Tuesday, October 1 at 7pm
BILL PENLEY READING & SIGNING
A long-time storyteller and lifelong resident of the Great Smoky Mountains area, Bill Penley brings this background into his first novel, A Smoky Mountain Odyssey. The story of a young man who survives the ravage of the Civil War only to be convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, this classic-feeling tale of his escape and adventurous route toward home is set against the beauty of the Smoky Mountains.
Wednesday, October 2 at 7pm
TYLER CAPPS TALK & SIGNING
On his food blog, Cooking Comically, Ashevillian Tyler Caps states: “I have no formal training in the culinary arts. I’m just a guy who likes to cook and eat and also just happens to draw comics, take pictures and believe that if you aren’t having fun when you cook, you’re doing it wrong.” By combining his love of comics and food, Capps hit a sweet spot and now his delightful blend of stick figures, witty banter, and low-brow culinary art is available in a book, also called Cooking Comically. Join us for a booksigning and sample some of his easy masterpieces yourself!
Thursday, October 3 at 7pm
RICK MCDANIEL READING & SIGNING
During his decade-long tenure as a writer for the Asheville Citizen-Times, Rick McDaniel was witness to many of the events, places, and people that turned Asheville into a food mecca. McDaniel will share these and other stories from his new book, Asheville Food:
A History of High Country Cuisine, which takes Asheville eating back to its early roots and also looks at where we stand today and what is on the horizon in food, booze, beer, and more. Filled with great facts and quotes from local chefs, farmers, and food lovers, the amazing pictures will have your mouth watering for your favorite local meal.
Friday, October 4 at 7pm
SUSAN GREGG GILMORE READING & SIGNING
In The Funeral Dress, the new novel from Susan Gregg Gilmore, a friendship between an unwed mother and a seamstress begins a series of events that exposes the strengths and weaknesses of a small mountain community. Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café) calls The Funeral Dress “a rare and wonderful glimpse into lives and friendships among blue collar working women in America.” The author of the novels Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, Gregg Gilmore has written for many publications as a journalist including The Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor.
Saturday, October 5 at 3pm
STAR WARS READS DAY
Geek out with us! Put on your Ewok costume and join us for a Star Wars celebration hosted by bookseller Lauren Napoli. Festivities will include trivia, games, food, and a dramatic reading of William Shakespeare’s Star Wars! Costumes are enthusiastically encouraged.
Saturday, October 5 at 7pm
DENI BÉCHARD READING & SIGNING
Award-winning author Deni Béchard discusses his new book, Empty Hands, Open Arms: The Race to Save Bonobos in the Congo and Make Conservation Go Viral. Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears says: “Deni Béchard’s Empty Hands, Open Arms is the embodiment of the type of reporting that we dream of reading, but all too rarely encounter–intelligent, engaged, and above all, astonishingly perceptive. Here is a portrait of a nation and the conservationists trying to protect it, rendered with all the necessary complexity to make this book joyously alive.” The author of the memoir Cures for Hunger and the novel Vandal Love, Béchard has done freelance reporting from Northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and his articles, blogs, stories and translations have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers.
Sunday, October 6 at 3pm
POETRIO
Join us for readings and signings by Kelly Cherry (The Life & Death of Poetry), Susan O’Dell Underwood (From), and Michael Beadle (Invitation).
Monday, October 7 at 7pm
WILLIAM BOOKER CHIROPRACTIC EVENT
More details TBA.
Tuesday, October 8 at 7pm
LEE SMITH READING & SIGNING
The author of staff and customer favorites like Fair and Tender Ladies, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-eyed Stranger, and Last Girls, Lee Smith returns with Guests on Earth. Primarily set in Asheville’s infamous Highland Hospital where Zelda Fitzgerald lost her life, this new book “is Lee Smith at her powerful best,” according to Adriana Trigiani (The Shoemaker’s Wife). Our own Emöke says, “If ever a story chose the writer, Guests on Earth certainly engaged Lee Smith to capture the personal, the imagined, and the mysteries that surrounds these guests on Earth. … [a] southern breeze that no other can send our way but our one and only Lee Smith.”
Thursday, October 10 at 7pm
WENONAH HAUTER DISCUSSION & SIGNING
Farmer, writer, and Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, Wenonah Hauter presents her book, Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America. Bill McKibben called Foodopoly “a shocking and powerful reminder of the distance between our image of the family farmer and the corporate agribusiness reality” and the San Francisco Chronicle says Hauter “does a particularly good job of detailing both the methods and implications of this corporate takeover of food.” Please join us for this important discussion.
Friday, October 11 at 7pm
MINDI MELTZ READING & SIGNING
Local author Mindi Meltz returns with her second book, Lonely in the Heart of the World, a fantastical novel. Publishers Weekly says, “[a] fiercely imaginative epic . . . this tale will reward the reader with a pantheistic glimpse of destruction, rebirth, and the tantalizing nature of desire and union.” Meltz has a Master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology and is the author of Beauty.
Saturday, October 12 at 7pm
LAURA GARREN TALK & SIGNING
One of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southeast, the Chattooga River muscles fifty-seven miles through a southern deciduous forest with one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the country and is home to many species of rare wildflowers. Join author Laura Ann Garren for a discussion of her book The Chattooga River: A Natural and Cultural History.
