Blue Bicycle Books

Join New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe and her longtime colleague Angela May at Wando Mt. Pleasant Public Library for an in-person drive-thru book signing of their new book for young readers, The Islanders (Aladdin, 304 pp., hb., $18.00), Sat, June 12, 11 am to 1 pm.

Books: To purchase a book to be picked up at the event, please visit City Paper Tickets and select the “Signed Copy of The Islanders” ticket option. Additional books will be available on site. Note: this is a special pre-release-day event, books will not otherwise be available in stores or online until June 15.

Time-slots: Free drive-thru time-slots are available in fifteen-minute increments. Please arrive as close to your time slot as possible. Each ticket admits one car. Details about this drive-thru book signing will be sent to you prior to the event.

All CDC guidelines will be followed, and you will be asked to stay in your car for the entirety of your visit. You will have a chance to meet Mary Alice and Angela and have them sign your book and take a quick photo together before you leave.

Photos: Mary Alice and Angela are happy to take socially distanced photos with fans. A library staff member will take photos of each family with the authors.

About the book: The Islanders is the story of friendships forged in the wild and what happens when kids unplug and experience nature’s power to heal and unite. Eleven-year-old Jake is spending the summer with his internet-and-TV-averse grandmother on remote Dewees Island. The South Carolina barrier island is a nature sanctuary, which means no paved roads, cars, stores, or restaurants, but plenty of wildlife and wide open spaces. Alongside Jake and his new friends Macon and Lovie, readers will fall in love with the Lowcountry landscape as well as the furry, finned, and feathered animals with whom they share it.

About the authors:

Mary Alice Monroe is the New York Times best-selling author of more than twenty books, including the recent The Summer of Lost and Found, The Beach House, Beach House Memories, Swimming Lessons, Beach House for Rent, Beach House Reunion, and On Ocean Boulevard. She is a 2018 inductee into the South Carolina Academy of Authors’ Hall of Fame, and her books have received numerous awards, including the 2008 South Carolina Center for the Book Award for Writing, the 2014 South Carolina Award for Literary Excellence, the 2015 Southwest Florida Author of Distinction Award, the RT Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Book Award for Green Fiction, and the 2017 Southern Book Prize for Fiction. The Beach House is also a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. An active conservationist, she lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The Islanders is her first novel for middle-grade readers.

Angela May is a former television news journalist who helps promote great books and share important community stories as a media specialist. She’s been working with Mary Alice Monroe for more than a decade. This is their first book together! Angela lives with her family in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Join us on Zoom Thurs., May 6, 2021 at 7 pm, for an evening with Josephine Caminos Oría, author of Sobremesa: A Memoir of Food and Love in Thirteen Courses. Oría will be joining Blue Bicycle Books as part of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Reader Meet Writer author series.

The Zoom link will be emailed to registered ticketholders on the day of the event.

Click here to purchase a signed copy of Sobremesa.

Click here to register for this FREE event!

About the book: 

In her coming-of-age adventure, Josephine travels to her family’s homeland of Argentina in search of belonging—to family, to country, to a love, and ultimately, to oneself. Steeped in the lure of Latin culture, she pieces together her mom and abuela’s pasts, along with the nourishing dishes—delectably and spiritually—that formed their kitchen arsenal. But Josephine’s travels from las pampas to the prairie aren’t easy or conventional. Just as she’s ready to give up on love all together, Josephine’s own heart surprises her by surrendering to a forbidden, transcontinental tryst with the Argentine man of her dreams. To stay together, she must make a difficult choice: return to the safe life she knows in the States, or follow her heart and craft a completely different kind of future for herself—one she never saw coming.

This otherworldly, multigenerational story of a daughter’s love and familial culinary legacy serves up, in 13 courses, the timeless traditions that help Josephine navigate transformational love and loss. It’s a reminder that that home really is anywhere the heart is. Sobremesa invites you to linger at the table, reveal your own hidden truths and savor the healing embrace of time-honored food and the wisdom it espouses.

Foreword by Sofía Pescarmona, CEO and Owner, Lagarde Winery

About the author: 

Josephine Caminos Oría was born in the city of La Plata, Argentina, and raised Stateside from infancy on in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Gathering around a table large enough to sit her family of eight, food and the sobremesa that accompanied it was how Josephine learned to make sense of the world. Stories of where she came from, and the people she’d left behind, were served to Josephine during family sobremesas she savored like meals.

Today, Josephine, along with her Argentine husband, Gastón, is the founder of La Dorita Cooks, an all-natural line of dulce de leche products and Pittsburgh’s first resource-based kitchen incubator for start-up and early stage foodmakers. In addition, Josephine is the author of the cookbook as food-memoir, “Dulce de Leche: Recipes, Stories, and Sweet Traditions” (Burgess Lea Press, February 2017).The Orías, along with their five children and golden retriever, are currently living la vida low-country in Charleston, SC.

Join the Conroy Center on Zoom, Thurs., Feb. 25, 2021, 7 – 8 pm for an evening with co-authors Sara Shepard and Lilia Buckingham,  discussing their book, Influence (Delacorte Press, hb., 368 pp., $18). Shepard and Buckingham will be joined in conversation by the Pat Conroy Literary Center‘s Holland Perryman and Jonathan Haupt.

To register for this FREE event click here.

To order a signed copy of Influence, click here. 

