Join wellness expert Ros Ben-Moshe as she discusses her new transformative body-mind guide in conversation with Dani Klein Modisett.About the BookLaughter really can be the best medicine, and in this transformative body-mind guide, acclaimed wellness expert Ros Ben-Moshe shares the prescription.In The Laughter Effect, Ros Ben-Moshe provides a roadmap to tap into the lighter side of life with laughter therapy. Ben-Moshe shares tips and tools to achieve an intentional state of being she calls the Laughter Effect-a way to elevate mindfulness, gratitude, and self-compassion. When used regularly, it enhances resilience to stress, enabling you to respond to adversity and bounce forward with humor, levity, and grace.Drawing on research from around the world, practice and wisdom from humor and laughter therapy, and positive psychology and neuroscience, Ben-Moshe shows you how to use the energy of laughter and joy to counter stress hormones and stimulate a daily dose of positive wellbeing with "happy hormones."The techniques, strategies and practices you'll learn can transform your physical, mental, social and emotional landscape. Viewing life through a laughter lens will awaken a positive change in yourself, how you respond to the world and, in turn, how the world responds to you.ABOUT THE AUTHORRos Ben-Moshe is a Read More ...

Join Mark Daley as he discusses his new memoir. ABOUT THE BOOK A heartrending and unforgettable memoir of an unlikely journey to parenthood through America's broken foster care system. What does it take to keep a child safe? As a long-time strategist and activist fighting for better outcomes for foster children, Mark Daley thought he had the answer. But when Ethan and Logan, an adorable infant and a precocious toddler, entered into their lives, Mark and his husband Jason quickly realized they were not remotely prepared for the uncertainty and complication of foster parenting. Every day seven hundred children enter the foster care system in the United States, and thousands more live on the brink. Safe offers a deeply personal window into what happens when the universal longing for family crashes up against the unique madness and bureaucracy of a child protection system that often fails to consider the needs of the most vulnerable parties of all--the children themselves. Daley takes us on a roller coaster ride as he and Jason grapple with Ethan and Logan's potential reunification with their biological family, learn brutal lessons about sacrifice, acceptance, and healing, and face the honest, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious challenges of Read More ...

A night of poetry featuring 5 incredible poets, moderated by Elizabeth Metzger & Liz (L. A.) Johnson! ABOUT THE EVENT Los Angeles poets L.A. Johnson and Elizabeth Metzger will co-host a reading and Q & A with five extraordinary poets as part of a curated reading series with local and non-local poets. L. A. Johnson is a writer from California. She is currently a Mellon Humanities postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California. The winner of the 2021 Rumi Prize in Poetry from Arts & Letters, her poems appear in Best New Poets, Poetry Magazine, The Slowdown Podcast, and elsewhere. Elizabeth Metzger is the author of Lying In (Milkweed, 2023), as well as and The Spirit Papers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and the chapbook Bed, recipient of The Sunken Garden Chapbook Prize. She is a poetry editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and she lives in California. ABOUT THE POETS Natalie Shapero is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collections Read More ...

How Amy Chua went from a shy Asian kid to a Yale Law professor and author of conversation-starting books! ABOUT THE EVENT Amy Chua will discuss her journey from the daughter of immigrants to Yale Law professor and author of conversation-starting books—and now novelist. Amy Chua’s most recent book is “The Golden Gate”, a historical novel. Perhaps her most famous (or infamous) book is “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” ABOUT THE AUTHOR Amy Chua is the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. After practicing on Wall Street for a few years, she joined the Yale Law School faculty in 2001 and is a noted expert in the areas of foreign policy, globalization, and ethnic conflict. Amy is the bestselling author of numerous books, including World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2002), which was selected by both The Economist and the U.K.’s Guardian as a Best Book of 2003; Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Read More ...

Join Ben Breen as he discusses his wild new book on the birth of psychedelic science. ABOUT THE BOOK A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley. Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth. At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists—and star-crossed lovers—Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life’s mission to reshape humanity through a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Read More ...

