SYLVIA WILKINSON
Wednesday, January 7, 7:00 p.m.
In Big Cactus, sixteen-year-old Benny Foushee, deemed by his father as going- 
nowhere-fast, embarks on a trip from North Carolina across the United States with his 84 year old Aunt Lucy, his dog Polar and his 1965 GMC pickup. Benny's quest, a challenge both overwhelming and irresistible, is to deliver Aunt Lucy to the big cactus, the giant saguaro in Arizona that she had dreamed of seeing since her own daddy put images of the American West into her teenage brain. Benny's roadway adventures with Aunt Lucy and her on-again, off-again mind, become intensified when he rescues a beautiful young runaway heiress who calls herself Tennessee, stranded alone beside the road with her father's broken Porsche. The foursome, stuffed in the cab of Benny's old pickup, push onward to the cactus: Aunt Lucy with hopes to bring home a story to overrule her braggart brother, Tendall; and Benny, smitten with first love, fearful he cannot bring home alive the old woman he left with. Author Sylvia Wilkinson, formerly a Motorsports Correspondent for AUTOWEEK, currently covers auto racing for The World Book Encyclopedia. Among her grants were National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Fellowships. BC (Before Computers) she did timing and scoring for Keke Rosberg, Bobby Rahal, Al Unser, Sr, Paul Newman, and others.
ALWYN FEATHERSTON
Thursday, January 8, 7:00 p.m.
Flamboyant baseball owner Bill Veeck always claimed that he came very close to integrating baseball in 1943 -- four years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947. Veeck's scheme was to buy the Philadelphia Phillies and stock the worst team in baseball with stars from the Negro League. His plan failed, but what if it had succeeded? This alternate history novel,The Making of Heroes: How the 1943 Black Phillies Broke the Color Line, proposes that Veeck's plan was allowed to play out. It creates a whole new dynamic for baseball's integration -- not just one lone hero, but a team of black stars. Familiar figures such as Veeck, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Babe Ruth all play significant roles. The result is a dramatic pennant race -- and an equally dramatic human story. Author Alwyn Featherston has been a professional sports writer for more than 40 years. While his primary focus has been college basketball, Featherston is also an avid baseball fan who was lucky enough to cover the rebirth of the famous Durham Bulls in 1980. He has met and interviewed several of the old Negro League stars that populate his book. Featherston, a graduate of Duke University, is the author of three previous books - two focused on basketball in North Carolina and a third about the World War II Battle of Mortain.
MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN
Monday, January 12, 7:00 p.m.
The stories in
Almost Famous Women don't seek to romanticize the women they depict, but rather resurrect them and explore the difficult choices that defined their lives. Crossdressing Standard Oil heiress Joe Carstairs bought an island and ruled it, while racing boats and womanizing. The conjoined Hilton twins were briefly a show business sensation. Beryl Markham wasn't just an aviatrix and author-she was also Africa's first female horse trainer and for awhile lived alone in a tent on a racetrack in Nairobi. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm were the nation's first integrated, all-girl swing band, and despite their overall excellence they ran into terrifying scenarios touring down south because of Jim Crow laws. Lord Byron's illegitimate daughter, Oscar Wilde's wild niece, and Edna St. Vincent Millay's sister also star in stories in the collection. Written with extraordinary grace and with seemingly intimate knowledge, the stories in Almost Famous Womenwill take readers around the world, into the past, and deep into the lives of women whose choices led them far outside society's typical lines. Author Megan Mayhew Bergmangrew up in Rocky Mount, NC and attended Wake Forest University. She has graduate degrees from Duke University and Bennington College. She is the author of
Birds of a Lesser Paradise.
JIM LEUTZE
Wednesday, January 14, 7:00 p.m.
In Entering North Carolina: Set Clocks Back 100 Years, Jim Leutze's wonderful work on the importance of reclaiming a progressive North Carolina, Leutze provides a clear picture of North Carolina's historic political ups and downs, a grim recital of the current reactionary takeover of state government and an urgent litany of specific steps to reverse course. It has happened before, he says, and it can and must happen again. Leutze will be in the store for a discuaaion and signing.
DANIEL WALLACE
Saturday, January 17, 11:00 a.m.