Sunday, October 13 at 3pm
JEFF HIGH READING & SIGNING
From the great state of Tennessee, Jeff High brings us his new novel, More Things in Heaven and Earth. Patrick Taylor (Irish Country Doctor) says, “Told through the eyes of Dr. Luke Bradford, a newly minted MD, the story of the little town of Watervalley, Tennessee, and its inhabitants comes vividly to life. … [Jeff High’s] tale and his love of his native Tennessee and the human race shines from every page.”
High is an operating room RN in open-heart surgery.
Tuesday, October 15 at 7pm
ASK THE CAREER EXPERTS
Join Susan Grosoff-Feinblatt, Career Counselor, and Jane Falter, Professional Resume Writer/Job Coach, for an informative discussion of how to find the hidden job market.
Wednesday, October 16 at 7pm
JOHN MILLIKEN THOMPSON READING & SIGNING
Love and Lament, John Milliken Thompson’s second novel, is set in rural North Carolina between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of WWI. Clyde Edgerton (Walking Across Egypt) calls it “. .
. a sweeping novel that gets everything right . . . it allows you to experience the life of another time, about a hundred years ago, in the soul and mind of a young woman whose passions and worries could be your own.” Thompson lives in Virginia and read from his first novel, The Reservoir, at Malaprop’s two years ago.
Thursday, October 17 at 7PM
MARK PINSKY READING & SIGNING
Former investigative journalist Mark Pinsky was a college student in North Carolina in 1970 when Nancy Dean Morgan was found murdered in Madison County. His new book, Met Her on the Mountain, details his efforts to find the answers to the unsolved case. “Pinsky’s meticulous research, relying heavily on interviews, translates into a beautifully nuanced study of culture clash, machine politics, and the sometimes hobbled pursuit of justice in a small mountain community,” according to Vicki Lane (Day of Small Things). Perhaps best known for his book The Gospel According to the Simpsons, Pinsky is the author of several other books and his articles have appeared in publications such as The Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Orlando Sentinel, where he was a staff writer.
Sunday, October 20 at 3pm
WRITERS AT HOME READING SERIES WITH TOMMY HAYS
Join us for a reading to celebrate Writers at Home host Tommy Hays’s new book, What I Came to Tell You! A story for ages 10+, What I Came to Tell You is a novel about a boy, his family, and his community, which is set in Asheville. Allan Wolf (The Watch That Ends the Night) says, “Without the use of dragons, zombies, wizards, or vampires, Tommy Hays has written a page-turning tale starring a true-to-life kid on a true-to-life quest to find solace and forgiveness. . . . a memorable story woven, like young Grover’s bamboo “tapestries,” from alternating strands of sorrow and joy.”
Monday, October 21 at 7pm
HEARTSPEAK: LISTENING & SPEAKING FROM THE HEART WITH CATHY HOLT
Join teacher and author Cathy Holt as she presents her handy new minibook, HeartSpeak: Listening & Speaking from the Heart. Do you want more cooperation and connection, and less conflict? Interactive exercises will help you learn the language of feelings and needs, hear the unmet need behind others’ judgments, and give empathy. Learn “heart coherence”–centering in the heart to enhance communication.
Tuesday, October 22 at 7pm
KEN ILGUNAS READING & SIGNING
Ken Ilgunas, in the name of not taking on any more debt during a grad school stint at Duke, lived in a Ford Econoline van for two and a half years. The memoir of that adventure, Walden on Wheels, is “his thoroughly endearing account of the whole business,” according to a review in the Wall Street Journal. The review goes on to say that, “This is a guy who starts out sounding like a refugee from ‘Wayne’s World’ and ends up a reasonably credible latter-day Transcendentalist–if you can imagine Seth Rogen channeling Thoreau.”
Please join us to hear tales of his adventures!
Thursday, October 24 at 7pm
CAROL PEPPE HEWITT READING & SIGNING
A business owner, activist, and co-founder of Slow Money NC, Carol Peppe Hewitt joins us to discuss her book Financing Our Foodshed:
Growing Local Food with Slow Money. Highlighting 22 of the more than
85 low interest loans that Carol and Slow Money NC have facilitated since its inception in 2010, Financing Our Foodshed reveals the importance of nontraditional funding for continuing our rich food culture.
Friday, October 25 at 7pm
CHARLES MCNAIR READING & SIGNING
Ron Rash calls Pickett’s Charge, Charles McNair’s new novel, “a rousing depiction of William Faulkner’s belief that the past is not dead, it’s not even past.” The story of a 114-year-old Civil War veteran, Threadgill Pickett, mired in old beliefs that are challenged when he undertakes an improbable journey, Pickett’s Charge has earned comparisons to John Kennedy Toole and Flannery O’Connor, as well as Faulkner. McNair is the author of the novel Land O’Goshen, books editor for Paste magazine, and a book reviewer for WMLB 1690 AM in Atlanta.
Saturday, October 26 at 3pm
TREASURE HUNTERS BOOK PARTY
ARRRRGH! It’s treasure, adventure, and huntin’ for loot at Malaprop’s!
Help us celebrate James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein’s newest series for middle-grade readers, Treasure Hunters, with a store-wide treasure hunt, activities, and prizes! In Treasure Hunters, four globe-trotting siblings embark on the non-stop adventure of their lives. Pre-order Treasure Hunters today!
Sunday, October 27 at 3pm
ALL HALLOW’S READS
Join us for scary stories, read by booksellers and friends! The stories will be appropriate for all ages, but come ready for some seriously spooky fun. Celebrate Halloween with a new book giving tradition, All Hallows Read, when you gift others with spine tingling tales.