Donna Santisi presents and signs Ask the Angels

Kill Your Idols, Inc. presents Ask the Angels, a redesigned special edition reissue of photographer Donna Santisi's cult classic 1978 book of black and white images, which were among the first to capture the dynamic transitionary period between West Coast New Wave and the emerging punk rock scene.

This reissue, with added photos through 1980, is free of nostalgic bombast, attempted groupie-dom and any claims to the exclusive photographic rights of that era. Donna Santisi instead allows her provocative, evocative photographs to speak for themselves, revealing a surreal time and a place where New Wave champs such as Patti, Cale, and Verlaine frolicked with Masque-era punkeroos the Bags, X, Go-Go's and Alleycats, along with plenty of influential visitors from New York, London, San Francisco, and Cleveland who co-mingle with West Coast art school dropouts like the Weirdos and Screamers... They're all here in this essential nugget of time.

Dr. Norman Leaf presents and signs Are Those Real?: True Tales of Plastic Surgery from Beverly Hills

Americans have long been fascinated by the personal lives of Hollywood celebrities and the over-hyped magic of plastic surgery. In this entertaining memoir, Dr. Norman Leaf, a highly respected plastic surgeon, reveals the complex and all-too-human connection that exists between these two worlds. In his thirty-five years practicing in Beverly Hills, California, Leaf has encountered the great and those aspiring to be great, seeing them in a different light than the general public. This unique perspective contributes to a touching, inspiring, humorous, and eye-opening journey into a world few have the opportunity to see close-up, while debunking the myths and clearing up the misconceptions about plastic surgery.

Lina Lecaro discusses and signs Los Angeles’ Best Dive Bars

Los Angeles might be the capital of conspicuous consumption, but the other cliché about “La La Land”—that it’s a cultural wasteland—couldn’t be further from the truth. For every “Extreme Makeover—Club Edition” (in which would-be impresarios continually swankify their establishments in a relentless quest to be “the” hot spot du jour), there is a well-worn drinking hole full of history, serving up a far more elusive and seductive mix of stiff drinks, loose atmosphere and keep-it-real regulars.

Geoffrey Cunningham and Carla Repice present and sign Office of Blame Accountability

Blame Accountants set up shop in areas where there is a high frequency of collective blame.  Ground Zero, the Republican National Convention, the Democratic National Convention and Wall Street (after the September ‘08 stock market crash), are examples of locations visited by the OBA.  Sitting unassumingly at a table with their typewriter and red phone, Blame Accountants invite passersby to blame, record, and reflect.  Who has wronged you?  What does it mean to take accountability for the actions—or inactions—of people, groups, and systems that have wronged you?  If held accountable, where will you find yourself and what actions will you take?  Through the OBA, the American public has an opportunity to examine habitual modes of interacting with problems (complaining, blaming) and begin to step outside these cubicles of thought. In this sense, the OBA is an opportunity to reach for the red phone and convince the familiar voice at the end of the line to take action.

Blame Forms filled out and filed by individuals are collected in this volume to give the reader a sense of the mindset of an America beset by war, the drama of national politics, private and personal dilemmas. Combined with interviews, essays, graphs, visual-statistical information, and photographs of the OBA in its various locations, this book provides a candid look at the culture of finger pointing in America today.

David Lynch signs David Lynch: Dark Splendor & David Lynch: Lithos

Parallel to the film career for which he is justly admired, David Lynch (born 1946) has always worked as an artist, having trained in painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the mid-1960s. Lynch's photographs, paintings, prints, drawings, and more recently, musical compositions, are an indispensable part of his oeuvre and frequently a source of inspiration for his films. Fans of such classics as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive will readily conjure the director's keen eye for lush but menacing neo-Surrealist tableaux, for instance, which are directly nourished by his artworks. Other hallmarks of the Lynchian style, such as cryptic messages and inscriptions, foreboding atmospherics and a famously left-field sense of humor likewise appear in the paintings, drawings and photographs collected in David Lynch: Dark Splendor--a landmark publication that reveals the breadth and accomplishment of his work in this realm. It contains such marvels as his matchbook drawings--pen-and-ink images of shrouded dreamscapes and interiors, inscribed on the inside of matchbooks--his wonderfully foreboding lithographs, in which scrawled captions jostle among murky figures, his photographs of industrial wastelands and his sinister paintings that incorporate materials and objects to further advance their gothic appeal. Dark Splendor presents these works in excellent reproductions, and will seduce fans of contemporary film and art alike.

David Lynch signs David Lynch: Dark Splendor & David Lynch: Lithos

The workshop of Item Editions is sequestered in a back courtyard off the Rue du Montparnasse in Paris, where artists from all around the world have lithographs made on Solnhofener stones. Here, with the help of the historic presses that have printed masterworks by such artists as Picasso, Matisse and Miro, a durable artistic continues today. Filmmaker, photographer, painter and printmaker David Lynch (born 1946) was captivated by this place and its history, when he first chanced across it in 2007: "I fell in love," he declared. Since his earliest experiments with zinc plates and prints in black and red, Lynch has continued to labor away at Item Editions, recently producing large black-and-white lithographs by drawing directly onto the stone (rather than using the medium to create multiples of pre-existing drawings), experimenting with textures to draw figurative imagery out of abstract patterns, and adding captions to further elucidate their themes. The content of these lithographs clusters around themes familiar to Lynch fans: love, eroticism, dreams and death. David Lynch: Lithos collects all of Lynch's work in this genre. A conversation between Dominique Paini, former director of the French Cinematheque and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the artist, provides further insight into Lynch's process.

Book Soup presents Damon Lindelof, creator of LOST in conversation with Tim Kring, the creator of Heroes and author of Shift at the Renberg Theatre in Los Angeles

Book Soup is extremely proud to welcome LOST creator Damon Lindelof and Heroes creator Tim Kring to the stage at the Renberg Theatre to discuss Tim Kring's new book, Shift. Tickets for the event cost $35.00 (+ tax), which includes entry into the event, a signed copy of Shift, and a photo op with Tim Kring and Damon Lindelof. Tickets will be available in-store at Book Soup starting Monday July 26, or can be purchased online now here.

Tickets are limited so act fast!

Elizabeth Brundage presents and signs A Stranger Like You: A Novel

A taut and terrifying thriller about the lengths to which we'll go to make our dreams come true. (Viking Adult)

Eric Nelson presents and signs The Silk Series

The Silk City Series pulls readers into the everyday lives of working-class residents of Paterson, New Jersey. Originally published serially in Nelson’s acclaimed zine — Silk City Series — this collection presents a diverse cross-section of characters based on the author’s own childhood neighbors. The stories capture a post-industrial city in a state usually not known for its beauty. In the heart of a city, where wealth lies in the surrounding suburbs, neighbors live on top of each other. Families struggle to stick together. Most find solace in each other. And the city, a character in itself, changes all who reside in its boundaries.

Lori Jane Coleman and Diana Friedberg discuss and sign Make the Cut: A Guide to Becoming a Successful Assistant Editor in Film and TV

Being a successful editor is about more than just knowing how to operate a certain piece of software, or when to make a certain transition. On the contrary, there are many unwritten laws and a sense of propriety that are never discussed or taught in film schools or in other books.

Based on their own experiences, first as upcoming assistant editors, then as successful Hollywood editors, the authors guide you through the ins and outs of establishing yourself as a respected film and video editor.