STORY HOUR with MISS JULIE Friday Mornings @ 10 am in the Children's Store

PRIOLEAU ALEXANDER presents You Want Fries With That? A White-Collar Burnout Experiences Life at Minimum Wage

Thursday, May 22nd at 7 p.m.

The American Dream used to include a white picket fence, 2.2 kids, and a dog. In today's frantic world, it's . . . well, let's be honest-it's quite different. But what would happen if you did have the nerve to quit your white-collar job? Prioleau Alexander can tell you:He walked away from a lucrative career as an advertising executive, seeking a life +like that dude on Kung Fu.+ Over the next year he worked minimum-wage jobs as a pizza deliveryman, ice cream scooper, construction worker, ER tech, fast food jockey, and even cowboy on a Montana dude ranch. In YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?, Prioleau explores life at minimum wage and proves unequivocally that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

DEBBIE MACOMBER presents Twenty Wishes

Saturday, May 24th at 1 p.m.

Anne Marie Roche wants to find happiness again. At thirty-eight, her life's not what she'd expected - she's childless, a recent widow, alone. She owns a successful bookstore on Seattle's Blossom Street, but despite her accomplishments, there's a feeling of emptiness.

On Valentine's Day, Anne Marie and several other widows get together to celebrate . . . what? Hope, possibility, the future. They each begin a list of twenty wishes, things they always wanted to do but never did.

Anne Marie's list starts with: Find one good thing about life. It includes learning to knit, doing good for someone else, falling in love again. She begins to act on her wishes, and when she volunteers at a local school, an eight-year-old girl named Ellen enters her life. It's a relationship that becomes far more involving than Anne Marie intended. It also becomes far more important than she ever imagined.

As Ellen helps Anne Marie complete her list of twenty wishes, they both learn that wishes can come true - but not necessarily in the way you expect.

PATTI CALLAHAN HENRY presents The Art of Keeping Secrets

Monday, June 9th at 7 p.m.

Annabelle has finally made peace with the loss of her beloved husband. Until she finds out he wasn’t alone when he died.

Since a plane crash killed her husband two years ago, Annabelle Murphy has found solace in raising her two children. Just when she thinks the grief is behind her, she receives the news that the wreckage of the small plane has been discovered—and that her husband did not die alone. He was with another woman. Suddenly, Annabelle is forced to question everything she once held true.

Sophie Parker knows the woman who was on that plane. A dolphin researcher who has lived a quiet life, Sophie has never let anyone get too close. But when Annabelle shows up on Sophie’s doorstep full of painful questions, both women must confront their intertwining pasts—and find the courage to face the truth.

DOUGHNUTS WITH DAD ~ Celebrate Dad, Grandpa or Your Favorite Guy! Stories, Crafts, Refreshments.

Saturday, June 14th at 11 a.m. (in the Children's Store)

ANDRE DUBUS III presents The Garden of Last Days

Wednesday, June 18th at 7 p.m.

One early September night in Florida, a stripper brings her daughter to work. April's usual babysitter is in the hospital, so she decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works.

Except that April works at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he's drunk and angry and lonely.

From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate, page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood and honor and masculinity. Set in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth, and realism that characterized Andre Dubus's #1 bestseller, House of Sand and Fog—and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.

ANNUAL BUBBLEWRAP EXPLOSION & 4TH OF JULY CELEBRATION

Saturday, June 28th at 11 a.m.