April 2018: Independent Bookstore Day, New Staff Faves, and More!

April 2018: Independent Bookstore Day, New Staff Faves, and More!
 
We've got big plans for Independent Bookstore Day! Also, read new reviews from our staff, see which authors are appearing here in May, and check out the latest releases from our Sports section.
Saturday, April 28, 2018 marks the fourth annual Independent Bookstore Day. Annie Bloom's will be celebrating all day long with fun activities for kids and adults, including a surprise Harry Potter-themed prize. We will also be selling unique items created exclusively for IBD, including book club journals, literary tea towels, Colson Whitehead "Fight the Power" utility pouches, and onesies inspired by Dragons Love Tacos.
 
We're also very excited to announce a bevy of local authors joining us for pop-up readings throughout the day. Click here for the full lineup!
 
Upcoming Author Readings
 
Annie Bloom's welcomes Oakland author Hilary Zaid, whose debut novel is Paper Is White. Zaid will be in conversation with Portland poet Willa Schneberg.
 
About Paper Is White:
When Holocaust oral historian Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend decide to get married, Ellen's search for a blessing leads her into a complicated relationship with a wily survivor of the Kaunas Ghetto, a woman in search of a blessing of her own. Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, Paper is White is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.
 
Annie Bloom's is delighted to welcome neighborhood author April Henry to read from the paperback edition of her Young Adult thriller, Count All Her Bones, the sequel to Girl, Stolen.
 
Six months ago, Griffin Sawyer meant to steal a car, but he never meant to steal the girl asleep in the backseat. Panicked, he took her home. His father, Roy, decided to hold Cheyenne--who is blind--for ransom. Griffin helped her escape, and now Roy is awaiting trial. As they prepare to testify, Griffin and Cheyenne reconnect and make plans to meet. But the plan goes wrong and Cheyenne gets captured by Roy's henchmen--this time for the kill. Can Cheyenne free herself? And is Griffin a pawn or a player in this deadly chase?
 
Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland writer Ellen Notbohm, who will read from her debut novel, The River by Starlight, a sweeping century-old tale of passionate love, unimaginable loss, resilience, and redemption embodied in one woman’s tenacious quest for self-determination in the face of devastating misfortune and social injustice.
 
Based on true events revealed through more than a decade of research, The River by Starlight explores a history rarely seen in fiction. Its themes of women’s mental health, gender inequity, climate disaster and economic boom-and-bust remain powerfully and painfully relevant today.
 
New Staff Reviews
 
Here are three new staff reviews for you!
by Laura Purcell
reviewed by Karen
Elsie, newly widowed and pregnant, moves from London to her husband’s country estate expecting to live in quiet comfort during the period of her confinement. Instead, she finds the house in disarray, the servants resentful, and the company of her husband’s young cousin, Sarah, less than satisfactory. Yet, when strange and dangerous events occur, Elsie and Sarah draw ever closer while the entities known as the silent companions create suspicion within the household and the nearby village. This Victorian-Gothic is not the novel read in bed – unless your intention is to remain wide awake!
by Gilbert King
reviewed by Nick
Beneath a Ruthless Sun is an all too real history of racism and corruption in rural 1950's Florida, told in a deeply readable narrative that will ensnare readers in conspiracy. Centered around sheriff Willis McCall and the injustices he frequently served to African-Americans and other disadvantaged peoples in his own Lake County, King explores institutionalized racism and the extent to which desegregation was vehemently and unconstitutionally resisted by Southern States.
by Jenny Erpenbeck
A poignant, gripping novel about the refugee crisis challenging the globe. Recently retired and suddenly finding himself adrift, Richard becomes captivated by a group of young African refugees being housed by the German government in his quiet Berlin suburb---Who are these men? What do they want? The answers seem simple, yet issues of power, humanitarian responsibility, bureaucracy, and intolerance make their lives and reality complex. Erpenbeck is a skilled novelist, and her talent as a storyteller serves as a humanizing lens on a daunting political crisis. Go, Went, Gone is imperative for us to read, discuss, and share.
 
More Staff Favorites
 
Here are more great new titles from our Staff Favorites table:
 
 
by Ruth Ware
 
 
by Peter Carey
 
by Paul La Farge
 
New in Sports
 
Check out these great new titles from our Sports section:
by Sebastian Abbot
Over the past decade, an audacious program called Football Dreams has held tryouts for millions of 13-year-old boys across Africa looking for soccer's next superstars. In The Away Game, reporter Sebastian Abbot follows a small group of the boys as they are discovered on dirt fields across Africa, join the glittering academy in Doha where they train, and compete for the chance to gain fame and fortune at Europe's top clubs. Abbot masterfully weaves together the dramatic story of the boys' journey with an exploration of the art and science of trying to spot talent at such a young age. The book is an unforgettable story of the joy and pain these talented African boys experience as they chase their dreams in a dizzying world of rich Arab sheikhs, money-hungry agents, and soccer-mad European fans.
by Susan Jacoby
From the historian and passionate baseball fan comes a book that is both a love letter to the game and a tough-minded analysis of the current challenges to its special position--in reality and myth--in American culture. The concise but wide-ranging analysis moves from the Civil War--when many soldiers played ball in northern and southern prisoner-of-war camps--to interviews with top baseball officials and young men who prefer playing online "fantasy baseball" to attending real games. Jacoby argues forcefully that the major challenge to baseball today is a shortened attention span at odds with a long game in which great hitters fail two out of three times. Without sanitizing this basic problem, Why Baseball Matters remind us that the game has retained its grip on our hearts precisely because it has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.
edited by Alexander Wolff
Masterfully assembled by longtime Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff, Basketball spans eight decades to bring together a dream team of writers as awe-inspiring and endlessly inventive as the game itself. Here are in-depth profiles of the legends of the hardcourt--Russell, Kareem, Bird, Jordan, and LeBron--and storied franchises such as the Knicks and Celtics, along with dazzling portraits of the flash and sizzle of playground ball and more personal reflections on the game by some of America's finest writers, among them Donald Hall, John Edgar Wideman, and Pat Conroy.
by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian
Who is Tiger Woods, really? The authors look deep behind the headlines to produce a richly reported answer to that question. To find out, they conducted hundreds of interviews with people from every facet of Woods's life--friends, family members, teachers, romantic partners, coaches, business associates, physicians, Tour pros, and members of Woods's inner circle. We are reminded, time and time again, of Woods's singular greatness and the exhilaration we felt watching an athletic genius dominate his sport for nearly twenty years. But at what cost? Benedict and Keteyian provide the answers in an extraordinary biography that is destined to become the defining book about an authentic American legend.