11th TAKOMA PARK BOOK FAIR
We are delighted that Busboys and Poets will be hosting the Takoma Park Book Fair again this year. The book fair is free and open to the public.
Below are the details about the book fair and a list of this year’s authors and their books.
11th ANNUAL TAKOMA PARK BOOK FAIR
A fun and unusual stop on your holiday rounds!
Saturday, December 14 2–5 p.m.
Takoma Park Busboys & Poets
235 Carroll St NW, Washington, DC
Read Local: Browse and buy books from more than 30 local authors (who will be happy to sign them). Think holiday gifts!
Eat & Drink Local: This year’s event coincides with the ever popular Takoma Park Cocoa Crawl. Warm up with a cup of hot chocolate (spiked or un-) or a Booktini—a special themed cocktail! And of course, enjoy a delicious meal at Busboy’s before or after the event.
Takoma Park Book Fair’s featured authors and books
Mary Amato, Sing with Me, Lucy McGee.The school talent show is a big deal for Lucy McGee and her friends, but when one “friend” tries to steal Lucy’s song lyrics as well as the spotlight, some serious (and hilarious) drama unfolds behind the scenes. This book by an award-winning children’s author is for grades 2-5 (ages 7-11).
Valarie Austin, The Student’s Comprehensive Guide For College & Other Life Lessons. This book helps high school/college bound students navigate selecting careers, investigating colleges and majors, and preparing for the financial requirements of attending college. This guide offers practical advice on how to graduate from college—on time.
Anne Becker’s Human Animal. This is a full-length collection of poems, does not shy away from encounters with the universe that brought forth our animal species. These poems cast a cold—and a hot—eye on love, offering a candid image: the body leads the way to love, our only resting place.
K.G. Bethlehem, Shadow Within A City II: Ghost Squad’s Apocalypse.
This anti-utopian fictional work is set 20 years in the future. A corrupt government continues to oppress the people, only to be confronted by ShadowKill and other freedom fighters.
Rick Bowers, Innocence on Trial. Laura Tobias, a rising star with the Council Against Wrongful Conviction, is the last hope for inmate Eddie Nash, who is serving life without parole at Attica. Laura uncovers evidence that Eddie was framed by the police and that the real killer remains at large. She also finds herself being stalked. With a new trial moving forward, Laura must find the truth and prevail in court—and avoid becoming the next victim.
Theodore Carter, Stealing the Scream. In 2004, masked thieves stole Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” from an Oslo museum. Norwegian police recovered the painting two years later but never explained how or where. This literary, humor-laced crime novel relates what may have happened.
Andrea Chamblee, The Capital of Basketball. This is the first comprehensive history of DC-area high school basketball, written by longtime sportswriter and loyal fan John McNamara. After the Annapolis sportswriter was killed during a mass shooting at the Capital Gazette offices in June 2018, his wife, Andrea Chamblee, and friend David Elfin completed McNamara’s passion project. John’s love for the game, the history, the players and coaches, and the city itself unfold over the pages describing 100 years of high school hoops. Chamblee has been interviewed about the book on CNN, CBS Evening News, and various radio shows since its release in November. #CapitalOfBasketball made The List of Nytimes.com Holiday Gift Books! https://www.nytimes.com/interacti…/…/books/sports-books.html
Debra Diamond, Diary of a Death Doula: 25 Lessons the Dying Teach Us About the Afterlife. Diamond, a psychic medium and researcher of near-death experiences, recounts what it’s like to work as a hospice death doula. She presents 25 essential life lessons gleaned from those at the threshold of the afterlife, and those who have crossed over, offering a new way of understanding death.
Laura Di Franco, Warrior Desire, Love Poems to Inspire Your Fiercely Alive Whole Self In this book, you’ll find a deeper awareness and vulnerability here, splattered out loud on these pages. The words, poems, reflections and writing prompts are meant to catapult you into your own next layer of discovery of your wildest desires and biggest love.
Barbara Doherty and Ron Carver, Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War. A collection of essays by historians, oral histories by GI resisters and civilian activists, photographs and illustrations documenting the many facets of the GI Movement and its significance in helping to end the war.
Susie Erenrich, Grassroots Leadership & The Arts For Social Change This book explores the intersection of grassroots leadership and the arts for social change, accentuating achievements and victories won by various artists. Readers will find inspiration in the work of these individuals and the continuing commitment to dream a better world for humanity.
John Feffer, Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern Europe’s Broken Dreams. In this unique and poignant account of faded dreams, journalist Feffer returns to Eastern Europe a quarter of a century after the fall of communism. He tracks down hundreds of people he had interviewed decades earlier, during the fall of the Iron Curtain, for his book Shock Waves. Aftershock makes for fascinating, if at times disturbing, reading—at once very real and very timely.
Melanie Figg, Trace. Trace is an award-winning poetry collection that explores the traces left behind by memory, abuse, illness, war, and love in layered poems “full of voices that seem out of another world.” With a feminist eye, these poems braid the visual arts, personal and global history, and myth to “face the abyss and sing, symphonically, into it.”
Amy Hansen, Fire Bird: A Kirtland’s Warbler Story. Chip-Chip-Che-Way-O! This is the song of the endangered Kirtland’s Warbler. These birds live in the jack pine forests of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada. Every fall they fly 1,500 miles to overwinter in the Bahamas; every spring they make the return trip. The birds’ nesting habitat depends on fire for renewal. How can they survive?