About the Authors:

Sara Shepard is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series, the Perfectionists series, and many more novels for teens and adults. She lives with her family in Pittsburgh. @saracshepard on Instagram; @sarabooks on Twitter

Lilia Buckingham is a seventeen-year-old writer, actress, dancer, and student. Though she has a strong social media presence, Lilia hates the term “influencer” but loved writing Influence. She lives in Los Angeles with her mother, brother, and two dogs. @lilia on Instagram; @BuckinghamLilia on Twitter

About the book:

Influence tells the story of life under the social media limelight through the perspectives of four young women. Jasmine is a former child star, Delilah was recently catapulted into fame by a viral video, Fiona is a long established figure in social media and looking to move into Hollywood, and Scarlet’s perfect relationship and famous boyfriend have made her famous. The three women struggle together through the many anxieties and pitfalls of social media fame.

Join us on Zoom, Tues., Feb 16, 6:30 pm as Baylor University professor Robert Elder discusses his newest book, Calhoun: American Heretic (Basic Books, hb., 640 pp., $35). Elder, a Clemson Grad, will be joined in conversation by Paul Anderson, professor of history at Clemson University.

This event is free and open to the public.

To buy a signed copy of the book click here.

To register, click here.

About the book: John C. Calhoun was first elected to Congress in 1810, and went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a “positive good” and for his famous doctrine of “state interposition,” which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union—and arguably set the nation on course for civil war.

Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years,  as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest, and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.

About the Author: Robert Elder is an assistant professor of history at Baylor University, where his research focuses on the American South. His first book was The Sacred Mirror: Evangelicalism, Honor, and Identity in the American South, 1790‒1860. He has a B.A. and M.A. from Clemson University, a PhD. from Emory University and lives in Woodway, Texas.

About the Moderator: Paul Anderson is Associate Professor of History and University Historian at Clemson University, where he has taught the history of the American South and the history of South Carolina for twenty years. His most recent book, A Short History of the American Civil War, was published in 2019 by Bloomsbury.

YALLWrite (a.k.a YALLFest 2020) is this weekend! 

Over 80 bestselling authors will share their trade secrets in a virtual, craft-themed festival Fri. Nov. 13 and Sat. Nov 14.

Writers like Marie Lu, Victoria Aveyard, Nic Stone, Neal Shusterman, Marissa Meyer, V.E. Schwab, Varian Johnson and more will teach dialogue, structure, world-building, writing as a political act, graphic novels, collaboration, romance, fantasy … all told there are SEVENTY (70) master classes, panels, scavenger hunts and giveaways!

Register here (it’s all free)

Even though we’ve gone virtual, you can still get signed books. We’ve sent out YALLWrite bookplates all over the world. 

Order here or click on a name below

Renee Ahdieh SIGNED

Melissa Albert SIGNED

Jennifer L. Armentrout SIGNED

John August SIGNED

Victoria Aveyard SIGNED

Lindsay K. Bandy SIGNED

Kalynn Bayron SIGNED

Holly Black SIGNED

Gwenda Bond SIGNED

Pseudonymous Bosch SIGNED

Alexandra Bracken SIGNED

Z Brewer SIGNED

Mahogany L. Brown. SIGNED

Roseanne A. Brown SIGNED

Lilia Buckingham SIGNED

Julie Buxbaum SIGNED

Patrice Caldwell SIGNED

Kacen Callender

Kristin Cashore

Soman Chainani SIGNED

Sona Charaipotra SIGNED

Traci Chee SIGNED

Dhonielle Clayton SIGNED

Brandy Colbert SIGNED

Ally Condie SIGNED

Zoraida Cordova SIGNED

Sayantani DasGupta SIGNED

Somaiya Daud SIGNED

Melissa de la Cruz SIGNED

Susan Dennard SIGNED

Tracy Deonn SIGNED

Corinne Duyvis

Kristina Forest SIGNED

Namina Forna SIGNED

Stephanie Garber SIGNED

Kami Garcia SIGNED

Ryan Graudin SIGNED

Jordan Ifueko SIGNED

Holly Jackson

Tiffany D. Jackson SIGNED

Leah Johnson SIGNED

Varian Johnson

Kimberly Jones

Amie Kaufman SIGNED

Erin Entrada Kelly SIGNED

Jay Kristoff 

Nina LaCour

David Levithan SIGNED

Alex London SIGNED

Marie Lu SIGNED

Kwame Mbalia

Anna-Marie McLemore SIGNED

Karen McManus SIGNED

Gretchen McNeil SIGNED

Tehlor Kay Mejia SIGNED

Marissa Meyer SIGNED

Kass Morgan SIGNED

Brandon Mull SIGNED

Marieke Nijkamp SIGNED

Jennifer Niven SIGNED

Garth Nix

Daniel Jose Older SIGNED

Tochi Onyebuchi SIGNED

Claribel A. Ortega SIGNED

Mark Oshiro SIGNED

Danielle Paige SIGNED

Brendan Reichs SIGNED

Caleb Roehrig

Margaret Rogerson SIGNED

Veronica Roth SIGNED

Yusef Salaam

Adam Sass SIGNED

Victoria / V.E. Schwab SIGNED

Gilly Segal

Samantha Shannon

Sara Shepard SIGNED

Neal Shusterman 

Adam Silvera SIGNED

Meagan Spooner SIGNED

Margaret Stohl SIGNED

Nic Stone SIGNED

Sabaa Tahir

Aiden Thomas SIGNED

Kiersten White SIGNED

C. Yee SIGNED

Nicola Yoon

Sara Zarr SIGNED

Ibi Zoboi SIGNED

Note that we can’t take orders for personal inscriptions. Signed bookplates may ship separately from books. Thank you so, so much for your support.