Ben Weber discusses his new book AMERICAN PURGATORY with LA icon Luis J. RodriguezABOUT THE BOOKIn this explosive new book, historian Benjamin Weber reveals how the story of American prisons is inextricably linked to the expansion of American power around the globe. A vivid work of hidden history that spans the wars to subjugate Native Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, the conquest of the western territories, and the creation of an American empire in Panama, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, American Purgatory reveals how “prison imperialism”—the deliberate use of prisons to control restive, subject populations—is written into our national DNA, extending through to our modern era of mass incarceration. Weber also uncovers a surprisingly rich history of prison resistance, from the Seminole Chief Osceola to Assata Shakur—one that invites us to rethink the scope of America’s long freedom struggle. Weber’s brilliantly documented text is supplemented by original maps highlighting the global geography of prison imperialism, as well as illustrations of key figures in this history by the celebrated artist Ayo Scott. For readers of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, here is a bold new effort to tell the full story of prisons and incarceration—at home and abroad—as well as Read More ...

Join us at Chevalier's Books to celebrate Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing's Darkness in Style, Noir Issue featuring 8 writers!ABOUT THE BOOKEdited by the world renowned Himalayan poet, Yuyutsu RD Sharma, Pratik is a purely non-profit literary publication and is published by White Lotus Book Shop, Kathmandu for Mrs. Prabha Adhikary. The magazine was founded by Nepalese poet, Hari Adhikary who along with several distinguished Nepali poets including Mohan Koirala published it initially in Nepali language. The magazine was later revamped and published in English language by Yuyutsu Sharma in 1989. Since then, Pratik has become a significant platform of creative writing worldwide.ABOUT THE WRITERSSuzanne Lummis guest-edited the noir-themed, “Darkness in Style,” issue for the international literary journal, Pratik. Poetry.la produces her long-running YouTube series that connects contemporary poetry and film noir, They Write by Night. NPR's "All Things Considered” profiled her in an episode called "Noir Poetry with L.A. as a Backdrop." She’s published three full-length collections and her poetry has appeared in noted literary journals. She’s a longtime teacher with the UCLA Extension Writers Program and leads a series of Zoom explorations involving workshops together with close readings of important poetry, Deep Poetry Knowledge.Yuyutsu Sharma is the Read More ...

Raj Tawney reads his latest, COLORFUL PALATE, in conversation with Claudia ForestieriABOUT THE BOOKA timely self-examination of the "mixed" American experience featuring exclusive recipes and photographs from the author's multicultural family.As citizens continue to evolve and diversify within the United States, the ingredients that make up each flavorful household are waiting to be discovered and devoured. In Colorful Palate, author Raj Tawney shares his coming-of-age memoir as a young man born into an Indian, Puerto Rican, and Italian-American family, his struggles with understanding his own identity, and the mouthwatering flavors of the melting pot from within his own childhood kitchen.While the world outside can be cruel and unforgiving, it's even more complicated for a mixed-race kid, unsure of his place in the world. Turning to his mother and grandmother for guidance, Tawney assists in the kitchen, providing intimate moments and candor as he listened to the tales behind each culinary delicacy and the women who perfected it. Each lovingly prepared meal offered another opportunity to learn more about his extraordinary heritage. The ability to create delicious fare with his family wasn't just a duty for the grand ladies who raised him; it was a survival tactic for navigating new and Read More ...

Richard Sandler reads from and discusses his new book WITNESS TO A PROSECUTION: THE MYTH OF MICHAEL MILKEN at Chevalier's Books.ABOUT THE BOOKIn 1986, the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York began an investigation into Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert, and its High Yield and Convertible Bond Department, a department Michael created and was head of. Michael was the most successful and innovative financier of his time. Drexel, an upstart investment bank was also the most successful securities firm on Wall Street, thanks to Michael.What was the investigation into Michael Milken going to focus on, other than his innovation in the financial markets? Mike was democratizing access to capital for the 99% of companies that could not previously access the public market and created a financial revolution that continues to this day. The high yield bond market grew rapidly from the end of the 1970's from $70 billion to over $2.2 trillion dollars in 2022. He created an industry that gave new businesses and investors the opportunity to create value by financing companies that were too small to access the markets.Richard Sandler decided to represent Michael as his personal lawyer, and to be responsible Read More ...

Jonny Sun and Deb JJ Lee read from their work GOODBYE, AGAIN & IN LIMBO to us and we love it for an entire evening!ABOUT THE BOOKSGOODBYE, AGAIN is a collection of touching and hilarious personal essays, stories, poems—accompanied by his trademark illustrations—covering topics such as mental health, happiness, and what it means to belong.IN LIMBO is a debut YA graphic memoir about a Korean-American girl's coming-of-age story—and a coming home story—set between a New Jersey suburb and Seoul, South Korea. ABOUT THE AUTHORSJonny Sun is the New York Times and international best-selling author of Goodbye, again and everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too, and the illustrator of Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Deb JJ Lee is a Korean American artist currently living in Brooklyn, NY. They have appeared in the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Google, Radiolab, PBS, and more. Books they have illustrated include The Invisible Boy by Alyssa Hollingsworth (Roaring Brook Press, 2020) and The Other Side of Tomorrow by Tina Cho (HarperCollins, 2024). They enjoy reality tv, sparkling water, and pretending to be an extrovert.

