Events

Lauren Conrad signs Sweet Little Lies

Time:  Monday, February 8, 2010 6:00 p.m. (NEW START TIME)
Location:  Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, MO 64112
Phone:  913-384-3126 to order Admission Packages or for more information.
 

Author:  Lauren Conrad is the star of MTV's number-one hit show, "The Hills".  She launched her career as a fashion designer in Spring 2008 with the debut of the Lauren Conrad Collection.  Lauren has been featured on the covers of "Cosmopolitan", "Rolling Stone", "Seventeen", and "Entertainment Weekly", among others.  She lives in Los Angeles.  Her first novel, L.A. Candy was a New York Times Bestseller.  

Title:  Sweet Little Lies: An L.A. Candy Novel, $17.99 Hardcover, ISBN 9780061767609, On Sale Date:  February 1, 2010

The second book in a fun and fierce teen fiction series written by a New York Times Bestselling author and the star of MTV's "The Hills."

What:  Lauren Conrad will meet fans and she will autograph copies of her books purchased from Rainy Day Books, on our Website and / or at our Author Event, that are accompanied by a Stamped Ticket. 

*Please note that no one will be admitted into the venue without a ticket.

*Please be aware that Lauren Conrad will only sign copies of LA Candy and/or Sweet Little Lies purchased for this event.  No photos, memorabilia, or other items may be taken through the signing line.

*Photographs may be taken from the audience.  No photos are permitted in the signing line, and videotaping is strictly prohibited.

When:  Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:00 PM (NEW START TIME)

Where:  A Rainy Day Books Author Event at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112

Admission Package:  $17.99 plus Tax, includes from Rainy Day Books, One (1) Stamped Ticket and One (1) Copy of Sweet Little Lies (Hardcover) to be Autographed.  To place your order, use the Add To Cart feature below.  PLEASE NOTE, THIS EVENT IS ONE BOOK, ONE TICKET.  NO ONE WILL BE ADMITTED INTO THE SANCTUARY WITHOUT A TICKET.

All Author Event Book Sales are Final and Non-Returnable.

GIRLS' NIGHT OUT: Maria Finn discusses Hold Me Tight & Tango Me Home

Time: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 7:00 p.m.
Location: Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, MO 64112
Phone: 913-384-3126 to order Admission Packages or for more information.
 

Author:  Maria Finn is the editor of the anthology Cuba in Mind (Vintage, 2004.) She has written for Audubon, Saveur, Metropolis, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. She is a graduate of University of Missouri - Kansas City (UMKC) and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has published literary work in magazines such as Gastronomica, The Chicago Review, New Letters, and Exquisite Corpse. She has lived and worked in Alaska, Guatemala, and Spain, and traveled extensively in Latin America. 

Title:  Hold Me Tight & Tango Me Home, $13.95 Trade Paperback, ISBN 9781565125179, On Sale Date:  February 9, 2010

Maria Finn's husband was cheating. First she threw him out. Then she cried. Then she signed up for tango lessons. It turns out that tango has a lot to teach about understanding love and loss, about learning how to follow and how to lead, how to live with style and flair, take risks, and sort out what it is you really want. As Maria's world begins to revolve around the friendships she makes in dance class and the "milongas "(social dances) she attends regularly in New York City, we discover with her the fascinating culture, history, music, moves, and beauty of the Argentine tango. With each new dance step she learns-the embrace, the walk, the sweep, the exit-she is one step closer to returning to the world of the living. Eventually Maria travels to Buenos Aires, the birthplace of tango, and finds the confidence to try romance again.

As exhilarating as the dance itself, the story whirls us into the center of the ballroom dancing craze. And buoyed by the author's humor and passion, it imparts surprising insights about how to get on with life after you've lost in love.

Learn more about Hold Me Tight & Tango Me Home online, enter The Heartbreak Competition, and hear samples of tango music from around the world.

What:  Maria Finn will discuss her delightful new Memoir, answer audience questions and she will autograph copies of her Books purchased from Rainy Day Books, on our Website and / or at our Author Event, that are accompanied by a Stamped Ticket. 

A demonstration of Tango with audience participation will accompany this Event!

When:  Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 7:00 PM

Where:  A Rainy Day Books Author Event at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Sanctuary, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112

Admission Package:  $13.95 plus Tax, includes from Rainy Day Books, One (1) Stamped Ticket, One (1) Guest Ticket and One (1) Copy of Hold Me Tight & Tango Me Home (Trade Paperback) to be Autographed after the Author Presentation. To place your order, use the Add To Cart feature below.

All Author Event Book Sales are Final and Non-Returnable.

The Kansas City Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society presents:

Jay Wexler discusses Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars

Time: Thursday, February 18, 2010 7:00 PM

Location: Unity Temple on The Plaza, Chapel, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112

Author: Jay Wexler is Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law.

