Author Event

Join us at Lake Forest Book Store as we welcome Linda Meyer and Alex Meyer, the mother/daughter team behind Veganosity.com as they share their new cookbook.

Books available for purchase and signing

Refreshments will be served

For more information, call 847-234-4420

Named one of the best new cookbooks for summer by The Washington Post!.  All your favorite BBQ dishes made deliciously plant-based! Great Vegan BBQ Without a Grill is the easy and convenient way to BBQ anywhere, anytime while keeping to your healthy vegan lifestyle. Linda Meyer and her daughter Alex take you on a tour of America's best BBQ, inspired by their family road trips to South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and more. They'll show you how to easily replicate the smoky flavors and textures of classic BBQ meats using a grill pan or cast iron skillet--no outdoor grill or smoker required!

Sink your teeth into Texas BBQ Brisket dripping with Big Mama's Homemade BBQ Sauce, and win the war on bland, crumbling veggie burgers with Smoky Chipotle BBQ Black Bean Burgers. Featuring more than 70 recipes, each paired with a mouthwatering photo, you can create a real hoedown with dishes such as "Honey" BBQ Ribz, Beer Braised Pulled "Pork" Sandwiches, BBQ Jerk Chick'n and Carolina Coleslaw. These amazing recipes will become your go-to vegan choices for all your BBQ cravings.

Linda Meyer and her daughter Alex run the vegan food blog Veganosity. They've had recipes featured on the websites of The Kitchn, One Green Planet, PETA, Shape, Fitness, Better Homes and Gardens and Vegan Food & Living. They have also done recipe development for many common food brands such as Dole, Silk, Barilla, Kellogg and more. Linda and Alex live in Chicago.

Lake Forest Book Store partnering with the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society host Nina Barrett for a book discussion and signing

Books available for purchase and signing

Refreshments will be served

For more information, call 847-234-4420

In 1924, University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were young, rich, and looking for a thrill. The crime that came next--the brutal, cold-blood murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks--would come to captivate the country and unfold into what many dubbed the crime of the century. As the decades passed, the mythology surrounding the unlikely killers continued to capture the interest of new generations, spawning numerous books, fictionalizations, and dramatizations. In The Leopold and Loeb Files, author Nina Barrett returns to the primary sources--confessions, interrogation transcripts, psychological reports, and more--the kind of rare, pre-computer court documents that were usually destroyed as a matter of course. Until now, these documents have not been part of the murder's central narrative. This first-of-its-kind approach allows readers to view the case through a keyhole and look past all of the stories that have been spun in the last 90 years to focus on the heart of the crime. Carefully curated and steeped in historical context from Barrett, this book allows the surviving Leopold and Loeb documents, most of which are in the form of either transcripts or narrative, to function as both artifact and literature, recounting the moves of the murder and sentencing hearing as well as addressing the questions that continue to fascinate--issues of morality, sanity, sexuality, religious assimilation, parental grief and responsibility, remorse, and the use of the death penalty. This comprehensive, ephemera-driven history allows the reader to act as a fly on the wall and speaks powerfully to the unsolved mysteries of this distinct crime, in which the guilt of the perpetrators is unambiguous but almost everything else is open to interpretation.

Nina Barrett, a graduate of both Yale University and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, is the author of three books and numerous articles, essays, and reviews. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The Nation, among other places. In 2009, she curated an exhibition for Northwestern called The Murder That Wouldn't Die, which inspired The Leopold and Loeb Files. Barrett is also the founder and owner of Bookends & Beginnings, an independent bookstore in Evanston, Illinois.

.

Join us for lunch with Gretchen Anthony as she presents her newly published book

Wednesday, October 17th, 2018 at 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM

$45 includes lunch and a copy of the book

Reservations required. Call 847-234-4420

A formidable matriarch learns the hard way that no family is perfect in this witty, sparkling debut novel. Violet Baumgartner has opened her annual holiday letter the same way for the past three decades. And this year she's going to throw her husband, Ed, a truly perfect retirement party, one worthy of memorializing in her upcoming letter. But the event becomes a disaster when, in front of two hundred guests, Violet learns her daughter Cerise has been keeping a shocking secret from her, shattering Violet's carefully constructed world.In an epic battle of wills, Violet goes to increasing lengths to wrest back control of her family, infuriating Cerise and snaring their family and friends in a very un-Midwestern, un-Baumgartner type of dramatics. And there will be no explaining away the consequences in this year's Baumgartner holiday letter...Full of humor, emotion and surprises at every turn, Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners brings to life a remarkable cast of quirky, deeply human characters who must learn to adapt to the unconventional, or else risk losing one another. This is the story of a family falling to pieces--and the unexpected way they put it all back together.

