Vroman’s Live

Bookstore boasts stellar lineup for May

By Arroyo Staff

The renowned bookstore Vroman’s is hosting more top-notch virtual programs throughout May.

The Vroman’s Live events are held virtually and in person. Register through vromansbookstore.com. Anyone with questions is asked to email email@vromansbookstore.com.

Vroman’s Virtual events will be presented through Crowdcast. Registration link below.

Kyung-Sook Shin, in conversation with Crystal Hana Kim, discusses “Violets” 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 4

San is 22 and alone when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul’s bustling city center. Haunted by childhood rejection, she stumbles through life. She barely registers to others, especially by the ruthless standards of 1990s South Korea. During course of one hazy, volatile summer, San meets a curious cast of characters: the nonspeaking shop owner, a brash co-worker, quiet farmers and aggressive customers. Fueled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer.

In “Violets,” best-selling author Kyung-Sook Shin explores misogyny, erasure and repressed desire, as San desperately searches for both autonomy and attachment in the unforgiving reality of contemporary Korean society.

Crowdcast registration: crowdcast.io/e/kyung-sook-shin

Rachel Ignotofsky discusses “The History of the Computer: People, Inventions, and Technology That Changed Our World” 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 18

Packed with accessible information, fun facts and discussion starters, this art-filled book takes readers from the ancient world to the modern day, focusing on important inventions, from the earliest known counting systems to the sophisticated algorithms behind AI.

Crowdcast registration: crowdcast.io/e/rachel-ignotofsky

In-person events

Vroman’s in-person events are no longer ticketed but are free and open to the public. Masks are strongly encouraged for those attending the events.

All in-person events will all be held at Vroman’s, located at 695 E. Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, unless noted otherwise. For more information, vromansbookstore.com.

Booker Prize-winning author Douglas Stuart discusses his latest, “Young Mungo” 7 p.m. Monday, May 2, at All Saints Church, 132 N. Euclid Avenue, Pasadena. Masks required.

Douglas Stuart’s debut novel, “Shuggie Bain,” was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize and the Sue Kaufman Prize and was a finalist for the United States’ National Book Award. His second novel, “Young Mungo,” the product of five years of writing, began when “Shuggie Bain” was between drafts and uncertain if it would even see publication. Recipient of four starred pre-publication reviews, “Young Mungo” is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James.

Born under different stars — Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic — they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live.

And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his older brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable.

And when several months later Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland, together with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Tickets include a copy of “Young Mungo,” which will be handed out at check-in.

Cassidy Lucas discusses “The Last Party” 7 p.m. Thursday, May 5

For Los Angeleno Dani Sanders, turning 50 seems like one more disappointment. Her career has stalled, her 19-year-old daughter with developmental issues is regressing, and Dani’s ex-husband Craig, a fertility doctor worshipped by Hollywood’s elite, is forever upending her life. Though she doesn’t feel much like celebrating, she can’t say no when her best friend Mia Markle, a flamboyant and strong-willed actress, insists on planning a “creative” birthday weekend in the wild, wealthy bohemian enclave of Topanga Canyon.

On the weekend of the Summer Solstice, Dani and her six closest friends gather in the hills above the canyon at Celestial Ranch, 18 acres of rugged, wooded mountainside where they’ll spend three glorious days hiking, practicing meditation and reiki, and enjoying lavish catered cuisine. They will also indulge in a little DMT, a shortacting psychedelic drug meant to open their senses and transport them to a higher plain. But as the weekend unfolds, long-buried tensions, unresolved grievances, and old secrets emerge, leaving Dani desperate for clarity about her life.

Dani and her friends take the drug late at night on an open hillside beneath the glittering stars. When Dani returns from her intense and revelatory trip, she learns that one of her friends has gone missing. Then another disappears. And soon, Dani finds herself alone on the dark mountainside, seemingly abandoned by the people who are supposed to love her most.

Cassidy Lucas is the pen name of writing duo Julia Fierro and Caeli Wolfson Widger.

Dervla McTiernan, in conversation with Rachel Howsell Hall, discusses “The Murder Rule” 7 p.m. Monday, May 9

Hannah has abandoned everything — her trajectory as a law student, her childhood home, and caring for her ill mother — for the chance to work with the Innocence Project, a prestigious coalition of investigators who fight to free wrongly convicted prisoners. Hannah’s ambitions are set on the program’s highest-stakes case in years: a convicted rapist and murderer on death row.

She’ll do anything to work on this case because Hannah has a secret. Nearly three decades ago, her mother, Laura, abandoned everything, too. A teenage runaway who fled her abusive family, she escaped to Maine for a fresh start. Desperate for work and a place to sleep, Laura is forced to resort to favors from friends and strangers, until she meets a young man named Tom, who becomes her guardian angel.

