Taking a Stand offers  forth an authoritative and incisive examination of torture, detention, exile, armed conflict, and genocide. Drawing on their experiences with the United Nations, Méndez and Wentworth offer a new strategy for holding governments accountable for their actions, providing an essential blueprint for different human rights groups to be able to work together to effect change.

 In the new book,Velva Jean Hart hits the road to pursue her dream of singing at the Grand Ole Opry. She leaves behind rural Appalachia, fuelled by the memory of her late Mama telling her to “live out there.” But after a string of auditions, she begins to lose hope- until her brother pays her a surprise visit and treats her to a flying lesson that ignites a brand-new dream: to become a female pilot. Funny, poignant, and utterly unforgettable, Velva Jean Learns to Fly will have fans cheering all over again.

Jennifer Niven is the daughter of award winning author, Penelope Niven, and the author of four titles. Her first book, The Ice Master, has been translated into 10 languages and received numerous awards, including Italy’s esteemed Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize for 2002. She has appeared in in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Talk, Glamour, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, The London Daily Mail, The London Times, and Writer’s Digest, to name a few.

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Taught by his grandfather Carew, Clay Rice is a 21st century folk artist and a Lowcountry treasure. Watching him cut a child’s silhouette in five minutes has been called performance art in itself. Last year, we watched as he was actually able to capture a recognizable profile of our squirming one-year-old in less time than it takes to get her shoes on.

His national touring schedule keeps him on the road often, cutting more than 10,000 children’s silhouettes a year, so events back home in Charleston are rare!

Personal silhouettes start at $40 for two copies. We expect slots to fill up quickly, to book an appointment, please call us at 843.722.2666.

Pictures from past years

Barton Seaver has manned the helm of many popular restaurants in Washington, D.C. He has been recognized as a leader in sustainability by the Seafood Choices Alliance, and is currently a Fellow with the National Geographic Society. His work influences large corporations and consumers toward a more responsible sourcing ethic. He currently hosts the television series In Search of Food on the Ovation Network.

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McWhirter offers the first narrative written history of the deadly summer of 1919, when a wave of antiblack riots swept the country.  After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality, believing that their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them equal rights. However, the racial unrest that rolled across the United States continued to deny them the equality they had been promised at the end of the Civil War. With a knack for story-telling and scrupulous historical research, McWhirter tells of the riots, lynchings, and public slaughters that ensued from April to November of 1919, paving the way for the American Civil Rights Movement.

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Join us in the bookstore on Fri., Aug. 19, 5 pm, for this booksigning event!

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The Girl on Legare Street

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 Signed copies available– stop by the store or order online!

Join us 4/20, 5 – 7 pm at 420 King Street for a brief talk and reception with pink champagne and brownies!

In the late seventies and early eighties, a cadre of South Carolina pot smugglers were the most prominent kingpins in America. These good-old boys unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish up and down the Eastern Seaboard — often sneaking through the undeveloped marshes of Hilton Head, Edisto and McClellanville in their home state.

Smugglers with handles like Flash, Rolex, Bob the Boss, Willie the Hog, and Disco Don forsook college to sail their drug-laden yachts across the Atlantic and the Caribbean. These fun-loving Southern gentlemen were kingpins in a time before drugs were associated with deadly gunplay.

In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia. Their undoing? Operation Jackpot, a pioneering task force assembled by a young U.S. attorney named Henry McMaster, now the Attorney General of South Carolina.

A former staff reporter for The State newspaper, Jason Ryan is associate director of college publications for the College of Charleston. He spent years researching Jackpot (Lyons Press Guilford, hb., 304 pp, $24.95) interviewing imprisoned and recently-released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down.

Order a signed copy here!

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