultimately led to the Ruby’s first-degree murder conviction and death sentence? What was Joseph Kennedy’s relationship to organized crime? And how was his insistence that JFK appoint RFK as attorney general tantamount to signing the president’s death warrant? (more…)

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Book Launch: Bolinas Bongo by Nicola Trwst

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Bolinas Bongo by Nicola Trwst

Nicola Trwst

Saturday, November 9th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

The second book in Nicola Trwst’s Briana Kaleigh mystery series, Bolinas Bongo is set in our own Bay Area. Reporter Briana Kaleigh finds the body of a man while investigating a series of shark attacks. However this man was not done in by a shark, but by a serial killer on the loose in … Marin County! Briana sees the opportunity for a good story and tries to investigate, only to be blocked by local detective, Dusty Arkansas, with whom she has previously worked. Unfortunately, before long Dusty himself gets captured by the deranged killer, leaving Briana to find the detective before he ends up with the same grisly fate as the rest of the victims. (more…)

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Book Launch: The Whale Song Translation by Howard Pines

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  The Whale Song Translation, by Howard Pines

Saturday, October 12th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

The Whale Song Translation is a story about sound—sounds of language, sounds of songs, and the sounds that kill . . .

When the Navy’s controversial sonar experiments begin to destroy Maui’s whales, an unlikely hero emerges. Inspired by his mentor’s paradigm-busting challenge to open a communications channel with other big-brained species, acoustics professor David Dmitri begins analyzing the songs of humpback whales. The quest to decode their mysterious language leads him to an astonishing revelation. With more proof, Dmitri realizes he could rally public opinion and stanch the bloodshed. But as his team prepares to launch a voyage of discovery in the Straits of Lahaina, others are determined to stop him—whatever the consequences.
Come for drinks and snacks and a celebration of sound and story.
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Book Launch: Toni Piccinini

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  The Goodbye Year, by Toni Piccinini

Toni Piccinini

Saturday, September 14th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Most of you have graduated high school and “left the nest” to live on your own and many of you have kids of their own who will one day do the same, if they have not already. Toni Piccinini’s new book, The Goodbye Year, is about dealing with that last year of kids living at home. From college essay writing to seeing the now-adult son or daughter off on their first day of college, Toni’s book talks about letting go and re-learning how to live her own life without kids around the house. It is as helpful to sons and daughters as it is to fathers and mothers, as it provides an interesting perspective on the issue to children while at the same time giving valuable insights to parents. So join us for the family-style celebration of Toni’s long-awaited new book. (more…)

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Book Party: Wandering in Paris

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK PARTY:  Wandering in Paris, Luminaries and Love in the City of Light

Saturday, August 17th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

“At last I have come into a dreamland …” famed Abolitionist and American author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, once said of Paris.

There is, indeed, a dreamlike quality to Paris. A crossroads of time, culture and personality, it seems a place where the layers that separate us from our imaginings become permeable. The glamour of the past and the promise of the future, merge in the present moment,  just as Gil Pender, the aspiring writer-hero of Woody Allen’s 2011 romantic comedy, Midnight in Paris, discovers. Gil encounters Alice B. Toklas, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and more, in his nostalgic meanderings.

A group of writers gathered on the Left Bank in September 2012. They lost themselves in the food, the fashion, the art, the music, the architecture, café society, and the many faces of love. But sometimes it goes dark in the City of Light. Our writers also had to contend with Parisian bureaucracy, intercultural tension, French engineering, and what lurks beneath the City’s very fashionable surface. (more…)

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Book Launch: My Chemical Mountain by Corina Vacco

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  My Chemical Mountain by Corina Vacco

Corina Vacco

Saturday, July 13, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

What is the secret to a great modern day young adult novel? Let’s ask Corina. Based on a real town in western New York, Corina Vacco‘s fierce first novel is already receiving rave reviews.

Jason and his friends rage against the noxious pollution that suffocates their town and despise those responsible for it. At the same time, they embrace the danger of their industrial wasteland and boast about living on the edge. Despite their apparent rebellion, they desperately struggle to make a change to their surroundings, but how will they do it? And what will it cost?

Corina Vacco felt compelled to write about toxic towns after reading an article alleging that hundreds of thousands of children and teens throughout the United States attend schools built on or near dangerously polluted sites. She found the inspiration for this book while living in Western New York, where she heard (more…)

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Book Launch: Beyond Sugar Shock by Connie Bennett

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Beyond Sugar Shock: The 6-Week Plan to Break Free of Your Sugar Addiction & Get Slimmer, Sexier & Sweeter by Connie Bennett

Connie Bennett

Saturday, April 13th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

Sugar and carb junkies, get help to free yourself from your potentially deadly addiction with The Sugar Liberator Connie Bennett, author of the international bestseller Beyond Sugar Shock: The 6-Week Plan to Break Free of Your Sugar Addiction & Get Slimmer, Sexier & Sweeter.

Beyond Sugar Shock has been praised by a Who’s Who of health and empowerment experts, including Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. Christiane Northrup, and Dr. Daniel Amen. Connie’s second book is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Connie’s acclaimed bestseller, Sugar Shock! How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life—And How You Can Get Back on Track, which has been praised by America’s Favorite Doctor, Dr. Mehmet Oz.”

In this Book Passage program, Connie—a charismatic transformational speaker, journalist, life coach, health coach, and self-mocking former sugar addict—will give her insights and simple starter secrets to:

  • Activate the positive power of procrastinating. (This is a simple tool to calm your cravings.)
  • Dodge the #1 mistake nearly everyone makes when quitting or reducing sweets. (more…)
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