Watermark Books and Cafe

When Frank Money joined the army to escape his too-small world, he left behind his cherished and fragile little sister, Cee. After the war, his shattered life has no purpose until he hears that Cee is in danger.

Frank is a modern Odysseus returning to a 1950s America mined with lethal pitfalls for an unwary black man. As he journeys to his native Georgia in search of Cee, it becomes clear that their troubles began well before their wartime separation. Together, they return to their rural hometown of Lotus, where buried secrets are unearthed and where Frank learns at last what it means to be a man, what it takes to heal, and--above all--what it means to come home.

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This book club reads general literary fiction & non-fiction. It doesn’t have a spiffy title because it's Watermark's original book club. The group is led by Watermark manager Beth Golay who has no particular literary credentials beyond loving books.

One of the largest rivers in the world, the Indus rises in the Tibetan mountains and flows west across northern India and south through Pakistan. It has been worshipped as a god, used as a tool of imperial expansion, and today is the cement of Pakistan’s fractious union. Alice Albinia follows the river upstream, through two thousand miles of geography and back to a time five thousand years ago when a string of sophisticated cities grew on its banks. “This turbulent history, entwined with a superlative travel narrative” (The Guardian) leads us from the ruins of elaborate metropolises, to the bitter divisions of today. Empires of the Indus by Alice Albinia is an engrossing personal journey and a deeply moving portrait of a river and its people.

Join our discussion on May 28th!

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This club explores global culture through great fiction & non-fiction reads. It meets the third Tuesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the cafe.

Whether you are new to Sarah Dessen or already love her books, we invite you to join our book club, which will meet every other Wednesday at 5 p.m. this summer.  Come relish the perfect summer read with Anne Frey, Watermark's queen of chick lit, both teen and adult!

No reading required for our first meeting!  And don't forget to ask about our Sarah Dessen punch card, available this summer only.

Four years after publishing, Travesuras de la ni a mala, Vargas Llosa has completed El Sueno del celta, a work based on the provocative life of Irishman Roger Casement, one of the first to document human rights abuses in European-ruled colonies.

Casement's shocking revelations exposed a painful truth: Europeans were committing unspeakably barbarous acts in the name of commerce, civilization, and Christianity. What Casement witnessed ultimately led him to confront England and the imperialist policies enforced in his native Ireland. He became a militant for the Irish Nationalist cause and during World War I conspired with the German government to purchase weapons for a revolt set to take place during the Easter holiday. But the weapons never made it to Irish shores, and the British brutally suppressed the Easter Rising. All Irish rebel leaders, including Casement, were executed. Many pleaded clemency for Casement including Arthur Conan Doyle, W.B. Yeats, and George B. Shaw.

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Everyone is welcome at the Spanish Book Club, which meets on the fourth Wednesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the basement "Author Autograph Gallery." They read & discuss in Spanish. The group's leader is Vicky Hastings, a busy mom of three who loves reading. Vicky was born in Peru and completed high school there. Upon moving to the U.S., she received her Bachelor's degree in social work and Spanish at WSU and continued on to KU for her Master's degree in social work. Vicky is employed at Derby High School.

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French, took the world by storm when it was published last year. With editions published by Penguin US, Penguin UK, Penguin Australia, Penguin China, and Penguin Canada, it was truly a global publishing event. Midnight in Peking is an absolutely riveting true crime story that has received critical acclaim around the globe. It has also been nominated for an Edgar award in the Best Fact Crime category. French, a historian and China expert, has opened the books on a seventy-five-year-old unsolved murder and offers a glimpse into the last days of Colonial Peking.

Peking, January 1937. In the frigid winter air, the ancient Fox Tower—rumored to be home to the seductive fox spirits who steal men’s souls—keeps silent watch. The morning after Russian Orthodox Christmas celebrations, the city awakens to a hangover—and a murder. The mutilated body of British schoolgirl Pamela Werner is found at the base of the Fox Tower, on the edge of the Badlands. A shiver of fear and shock ripples through Peking. With the Japanese already in Manchuria and encircling Peking, the city is on high alert.