Gretchen Anthony is a Minnesota-based writer and humorist whose work has been featured on scarymommy.com, medium.com and thewritelife.com. She's also spent decades as a ghostwriter and has written for some of the best personal brands in the United States, from CEOs to doctors and start-up superstars to BBQ pros. Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners is her first novel. Author photo credited to  M. Brian Hartz

Meet local author Amelia Levin and sample recipes from her new cookbook.

THE LAKE MICHIGAN COTTAGE COOKBOOK

Storey Publishing  $20.00 Released April 3, 2018

Samples from her books will be served

Call 847-234-4420

This collection of 118 recipes captures the evocative food experiences of the Lake Michigan region, an ultimate vacation destination with hundreds of miles of shoreline and rich food traditions reflecting the bounty of the area's farms and the lake's daily catch. Recipes include Helen Suchy's Apple Cake from Door County, Homemade Sheboygan-Style Bratwurst, Chicago's HBFC Original Fried Chicken Sandwich, Beach House Cheesy Potatoes from Northwest Indiana, and The Cook's House Crispy Skinned Lake Trout from Traverse City. Delightful photographs of cottage life and classic destinations, along with profiles of favorite food purveyors, bring the lakeshore's flavors and charm to you year-round, wherever you are.

Amelia Levin is a Chicago-based food writer, chef, cookbook author, and passionate Midwesterner. She grew up in the Chicago area, vacationed for 30 years in Wisconsin, went to college in Michigan, and has since traveled throughout the entire northern Midwest for both fun and business. She contributes to Edible Chicago magazine and is the food editor at FSR, a trade magazine for full-service restaurants. She is the author of Chicago Chef's Table: Extraordinary Recipes from the Windy City.

LAKE FOREST BOOK STORE WILL BE DONATING $1 PER BOOK SALE BETWEEN JUNE 19th UNTIL SEPTEMBER 19th TO REBECCA MAKKAI'S FUNDRAISING EFFORT.  #TheGreatBelieversDonate.  ALL DONATIONS WILL GO TO VITAL BRIDGES FOOD PANTRY

Join Lake Forest Book Store as we host a cocktail reception and book talk featuring author Rebecca Makkai and her book The Great Believers

$45 individual or $55 per couple and includes 1 book

Reservations required, call 847-234-4420

A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai. In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

Rebecca Makkai is the author of The Borrower, The Hundred-Year House, which won the Novel of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, and Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Harper's, and Tin House, among others. She lives outside Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

Author Photo Credit to Susan Aurinko

Join us in welcoming Jennifer Haupt, author of In the Shadows of 10,000 Hills, as she appears in-conversation with Chicago-based writer and author of The Comedown, Rebekah Frumkin.

IN THE SHADOW OF 10,000 HILLS

THE COMEDOWN

Books available for purchase and signing

Refreshments will be served

Call 847-234-4420

Jennifer Haupt went to Rwanda as a journalist in 2006, a decade after the genocide that wiped out over a million people, to explore the connections between forgiveness and grief. She spent a month traveling in the 10,000 hills with a guide, interviewing genocide survivors and humanitarian aid workers, and came home to Seattle with something unexpected: the bones of a novel. Her essays and articles have been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, The Rumpus, Psychology Today, Travel & Leisure, The Seattle Times, Spirituality & Health, and many other publications. In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills is her first novel.

Rebekah Frumkin is a writer based in Chicago. She also teaches writing and literature at Northeastern Illinois University and University of Illinois-Chicago. Her fiction, nonfiction, and journalism have appeared or are forthcoming in Granta, Pacific Standard, McSweeney’s, Catapult, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. Her debut novel, The Comedown will be published by Henry Holt in April 2018. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MSJ from the Medill School of Journalism. She is the recipient of the Richard E. Guthrie Memorial Grant and the Meta Rosenberg Fellowship for her fiction. She has taught fiction writing at the University of Iowa and currently teaches creative writing at Open Books in Chicago. She also works as a freelance reporter for the Social Justice News Nexus and In These Times. She speaks and studies German, for which she received a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace, as well as Spanish and intermediate-level Hindi, for which she received a Critical Languages Scholarship. 

Join us at Lake Forest Book Store as we welcome author Spencer Wise celebrating his new historical novel.

Books available for purchase and signing

Refreshments will be served

Call 847-234-4420

From an exciting new voice in literary fiction, a transfixing story about an expatriate in southern China and his burgeoning relationship with a seamstress intent on inspiring dramatic political change Alex Cohen, a twenty-six-year-old Jewish Bostonian, is living in southern China, where his father runs their family-owned shoe factory. Alex reluctantly assumes the helm of the company, but as he explores the plant's vast floors and assembly lines, he comes to a grim realization: employees are exploited, regulatory systems are corrupt and Alex's own father is engaging in bribes to protect the bottom line. When Alex meets a seamstress named Ivy, his sympathies begin to shift. She is an embedded organizer of a pro-democratic Chinese party, secretly sowing dissonance among her fellow laborers. Will Alex remain loyal to his father and his heritage? Or will the sparks of revolution ignite? Deftly plotted and vibrantly drawn, The Emperor of Shoes is a timely meditation on idealism, ambition, father-son rivalry and cultural revolution, set against a vivid backdrop of social and technological change.

