Mary Kay Andrews will be joining us Thurs., June 6, 5 – 7 pm for a happy hour drink next door at Osteria La Bottiglia and will be signing her newest book, Ladies’ Night (St. Martin’s, hb., $26.99).
Mary Kary Andrews is a former Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, where she covered the real-life murder trial that inspired Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Originally from St. Petersburg, FL, she is also the author of the bestselling Savannah Breeze. Ladies’ Night is the latest beach read from the NY Times bestselling author, and we figured, what better way to celebrate her new release than with a glass of wine. Come meet Mary Kay and get a signed copy!
YALLFest: Charleston’s Young Adult Book Festival will return Sat., Nov. 9, 2013, and organizers will release the 2013 line-up very soon. But in the meantime, Blue Bicycle Books is hosting a mini-YA festival to tide over fans.
Thurs., May 23, 5:30 to 7:30 pm, Beautiful Creatures co-author Margaret Stohl will bring her “YA Icons” tour to Blue Bicycle Books, celebrating the release of her new solo project Icons (Little Brown, hb., 448 pp.).
Icons is a great dystopian alien-invasion story in the tradition of John Christopher’s Tripods (The White Mountains, serialized as comics in the old Boy’s Life magazines).
Watch the terrific book trailer for Icons here.
A YALLFest co-organizer, Margaret’s Beautiful Creatures series (co-authored with Kami Garcia) has spent most of 2013 as the #1 Bestselling YA series in the country (ahead of Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid).
Margie has asked some of her fellow YA Icons to join her on the book launch tour. Joining her at Blue Bicycle Books will be Beth Revis, author of Across the Universe, Michelle Hodkin, author of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, and Brendan and Kathy Reichs, co-authors of the Virals series. Kathy Reichs is also the author of the Bones series, basis for the FOX TV show.
Join us Thurs., May 10, 3 – 5 pm, while author and trial lawyer Pat Harris discusses and signs his newest book, Mistrial.
Historically, criminal defense attorneys were the heroes of the justice system. Atticus Finch was an icon. But that all has changed. Now defense lawyers in the media are all unapologetic win-at-all-costs characters. In their book, Mark Geragos and Pat Harris debunk the myths surrounding both judges and jurors and ultimately question whether a two centuries-old justice system is still viable today.
Fri. May 3, 4 – 6 pm, New York Times Bestselling author Elin Hildenbrand will be signing her newest novel Summerland (Hachette, 416 pp, pb. $14.99).
Set on Nantucket, the novel opens with an island tradition and a fatal car accident. As the summer unfolds, so do secrets about the accident’s survivors and their families: secrets kept and broken, oaths made and betrayed. Written along the same vein as local favorites Dorothea Benton Frank and Karen White, Summerland proves even amid tragedy, love can emerge.
Elin Hildenbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and three children. This is her sixth novel set on the island. 
Blue Bike’s Author Luncheon series continues with Post & Courier writer Ken Burger Fri., Apr., 26, 12 pm at Fish restaurant and followed by a champagne and dessert reception here at the bookstore. Ken will be discussing his newest novel, Salkehatchie Soup, an unflinching portrayal of post-Cold War politics all across the Eastern seaboard. From fancy golf courses to Congress cloakrooms, Salkehatchie Soup hosts characters powerful and pitiful, those fallen from grace and others desperately seeking to grasp it.
Ken Burger worked as a South Carolina journalist for over forty years, covering everything from sports to business to lifestyles, before retiring in 2011.
Tickets are $25 and include lunch and reception, the book is sold separately. Purchase tickets here or call us at the store, 843.722.2666.
Join us this Thurs., Apr. 4th for the 15th annual Bridge Run Party and Reading. Every year, two nights before the bridge run local writer and bookstore owner Jonathan Sanchez reads a vaguely race-related short story. Blue Bike’s whole staff, Cameron Jones, Sara Peck, and Kristen Gehrman will also be offering readings of the fiction, poetry, nonfiction and unrelated-to-running sort as well. You don’t have to be a runner to enjoy this tradition that has persisted as long as our cat, Purdy, has been living. Wine and snacks start at 7:30, readings at 8:00.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Blue Bicycle Books is excited to welcome the Lee Brothers for a special lunch, Fri., Mar. 22, 2012, 10:30 am, at Fleet Landing Restaurant, 186 Concord Street, to celebrate the release of their newest cookbook: The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, hb., 256 pp.).