Chinese detective Han and visiting British detective Dennis team up to solve the case, battling time and the meddling of their respective bureaucracies. Dennis, a Scotland Yard man, attempts to recreate Pamela’s last days by combing through her diary and questioning her friends. A puzzling picture emerges of a girl who was sometimes a studious schoolgirl and other times a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

Han and Dennis’s investigation pulls them deep into Peking’s seedy underworld of crime, drugs, and prostitution. As the weeks progress and they get no closer to finding the killer, they are pressured to close the case by their superiors, the press, and the public. Dennis returns to Tientsin and Han closes the official investigation. Unsatisfied, Pamela’s father, ETC Werner, takes up the search for justice. What he uncovers is even more devious that Han and Dennis had suspected. Though no justice is served, the remainder of Werner’s life is consumed with the investigation into his daughter’s murder.

Almost seventy-five years after the murder of Pamela Werner, Paul French finally gives the case the resolution it was denied at the time. In the tradition of the true crime classics White Mischief and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Midnight in Paris transforms a front page murder into an absorbing and emotional exposé, bringing the last days of old Peking to life.

Historian Paul French lives in Shanghai, where he is a business advisor and analyst. He frequently comments on China for the English-speaking press around the world. He studied history, economics, and Mandarin at university and has an M. Phil in economics from the University of Glasgow. He the author of a number of books, including Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand and Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao.

Watermark Books & Cafe is pleased to welcome Melvin Epp for a book talk and signing for The Petals of a Kansas Sunflower: A Mennonite Diaspora. 

Rather than pledging alligiance to the military effort as dictated by Prussian law in 1867, many devout Anabaptists deemed it prudent to become pioneers in Kansas. The year was 1876 and odd numbered sections of railroad land were being marketed by the Santa Fe across Kansas. Towns developed around train depots; local shopping became available. Marie Harder Epp was born in America to these relocated Anabaptists. She was a Kansas Mennonite farmer and also a village poet. Her poems, written for oral delivery, tell the story of life in Holland and West Prussia following the Reformation, the relocation to Kansas, and the creation of a church community on the tall grass prairies. A church was organized to focus these hard-working Germans on divine realities as they buried their dead, married their young, and dealt with the harsh prairie winds. Marie’s poems also describe the change over from buggies to cars, from German to English, and from isolation to global outreach. With time, the Anabaptists learned through cultural adaptation that they could be both staunch Mennonites and also patriotic Americans.

You Are Not Like Other Mothers by Angelika Schrobsdorff will be our topic of discussion on May 28th. Join us!

You Are Not Like Other Mothers is the story of Else Krischner, a free spirited mother of three sons. The novel spans the first half of the 20th century, from World War I through the Jewish Else’s exile in Bulgaria during World War II. Multi-layered and epic in scope, the narrative incorporates numerous sub-plots and secondary characters to provide a richly rendered portrait of 20th century Europe.

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Watermark Books & Café is proud to introduce a new book club... The Europa Editions Book Club.

Founded in Italy in 2005, Europa Editions brings fresh international voices to the American market by enlisting some of the best translators in the business. The design of the books are distinct, incorporating artistic European and U.S. jacket design to reflect a conviction that books today must be pleasing to the senses as well as to the mind. Offering an eclectic catalog of titles chosen not only for its ability to entertain and fascinate, but also to inform and enlighten, we thought this press was tailor-made for book club selections.

This group will meet on the fourth Tuesday of each month, and we'll have two sessions to choose from--10:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.--and the sessions will be led by Sarah Bagby and Teresa Harrison.

You Are Not Like Other Mothers by Angelika Schrobsdorff will be our topic of discussion on May 28th. Join us!

You Are Not Like Other Mothers is the story of Else Krischner, a free spirited mother of three sons. The novel spans the first half of the 20th century, from World War I through the Jewish Else’s exile in Bulgaria during World War II. Multi-layered and epic in scope, the narrative incorporates numerous sub-plots and secondary characters to provide a richly rendered portrait of 20th century Europe.

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Watermark Books & Café is proud to introduce a new book club... The Europa Editions Book Club.