Rachel M. Harper discusses “The Other Mother” 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 17

Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami. He arrives at Brown University on a scholarship but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died when Jenry was 2. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was romantically involved with Jenry’s mother? Juliet is the parent he should be looking for — his other mother.

Charles Harper Webb and Carleton Eastlake present their latest Ursula Lake & Monkey Business 7 p.m. Thursday, May 19

In the fast-paced, sexy, and very scary literary thriller “Ursula Lake,” a husband and wife trying to save their marriage and a rock musician trying to get his career back on track find big trouble, natural and possibly supernatural, in the spellbinding wilds of British Columbia. “Monkey Business” is a fast-moving Hollywood satirical adventure and deeply revelatory love story with a comprehensive look at the reality of producing a TV series.

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Christina Lauren, in conversation with Alisha Rai, discusses “Something Wilder 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 24

Growing up the daughter of notorious treasure hunter and absentee father Duke Wilder left Lily without much patience for the profession — or much money in the bank. But Lily is nothing if not resourceful, and now uses Duke’s coveted hand-drawn maps to guide tourists on fake treasure hunts through the red rock canyons of Utah. It pays the bills but doesn’t leave enough to fulfill her dream of buying back the beloved ranch her father sold years ago, and definitely not enough to deal with the sight of the man she once loved walking back into her life with a motley crew of friends ready to hit the trails. Frankly, Lily would like to take him out into the wilderness — and leave him there.

Leo Grady knew mirages were a thing in the desert, but they’d barely left civilization when the silhouette of his greatest regret comes into focus in the flickering light of the campfire. Ready to leave the past behind him, Leo wants nothing more than to reconnect with his first and only love. Unfortunately, Lily Wilder is all business, drawing a clear line in the sand: It’s never going to happen.

But when the trip goes horribly and hilariously wrong, the group wonders if maybe the legend of the hidden treasure wasn’t a gimmick after all. There’s a chance to right the wrongs — of Duke’s past and their own — but only if Leo and Lily can confront their history and work together. Alone under the stars in the isolated and dangerous mazes of the Canyonlands, Leo and Lily must decide whether they’ll risk their lives and hearts on the adventure of a lifetime.

Christina Lauren is the pen name of writing duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings.

David Yoon, in conversation with John Cho, discusses “City of Orange” 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 25, at Vroman’s Paseo

A man wakes up in an unknown landscape, injured and alone. He used to live in a place called California, but how did he wind up here with a head wound and a bottle of pills in his pocket? He navigates his surroundings, one rough shape at a time. Here lies a pipe, there a reed that could be carved into a weapon, beyond a city he once lived in.

He could swear his daughter’s name began with a J, but what was it, exactly?

Then he encounters an old man, a crow and a boy — and realizes that nothing is what he thought it was, neither the present nor the past.

He can’t even recall the features of his own face, and wonders: Who am I?

Obed Silva, in conversation with Greg Boyle, discusses “The Death of My Father the Pope: A Memoir” 7 p.m. Thursday, May 26

Weaving between the preparations for his father’s funeral and memories of life on sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Obed Silva chronicles his father’s lifelong battle with alcoholism and the havoc it wreaked on his family. Silva and his mother had come north across the border to escape his father’s violent, drunken rages. His father had followed and danced dangerously in and out of the family’s life until he was arrested and deported back to Mexico, where he drank himself to death, one Carta Blanca at a time, at the age of 48.

Told with a wry cynicism; a profane, profound anger; an antic, brutally honest voice; and a hard-won classical frame of reference, Silva channels the heartbreak of mourning while wrestling with the resentment and frustration caused by addiction. “The Death of My Father the Pope” is a fluid and dynamic combination of memoir and an examination of the power of language — and the introduction of a unique and powerful literary voice.

Rebecca Walker discusses “Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo” 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 31

“Women Talk Money” is a collection that lifts the veil on what women talk about when they talk about money; it unflinchingly recounts the power of money to impact health, define relationships and shape identity. The collection includes previously unpublished essays by trailblazing writers, activists and models, such as Alice Walker, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Rachel Cargle, Tracy McMillan, Cameron Russell, Sonya Renee Taylor and Adrienne Maree Brown, with Rebecca Walker as editor.

In this anthology, readers discover a family who worships money even as it tears them apart; guests read about the “financial death sentence” a transgender woman must confront to live as herself. We trace the journey of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who finally makes enough money to discover her spiritual impoverishment; we follow a stressful email exchange between an unsympathetic university financial officer and a desperate family who can’t afford to pay their daughter’s tuition and other items.

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