Wednesday, May 1

5:45 PM Wednesday Evening Book Club
- Eggshells by Caitriona Lally

Friday, May 3

Great Harvest delivery

Saturday, May 4

RIVERWALK CANCER WALK
2 PM Program and book signing of GUITAR GENIUS, a newly released picture book about Waukesha’s own LES PAUL, written by author Kim Tomsic
- WHERE: Waukesha County Museum

4- 10 PM Waukesha ART CRAWL
Future Artists Showcase
- Art Exhibit by Waukesha Elementary School students during the month of May
- Featured authors include: Kim Tomsic, Rose Lauchart

Sunday, May 5

2-3 PM Family & Friends: Springtime Bingo

Monday, May 6

2 PM Avalon Book Club
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede

Tuesday, May 7

1:00 PM DeMensa Book Club

Wednesday, May 8

3 PM Plowshares Education Committee meeting
6:30 PM An Evening with Patricia Backhaus, Author of newly released ROYAL PAGEANT

Musical entertainment provided by Valerie Floeter

Thursday, May 9

12:30 PM Lost Faculties Book Club

Friday, May 10

Great Harvest delivery
6:30-9 PM Join us for Dinner and an Evening of Music
Featuring FAIR WEBBER

Call 262-547-1060 for details

Sunday, May 12

3-5 PM Waukesha Open Poetry meeting

Monday, May 13

10:30 AM Monday Morning Book Club
Paddle for a Purpose by Barb Geiger. Barb and her husband Gene will be in attendance

Tuesday, May 14

6:30 PM WDBA meeting

Thursday, May 16

1:30 PM No Tears, No Fears Book Club
- Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan

Friday, May 17

Great Harvest delivery
6:30-9 PM Join us for Dinner and an Evening of Music featuring BIG KENNY & FRIENDS

Call 262-547-1060 for details

Sunday, May 19

4-5 PM A Conversation about THE GIVER, by author Louis Lowry
- (after the theatre’s final performance)

Join us for a discussion of the play and the four novels that compose Louis Lowry’s GIVER QUARTET.

Friday, May 24

Great Harvest items have arrived

Sunday, May 26

2-3 PM Family & Friends: Play our games & receive a discount on any that you purchase

Monday, May 27

10:15 AM MEMORIAL DAY PARADE

Friday, May 31

Great Harvest items have arrived

SPECIAL MAY IN-STORE PROMOTIONS!

TWO NEW BOOKS ABOUT LES PAUL!

LES PAUL GUITAR GENIUS

This is the story of how Les Paul created the world's first solid- body electric guitar, countless other inventions that changed modern music, and one truly epic career in rock and roll. How to make a microphone? A broomstick, a cinderblock, a telephone, a radio. How to make an electric guitar? A record player's arm, a speaker, some tape. How to make a legendary inventor? A few tools, a lot of curiosity, and an endless faith in what is possible. Featuring richly detailed, dynamic illustrations by Brett Helquist, this unforgettable biography will resonate with inventive readers young and old.

THE BIRTH OF LOUD

“A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history” (The New York Times Book Review), this one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound—Leo Fender and Les Paul—and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built. In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock ’n’ roll—and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul—whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought—to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo. While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s—including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton—adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable. In “an excellent dual portrait” (The Wall Street Journal), Ian S. Port tells the full story in The Birth of Loud, offering “spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of guitars” (The Atlantic). “The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new” (The Washington Post).

EAGERLY ANTICIPATED SEQUELS...

MOLOKA’I

It has been over fifteen years since Alan Brennert penned his novel MOLOKA’I in which a girl named “Rachel Kalama at age seven discovers she has leprosy while growing up in Honolulu during the 1890s. Despite being part of a big, loving Hawaiian family, her dreams of meeting her father are shattered when she is sent to live in a leper colony.” Mr. Brennert’s sequel tells the story of Ruth, “the daughter that Rachel Kalama was forced to give up at birth. Ruth is adopted by a Japanese couple who raise her on a strawberry and grape farm in California. She marries, but is unjustly interned at Manzanar Relocation Camp during World War II. After the war, she receives a letter from a woman who says she is Ruth's birth mother, Rachel.”

THE AMERICAN AGENT

THE AMERICAN AGENT is the fifteenth installment in the wildly popular Maisie Dobbs series written by Jacqueline Winspear. “Beloved heroine Maisie Dobbs (described as ‘one of the great fictional heroines’) investigates the mysterious murder of an American war correspondent in London during the Blitzkrieg of World War II. The author once again creates a historically accurate tale of love and war, terror and survival” that offers so much for the reader to contemplate on a personal level as well. As one reviewer so correctly summarized: “Reading a Maisie Dobbs book is a little like spending time with an old friend you don't see often enough.”

WISHTREE

WISHTREE is a children’s book written by Katherine Applegate that has now been published as an adult paperback. In similar fashion to Lois Lowry’s THE GIVER, this is a story that transcends specific age groups. Ms. Applegate’s novel illustrates the need for tolerance and acceptance in today’s world, now more than ever. “Trees can't tell jokes, but they can certainly tell stories. . . . Red is an oak tree who is many rings old. Red is the neighborhood "wishtree"--people write their wishes on pieces of cloth and tie them to Red's branches. Along with a crow named Bongo and other animals who seek refuge in Red's hollows, this wishtree watches over the neighborhood. You might say Red has seen it all until a new family moves in. Not everyone is welcoming; Red's experience as a wishtree becomes crucial.”

Martha Merrell's Community Involvement

Martha Merrell’s Books is a community-minded independent bookstore, meaning that we host, participate, or are involved in many community events.

Examples of the depth of our commitment to Waukesha and the community include:

Event and Community

Waukesha Downtown Business Association
Waukesha Friday Night Live
ProHealth Care RiverWalk for Breast Cancer, 1st Saturday in May each year
Alzheimer’s Walk, 1st Saturday in September each year
Waukesha’s Friday Night After Dark Music Series (indoor music from October – December)
Downtown Trick or Treating on the Saturday before Halloween
Holiday Stroll featuring Author Mania (before the Christmas Parade)
Christmas Clearing Council
Silver Bells activities during the Christmas season
Santa’s Breakfast Workshop on Saturdays from Thanksgiving to Christmas
Art Crawls on the 1st Saturday in March, May, August, October & December
Waukesha JanBoree

Other Community

Waukesha Farmers’ Market on the RiverWalk
Waukesha GuitarTown Project (a public art project with Gibson Guitar Company)
Waukesha County Reading Council
Waukesha Reads Program each October
Wisconsin State Reading Association

If at all possible, we try to be supportive of any proposals brought to our attention.

Norm and Eve Bruce

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