Founded in Italy in 2005, Europa Editions brings fresh international voices to the American market by enlisting some of the best translators in the business. The design of the books are distinct, incorporating artistic European and U.S. jacket design to reflect a conviction that books today must be pleasing to the senses as well as to the mind. Offering an eclectic catalog of titles chosen not only for its ability to entertain and fascinate, but also to inform and enlighten, we thought this press was tailor-made for book club selections.

This group will meet on the fourth Tuesday of each month, and we'll have two sessions to choose from--10:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.--and the sessions will be led by Sarah Bagby and Teresa Harrison.

Watermark Books & Cafe is pleased to welcome Jill McCorkle for a reading & signing of her book, Life After Life. 

Award-winning author Jill McCorkle takes us on a splendid journey through time and memory in this, her tenth work of fiction. Life After Life is filled with a sense of wonder at our capacity for self-discovery at any age. And the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life s most profound discoveries and are some of the most true-to-life characters that you are ever likely to meet in fiction. There's retired third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph, who has taught every child in town and believes we are all eight years old in our hearts; Stanley Stone, a prominent lawyer, now feigning dementia to escape life with his son; Marge Walker, the town s self-appointed conveyor of social status, who keeps a scrapbook of every local murder and heinous crime; Rachel Silverman, recently widowed, whose decision to leave her Massachusetts home and settle at Pine Haven is a puzzle to everyone but her; C.J., the pierced and tattooed young mother who runs the beauty shop; and Joanna Lamb, the hospice volunteer who discovers that her path to a good life lies in helping people achieve good deaths. As each character begins to connect with another, the mysteries and consequences of their lives are revealed. What they eventually learn about themselves and one another will profoundly transform them all. Delivered with her trademark wit, Jill McCorkle s constantly surprising novel illuminates the possibilities of second chances, hope, and rediscovering life right up to the very end. With Life After Life, she has conjured up an entire community that reminds all of us that grace and magic can and do appear when we least expect it. 

Life After Life is Jill's first novel in 17 years, and we are so excited for it. Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang) said that in Life After Life, McCorkle "once again finds that space where the humor and sadness in these characters’ lives come together, that space where McCorkle has always worked the best of her magic. Few writers can shift your emotions in such subtle ways that you are undoubtedly changed when you reach the novel’s end." Ron Rash (The Cove) compared McCorkle to Flannery O’Connor, saying that "McCorkle’s genius is to give us both philosophical speculation and a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters." He went on to proclaim: "Jill McCorkle is one of the South’s greatest writers; she is also one of America’s."

Join us during the Final Friday Art Crawl! Lee Shiney will be here for the opening reception for Sub-substrates: painting experimentations on alternative surfaces.

The opening reception is from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. 

Join the French Book Club as they read and discuss books in French. This group meets the first Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the basement "Author Autograph Gallery."

On Monday, June 3rd, they will meet to discuss Les Enfants de I'lle du Levant, by Claude Gritti.

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The group is led by Dr. Brigitte Roussel, who is an Associate Professor of French at WSU. She also coordinates the exchange program between WSU and the University of Orleans in France and is involved in the Sister Cities partnership as well.

Alex Grecian will be here for a reading and signing of The Black Country, follow-up to The Yard.

Grecian cleverly blends historical fiction with the contemporary fascination with forensic crime investigation techniques when Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad returns in The Black Country. Set in the British Midlands, called "Black Country," by its inhabitants and with good reason – bad things can happen there. When three members of a prominent family disappear from a coal-mining village – and a human eyeball is discovered in a bird’s nest – the local constable sends for help from Scotland Yard’s new Murder Squad. Inspector Walter Day and Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith, soon realize that they’ve stepped into something much more bizarre and complicated than they thought. The villagers have very intense, intertwined histories. Everybody bears a secret. Superstitions abound, especially a local legend about a monster that some of them claim they’ve seen. Added to that, a flu outbreak is killing off some of the inhabitants…and the village itself is slowing sinking into the mines below it.

What happens if we change history? In The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma, characters real and imaginary come vividly to life in this whimsical triple play of intertwined plots. A skeptical H. G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time travel and to save lives and literary classics, including Dracula and The Time Machine, from being wiped from existence.

