EVENTS
Meet the Author
J. A. Jance | Blessing of the Lost Girls
@ Franklin Event Center – 4801 Franklin Avenue Room 148
New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance returns to her Southwestern roots and unites popular characters from her Joanna Brady Mysteries and Walker Family thrillers in a gripping mystery centered on a serial killer who targets notoriously overlooked victims: young Indigenous women.
Meet the Author
Tom Montgomery Fate | The Long Way Home
@ Beaverdale Books
A travel memoir that ventures from his smalltown upbringing to vastly different cultures around the globe, Tom Montgomery Fate comes to define “home” not as a physical location, but as a way of belonging.
Author Carol Roh Spaulding in Conversation with Rekha Basu
Carol Roh Spaulding | Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories
@ Beaverdale Books
Retired Des Moines Register opinion columnist Rekha Basu will talk with Carol Roh Spaulding about her Korean American background and the family roots that inspired this collection of stories.
This collection of linked stories follows four generations of the Songs, a Korean American family, beginning in 1924 just prior to the Immigration Act and extending to near the end of the century. With these stories, Carol Roh Spaulding charts shifting definitions of “Americanness” across time through the arc of a family narrative that centers on the life experiences of Gracie Song.
Meet the Author
Monsignor Frank Bognanno | Three Minutes with God: Reflections to Inspire, Encourage, and Motivate
@ Beaverdale Books
Three Minutes with God features hundreds of inspiring reflections and prayers that will remind you to rejoice and praise God! Each day’s entry includes a scripture passage, a thoughtful reflection, and a brief prayer to revive your spirit.
Meet the Author
David Pepper | Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual for Every American
@ Beaverdale Books
Saving Democracy is the companion book to Pepper's earlier book, Laboratories of Autocracy. It details how we all can and must play a role in saving democracy at this fraught time. It explains how all levels of the pro-democracy side, from national political leaders to grassroots activists to everyday Americans, must switch to offense. It explains how to stay on offense and win on offense. Immediately, and everywhere.
Meet the Author
Sharelle Byars Moranville | Forget-Me-Not Blue
@ Beaverdale Books
Moranville’s captivating and vulnerable prose explores the ways in which addiction’s ripple effects pass through generations and how familial bonds can remain unbreakable through the most difficult circumstances. Expertly grappling with difficult topics at an age-appropriate level, this novel is a sensitive, nuanced exploration of children’s enduring resilience and optimism.
Meet the Author
Clark Eide | A Monk’s Way
@ Beaverdale Books
An attack from a most unexpected source intensely complicates matters. Left unchecked, it threatens to bring down the whole community and once again, Jean Moreau must be up to the task.
As this suspenseful story unfolds, it also becomes evident how this man of spirit continues to think outside the box, in encountering his humanity and all of its challenges. He invites the reader to look at life’s problems and the spiritual life in new ways…his ideas about life, love, and traditional religion will often surprise…but they offer the reader pathways to awareness, the key to happiness.
Special Event
Beaverdale Books BANNED BOOKS Festival
@ Franklin Event Center – 4801 Franklin Avenue
Join us on Saturday, October 7 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. as we celebrate the Freedom to Read! Planning...
Meet the Author
Tom Geraty | Where the Trees Dance
@ Beaverdale Books
Where the Trees Dance is many things: a love story, an ode to adoption, a reflection on growing up Irish-Catholic in Des Moines, a father’s gift to his sons, and a kinder ending to a birth-mother’s story; all disguised as a memoir. From his earliest memories to middle-age, the author relates that which is most intimate, most personal, sad, humorous, glorious, and ignoble in his life as he journeyed from being an adoptee, adrift, wondering where he fit in in the world, to finally finding home.
Meet the Author
Marta McDowell | Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers
@ Clive Public Library – 1900 NW 114th St, Clive
Flora and horticulture have had an outsize influence on the mystery genre: motive, means, opportunity, victims, villains, and detectives. Join Marta McDowell, a writer, gardener, and avid mystery reader, in exploring the many ways in which writers—from Edgar Allen Poe and Wilkie Collins to Agatha Christie and some of today’s top crime fiction authors—have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardening.
Meet the Author
Erin Huiatt | 100 Things to Do in Des Moines Before You Die
@ Beaverdale Books
Nestled smack dab in the center of the Midwest where two of the longest interstates in America meet sits Des...
Meet the Author
T. Patrick Graves | A Menace to the Community
@ Beaverdale Books
In the serene expanse of South Dakota's western region, Deputy Sheriff Paul McKinley's tranquil county is disrupted by the arrival...