Author Event

Author Discussion & Signing with Val Bruech

Title: Judicious Murder

Date: August 5, 2018

Day: Sunday

Time: 2:00 PM

Description

Defense attorney Susan Marshfield's life is spent challenging prosecutors, charming juries, and liberating her clients, most of whom are attired in orange jumpsuits. When her former trial partner and mentor, Sam Kendall, now a judge, is bludgeoned to death in his chambers, she catapults into the murder investigation with the same take no prisoners mentality that fuels her courtroom victories. Is the murderer one of the hostile witnesses or bitter prosecutors Sam bested in his long legal career? Why did he launder 150 thousand dollars through a secret account? Susan's quest leads her to reopen a murder case she and Sam lost at trial. She becomes convinced their client, now in the penitentiary, is innocent. Did the perpetrator in that case murder Sam too? When Susan forces the killer into an endgame she becomes the object of a crazed pursuit and finds herself in a midnight battle of wits and cunning with an opponent she unknowingly trusted far too much.

Val Bruech

Val grew up in Chicago where she rode her bike to the library to check out mysteries.  After law school, the opportunity to practice criminal defense gave her first-hand experience with wrongful verdicts, pathological liars and unsolved homicides. All of these themes are woven together in her novel, Judicious Murder. In the course of representing the unjustly accused for more than twenty years in Oregon and Illinois, she learned that the true story often originates from the darkest chamber of the soul.

When she’s not writing she’s biking around Portland, Oregon, hiking in the Columbia River Gorge or swimming. Fur, the feline in Judicious Murder, is modeled after Izzy. At the shelter, Izzy had a red “x” on her cage which meant it was to be her last day on the planet. That was sixteen years ago. She and Val have lived happily together since.
 

Valerie’s been published in Oregon Coast Magazine and took first place in the Portland Japanese Garden writing contest. She’s a member of Willamette Writers where she served as secretary for two year

Author Discussion & Signing with Val Bruech

Title: Judicious Murder

Date: August 5, 2018

Day: Sunday

Time: 2:00 PM

Title: Courageous Women of the Vietnam War: Medics, Journalists, Survivors, and More.

Date: October 14, 2018

Day: Sunday

Time: 2:00 - 4:00 PM

Description

One of just a handful of women reporting on the Vietnam War, Kate Webb was captured by North Vietnamese troops and presumed dead--until she emerged from the jungle waving a piece of white parachute material after 23 days in captivity. Le Ly Hayslip enjoyed a peaceful early childhood in a Vietnamese farming village before war changed her life forever. Brutalized by all sides, she escaped to the United States, where she eventually founded two humanitarian organizations. Lynda Van Devanter was an idealistic young nurse in 1969 when a plane carrying her and 350 men landed in South Vietnam. Her harrowing experiences working in a combat zone hospital would later serve as inspiration for the TV series China Beach. 

In these pages readers meet these and other brave women and girls who served in life-threatening roles as medics, journalists, resisters, and revolutionaries in the conflict in Vietnam. Author Kathryn J. Atwood presents a clear introduction to each of five chronological sections, guiding readers through the social and political turmoil that spanned two decades and the tenure of five US presidents. Each woman's story unfolds in a suspenseful, engaging way, incorporating plentiful original source materials, quotes, and photographs. Resources for further study, source notes and a bibliography, and a helpful map and glossary round out this exploration of one of modern history's most divisive wars, making it an invaluable addition to any student's or history buff's bookshelf.

About the Author

Kathryn J. Atwood is the author of Women Heroes of World War I, Women Heroes of World War II, and Women Heroes of World War II--Pacific Theater as well as the editor of Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent. She has contributed to The Historian; War, Literature, and the Arts; and the Des Plaines River Anthology. Visit her online at www.kathrynatwood.com. Diane Carlson Evans was a captain in the US Army Nurse Corps from 1966 to 1972, serving in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. She is the founder and president of the Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation and speaks nationally about the experience of women in wartime.

Author Discussion & Signing:

Date:  August 4, 2018

Day: Saturday

Time: 2:00 - 4:00 PM

Author: Julia Buckley

About the Author

Julia Buckley is the author of the Undercover Dish Mysteries and the Writer's Apprentice Mysteries. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the Chicago Writer's Association. She has taught high school English for twenty-nine years.

Title: A Dark and Twisting Path (3rd Writer's Apprentice Mystery)

Description

Writer's apprentice Lena London is happily working on a new collaboration with her idol and bestselling suspense novelist and friend Camilla Graham, but her joy is short-lived when a dark cloud descends upon the quaint town of Blue Lake, Indiana...

Lena's best friend, Allison, is in a panic. On a walk in the woods by her home, Allison discovers the body of her mail carrier, an argumentative man who recently had a falling out with Allison's husband. Lena quickly realizes that Allison has nothing to worry about as the murder weapon points to a different suspect altogether: Lena's embattled boyfriend, Sam West.

Sam was cleared of his wife's murder when she was found alive, and now someone is trying to make him look guilty again. Surveillance video of a break-in at his house shows a shadowy figure trying to incriminate him by stealing the weapon from his desk. Lena and Camilla work on a suspect list, but a threatening note and a violent intrusion at Graham House prove that the devious killer has decided to write them into the plot.