Join the discussion on June 4th!

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This mystery-lovin’ group meets the first Tuesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the basement “Author Autograph Gallery.” The Mystery Book Club is led by Melody Robinson who teaches Advanced Placement English and ECCR (English Composition/College Reading). Melody has a Master's degree in Anthropology/Archaeology, a second Master’s in English, and is working on her third Masters in History. Her favorite books (so far) are Shadow of the Wind, John Dunning’s books, “and, of course, Wicked.”

Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone is an enchanting story that ranges from the farms of Kansas to bustling 1920s New York City.

The Chaperone is inspired by the real-life relationship between the 15-year-old, future movie star Louise Brooks – cantankerous, irreverent, blossoming with sexuality and sporting her black bob with bangs – and the older, conservative, Midwestern woman who chaperoned Louise to New York City for a summer. It’s the story of an unlikely friendship between two women who couldn’t be more different, and how the summer spent together in New York City forever changes both their lives.

Moriarty’s early novels have earned widespread fans among readers and booksellers as well as critical acclaim. The Dallas Morning News has praised her “eye for detail and smart observations that elevate the novel above the level of mere domestic drama,” the Chicago Tribune calls her writing “graceful and poignant,” and The Boston Globe says “her voice illuminates the most mundane observations, turning the ordinary extraordinary.”

Laura Moriarty is the author of The Center of Everything, The Rest of Her Life, and While I’m Falling.  She was the recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and is now a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kansas. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas. 

Whether you are new to Sarah Dessen or already love her books, we invite you to join our book club, which will meet every other Wednesday at 5 p.m. this summer.  Come relish the perfect summer read with Anne Frey, Watermark's queen of chick lit, both teen and adult!

Today we will discuss That Summer.  And don't forget to ask about our Sarah Dessen punch card, available this summer only!

This reading group meets every first and third Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. to read Shakespeare's works aloud together for an hour. No experience or skill is required. Our goal is to enjoy the written and spoken words, suss out meanings, and find a greater enjoyment of the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

See what we're reading this quarter listed below. To see an archived list of our past reading selections, click here.

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With new editors who have incorporated the most up-to-date scholarship, this revised Pelican Shakespeare series will be the premiere choice for students, professors, and general readers well into the twenty-first century.

Each volume features:
* Authoritative, reliable texts
* High quality introductions and notes
* New, more readable trade trim size
* An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts

A sparkling glimpse into the life of Edith Wharton and the scandalous love affair that threatened her closest friendship, The Age of Desire brings to life one of literature’s most beloved writers, whose own story was as complex and nuanced as that of any of the heroines she created. Boston Globe called it “absorbingly sensuous” and Publishers Weekly said it is “delicate and imaginative… Fields’s love and respect for all her characters and her care in telling their stories shines through.”

The Age of Desire transports the reader to Edith Wharton’s life in the Gilded Age: glamorous salons and literary banter in Paris, visits to Henry James’s manse in Rye, and house parties at the Wharton’s elegant estate in Massachusetts. This book is the story of Edith’s illicit affair at the age of forty-five with a handsome young journalist, Morton Fullerton. It is only through this relationship that she at last feels she’s lived life. But the real heart of the tale is how her wayward passion affects the people who love her most: her unstable husband, Teddy, and especially Anna Bahlmann, her governess turned literary secretary, her confessor, and dear life-long friend.

Despite Edith’s whims, her endless travels and a wit that is sometimes too sharp, Anna has dedicated her life to Edith and loves her more than she loves herself. But Edith’s relationship with Fullerton, a playboy cad in everyone’s view except Edith’s, pushes even Anna’s boundless loyalty to the breaking point. She views it all with tenderness and sorrow.

Extraordinary coincidences, such as the sudden discovery of over 100 letters from Edith to Anna Bahlmann make the tale of the writing of this novel a page-turner of its own. Told through the points of view of both women, The Age of Desire takes the reader on a vivid journey through Wharton’s exhilarating world.

Eleven-year-old Holly Shepard is hardly one of great magical power. She’s just an ordinary girl living in an even more ordinary American suburb. Her brother Ben excels in the advanced-math class while Holly pulls a C for daydreaming and doodling on her test papers. But her greatest wish—to escape her humdrum existence and experience true adventure—has just been waiting for the right moment to come true.

