Blue Bicycle Books

Join us Sat., June 10, 5 pm as celebrated food writer Kat Kinsman and James Beard Award winner Barbara Lynch discuss their new books Out of Line (Atria Books, hb., 240 pp., $26) and Hi, Anxiety (Dey Street Books, hb., 240 pp., $26).  Angel Postell of Home Team PR will also be joining them.

Out of Line describes Lynch’s remarkable process of self-invention, including her encounters with colorful characters of the food world, and vividly evokes the magic of creation in the kitchen. Through her story, Lynch explores how the past—both what we strive to escape from and what we remain true to—can strengthen and expand who we are.

In Hi, Anxiety, beloved food writer, editor, and commentator Kat Kinsman expands on the high profile pieces she wrote for CNN.com about depression, and its wicked cousin, anxiety. As Kat found when she started to write about her struggles, she is not alone in feeling like the simple act of leaving the house can be crippling. And though periodic medication, counseling, a successful career and a happy marriage have brought her relief, the illness remains.

Barbara Lynch has won multiple James Beard Awards, including Outstanding Restaurateur (only the second woman to win), an Amelia Earhart award for success as a woman in a male-dominated field, and the Relais & Château designation of Grand Chef (one of only six in North America). She is the owner of Barbara Lynch Gruppo, which encompasses seven celebrated restaurants, including No. 9 Park, B&G Oysters, Drink, Sportello, and Menton. In 2017, she was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Kat Kinsman is senior food and drinks editor at Time Inc.’s Extra Crispy and former editor at large and editor in chief of Tasting Table. She is a frequent public speaker on the topics of food and mental health, and addresses their connection on her website Chefs with Issues. She is a former writer and editor for CNN.com, where she was nominated for the James Beard Broadcast Award in the TV Segment category and won the 2011 EPPY Best Food Website for CNN’s Eatocracy. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband and various animals.

Join us Thurs., June 22, 5 pm as New York Times reporter Gina Kolata discusses her new book Mercies in Disguise (St. Martin’s, hb., 272 pp., $26).

In Mercies in Disguise, Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an almost archetypal family in a small town in South Carolina. A proud and determined clan, many of them doctors, they are struck one by one with an inscrutable illness. They finally discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of events. Meanwhile, science, progressing for a half a century along a parallel track, had handed the Baxleys a resolution―not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease and who did not. And science would offer another dilemma―fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children through an expensive process.

A work of narrative nonfiction, Mercies in Disguise is the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when the medical world abandoned them. It’s a story of a family that had to deal with unspeakable tragedy and yet did not allow it to tear them apart. And it is the story of a young woman―Amanda Baxley―who faced the future head on, determined to find a way to disrupt her family’s destiny.

Gina Kolata is a senior medical writer for the New York Times and the author of nine books and editor of three. She has won numerous prizes and was a Pulitzer finalist twice.

Join us Thurs., June 8, 12 pm for lunch at High Cotton (199 East Bay St.), as Lisa Wingate discusses and signs her new book Before We Were Yours (Ballantine Books, hb., 352 pp., $26). Tickets are $31 for the three-course luncheon and talk, or $57 including a signed copy of the book.

Get tickets here.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals–in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country–Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, an inspirational speaker, and the bestselling author of more than twenty novels. Her work has won or been nominated for many awards, including the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, the Carol Award, the Christy Award, and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award. Wingate lives in the Ouachita Mountains of southwest Arkansas.

NOTE: This event has been rescheduled for Thurs., May 18, 12 pm.

Join us Thurs., May 18, 12 pm for lunch at High Cotton (199 East Bay St.), as Patricia Altschul explains The Art of Southern Charm (Diversion, hb., 240 pp., $27). Tickets are $57 for the three-course luncheon, including a signed copy of the book, 0r $88 for two tickets with one book.

Get tickets here.

From the primetime show Southern Charm, Patricia Altschul finally brings fans her eagerly anticipated opus on etiquette and living a glamorous Southern lifestyle. Patricia provides advice on every situation, from hosting a memorable cocktail party, to decoding the dress code for any event, to handling a drunken boor at the dinner table, to delivering the perfectly phrased insult―like her now iconic “shameless strumpet.” The Art of Southern Charm takes readers inside the world of Charleston’s most captivating grande dame, who (with Michael the Butler) offers a blueblood’s blueprint for curating and celebrating life at its best.

Patricia Altschul has been featured in publications including Vogue, Town & Country, People, and Architectural Digest. Wise, cultivated, elegant, and funny, Patricia is a consummate hostess and a lifestyle icon whose unique combination of class and sass has endeared her to fans of all ages.

*****Sorry, this event has been cancelled.*****

Join us Fri., May 5, 12 pm for lunch at High Cotton (199 East Bay St.), as Mary Kay Andrews discusses The Beach House Cookbook (St. Martin’s, hb., 272 pp., $30). Tickets are $61 for the three-course luncheon, including a signed copy of the book, 0r $92 for two tickets with one book.

Get tickets here.

You don’t have to own a beach house to enjoy Mary Kay Andrews’ recipes. All you need is an appetite for delicious, casual dishes, cooked with the best fresh, local ingredients and presented with the breezy flair that make Mary Kay Andrews novels a summertime favorite at the beach.

From an early spring dinner of cherry balsamic-glazed pork medallions and bacon-kissed Brussels sprouts to Fourth of July buttermilk-brined fried chicken, potato salad, and pudding parfaits to her New Year’s Day Open House menu of roast oysters, home-cured gravlax, grits ‘n’ greens casserole, and lemon-cream cheese pound cake, this cookbook will supply ideas for menus and recipes designed to put you in a permanently carefree, coastal state of mind all year long.

Mary Kay Andrews is The New York Times bestselling author of The Weekenders, Beach Town, Save the Date, Ladies’ Night, Christmas Bliss, Spring Fever, Summer Rental, The Fixer Upper, Deep Dish, Blue Christmas, Savannah Breeze, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Savannah Blues. A former journalist for The Atlanta Journal Constitution, she lives in Atlanta, Georgia.