Date: August 12, 2018

Day: Sunday

Time: 2:00-4:00 PM

Author: Paul Teodo

Paul Teodo is 61. He was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, very close to where he currently serves as Chief Operating Office of Holy Cross Hospital. "The Cross" is an inner city hospital serving indigents run by a dedicated group of nuns from Lithuania. Paul's parents Pietro and Graziella owned an Italian Deli, and he has two great sons - Paul Jr. and Peter.

Title: PASTAMAN:  

       Chicago in the '60s was a hard place to be for young Tony Tormenti. Racial strife, political corruption, and changing social values have torn apart his world. He is assaulted by conflicting messages from his Catholic school, his damaged drunken father, and the black spot he acknowledges stains his soul. "Pastaman" is a coming-of-age story reverberating in the rhythms of a great city in turmoil, reflected through the characters living in Tony's south side Italian neighborhood. Tony's life is a painful journey from the depths of despair to miraculous recovery and redemption.

Author: John Copenhaver

Title: Dodging and Burning

Date: September 29, 2018

Day: Saturday

Time: 2:00-4:00 PM

Title: Dodging and Burning

Description

In the summer of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely twelve-year-old tomboy, mourning the loss of her brother, Robbie, who was declared missing in the Pacific. She tries to piece together his life by rereading his favorite pulp detective story "A Date with Death" and spending time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, in Royal Oak, VA. One unforgettable August day, Jay leads Ceola and Bunny to a stretch of woods where he found a dead woman, but when they arrive, the body is gone. They soon discover a local woman named Lily Vellum is missing and begin to piece together the threads of her murder, starting with the photograph Jay took of her abandoned body. As Ceola gets swept up playing girl detective, Bunny becomes increasingly skeptical of Jay, and begins her own investigation into the connection between Jay and Lily. She discovers a series of clues that place doubt on Jay's story about the photograph. She journeys to Washington, D.C., where she is forced to confront the brutal truth about her dear friend--a discovery that triggers a series of events that will bring tragedy to Jay and decades of estrangement between her and Ceola.

Author: John Copenhaver

Background 

I grew up in southwestern Virginia and graduated with my BA from Davidson College, MA in literature from Bread Loaf School of English, and a MFA in fiction from GMU, where I served as Executive Editor of the literary magazine Phoebe. Currently, I chair 7-12 English Department at Flint Hill, a college preparatory school, outside of Washington, DC, where I live with my partner Jeff and two ridiculously photogenic dogs, Winky and Roxy. (Really, the camera just loves them!)

Writing for me is about chasing ghosts and peeling off masks. I have Hanna-Barbera to thank for that. As a kid, I would dash home from school, grab a packet of Pop-Tarts and a bottle of Mountain Dew, and hurry to the living room as that all-too-familiar jingle announced my favorite show on TV—Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? I loved this show with such furor, such unadulterated pleasure. I loved it because Scooby and Shaggy were believers. They believed in the Creeper and the Snow Ghost, the Miner 49er and the Witchdoctor even though time and time again, the mask would be ripped off, and the gloriously paranormal would be reduced to some schmuck in a suit.

I wanted to believe in ghosts too. My father died when I was eight, and I was left with only an outline of a man, a phantom. Out of that void burgeoned my desire to write. My early compulsion to tell stories sprung from a need to fill in his outline, to uncover who he was. Throughout adolescence and my twenties, I continued chasing his ghost. During this time I married a woman, began teaching high school English, and established a conventional straight existence. But the more I pursued him, the more I realized it wasn't my father I was hoping to booby-trap and unveil, but myself. Then, much like hapless Scooby and Shaggy, I ensnared my own ghost and ripped the mask off—I came out of the closet and started living and writing truer to myself.

Now, instead of ripping off goofy latex masks, I pursue my phantoms as psychological metaphors, removing layers of deception and misdirection to unveil the truth about my characters.

Discussion & Author Signing with Peter Stark

Date: July 7, 2018

Day: Saturday

Time: 2:00 PM

Title: Young Washington: How Wilderness and War

          Forged America's Founding Father 

Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father 

Description

A new, brash, and unexpected view of the president we thought we knew, from the bestselling author of Astoria

Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Na ve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War--a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution.

With powerful narrative drive and vivid writing, Young Washington recounts the wilderness trials, controversial battles, and emotional entanglements that transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader. Enduring terrifying summer storms and subzero winters imparted resilience and self-reliance, helping prepare him for what he would one day face at Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to set aside his own relentless ambitions and stand in solidarity with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating military strategy with British and colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. And thwarted in his obsessive, youthful love for one woman, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships.

By weaving together Washington's harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historical context, Young Washington offers new insights into the dramatic years that shaped the man who shaped a nation.