When the family travels to England for the summer, Holly finds more adventure than even she bargained for—an ancient iron key that unlocks visions, portals, and even the magic long slumbering in Holly herself. With Ben and his friend Everett, Holly travels to Anglielle, a medieval kingdom  where magic is outlawed and those with magical powers are hunted by a ruthless king. Holly soon discovers that her magic is the most sought-after of all.

Packed with magic and adventure, The Key and the Flame is only the beginning of a five-part series that chronicles how Holly, Ben, and Everett strive to restore magic to Anglielle and defeat the evil forces that hold the kingdom in its grip.

Claire M. Caterer was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in the suburbs of Kansas City. A writer from the age of five, Claire has published fiction in Woman’s World magazine as well as in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. She holds a degree in French from the University of Kansas and spent several years working in New York publishing. Today she is back in the Kansas City metro area, where she writes full time and shares her home with her husband, daughter, two dogs, and a host of imaginary friends. The Key & the Flame is her first novel.

A blend of historical fiction and fantasy that follows a California girl to London in 1952. It's full of memorable characters and action. We'll be discussing The Apothecary on June 8th.  

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This is a book group for those going into third through fifth grade. We’ll be reading new and classic middle grade fiction (and maybe non-fiction), including Newbery winners and books off the William Allen White list. We’ll be discussing the books on the second Saturday at 10 a.m. from May through August (with the possibility of going longer if there’s enough interest). A parent is welcome to attend with their child (the only requirement is that they read the book, too!), but it is not required.

Leader Melissa Fox is a Watermark staff member and the mother of four girls--ages 7 to 17--all who love to read. She has also blogged about middle grade and teen books for eight years and has spent five years as a Cybils--The Children’s and Young Adult Literary Blogger Awards--judge on both the Middle Grade and Middle Grade Science Fiction/Fantasy panels. In short, she loves reading these books and is looking forward to discussing them with their intended audiences!

In this companion novel to the Newbery Honor-winning Wednesday Wars, Gary Schmidt tells the story of Doug Swieteck as he tries to navigate his brother leaving for Vietnam, his alcoholic father, and moving to a new town. We will be discussing Okay for Now on June 8th.

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This is book group for those going into sixth through eighth grade. We’ll be reading new and classic YA fiction, and discussing books on the second Saturday from May through August (with the possibility of going longer if there’s enough interest), at 11 a.m. We would like this to be a book club for and by the 6-8th graders, so no parents please.

Leader Melissa Fox is a Watermark staff member, and the mother of four girls – ages 7 to 17 – all who love to read. She has also blogging about middle grade and teen books for 8 years, and has spent five years as a Cybils – The Children’s and Young Adult Literary Blogger Awards – judge on both the Middle Grade and Middle Grade Science Fiction/Fantasy panels. In short, she loves reading these books and is looking forward to discussing them with their intended audience!

Attn: Shadowhunters fans! The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones -- based on Cassandra Clare's mega-bestselling books -- will be landing in theatres this August. To get ready for the movie, we'll be reading and discussing the entire Mortal Instruments series this summer! And then we're going to head to the theatre on August 23rd when the movie is released.

At our first meeting, we will discuss City of Bones, Book 1 of the Mortal Instruments series. 

Take an instantly recognizable social dilemma—attending a wedding alone—add a good laugh (and maybe a cry), and meet The Singles, the warm and witty debut by Boston Globe “Love Letters” columnist Meredith Goldstein.

Beth “Bee” Evans’s first vow as a bride is that everyone on her list be invited to bring a guest to her lavish, Chesapeake Bay nuptials. When Hannah, Vicki, Rob, Joe, and Nancy one by one decline Bee’s generous offer, the frustrated bride dubs them the “Singles,” adrift on her seating chart as well as in life.

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This book club reads light, frothy titles and meets the second Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the cafe. The group is led by Anne Frey, Watermark employee for ten years and Chick Extraordinaire.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter is our June 11th selection.

The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 . . . and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.