Join us for a Saturday morning pajama party with milk and cookies and a reading of The 
Cat's Pajamas by Daniel Wallace, a new children's book by the best-selling author of Big Fish. In The Cat's Pajamas we meet Louis Fellini, who lived in a time long ago when cats wore clothes, worked in cities, and went on picnics. But the cats dressed all the same, down to the shoes they wore. Louis Fellini was a different sort of cat. He wanted to be himself. But it isn't as easy as you might think to be yourself, especially when everyone else looks the same, when everybody else is a . . . copy cat. But Louis Fellini found a way. He was just that kind of cat. He was the cat's pajamas. Wallace will be in the store (in his pajamas, of course!) for a reading and to sign books.
MICHAEL J DEVALVE
Tuesday, January 20, 7:00 p.m.
InA Different Justice: Love and the Future of Criminal Justice Practice in America, Michael J. DeValve describes a criminal justice system in America does that doesn not work; and from the perspective of current criminological thought no ideas exist for how to truly fix it. The fault lies not with criminology as a discourse, but with us as individuals. What would justice look like if were predicated on love? Sacred sources, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, along with the thought of scholars like Erich Fromm, Karl Marx, Simone Weil, and Paolo Freire, are examined in detail for insights into the nature of love and its significance for social justice. Devalve will be in the store for a discussion and signing.
JUDY HOGAN AND JAKI SHELTON GREEN
Wednesday, January 21, 7:00 p.m.
Two of our favorite local poets will be in the store to read from their recent books and for a signing. Judy Hogan is a poet, former student of Greek philosophy at UC, Berkeley, environmental activist and founding editor of both Hyperion Journal and Carolina Wren Press. Her new book is a single epic poem entitled This River Jaki Shelton Green is a poet, creativity coach, teacher, and cultural activist. Her new book of poems isFeeding the Light.
STEPHEN HREN
Thursday, January 22, 7:00 p.m.
Set in the near future of roaming double-wides and alligator-infested potholes, Stephen Hren's ribald dystopian comedy, Max's Hungry Ghost, follows the story of a zany cast of characters as they struggle to make ends meet before being consumed by their engorged and wayward genitalia. Part science-fiction allegory, part pornographic fairy tale, best read naked with a strong pina colada relaxing in the bean patch. Hren is a Durham author and an earthonaut exploring inner and outer reaches on an ancient earth overrun by a bipedal adolescent juggernaut ~ his beautiful and wondrous brothers and sisters. He will be in the shop to read and sign books.
SHALOM GOLDMAN
Tuesday, January 27, 7:00 p.m.
In Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land 
Shalom Goldman, Professor of Religious Studies and Middle eastern Studies at Duke, takes the standard histories of Zionism to task for having depicted it almost exclusively as a Jewish political movement, one in which Christians do not appear except as antagonists. In the highly original Zeal for Zion, Shalom Goldman makes the case for a wider and more inclusive history, one that brings the substantial Christian involvement with Zionism--most recently by American evangelical Protestants--into the light. Christian Zionism has a long history and has been embraced at various times by Catholics and Protestants, liberals and conservatives, reformers and traditionalists. Zeal for Zionplaces this vital movement within the larger history of Zionism, making the story of Zionism all the more rich and complex.
PENELOPE EASTON
Wednesday, January 28, 7:00 p.m.
When Penelope S. Easton, a young, vigorous, sensible World War II veteran with a Masters in Public Health Nutrition, embarked on a journey to Territorial Alaska to serve as the dietary consultant for the Alaskan Health Department, she could not anticipate the deplorable health-related conditions that she would find. Easton observed the effects of measles and tuberculosis epidemics, educational philosophies that opted to teach Native children only in English, a scarcity of imported food supplies, and the derision of native foodways. Learning to Like Muktuk: An Unlikely Explorer in Territorial Alaska, draws on Easton's detailed field reports, photographs, letters, and other documents, some of which may be the only remaining descriptions of native Alaskan foodways from the period between the end of WWII and statehood. Easton will be in the store for a discussion and signing.
BETSY POLK AND MAGGIE ELLIS CHORTAS
Thursday, January 29, 7:00 p.m.
Betsy Polk and Maggie Chotas have learned something powerful. When women work together, they discover a level of support, flexibility, confidence, accountability, and freedom to be themselves that they rarely find in other work relationships. Drawing on their own 12-year partnership and from interviews with 125 women business partners, in Power Through Partnership: How Women Lead Better Together Polk and Chotas demolish the myths that keep women from collaborating and offer advice for handling a host of potential challenges.This groundbreaking book shows that when women team up - combining complementary skills, channeling their egos into the partnership, and encouraging each other - they can work as full equals to achieve something that's exponentially greater than each woman alone. The authors will be in the shop to discuss and sign books.
Learn more about these and all of our upcoming events by visiting
the events calendar on our web site. 