Ali Kahn, Patapsco: Life along Maryland’s Historic River Valley. This collection of compelling oral history narratives, evocative essays, and stunning images profiles the lives of longtime residents of five historic Patapsco Valley towns—Ellicott City, Oella, Elkridge, Relay, and Daniels—and reveals the connections between culture, place, and memory.
Kyi Kaung, Wolf: A Novel of Love and Betrayal. Mothi Awegoke, a student leader of the 1988 student uprising in Burma, is fleeing the junta’s dreaded military agents when a beautiful young woman, Thuzar, brakes to a halt, driving a white Mercedes, and rescues him. It will turn out she has her own agenda. Follow Mothi from the glittering capitals of the world, to their slums and a surprise ending in Queens, New York.
Kimberly Keyes, The Cash-Strapped Person’s Guide to Thriving in the Digital Age. A practical how-to guide on finding computers and software without going into major debt. It also includes information on how one can do such things for free or low-cost such as going online, getting training, obtaining ebooks, and much more!
Jenny Klein, Using Art to Teach Writing Traits. This book explores the benefits of using visual arts as a way to teach writing traits in a text-free environment. Creative lesson plans are included.
Julie Langsdorf, White Elephant. The “white elephant”—a newly built, monstrously oversized residence—towers over the quaint old houses of Willard Park, including the tiny, 100-year-old home of Allison and Ted Miller. This is a tangled-web tale of a community on the verge and its inhabitants, who long to connect. It’s a story about opposing sides struggling to find a middle ground—a parable for our times.
Christine Merriam, At the Far End of Nowhere. A haunting father-daughter relationship, an old-fashioned father, a dutiful daughter, a changing culture. It’s complicated.
Susan Katz Miller, The Interfaith Family Journal. A five-week process of journaling, discussion, and creative activities to find the best pathway for your interfaith family. Contemplate your religious, spiritual, and cultural past, and envision your future together.
Kathleen O’Toole, This Far. Like movements in a musical composition, these poems share leitmotifs: grief and the desire to honor those who have passed on, the ways in which nature and art illuminate and console, the tension between the need for silence and the urge to bear witness.
Diane Pomerantz, Lost in the reflecting pool, a memoir. A memoir and a psychological love story, this book is at times both tender and horrifying. It chronicles one woman’s struggle to survive within, and ultimately to break free of, a relationship with a narcissistic man who is incapable of caring about anyone beyond himself
Katia Raina, Castle of Concrete. Set in the final year of Soviet Russia’s collapse, this stunning debut novel tells the story of Sonya, a timid Jewish girl who reunites with her dissident mother and falls in love with a mysterious boy, who may be an anti-Semite. Meanwhile Sonya’s mama is falling in love—with America. The place sounds amazing to Sonya. Will she ever find her way there?
Jeff Richards, Lady Killer. Set in Takoma Park among a group of college friends now raising families together, this book explores spousal abuse and the ways that longstanding friendships and marriages can unravel when put to the test.
John Robinette and Robert Jacoby, Never Stop Dancing: A Memoir. After John’s wife is killed in an accident, leaving him to raise their two young sons on his own, his friend Robert, an author, suggests that he interview John over the course of a year. Instead of offering quick fixes, this book charts a deeper, thornier examination of loss and regret and reassures us that one can and does go on after loss.
Megan Scribner, Teaching with Heart: Poetry that Speaks to the Courage to Teach. For this book, 90 teachers, educators, and administrators each selected a poem and wrote a moving commentary about how it taps into the joys and challenges that define their work and life as teachers.
Shabnam Samuel, A Fractured Life. The author explores the experience of growing up female and the shared “culture of silence”—and how to break through with hope and resilience.
Cory Shulman, The Writer’s Story. This commentary on social justice unfolds through a romance between an atheist writer and a female rabbi. Much of the action takes place in a Starbucks cafe, where the two characters engage in banter and philosophical discussion as their connection grows. And then there’s the armed robbery, an examination of mental illness, and unexpected death. This is no clichéd Hollywood story.
Harvey Solomon, Such Splendid Prisons: Diplomatic Detainment in America during World War II. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government incarcerated Axis diplomats in remote luxury hotels until they could be repatriated for U.S. diplomats trapped abroad. Solomon’s book uncovers this hidden chapter of American history that brims with behind-the-scenes diplomatic machinations and political calculations.
Joel Snyder, The Visual Made Verbal. Audio description is a narrative that makes the visual elements of an event or a media piece accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. It is mandated now for some television broadcasts, accompanies most movie releases, and is used increasingly in museum exhibits. Snyder has worked with the technique since its beginnings as a formal service at DC’s Arena Stage, and he gives talks about it and conducts trainings around the world.
Diana Tokaji, Surviving Assault: Words that Rock & Quiet & Tell the Truth – Resource for the Living A writer, choreographer, and certified yoga therapist, Tokaji specializes in a strength-focused approach following trauma. This book exists to remind us of what we already know. And to steer us when doubts interfere and try to weaken us. Surviving an assault to heart, mind, or body takes will and courage.
Lane Windman, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide. The author highlights organizing efforts by women and by people of color, which too often are overlooked. Her book overturns widely held myths about the decline of labor and opens the door to building greater worker power.
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