Paul Yoon reads from and discusses his new book THE HIVE AND THE HONEY at Chevalier's Books.ABOUT THE BOOKFrom the beloved award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a spectacular collection of unique stories, each confronting themes of identity, belonging, and the collision of cultures across countries and centuries.A boy searches for his father, a prison guard on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family.The Hive and the Honey is a bold and indelible collection by celebrated author Paul Yoon, one that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that haunt a Korean settlement in Far East Russia?Lauded as a “quotidian-surreal craft-master” (New York magazine), Yoon’s stunning stories are laced with beauty and cruelty, and The Hive and the Honey is the Read More ...

Minnesota Attorney General will be discussing his recent book BREAK THE WHEEL.ABOUT THE BOOKWith this powerful and intimate trial diary, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asks the key question: How do we break the wheel of police violence and finally make it stop?The murder of George Floyd sparked global outrage. At the center of the conflict and the controversy, Keith Ellison grappled with the means of bringing justice for Floyd and his family. Now, in this riveting account of the Derek Chauvin trial, Ellison takes the reader down the path his prosecutors took, offering different breakthroughs and revelations for a defining, generational moment of racial reckoning and social justice understanding.Each chapter of BREAK THE WHEEL goes spoke to spoke along the wheel of the system as Ellison examines the roles of prosecutors, defendants, heads of police unions, judges, activists, legislators, politicians, and media figures, each in his attempt to end this chain of violence and replace it with empathy and shared insight.Ellison’s analysis of George Floyd’s life and the rich trial context he provides demonstrates that, while it may seem like an unattainable goal, lasting change and justice can be achieved.ABOUT THE AUTHOR Keith Ellison was sworn in as Minnesota’s Read More ...

Decorated sportswriter Alex Squadron discusses his new book LIFE IN THE G with Mirin FaderABOUT THE BOOKWelcome to the G League—the official minor league of the National Basketball Association. Life in the G is about the arduous quest to achieve an improbable goal: making it to the NBA. Zeroing in on the Birmingham Squadron and four of its players—Jared Harper, Joe Young, Zylan Cheatham, and Malcolm Hill—Alex Squadron details the pursuit of a dream in what turned out to be the most remarkable season in the history of minor league sports. Life in the G League is far from glamorous. Players make enormous sacrifices and work unimaginable hours in the hope that someone in the NBA will give them a chance. To this day, very few fans—even the most passionate followers of the NBA—know much about the G League. In the fall of 2021, the Birmingham Squadron granted author Alex Squadron complete access to the team to capture the experience of playing in the league. That year, with hundreds of NBA players sidelined by the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19, the G League saw a record number of call-ups. Sports Illustrated labeled it “the year of the NBA replacement Read More ...

Melissa Broder will be reading her latest, DEATH VALLEYABOUT THE BOOKThe most profound book yet from the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.In Melissa Broder’s astounding new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike.Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death Valley.ABOUT THE AUTHOR Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Milk Fed and The Pisces, the essay collection Read More ...

Cliff Sloan discusses THE COURT AT WAR with Rich Marmaro.ABOUT THE BOOKThe inside story of how one president forever altered the most powerful legal institution in the country, with consequences that endure today.By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices—the most by any president except George Washington—and handpicked the chief justice.But the wartime Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president. The Court at War explores this pivotal period. It provides a cast of unforgettable characters in the justices—from the mercurial, Vienna-born intellectual Felix Frankfurter to the Alabama populist Hugo Black; from the western prodigy William O. Douglas, FDR’s initial pick to be his running mate in 1944, to Roosevelt’s former attorney general and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson.The justices’ shameless capitulation and unwillingness to cross their beloved president highlight the dangers of an unseemly closeness between Supreme Court justices and their political patrons. But the FDR Court’s finest moments also provided a robust defense of individual rights, rights the current Court has put in jeopardy. Sloan’s intimate Read More ...