Tickets are $75 and include a multi-course lunch and a signed copy of the book. Doors will open at 10:30 am, with lunch served at 11. To purchase call 843-722-2666 or click here.
Between courses, Matt and Ted Lee will discuss how they wrote The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen as a tribute to the classic cuisine of the Holy City and how Charleston made them the cooks they are today. (The spot where the boys used to throw their cast net is visible from the dining room of Fleet Landing.)
Featuring traditional Charleston recipes updated for today’s kitchens and plenty of Lowcountry food lore, the Lee Bros. newest book is a personal history and a classic cookbook all in one.
Lunch will include two courses plus dessert — all prepared by Fleet Landing Executive Chef Drew Hedlund using recipes from the book. The following menu is tentative and subject to change:
Featured Cocktails:
The Hugo
Lowcountry Lemoncello
Kumquat-Chili Bloody Mary
First Course:
Peanut Oyster Stew
Second Course:
Deviled Crab with Skillet Asparagus and Grapefruit
Dessert:
Huguenot Torte
Sweet Benne Wafers
Pancake Cookies
Macaroons
Join us Fri., Feb. 8, 5 – 7 pm for a wine and cheese drop-in celebration of Beth Webb Hart’s newest novel Moon Over Edisto (Thomas Nelson, pb, 320 pp, $15.99).
After years of running from her past, Julia is pulled back home to Edisto Island and back to the places and the people she had been trying to leave behind her entire adult life. But once she begins reconnecting with the family she barely knows, she may uncover the secrets to mend her long-since shattered heart. Dorothea Benton Frank writes, “Moon Over Edisto is a rich, endearing, can’t-stop-reading book about what matters most, the power of love to transform the human heart.”
Beth Webb Hart is also the author of Grace at Low Tide, Adelaide Piper, The Wedding Machine, and Love, Charleston. She studied writing at Hollins and Sarah Lawrence and has won awards for both her writing and teaching (she is writer in residence at Ashley Hall School). Beth Webb lives in downtown Charleston with her husband, composer Edward Hart, and their two children.
Despite a recent Blue Bicycle Books newsletter (staff-written) poking fun at my slowpoke reading pace, I did actually read all of John McPhee’s Levels of the Game. It’s an account of a semifinal tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner at the 1968 U.S. Open. Both men had come up though the junior tennis circuit and were roughly the same age, both were still amateurs. The book starts with the first serve and ends with the follow-through of the backhand winner at match point, and in between tells very different stories of these two men, in relation to their approaches to the game and in relation to what was going on in America at the time.
I’d always known that Arthur Ashe was a pioneering black athlete, I’d never known that his style was so loose and free, based on going for low-percentage shots that often left his opponents shaking their heads in wonderment. As for McPhee, I’ve sold many of his books — writers like him are the very reason we created the nonfiction section back when I took over the store — but had never read a word of his. I was reading a recent New Yorker piece by him on how he structured his writing, and how Princeton computer programmers developed editing software around his methods, when I saw the book at my brother-in-law’s house, and picked it up.
I’m sure there are other fine books that use a microcosmic look at one event in the late 1960s to cast light on the larger cultural and political moment, but the one that comes to mind right now is my friend James Scott’s Attack on the Liberty. It’s a thorough examination of the unexplained 1967 attack on a U.S. spy ship by Israel — taking into consideration not just the events on the ship before and after the attack but domestic political concerns, especially the support for Israel by Jews in the U.S., American-Soviet tensions, and rising protests against the Vietnam war. — Jonathan Sanchez
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Fri., Feb. 15, at 7:30 pm 2011 National Book Award Winner and South Carolina native Nikky Finney will be reading at the Charleston School of the Arts. Nikky will be appearing as the keynote speaker for the 2013 Robinson Jeffers Association Conference. The reading will take place in the SOA’s Rose Maree Myers Theater for the Performing Arts, and the evening will also feature readings from South Carolina Poet Laureate Marjory Heath Wentworth and Charleston poet Brian Pemberthy.
Admission to Friday’s reading is $5.00 for students and $10.00 for adults. We’ll be on hand with copies of Finney’s latest collection Head Off and Split (Northwestern University, pb, 97 pp, $15.95), so come check out some homegrown poetry!
Mary Kay Andrews will be joining us Thurs., June 6, 5 – 7 pm for a happy hour drink next door at Osteria La Bottiglia and will be signing her newest book, Ladies’ Night (St. Martin’s, hb., $26.99).