Title: Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars, $20.00 Paperback, ISBN 9780807000441, On Sale Date: June 1, 2009

What happens when a professor of church/state law decides to get out of his stuffy office and hit the road in search of the places and people responsible for some of the country's most controversial Supreme Court cases about this hot-button issue? In Holy Hullabaloos, Jay Wexler visits Amish farmers in Wisconsin who were fined for keeping their kids out of school; drinks at a bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose liquor license was challenged by a nearby Armenian church; and attends a public high school football game in east Texas where students once prayed before kickoff. He stops by Hialeah, Florida, where laws were passed to keep a Santeria church from performing animal sacrifices; visits a publicly funded Muslim school in downtown Cleveland; and checks out the site of a six-foot granite monument of the Ten Commandments erected on the Austin Capitol grounds near the Supreme Court.With a mix of awe and skepticism as well as large doses of humor, Jay Wexler searches for what really happened in some of our gnarliest disputes about just how high to build the wall between Church and government.

What: Jay Wexler will speak, answer audience questions and sign copies of his new book.

When: Thursday, February 18, 2010, 7:00 PM

Where: An American Constitution Society and Rainy Day Books Author Event at Unity Temple on The Plaza, Chapel, 707 W 47th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112

Admission: This event is free of charge.

Rainy Day Books will have Professor Wexler's book for sale at the event or you can place an advance order for pickup at the Event through www.RainyDayBooks.com

Author: Edmund White, esteemed novelist and cultural critic, is the author of many books, including the autobiographical novel A Boy’s Own Story; a previous memoir, My Lives; a biography of poet Arthur Rimbaud. White lives in New York City and teaches writing at Princeton University.

What: Edmund White will discuss City Boy, his critically acclaimed new memoir. When Edmund White left the Midwest after college he had an opportunity to pursue a PhD at Harvard; instead, he followed a lover to New York City. CITY BOY: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ‘70s is at once a memoir of the social and sexual lives of New York’s cultural and intellectual in-crowd and White’s own story of his twenties and thirties and his formation as an author.

White arrives in New York broke and unknown, struggling to express himself as a gay man. New York isn’t faring much better; it was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city where garbage piled up during the long strikes of the sanitation workers and when a major blackout led to days and days of looting. White and his friends wore whistles around their necks so they could summon help from other gay men when they were attacked by the gangs when they left Greenwich Village on their way to the West Side leather bars. A time of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult, White describes encounters with famous names and cultural icons from James Merrill to Elizabeth Bishop to William Burroughs; Harold Brodkey to Susan Sontag to Jasper Johns. Present at the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, White witnesses the start of the gay movement. And within a decade of his first publication, White writes A Boy’s Own Story, the autobiographical novel that will make him America’s most celebrated gay writer.

Recalling life in a more sordid Manhattan in an era of transformation, White records his ambitions and desires, remembers lovers and literary heroes. CITY BOY is a moving, candid, brilliant portrait of a time and a place.

This event is part of the Writers At Work speaker series organized by Kansas City novelist Whitney Terrell and co-sponsored by Chris Davis and the English Department at the University Of Missouri - Kansas City.

Where: Kansas City Public Library, Central Branch, Helzberg Auditorium, 14 W 10th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64105

When: Monday, February 22, 2010, 6:30 PM.

Admission: Complimentary and open to the public. Reservations requested, please call the Kansas City Public Library at (816) 701-3407.

Writers' books are available for purchase at events from Rainy Day Books.

Rainy Day Books and HealthRidge Fitness Center present a Body & Mind event:

Joe Piscatella discusses Positive Mind, Healthy Heart

Time: Monday, March 1, 2010 7:00 p.m.
Location: HealthRidge Fitness Center, 17800 West 106th Street, Olathe, KS 66061

Author: Joe Piscatella is one of the country’s most respected experts on how to live a healthy lifestyle in the real world. At age 32, Joe underwent coronary bypass surgery. The prognosis was not good with doctors predicting he would not live to be 40. But Joe’s philosophy was that “you can’t change the cards you were dealt, but you can change the way you play them.” And he did by developing a healthy living program. How has it worked? He has now celebrated his 30th anniversary of that surgery and has experienced heart disease reversal.Today the effectiveness and practicality of his advice is recognized nationally. He is a frequent guest on The Today Show, CNN, Good Morning America and Fox News. He has hosted three PBS television specials on lifestyle and health. He is the only non-medical member of the National Institutes of Health Expert Panel on Cardiac Rehabilitation.

