Blue Bicycle Books, Charleston, SC


Jason Ryan signs Jackpot on Apr. 20, 5 – 7 pm

 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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Heavy Reading

Beach season is upon us. Sure, tricep dips are easily to do on a spare office chair, but what about the curls for the girls? Fortunately Blue Bike Books has plenty of volumes even thicker than the dictionary this gent is using, long books like to Infinite Jest (1104 manly pages, $17.98) to work those biceps.

(Quick Workouts, Time-Life, 1987. $19.98)



Blog Love

Charlotte “The Wedding Machine” Zacharkiw of Charlotte Elizabeth Photography and Beth Webb “The Writing Machine” Hart wrote really nice things about us on their blogs. Check it out.
 
Read Charlotte’s blog here!
 
Read Beth Webb’s blog here!

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Judy Heath, Apr. 23

Judy Heath will be at Blue Bicycle Books on Sat., Apr. 23, 1-3 pm. to sign her book, No Time for Tears: Surviving Grief in America. A gentle guidebook for those who have experienced loss, Heath answers your questions and provides hope to move forward.
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Blue Bike Books Author’s Luncheon Series

Blue Bicycle Books Author’s Luncheon Series
Mary Whyte: Working South

Blue Bicycle Books Author’s Luncheon Series continues this spring with a special appearance from renowned watercolorist Mary Whyte, Friday, Apr. 8, 12 – 2 pm.

Whyte will be discussing and signing her newest book, Working South, sketches and portraits of vanishing blue-collar professions from across the South. Portraying her subjects with sensitivity and reverence, she depicts a textile mill worker, a tobacco farmer, a shoeshine man, a hat maker, an oysterman, a shrimper, a ferryman, a funeral band, a sponge diver, elevator operator, and others.

Working South, 128 pp, 61 color illustrations, published by University of South Carolina Press, 2011, hb., $49.95, pb., $29.95.

About the artist:
Mary Whyte’s portraits are in the permanent collections of Greenville County Museum of Art, the Gibbes Museum, and numerous corporate, private and university collections. Whyte is the author of Alfreda’s World, a compilation of her Gullah paintings, as well as An Artist’s Way of Seeing and Watercolor for the Serious Beginner. Her work can be found at Coleman Fine Art in Charleston. She lives on Johns Island, South Carolina.

The talk and lunch will be at the new Osteria La Bottiglia restaurant, 420 King St., downtown Charleston, Friday, Apr. 8, 12 – 2 pm. A champagne and dessert book signing will immediately follow at Blue Bicycle Books. 

Advance reservations required. Tickets are $30. This event will benefit Crisis Ministries. For tickets please call 843.722.2666 or buy online here!

 

 

Click here to watch Mary Whyte on CBS News Sunday Morning

 

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Janie Bryant, “Mad Men” Costume Designer at Fashion Week

Janie Bryant will sign her new book, The Fashion File, at the Charleston Fashion Week Finale at Marion Square, Sat., Mar. 26, 7-8pm. Bryant, “Mad Men” costume designer and style guru, draws from her wide experience to provide sartorial direction for the everyday woman in her impressive book. Beautifully illustrated and loaded with inspiration, The Fashion File tackles tricky how-to’s and provides insight into the wardrobes of each Mad Men character.

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Cooper River Bridge Run Show, Mar. 31

Join us Thurs., Mar. 31, 8 pm for the annual Cooper River Bridge Run Show here at the store.

Every year, two nights before the Bridge Run, store owner and local writer Jonathan Sanchez debuts a new race-related short story. Past stories have been compiled into his pretty-good collection, Bandit. Wine, power bars, and encouraging handshakes start at 7:30, reading starts around 8.



Heather St. Aubin-Stout, Mar. 12

Heather St. Aubin-Stout will sign Not My Mother’s Journey, a memoir of her battle with breast cancer, at Blue Bike on Sat., Mar. 12, 3-5 pm.  Twenty years after losing her mother to the same disease, her own diagnosis floods her with memories of her mother’s struggle and death. However, through her own treatment, she realizes that she is not sharing her mother’s same journey. Written with candid honesty of the emotion and challenges that come with a potentially terminal disease, St. Aubin-Stout’s story is a portrait of courage in the face of the past and future.

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Karen Allen, March 18

Blue Bicycle Books welcomes Karen Allen on Fri. March 18, 5 – 7 pm to sign copies of her novel Beaufort 1849.

In this antebellum tale, Jasper Wainwright, a progressive thinker who returns to Beaufort with his freed slave and finds that in his absence, his home city has flourished into a haven for wealthy planters and hotheaded sucessionists. Though he has no desire to stay, he remains in Beaufort to pursue the lovely Cara. As the cries for sucession grow louder, Jasper tries to convince local planters that gradual emancipation and transition to a wage-based economy could avert the coming storm of war.

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Survivor’s Guide to Bonnaroo, Apr. 2

Blue Bike welcomes author and music festival veteran, Tara Groth, on Sat., Apr. 2, 1-3 pm to sign copies of her guidebook How do you Roo? A Survivor’s Pocket Guide to Bonnaroo It turns out there is more to attending Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival than bringing sunscreen and a wide-brimmed bat. Groth takes us step by step through the modern-day Woodstock with tips on everything from getting there to making camp to saving money to dressing like a seasoned festival-goer.

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