Nana-Ama Danquah will read from and discuss her groundbreaking memoir, WILLOW WEEP FOR ME: A BLACK WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH DEPRESSION.ABOUT THE BOOKThe first book to focus on black women and depression, seen through the personal journey of a young black woman’s descent into despair.Nana-Ama Danquah, a “working-class broke,” twenty-two-year-old single mother, began to suffer from a variety of depressive symptoms after she gave birth to her daughter, which led her to suspect that she might be going crazy. Understanding the importance of strength in a world that often undervalues black women’s lives, she shrouded herself and her illness in silence and denial. “Black women are supposed to be strong―caretakers, nurturers, healers of other people―any of the twelve dozen variations of Mammy,” writes Danquah. But eventually, she could no longer deny the debilitating sadness that interfered with her ability to care for her daughter, to pursue her career as a writer, and to engage in personal relationships. “This is how the world feels to me when I am depressed,” she writes. “Everything is blurry, out of focus, fading like a photograph; people seem incapable of change; living feels like a waste of time and effort.”She moves back to the city of Read More ...

Join Anna Quinn & Staci Greason to discuss their recent books ANGELINE & ALL THE GIRLS IN TOWNAnna Quinn is the author of the novel, Angeline, forthcoming from Blackstone Publishing, spring, 2023, and The Night Child (Blackstone Publishing, 2018). Listed as a #1 Amazon Bestseller in Psychological Literary Fiction, it was also selected an an Ingram's 2018 Best Book Club and #1 Best Real Psychological Fiction on Goodreads. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Writer's Digest, Psychology Today, Washington 129 Anthology, and the Alone Together: Comfort in the Time of Covid anthology. Anna leads writing workshops across the country, and is the former owner of The Writers' Workshoppe and Imprint Bookstore in Port Townsend, WA. www.annamquinn.comANGELINE is about a young, cloistered nun from Chicago transferred unwillingly to a radical convent in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. Here, she must learn to assimilate the profound losses of her past with a supernatural gift for healing that awakens as she opens to her new life.Staci Greason is the author of All the Girls in Town, a novel (TouchPoint Press, 7/26/22). Her other literary achievements include award-winning television pilots and screenplays. Her short stories and essays have been published in Read More ...

Join Sascha Rothchild to discuss her recent book BLOOD SUGARABOUT THE BOOK AND AUTHORQUICK TAKE: A New York Times Book Review Best Thriller of 2022 that received critical acclaim from outlets like Cosmopolitan, New York Post, FIRST For Women, CrimeReads, Paste, PopSugar, and BookPage, BLOOD SUGAR tells the story of Ruby Simon, an absurdly likeable murderess accused of killing her husband—ironically, the only murder she didn’t commit. As Ruby undergoes questioning and the narrative alternates between Ruby’s memories of her past crimes and her present-day fight to clear her name, Rothchild weaves an intricately plotted and surprisingly sensitive exploration of love, guilt, chronic illness, revenge, and justice, all served up in her irreverent charm and fresh, acerbic prose. The result is a twisty, clever tale of female power and a surprising tribute to the extraordinary things we do for love, starring an unforgettable protagonist you can’t help but root for—an addicting mixture of sour and sweet.BLOOD SUGAR marks a departure for Rothchild, who cut her teeth writing some of the last decades’ boldest, most memorable stories. After gaining notoriety first for her 2004 stint on public radio show “This American Life” and then for her comedic yet heartfelt memoir-turned-screenplay, How Read More ...

Join Lilah Fitzgerald to discuss her recent book STARS & SWASHBUCKLERSABOUT THE BOOKMonsters eat dreams.Yes or no?Far in the future, earth has split apart into thousands of islands dangling between the stars. Privateers search for relics, artifacts, and manuscripts that were lost when the earth split, ships sail the stars like they once sailed oceans, and banished Olde Beings lurk in the Mysts between the islands.Welcome to the broken world.Stuck in steerage on the maiden voyage of the luxury airship the Halthow, sixteen-year-old Anya Marcox is determined to make her brother happy by accepting the fate their dead father used to recite to her like a prayer: average lives for average girls.But when an encounter with a dashing stranger lands Anya in the middle of a cutthroat race to find a relic that could change the fate of the islands, average is no longer an option.Compelled by the whispering of the stars that have always promised her something more, Anya finds herself secretly working as a privateer—and falling for her partner in crime. But her treasure hunt through the stars soon turns deadly: the nightmares are getting worse . . . and Anya is beginning to wonder if they’re more Read More ...