Author Event with Angeline Boulley
Join us Saturday 6/21 for a special Author Event with Angeline Boulley, author of New York Times bestsellers Firekeeper’s Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed. Audrey and her BANNED Book Club will lead a discussion with Angeline Boulley about her book, Firekeeper’s Daughter, engaging in what is sure to be an educational and empowering talk regarding censorship & more. This event is open to the public, so spread the word, and join us at Glendora Bookshop for an inspiring afternoon!
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Angeline Boulley, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is a storyteller who writes about her Ojibwe community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She is a former Director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education.
Angeline lives in southwest MI, but her home will always be on Sugar Island. Firekeeper's Daughter is her debut novel, and was an instant #1 NYT Bestseller. https://angelineboulley.com/about-angeline-boulley.html
Author Event with Christy Prahl
Join us Saturday 7/19 to welcome Christy Prahl who will share some of her poetry as well as her process with us!
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We Are Reckless by Christy Prahl 1st Runner-Up for Chicago Reader's Best New Poetry Collection by a Chicagoan, 2023!
"These poems boldly ask how we define a self, a marriage, and a family via eerie and frightening worlds. We Are Reckless is a dazzling debut." -Hadara Bar-Nadav, author of The New Nudity
"I love the wild curiosity of this book, its attention to the off-kilter, the liminal, the often unseen and unacknowledged. I love the way nothing is beneath the notice of these searching, pulsing, vibrantly alive poems." -Kasey Jueds, author of Keeper and The ThicketAn Illinois Arts Council grant recipient and multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, my work has appeared in a host of national and international journals. I have enjoyed residencies at both Ragdale and The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow and split my time between Chicago and rural Michigan. I am the founder and director of the PenRF reading series. https://christyprahl.wixsite.com/christy-prahl
Author Event with Meagan Francis
Join us Saturday 8/16 for our Author Event with Meagan Francis! Writer, podcaster and mom, we are excited for Meagan to share her latest work with us, The Last Parenting Book You’ll Ever Need: How to Let Your Kids Go and Embrace What’s Next. Come and enjoy a reading by the author, discussion, book signings & more in August.
about the book…
Your guide to celebrating and loving your kids more than ever in the weeks, months, and years before they begin their adult lives
We read the parenting books. We cheer from the sidelines. We grow accustomed to the joys and pains of raising toddlers, kids, tweens, and teens. And then, before we know it, it's our kids' last first day of school, the last time we'll watch them take the field, or the last night they sleep at home before heading off to their next adventures. A season of our lives as moms is ending, and we may be mourning its passing. And yet, while our kids still need us--in some ways, more than ever--this stage can also be an opportunity for personal transformation.
Author Meagan Francis understands the mixed feelings that come along with this stage. As a mom of five kids ages teen to young adult, she's been blogging and podcasting about motherhood for more than twenty-five years while going from five kids under her roof to just one. In The Last Parenting Book You'll Ever Read, Francis will take you by the hand and lead you through the final stage of "active" parenting, as your teenagers prepare to step into the world...and you explore what it means to step back into yourself.
The Last Parenting Book You'll Ever Read is about coming to terms with the many endings that moms of teenagers experience--but more than that, it's about all the new beginnings on the horizon, and how moms can still hold their families close while letting them go. With compassion for the big feelings that accompany big transitions, Francis helps readers harness some of the mothering energy they've been directing toward their children and redirect it back toward nurturing themselves. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-last-parenting-book-you-ll-ever-read-how-we-let-our-kids-go-and-embrace-what-s-next-meagan-francis/21709100?ean=9781464225161&next=t
about the author…
I’ve been writing professionally since 2002, placing hundreds of articles and essays in newsstand magazines and websites like Parenting, Good Housekeeping, Parents, Midwest Living, The Washington Post, NBCNews.com, NYTimes.com, and many more. I moved into digital publishing in 2005 as a pioneer in the “mommy blogging” landscape, and was an early podcaster on home and family life, starting in 2012.