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Our morning reading group is perfect for retirees, busy parents with school-age children, and anyone who wants a daytime book club. Over morning coffee, we read engaging novels and memoirs--which often focus on the lives of women and children around the world--and we have lively discussions. Come be hot and popular with us!

"Elaine Dundy writes a sprightly novel to bring us up to date on the American girl from across the street who goes to Paris looking for Life and Love. Her book is sad and tender, bubbling with fun, spiced with insight...The Dud Avocado is satiric, mostly true, and decidedly sexy...The writing is sharp." --New York Herald Tribune Join the discussion on June 11th!

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This group meets the second Tuesday of each month at 6:00 p.m. in the Inglenook corner of the bookstore to discuss classic works by great authors. Retired English teacher turned Watermark bookseller Shirley Wells will be leading the discussions (and we promise she'll resist the urge to assign any essays).

Wichita State University and Watermark Books & Cafe will host Khaled Hosseini, author of the international bestsellers The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, at the WSU Hughes Metropolitan Complex, 5015 E. 29th St. N, Wichita, Kan., at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 12.

Tickets--which also serve as book signing line numbers--are $28.95 plus tax, and include a copy of the new book available for pre-order through Watermark Books & Cafe, by phone at (316) 682-1181 or online by clicking the "add to cart" button below. Tickets will be available for pick-up when the book is released on May 21.

Hosseini and Ted Ayres, vice president and general counsel for Wichita State University, will have a book conversation about Hosseini's newest title, And The Mountains Echoed. A book signing will immediately follow. 

And the Mountains Echoed is a novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor and sacrifice for one another and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.

Marlene Lee will be at Watermark Books & Cafe to sign copies of her book, The Absent Woman, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

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Virginia Johnstone doesn't need a rest, she needs a change; not comfort, but purpose. Divorced, and a visitor in her children's lives, she decides to leave Seattle and spend three months in the harbor town of Hilliard. There, on the edge of Puget Sound, she sublets rooms in an old hotel, rooms belonging to a woman who has vanished without explanation. In search of someone who can take her piano-playing to the next level, Virginia encounters Twilah Chan, an inspiring teacher and disturbing presence. Twilah's son, Greg, an exciting but also disturbing presence, re-awakens Virginia's romantic life. When she discovers a connection between the absent woman of the old hotel, Twilah, and Greg, she must decide whether to pursue the uncertain course she has set for herself or return to the safety of Seattle. In a novel which is both elegiac and passionate, insightful and wryly humorous, Marlene Lee explores the need for change and the emotional consequences of leaving an old life in order to embrace a new one.

Award-winning author Jill McCorkle takes us on a splendid journey through time and memory in this, her tenth work of fiction. Life After Life is filled with a sense of wonder at our capacity for self-discovery at any age. And the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) share some of life s most profound discoveries and are some of the most true-to-life characters that you are ever likely to meet in fiction. There s retired third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph, who has taught every child in town and believes we are all eight years old in our hearts; Stanley Stone, a prominent lawyer, now feigning dementia to escape life with his son; Marge Walker, the town s self-appointed conveyor of social status, who keeps a scrapbook of every local murder and heinous crime; Rachel Silverman, recently widowed, whose decision to leave her Massachusetts home and settle at Pine Haven is a puzzle to everyone but her; C.J., the pierced and tattooed young mother who runs the beauty shop; and Joanna Lamb, the hospice volunteer who discovers that her path to a good life lies in helping people achieve good deaths. As each character begins to connect with another, the mysteries and consequences of their lives are revealed. What they eventually learn about themselves and one another will profoundly transform them all. Delivered with her trademark wit, Jill McCorkle s constantly surprising novel illuminates the possibilities of second chances, hope, and rediscovering life right up to the very end. With Life After Life, she has conjured up an entire community that reminds all of us that grace and magic can and do appear when we least expect it.

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Come join us for Watermark's KMUW Literary Feast at 6:00 p.m. Our monthly dinner-and-book discussion series is the most delicious book club in town! Come enjoy a buffet dinner, dessert, coffee, and a rousing roundtable discussion of a major new book on the second Friday of each month. You are welcome to bring your own wine. Places are limited; we recommend purchasing early. Your reservation will not be complete until payment is received. To make sure your online reservation is made, please select the pay online option. Do not select "pay at the store".