Author: Peter Stark

Description

Peter Stark is an adventure and exploration writer and historian. Born in Wisconsin, he studied English and anthropology at Dartmouth College, took a master’s in journalism from the University of Wisconsin, and headed off to the remote spots of the world writing magazine articles and books. With a home base in Missoula, Montana, he and his family periodically have lived abroad for a year, most recently in a small town in Northeast Brazil. A long-time correspondent for Outside magazine, Stark’s articles and essays have also appeared in Smithsonian, The New Yorker

Title: Graceland Cemetery in Chicago: A Sherlockian Midst the Tombstone

Author: Brenda Rossini

Date: July 8, 2018

Day: Sunday

Time: 2-4:00 PM

Brenda Rossini is renowned Chicago attorney and the local Matriarch of Chicago Sherlochians (or so I've said.) You are in for a marvelous presentation on one of the most elaborate cemeteries in Chicago and, maybe, the Nation. Ms. Rossini will elaborate on the tombstones and the remains of some of the greats in Chicago history. Also, she will tie in what all this means to a Chicago Sherlockian as she wanders through this little piece of heaven on earth.

Graceland Cemetery is one of Chicago's most outstanding memorial grounds. It's like a little town with a private lake and mausoleums lining its streets. The funerary architecture is spectacular. Here lie Chicago's deceased: baseball players, boxers, ballerinas, fire victims, detectives, politicians, department store owners and inventors. They passed through nature and on to eternity but not without a pawky connection to Sherlock Holmes. 

Author Signing: Jack Fredrickson

Title: Tagged for Murder (7th Dek Elstrom Mystery)

Sunday

July 15, 2018

2:00 PM

Description

When the man who's hired Dek Elstrom disappears, the private investigator's search for his missing client unearths some shocking findings.

The dead man is found spread-eagled on the top of a box car on an abandoned rail siding. He's dressed in a $2000 suit, yet half his teeth are rotten and his skin is bad. Who was he ... and how did he end up there?

When he's offered an exorbitant fee to photograph the scene, PI Dek Elstrom doesn't ask many questions. But his photos reveal something surprising: there's a witness to the murder, a tagger who's returned to the scene to paint what he saw. His work quickly disappears. What is it that the mysterious graffiti artist wants the world to know?

Then a second body shows up - and the case takes a shocking new twist ...

Description

A former Library Trustee and current President of the Friends of the Hinsdale Public Library, mystery writer Jack Fredrickson is a delightfully enthusiastic advocate for public libraries. If you’ve featured any of his books in your newsletter or on your website, you may have even received a hand-written note of thanks. (Though, given his sense of humor and penchant for self-deprecation, you may have mistaken it for an apology.)

In honor of Booklist’s Mystery Month, I sat down for a “quick” chat with Jack, whose latest Dek Elstrom mystery Hunting Sweetie Rose came out this spring and is just as quirky and enjoyable as its predecessors.

It’s not a huge surprise that Jack became a writer, some of his strongest and earliest memories are of checking out armloads of books from the Park Ridge Public Library. (He even earned his Boy Scout Troop’s very first merit badge—for reading.) Once he was old enough to head into downtown Chicago on his own, he’d take a ten-dollar bill he got for Christmas and case Kroch’s and Brentano’s for hours, plotting which 35-cent paperbacks to take come. He’d start reading on the train and not remove his nose from his books until school started.

Reading remained a passionate hobby, but writing was limited to a couple of business books he wrote in his post-MBA days. (To read more about Cost Reduction in the Office and Designing the Cost-Effective Office, go to the cheekily named “Sleep Aids” page on his website.) After working in management consulting and industrial engineering, Jack ran a successful office furniture business. He retired early and gave himself three years to be irresponsible. Scuba lessons, Appalachian banjo-building lessons, and a string of other adventures followed.

Up for anything, Jack agreed to take a writing class at a local community college with a friend. The friend was not aware that Jack already had a manuscript in a drawer, a story that had been the reason Jack would sneak into the office early or offer to lock the place up at night. The positive feedback he received from this workshop gave him the courage to submit a short story to Ellery Queen magazine. Months later (April Fool’s day, actually) he bought himself a straw hat from Target when he learned it would be published.

Jack continued taking classes and finally went to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, where an instructor read the first draft of The Gateville Explosions (later to be published as A Safe Place for Dying) and suggested that he send it to an agent. That first agent didn’t bite, but the book did eventually catch the eye of an editor at St. Martin’s. The rest is history. (With a long interlude including lunch at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station, a scrambled phone call to his son in which some lady from New York left a message about Jack looking for a place to die in New York, and a trudge to the Flatiron Building. Get Jack to tell you about it sometime.)

Thus, Dek Elstrom, the turret-dwelling, hypocrisy-hating, ex-wife-pining, Ho-Ho-eating former P.I. was released upon the reading public. About Dek’s destiny, “I don’t want to know,” Jack says. “I only know about 10 minutes in advance what’s going to happen.” Which is probably a good thing. Part of the charm of this series is Dek’s casual befuddlement. I think of the Dek Elstrom books as Elmore Leonard on good behavior. They’re not quite cozies, not quite capers. Easily recommended to fans of Lawrence Shames or G.M. Malliet, the characters and irreverent sense of humor are the big draw to this enjoyable series. Now that I think about it, the same can be said of the author.