Lisa Birnbach presents and signs True Prep: It's A Whole New Old World

True Prep is a contemporary look at how the old guard of natural-fiber-loving, dog-worshipping, G&T-soaked preppies adapt to the new order of things. Birnbach considers the prep attitude towards money (ambivalent), schools (good investment), wardrobe (now your clothes fit), work (some careers will never be prep), decorating (ask mummy), scandal (including rehab and prison), and food and drink (with some classic recipes for both). She also looks at weekends (and what to do to get asked back), entertaining, sports (including sailing and shopping), weddings, etiquette, the Internet and electronic gadgetry, political correctness, reality TV, and... polar fleece. And last but not least: a do-it-yourself eulogy. With more than 200 original illustrations and photographs, "True Prep" promises to be a whole new, old sensation. (Knopf Publishing Group)

West Hollywood Book Fair

Please join Book Soup at the West Hollywood Book Fair Sunday September 26th from 10:00am - 6:00pm at West Hollywood Park at 647 North San Vicente Boulevard. Eight author panel stages, six performance stages, writing workshops all day, and tons of exhibitors including Book Soup! For more information, be sure to visit the We-Ho Book Fair website!

Tiphanie Yanique presents and signs How To Escape from a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories

The inhabitants of an island walk into the sea. A man passes a jail cell's window, shouldering a wooden cross. And in the international shop of coffins, a story repeats itself, pointing toward an inevitable tragedy. If the facts of these stories are sometimes fantastical, the situations they describe are complex and all too real. Lyrical, lush, and haunting, the prose shimmers in this nuanced debut, set mostly in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Part oral history, part postcolonial narrative, How to Escape from a Leper Colony is ultimately a loving portrait of a wholly unique place. Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Edwidge Danticat, and Maryse Conde before her, Tiphanie Yanique has crafted a book that is heartbreaking, hilarious, magical, and mesmerizing. An unforgettable collection.

Book Soup and Cinefamily present Take 100: The Future of Film at Cinefamily

Book Soup and Cinefamily present the L.A. launch of the brand-new book Take 100: The Future Of Film, the first global film festival ever attempted between two covers, along with a live panel discussion featuring film directors Jody Hill (Observe and Report, Eastbound And Down), The Duplass Brothers (Cyrus, Baghead, The Puffy Chair) and Taika Waititi (Eagle vs. Shark)! Published by Phaidon, Take 100 is a 450-page, richly-illustrated tome that features the work of 100 of the world’s most promising new film directors, as selected by ten esteemed film-festival director “curators”. Whether you’re a film professional or a casual moviegoer, Take 100 will guide you through today's must-see films and directors. The evening’s panel is moderated by esteemed curator Trevor Groth (Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival) -- and join us after the show for a book signing on the Cinefamily backyard Spanish patio!

Neal Pollack presents and signs Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude

Neal Pollack was out of shape. The hair on his head was thinning and the hair on his face was pretentious--traits a New York Times critic gleefully pointed out while panning his second book. Combined with the predestined failure of his punk rock band, it was almost too much for Pollack to bear. He was willing to try anything to get his life back on track... even yoga.  While struggling to master difficult poses without kicking other yogis in the face, Pollack actually, remarkably, began to feel better, both in body and mind. Soon he found himself immersed in the "weird and circuslike" world of yoga. He participated in a 24-hour yogathon, attended yoga conferences and Asian retreats, went to yoga rock shows, started getting regular assignments for Yoga Journal magazine, and, finally, began teaching yoga classes himself.  Stretch mercilessly lampoons the bizarre, omnipresent culture of yoga, but it's also a story of profound personal transformation. Pollack started off mocking yoga. Now he's become one of its most enthusiastic proponents. 

Marianne Leone presents and signs Knowing Jesse: A Mother's Story of Grief, Grace, and Everday Bliss

Jesse Cooper was an honor-roll student who loved to windsurf and write poetry. He also had severe cerebral palsy and was quadriplegic, unable to speak, and wracked by seizures. He died suddenly at age seventeen.

In fiercely honest, surprisingly funny, and sometimes heartbreaking prose, Jesse’s mother, Marianne Leone, chronicles her transformation by the remarkable life and untimely death of her child. An unforgettable memoir of joy, grief, and triumph, Knowing Jesse unlocks the secret of unconditional love and speaks to all families who strive to do right by their children.

Stephen Jay Schwartz discusses and signs Beat

LAPD Robbery-Homicide Detective Hayden Glass has always had trouble controlling his urges.  No longer trolling the streets looking for working girls, he has a new obsession--the Internet.  Infatuated with a woman he finds on a website, Hayden Glass's sex addiction drags him to San Francisco and into a web of corruption and crime. Glass’s search for this woman leads him to a massive sex slave trade, run by the Russian mafia and protected by a group of powerful and corrupt San Francisco cops.  Glass gets co-opted by the FBI to aid in their investigation... but his presence is doing much more harm than good.

“Just as I thought there wasn't an original take left on the detective novel, along comes Stephen Jay Schwartz and Beat. Fast and slick, this book is a great ride!” (Michael Connelly)

Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin discusses and signs Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World without God with moderator by Steve Olson

Most people know Greg Graffin as the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion, but few know that he also received a PhD from Cornell University and teaches evolution at the University of California at Los Angeles. In Anarchy Evolution, Graffin argues that art and science have a deep connection. As an adolescent growing up when "drugs, sex, and trouble could be had on any given night," Graffin discovered that the study of evolution provided a framework through which he could make sense of the world. In this provocative and personal book, he describes his own coming of age as an artist and the formation of his naturalist worldview on questions involving God, science, and human existence. While the battle between religion and science is often displayed in the starkest of terms, Anarchy Evolution provides fresh and nuanced insights into the long-standing debate about atheism and the human condition. It is a book for anyone who has ever wondered if God really exists.

Kim Dower discusses and signs Air Kissing On Mars

A Kim Dower poem is a portal to a haunting universe of everyday life wrapped into poetic reverie. Lost languages, locomotives pummeling through dreams, taxi drivers thrown by the earth’s rotation, shadows in closets, vanishing carrots, men who exfoliate —all come together in this opus of shining and startling wisdom. At once rhapsodic, edgy and sensual.

Thaddeus Russell discusses and signs A Renegade History of the United States

“Howard Zinn wrote the "people's history" of the United States... but Thaddeus Russell has written "the history of the American people whom historians would rather forget: the whores, delinquents, roustabouts"—the so-called bums and immoral minority who did more for our civil rights and personal freedoms than anyone could count—until now. There is no understanding of American feminism, sexual liberation, civil rights, or dancing in the streets without this careful analysis that Russell has put before us.” (Susie Bright)