In the winter of 1885-86, western Kansas cattle ranges, over-stocked and drought-ridden, endured a series of storms as snow and heavy winds hit the Central Plains. When spring came, some cattle had survived the winter. Some had perished. So it was with the people—the ranchers and the homesteaders.

Serious in tone and striving for a sense of reality,The Wintering is a character-driven story showing the kinds of people who settled the American West: Maud, from bride to widow in a few short months; Breed, a rancher caught in the change from open-range grazing to settlement; Augusta, eternally pregnant and living in a one-room soddy; Kirsten, a self-made prisoner who finds her own escape; Cora, a realist who learns to live between the hurts; Rachel who seemingly holds on to nothing; Boston who makes his home in the world of his words; and Obadiah, whose destiny is as shaped as his well-worn hat.

Told from three viewpoints (Maud, Breed, and Obadiah) the novel explores subjects such as women's lives on the frontier, relationships, Nature as teacher, racism, and the cattle industry's change from open-range grazing to settlement. This novel of the old West will speak to readers who trace their beginnings to the land and to those who wish to connect again with elements and earth. It is a love story, an adventure story, and a chronicle of the endless cycle of dying and rebirth.

Niki Lewis Shepherd grew up on a cattle ranch in western Kansas. She played in the remains of the old sod house where, as a child, her grandmother huddled when a prairie fire roared overhead. She dreamed of knowing her great, great, grandfather who trailed cattle north from Texas to the railheads in Kansas and grazed his cattle in the same pastures where she roamed. She helped with the seasonal ritual of driving the cattle to summer range in the spring and bringing them back to the ranch in the fall, her time on horseback enriched by hearing stories of the past. All this left its mark. The Wintering is an attempt to hold on to a place and time. Although she has lived in suburban Kansas City for the past forty-six years, she still considers herself a country girl. The sight of a passing pickup truck with the driver raising his index finger from the steering wheel to give the standard country wave still makes her smile.

Everything he’d seen had been unimaginably different from the dry, dour streets of home, and to his surprise he was not sorry in the slightest. He was smitten by the beguiling otherness of it all. And so began my grandfather’s rapturous love affair with America—an affair that would continue until the day he died. This is the story of the Meisenheimer family, told by James, a third-generation American living in Beatrice, Missouri. It’s where his German grandparents—Frederick and Jette—found themselves after journeying across the turbulent Atlantic, fording the flood-swollen Mississippi, and being brought to a sudden halt by the broken water of the pregnant Jette. A Good American tells of Jette’s dogged determination to feed a town sauerkraut and soul food; the loves and losses of her children, Joseph and Rosa; and the precocious voices of James and his brothers, sometimes raised in discord…sometimes in perfect harmony. But above all, A Good American is about the music in Frederick’s heart, a song that began as an aria, was jazzed by ragtime, and became an anthem of love for his adopted country that the family still hears to this day.

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This book club reads general literary fiction & non-fiction. It doesn’t have a spiffy title because it's Watermark's original book club. The group is led by Watermark manager Beth Golay who has no particular literary credentials beyond loving books.

Divorce Islamic Style by Amara Lakhouse is our June 18th selection.

It's 2005. The Italian secret service has received intel that a group of Muslim immigrants based in the Viale Marconi neighborhood of Rome is planning a terrorist attack. Christian Mazzari, a young Sicilian who speaks perfect Arabic, goes undercover to infiltrate the group and to learn who its leaders are. Christian poses as Issa, a recently arrived Tunisian in search of a job and a place to sleep. He soon meets Sofia, a young Egyptian immigrant dressed in a burqa who lives in the neighborhood with her husband Said, a.k.a. Felice, an architect who has reinvented himself in Italy as a pizza cook.

Amar Lakhous presents a sardonic view of the Moslem immigrant's daily life and the intelligence organizations that hunt terrorists.

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This club explores global culture through great fiction & non-fiction reads. It meets the third Tuesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. in the cafe.