I’ve cohosted The Mom Hour podcast, which has been downloaded over 20 million times, since 2015. My solo podcast and Substack publication The Kettle reach thousands of loyal listeners and readers each week, with cozy conversations about living wisely and well in our manic modern world. And my new book, The Last Parenting Book You’ll Ever Read, focuses on the transitional period between the “arms full” and “hands free” stages of parenting.
I live with my new husband Eric, and our large blended family of adult kids are a constant presence in our home. While I have resided in Southwest Michigan for the past fifteen years, Northern Michigan – specifically the Upper Peninsula – is like a second home to me.
I love nature, books, music, sharing stories and connecting over tea. I can’t wait to get to know you. https://meaganfrancis.com/about/
Author Event with Hillel Levin
Join us Saturday 9/13 for our Author Event with Hillel Levin - journalist, true crime writer, and author of several books including his latest Submerged: How a Cold Case Condemned an Innocent Man to Hide a Family's Darkest Secret. Hillel will be read from his latest work, share insights into his process and be available for book signings right here at Glendora Bookshop.
about the book…
In March 1993, sixteen-year-old Rayna Rison was abducted outside the La Porte, Indiana, veterinary hospital where she worked. A month later, her body was found submerged under tree limbs in a rural pond. Police targeted her brother-in-law, Ray McCarty, as the prime suspect. Although a grand jury indicted him for the murder in 1998, prosecutors later dropped the charges. Then in 2013, county officers arrested Jason Tibbs, Rayna's middle-school boyfriend, convicted him, and sentenced him to forty years in prison.
After a two-year investigation, drawing on dozens of interviews and more than a thousand pages of police files, author Hillel Levin completes the case against McCarty, following clues and leads that detectives overlooked. In the process, he reveals startling new information about the killer's murder weapon and accomplices, and uncovers the politics and misconduct that enabled the prosecutor to convict Jason Tibbs. Although cold cases are celebrated in popular culture, Jason's trial shows the perils they can pose for innocent defendants.
At the heart of Submerged is the tragic story of Rayna Rison, an exceptional young woman with a promising future whose family and justice system failed to keep her from harm.https://www.hillellevin.com/
about the author…
Hillel Levin’s reporting has appeared in The Nation, New York magazine, Monthly Detroit magazine, Metropolitan Detroit magazine, and Chicago magazine. He was executive editor of Metropolitan Detroit and editor of Chicago magazine. In 1984, he wrote Grand Delusions: The Cosmic Career of John De Lorean (Viking). In 2004, he wrote When Corruption Was King (Carroll & Graf) with Robert Cooley about Cooley’s central role in the FBI investigation of mob influence on Chicago’s courts and political system. “Area Two,” his Playboy article on Chicago police misconduct, co-written with John Conroy, won a 2011 Headline Club Peter Lisagor Award. His docudrama play, Assassination Theater, was produced in Chicago in 2015 and based on his Playboy article, “How the Outfit Killed JFK.” His 2010 book In With the Devil (St. Martin’s Press), which he wrote with James Keene, was about Keene's undercover mission to crack a serial killer in a federal prison and was the basis for the Apple TV+ series Black Bird. https://www.hillellevin.com/about
Author Event with Rekha S. Rajan
Glendora Bookshop welcomes back Rekha S. Rajan (author of the This is Music series and Can You Dance Like a Peacock?) here with her latest children’s book This is Ballet! Bring the kids down for this family friendly affair and be ready to move! After story time, we’ll open the floor to discussion, and Rekha will offer signings for anyone who wants to purchase a copy of one of her books. Hope to see you there!
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Dr. Rekha S. Rajan is an author of over 15 books (nonfiction and fiction) for kids and adults (and more to come!). Her books have been listed on multiple BEST BOOKS list, received numerous starred reviews and been #1 new releases and editor's picks on Amazon. Her audio narration and musical instrumentation for the THIS IS MUSIC board book series were named best children's recordings from ALA/ALSC 2023. Her book AMAZING LANDMARKS is a finalist for the 2024 Rhode Island Children's book award.
Rekha is a classically trained opera singer, has performed in numerous musicals, and plays the mridangam (a drum from South India), the piano, banjo, ukulele, djembe, bongos, recorder, and a lot of other instruments.