Title: Positive Mind, Healthy Heart: Take Charge of Your Cardiac Health, One Day at a Time, $10.95 Paperback, ISBN 9780761154570, On Sale Date: January 1, 2010

From one of the longest surviving bypass patients in the U.S.--31 years and counting--comes a supportive, generous, think-positive book that shares the secret of his extraordinary success. Includes a year-long selection of motivational stories, quotes, meditations, tips, and more.

What: Joe Piscatella will speak, answer audience questions and sign copies of his new book.

When: Monday March 1, 2010, 7:00 PM

Where: A Rainy Day Books and HealthRidge Fitness Center Author Event at Healthridge Fitness Center 17800 West 106th Street, Olathe, KS 66061

Admission: This event is free of charge. Call (913) 888-0505 to make your reservation.

Rainy Day Books will have Mr. Piscatella's book for sale at the event or you can place an advance order for pickup at the Event through www.RainyDayBooks.com

Mark Lee Gardner discusses To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West

Time: Thursday March 4, 2010 6:30 p.m.
Location: Kansas City Public Library, Plaza Branch, Main Floor, Kansas City, MO 64112
Phone: 913-384-3126 to order books in advance, 816-701-3407 to make reservations to attend.

Author: Mark Lee Gardner is a professional historian and lives in Cascade, Colorado.

Title: To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West , $26.99 Hardcover, ISBN 9780061368271, On Sale Date: February 1, 2010

Western historian Gardner ("Wagons for the Santa Fe Trade") delivers a dual biography documenting Sheriff Pat Garrett's hunt for the iconic outlaw William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. As Gardner sees it, the battle between the wily Kid and the determined Garrett is perhaps the greatest of our Old West legends. Digging beneath the myths and melodrama, he begins in Las Vegas during Christmas week, 1880, when the capture and confinement of Billy the Kid made national headlines. Gardner then details the Kid's daring daylight courthouse escape on April 28, 1881, in a hail of gunfire, leaving bloodied bodies behind. I am not going to leave the country, said the Kid, and I am not going to reform, neither am I going to be taken alive again. The chase began, with Garrett finally gunning down the Kid on July 14, 1881. Gardner concludes with a survey of the Kid's robust mythic afterlife in books and films. Gardner's extensive research and authoritative approach ground this compelling historical recreation.

What: Mark Lee Gardner will discuss his new work, answer audience questions and he will autograph copies of his books purchased from Rainy Day Books, on our website and / or at our Author Event.

When: Thursday, March 4, 2010, 6:30 PM

Where: A Rainy Day Books Author Event at The Kansas City Public Library, Plaza Branch, Main Floor, 4801 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112

Admission Package: This event is open to the general public. Call 816-701-3407 to make reservations to attend.

All Author Event Book Sales are Final and Non-Returnable.

Kathleen Norris discusses Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life

Time: Tuesday, March 9, 2010 7:00 p.m.
Location: Community Christian Church, 4601 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64112
Phone: 913-384-3126 to order Admission Packages or for more information.
 

Author:  Kathleen Norris is is the award-winning poet, writer, and author of The New York Times bestsellers The Cloister Walk, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, and The Virgin of Bennington. Exploring the spiritual life, her work is at once intimate and historical, rich in poetry and meditations, brimming with exasperation and reverence, deeply grounded in both nature and spirit, sometimes funny, and often provocative. 

Title:  Acedia & Me, $16.00 Trade Paperback, ISBN 9781594484384, On Sale Date:  March 2, 2010

The extraordinary New York Times bestselling masterpiece from "one of the most eloquent yet earthbound spiritual writers of our time" (San Francisco Chronicle). Kathleen Norris had written several much loved books, yet she couldn't drag herself out of bed in the morning, couldn't summon the energy for her daily tasks. Even as she struggled, Norris recognized her familiar battle with "acedia," a word she had discovered in early Church text years earlier. Fascinated by this "noonday demon," so familiar to those in the early and medieval Church, Norris knew she must restore this forgotten but important concept to the modern world's vernacular. An examination of acedia in the light of psychology, spirituality, the healing powers of religious practice, and Norris's own experience, "Acedia & Me" is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always insightful.

What:  Kathleen Norris will discuss her powerful new memoir, answer audience questions and she will autograph copies of her books purchased from Rainy Day Books, on our website and / or at our Author Event, that are accompanied by a Stamped Ticket. 

When:  Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 7:00 PM

Where:  A Rainy Day Books Author Event at Community Christian Church 4601 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112

Admission Package:  $16.00 plus Tax, includes from Rainy Day Books, One (1) Stamped Ticket, One (1) Guest Ticket and One (1) Copy of Acedia & Me(Trade Paperback) to be Autographed after the Author Presentation. To place your order, use the Add To Cart feature below. For At Event pickup, simply choose In-Store Pickup and add a comment to your order that you will pick up at the event.

All Author Event Book Sales are Final and Non-Returnable.