Three books selected for Kona Stories’ book groups
Kona Stories community bookstore’s book club selections for March have been selected. Fiction group meets at 6:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of the month, travel group meets at 6:30 p.m. the third Tuesday of the month and the non-fiction group meets at 6 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month. Book groups are free if books are purchased from Kona Stories, or a $5 donation is appreciated. Bring a pupu or beverage to share and come prepared to discuss the following books. You can choose to attend any or all of these groups. Kona Stories is located in the Keauhou Shopping Center in the courtyard shops on the KTA side.
March 13 Fiction Group is discussing: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.
Ward, two-time National Book Award winner delivers a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.
A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch’s father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn’t show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn’t much to save. Lately, Esch can’t keep down what food she gets; she’s fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull’s new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child’s play and short on parenting.
This group meets at 6:30 p.m. at Kona Stories Book Store.
March 20 Travel Group is discussing: The Edge of the Empire – a Journey to Britannia by Bronwen Riley.
Set in AD 130, Rome is the heart of a vast empire and Hadrian its most complex and compelling ruler. Faraway Britannia is one of the Romans’ most troublesome provinces: here the sun is seldom seen and “the atmosphere in the country is always gloomy.”
Combining an extensive range of Greek and Latin sources with a sound understanding of archaeology, Riley describes an epic journey from Rome to Hadrian’s Wall at the empire’s northwestern frontier.
This group meets at 6:30 p.m. at Kona Stories Book Store.
March 27 Non-Fiction Book Group is discussing: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston.
Since the days of conquistador Hernan Cortes, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God, but then committed suicide without revealing its location.
Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest.
Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quick mud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn’t until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal, and incurable disease.
This group meets at 6 p.m. at Kona Stories Book Store.
If you need more information, call Brenda or Joy at 324-0350 or check it out online at www.konastories.com.
Princeville, Hawaii author publishes book on eclipse
Moon Mission: Passage to Totality 2017, a new book by Michael Thomas, has been released by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. The book chronicles a family’s expedition of Cascade, Idaho to see the total eclipse of the sun on Aug. 21.
Photographs in the book have been carefully selected from high resolution, still and video images, including aerial images, to tell the story of our family’s excitement and anticipation of the total eclipse in common with everyone else who witnessed it. The book is intended to be a “photojournalistic visual experience” that does not bore the reader with arcane historical or scientific facts. Rather, it is intended to appeal to readers of all ages. Thus, the author has included only brief scientific references that are necessary to describe only what the reader is actually seeing in the eclipse photographs.
This book is a quality memento for the millions who witnessed totality and who wish to remember their own experiences of this majestic event in their lives.
Moon Mission: Passage to Totality 2017 is a 56-page hardcover with a retail price of $25. It was published by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For more information, or to request a review copy, please go to the virtual pressroom at www.dorrancepressroom.com or our online bookstore www.bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com.
Honolulu’s Ackerman publishes WWII tale
Honolulu-based author Sara Ackerman’s World War II novel, Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers, was published last month by MIRA/Harper Collins.
In Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers, Violet Iverson and her young daughter, Ella, are piecing their lives together one year after the disappearance of her husband. As rumors swirl and questions about his loyalties surface, Violet believes Ella knows something. But Ella is stubbornly silent. Something — or someone — has scared her. And with the island overrun by troops training for a secret mission, tension and suspicion between neighbors is rising.
Violet bands together with her close friends to get through the difficult days. To support themselves, they open a pie stand near the military base, offering the soldiers a little homemade comfort. Try as she might, Violet can’t ignore her attraction to the brash marine who comes to her aid when the women are accused of spying. Desperate to discover the truth behind what happened to her husband, while keeping her friends and daughter safe, Violet is torn by guilt, fear and longing as she faces losing everything. Again.
Ackerman was born and raised in Hawaii. She studied journalism and earned graduate degrees in psychology and Oriental Medicine.