She has been teaching young children, helping them understand the world around them through STEAM activities, projects and books. As a professor, she has taught classes on arts, education, grant writing, evaluation. She is also the editor for the Journal of General Music Education with the National Association for Music Education. https://rekhasrajan.com/about-me
Author Event with Wendy Simons
Join us Saturday 3/22 @ 2pm EST right here at Glendora Bookshop to welcome author Wendy Simons who will be sharing from her latest novel, Losing August. After the reading, we’ll open the floor to discussion, and Wendy will offer signings for anyone who wants to purchase a copy of one of her books. Hope to see you there!
Wendy S. Simons is a fifth-generation daughter of the Great Lakes. Growing up on the southern shores of Lake Michigan, it’s no wonder Simons has an affinity with water. She has said it seems she can’t write a story without some element of water playing a roll, more often than not therapeutic in nature.
Wendy’s first novel, A Second Look, is available now, along with Stone by Stone. Losing August is releasing March 22nd of this year, with Weeding Out the Lies launching later in 2025. Both novels share a common location with Wendy’s first novel in the fictional lakefront town of Edgewater, Michigan.
Fall in Love with a Local Author
Join us for Fall in Love with a Local Author, our first multiple-author event, on February 15. Speed date an author, enjoy refreshments, signup for one of our fabulous book clubs, and meet-cute with your community. This is a family friendly event, so bring the kids! This lovely group of authors will be presenting a landscape of varying genres, from children's to poetry, photography to contemporary fiction, so there's sure to be something for everyone. Hope to see you there!
Author Event with John McShea
An entertaining account of an active retiree taking a solo and self-supported 15-day bike trip around Lake Michigan, starting from and finishing in Chicago. Mcshea averaged more than 75 miles a day, sleeping in motels each night and eating at unique restaurants along the way. McShea also raised money for the Danny Did Epilepsy Foundation, which provides seizure monitors at night for kids afflicted with epilepsy. Each day became a chapter in this inspiring story of crazy weather, fascinating people and beautiful cycling routes.
John McShea spent his career in financial services. Post-retirement, he built a second and third career in sales consulting and professional acting in film, TV and commercials. All along he has been an avid cyclist, exploring numerous routes and places across the United States.
Author Event with Zito Madu
Zito Madu is a Nigerian-born writer who grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He’s been a narrative director at several creative agencies, a sportswriter, a soccer player, and an engineering student. His writing as been appeared in Plough Quarterly, Victory Journal, GQ Magazine, the New Republic, and the Nation. He lives in Brooklyn.
“Throughout the first year of the covid pandemic, my girlfriend and I mainlined season after season of the genial PBS travel program “Rick Steves’ Europe,” seeking a habitable elsewhere in its images of crowded market squares and ornate palazzos. Nigerian American writer Zito Madu’s experience of the era was altogether different, thanks to an artist’s residency that brought him to Venice in the fall of 2020, a time when the city had been largely emptied out, especially of the tourists who normally drift along its canals.
In this memoir published earlier this year, that evacuated milieu becomes an occasion for Madu’s elegant meditations on alienation, especially from his own family but also from the overwhelmingly White world he moves through. His prose has the smooth and constant warmth of blood in a vein, a fluidity so steady it sometimes seems no different from stillness. Though Madu’s narrative culminates in a shockingly surreal sequence that is unlike anything I have read in a memoir, I will remember “The Minotaur at Calle Lanza” for its calmer moments: an African priest’s service in an otherwise Italian Catholic church or the quiet labor of a glass blower, a man content to carry on his business in silence ‘as if you weren’t there.’”
- Jacob Brogan, The Washington Post, https://www.zitomadu.com/writing/sbnation-e3hpm
Author Event
After her mother’s death, GABRIELLE ROBINSON was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather’s 1945 Berlin diaries--only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
Robinson’s award-winning memoir shows Api’s work in medical cellars without water or light. Retracing Api’s steps over fifty year later, she looks for answers to why he joined the Nazi party while also remembering the man who had given her a loving home before the war.
Gabrielle has taught at the University of Illinois and IUSB. She lives in South Bend with her husband and her cat.