Thursday, August 1
- Afternoon Great Harvest delivery

Friday, August 2
- 6:30-9 PM FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE
- Music by Mike & Kathy Gallenberger and Aspenglow

Saturday, August 3
- 4-10 PM ART CRAWL
- 4-7 PM Featured author: Barb Geiger along with husband Gene
  - Paddle for a Purpose
- 4-8 PM Featured author: Rose Lauchart
  - I Have Wi-Fi to God: All Five Bars Rockin’!

Monday, August 5
- 2 PM Avalon Book Club
- Southernmost by Silas House

Tuesday, August 6
- 1 PM DeMensa Book Club

Wednesday, August 7
- 5:45 PM Wednesday Evening Book Club
- The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

Thursday, August 8
- Afternoon Great Harvest delivery
- 12:30 PM Lost Faculties Book Club
- 3-6 PM Chris Casey, Silhouette Sketch Artist

Friday, August 9
- ALL DAY Norm’s Birthday Sale: Mystery discounts on most items
- 6:30-9 PM FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE
- Music by Bill & Lin O’Connor & Maria on violin
Monday, August 12
- 10:30 AM Monday Morning Book Club
- The Huntress by Kate Quinn
Tuesday, August 13
- 6:30 PM WDBA meeting
Thursday, August 15
- Afternoon Great Harvest delivery
- 1:30 PM No Tears, No Fears Book Club
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
25^th ANNIVERSARY SALE ALL WEEKEND LONG (August 16-18)
- 25% discount on most in-stock books not already on sale

Friday, August 16
- 6:30-9 PM FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE
- Music by Big Kenny & Friends

Saturday, August 17
- 11 AM Musical Performance
- by Classical Guitarist Jeffrey Jaworski

Thursday, August 22
- Afternoon Great Harvest delivery

Friday, August 23
- 6:30-9 PM FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE
- Music by Off the Record

Saturday, August 24
- 2:30-4 PM Book Launch by Local Authors
- Kathryn Heling and Deborah Hembrook
- Clothesline Clues to the First Day of School AND There’s Only One YOU
- Book Signing and Special Activities

TEACHERS’ BACK-to-SCHOOL SALE:

Sunday, Aug. 25-Saturday, Aug. 31 – 30% off items for your classroom

Monday, August 26
- 5:30 PM American Legion Executive Committee meeting

Thursday, August 29
- Afternoon Great Harvest delivery

Friday, August 30
- 6:30-9 PM FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE
- Music by Amped Up

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

Martha Merrell's Books

2 days ago

Our 25th Anniversary Sale continues today and tomorrow... 25% off most books as a thank-you to all of you who have supported us in this chapter of our lives...…. ... See MoreSee Less

AUGUST Events Calendar

August In-Store Promotions!