Born in Boston, Spencer Wise is a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Texas at Austin and worked in the editorial departments at Sports Illustrated and Time Out New York. His work has appeared in Narrative magazine, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Florida Review, and New Ohio Review. He is the winner of the 2017 Gulf Coast Prize in nonfiction. Wise teaches at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee.

Author photo by Molly Hamill

Greet former Lake Forest resident, Beth Ann Fennelly at Lake Forest Book Store as we celebrate her most recent book.

W. W. Norton & Company  $23.00

Thursday, May 31st at 6:00 PM

Books available for purchase and signing

Refreshments will be served

Call 847-234-4420

The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life's challenges and joys. Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.

Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of three poetry collections, Unmentionables, Tender Hooks, and Open House; two memoirs, Heating & Cooling and Great with Child; and a novel, The Tilted World, coauthored with her husband, Tom Franklin. She teaches at the University of Mississippi, and is also the state's Poet Laureate. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Join the Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods and Lake Forest Book Store as we host Dave and Amy Freeman to support their Pedal to D.C.: A Book Tour to Save the Boundary Waters and celebrate their book.

Tickets for the event are $5 for BCRW members, $10 for non-members, and free for students

Register at: https://www.brushwoodcenter.org/Events/PedaltoDC.html 

Books available for purchase and signing

Dave and Amy Freeman will tow a canoe while bicycling 1,750 miles from Ely, MN to Washington D.C. to raise awareness of the threat from sulfide-ore copper mining proposed in the Boundary Waters watershed and to promote their award-winning book, A Year in the Wilderness.

On December 22nd, 2017, a critical decision was made by the Trump administration that puts the BWCAW region and watershed under an urgent threat. The U.S. Department of the Interior is reinstating two expired mineral leases first issued in 1966 that could allow Antofagasta, a Chilean mining company (and subsidiary, Twin Metals) to build a copper-nickel mine adjacent to the Boundary Waters and upstream from Voyageurs National Park. Sulfide-ore copper mines require a toxic mining practice that has never before been allowed in Minnesota. Supporters of the mine say it will create 650 jobs; however, it will also endanger 4,490 jobs in local tourism that depend on a clean Boundary Waters, including the Freeman’s work as dogsled and canoe guides. Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness plans to sue to challenge the decision.

Pedal to DC is a collaborative effort between Save the Boundary Waters and Milkweed Editions.

Dave and Amy Freeman's expeditions have taken them over thirty thousand miles by canoe, kayak, and dogsled through some of the world's wildest places, from the Amazon to the Arctic. National Geographic named the Dave and Amy Adventurers of the Year in 2014 and their images, videos, and articles have been published by a wide range of media sources from the CBC, NBC, and FOX to the Chicago Tribune, National Geographic, Outside, Backpacker, Canoe and Kayak, and Minnesota Public Radio.

Join us for a meet and greet with children's book author Gigi Priebe during her stop at Lake Forest Book Store in her tour of our local schools.

THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY WHISKERS #1 and #2

Aladdin Paperbacks  $5.99 each 

Sunday, April 8th 1:30 pm

at Lake Forest Book Store

Gigi Priebe 1:30-2:30

Books available for purchase and signing

Contact the store at 847-234-4420

Henry Whiskers must face his fears and rescue his little sister from the scary Rat Alley in this fun, fast-paced debut chapter book set in Queen Mary's historical dollhouse at Windsor Castle. Twenty-five generations of Whiskers have lived in Windsor Castle's most famous exhibit: Queen Mary's Dollhouse. For young, book-loving Henry Whiskers and his family, this is the perfect place to call home. But when the dollhouse undergoes unexpected repairs and Henry's youngest sister, Isabel, goes missing, he risks everything in a whisker-whipping race against time to save her. His rescue mission will take him to the murky and scary world of Rat Alley, and Henry will have to dig deep and find the courage he never knew he had in order to bring his sister back home.

Gigi Priebe is the mother of three, the founder of Stepping Stones, an award-winning children's museum in Norwalk, Connecticut and the author of The Adventures of Henry Whiskers, the first in her middle grade series. When she is not writing,or rewriting, she is a philanthropic advisor and community volunteer in Fairfield County, Connecticut, where she lives with her husband, a cat named Tigger, a dog named Clover, and probably some mice.