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Fay Vincent, Donald Westlake 
Among 24 Authors to Sign Books
at Hotchkiss Library of Sharon 
Friday, August 1, 2003 
From:  Hotchkiss Library of Sharon, CT  860-364-5041
Contacts:  Keith Johnson, 860-364-1328  krj2@rcn.com
                 Harry Rubicam, 860-364-0125  hcrubicam20@aol.com


     The seventh annual gala book signing event at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon on Friday, August 1, will find former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, mystery writer Donald Westlake, sportswriter-novelist Frank Deford, and New York Times essayist Verlyn Klinkenborg heading a list of 24 local authors.  Subjects range from cooking and gardening to history and religion.

     In The Last Commissioner:  A Baseball Valentine, Vincent recalls his years as commissioner of major league baseball, including confrontations with Pete Rose and George Steinbrenner and lively anecdotes about the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.  Westlake's latest, Money for Nothing, about a man who doesn't realize he's been a sleeper secret agent until he's suddenly activated as a political assassin, joins last year's Put a Lid on It, now in paperback.  Mixing history with fiction, Leslie Wheeler's Murder at Plimoth Plantation sets a mystery story among today's re-enactors of early 17th century events in the Massachusetts colony.

     The distinguished sportswriter and author Frank Deford will be on hand with An American Summer, a coming- of-age novel set in 1954, about the friendship of a 14-year-old boy and a 23-year-old woman stricken with polio.  In And All the Saints, novelist Michael Walsh (As Time Goes By), re-imagines the sensational career of Owney Madden, a real Prohibition-era Irish gangster whose life of crime began in New York City's Hell's Kitchen at age 10.
       
     On the non-fiction front, the novelist and best-selling historian Thomas Fleming considers The Illusion of Victory:  America in World War I and blames the misguided acts of Woodrow Wilson for many of the subsequent 20th century disasters.  Law and Justice in Everyday Life collects Connecticut columnist Andy Thibault's hard-hitting investigative reports on unsolved crimes, cover-ups, the Michael Skakel trial, and much more.
       
     Another collection, by New York Times editorial board member Verlyn Klinkenborg, assembles his reflections over seven  years on the challenges of The Rural Life from his upstate New York farm.  In A Family Place:  A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family, Leila Philip, a Colgate professor, tells of her Dutch family's long involvement with land they settled in 1730 and are determined to hold onto despite financial difficulties.  Richard Grossman, editor and psychiatrist, draws on decades of regular reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson for the selections in A Year With Emerson:  A Daybook, published on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

     Anyone looking to know more about country surroundings can turn to Elmer Eriksson's Backyard Birding in the Northeast, with helpful advice about  bird foods and feeders, and A Beginner's Guide to Wild Plants, an identification manual by Gretchen Stevens and M. A. White.  For those with itchy green thumbs, there's the New England Gardener's Guide to what grows best in a difficult climate, by Jacqueline Hériteau and Holly Hunter Stonehill.  On using color to dramatic effect in a garden, the artist Sydney Eddison offers The Gardener's Palate, complete with a guide to basic color theory.
       
     Out of the garden, onto the stove:  this year's cookbooks include Fritz Sonnenschmidt's Tastes and Tales of a Chef and  Micol Negrin's Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking, which  provides recipes for 10 specialties from each of Italy's 20 distinct regions (e.g., butternut squash gnocchi in rosemary butter, from Lombardy) along with lists of
restaurants and places to shop.
       
     Wife of the Chef by Courtney Febbroriello tells a witty, wry tale of life behind the scenes at Metro Bis, the top-rated restaurant she runs with her husband, Chris Prosperi, in Simsbury, Connecticut.  For help escaping it all, August Boehm, called by The Bridge World "one of America's premier teachers and professional players," goes beyond bidding conventions to explain the underlying principles of the game in Private Sessions--A Bridge Education.      

     Children's author-illustrator Nancy Tafuri returns to the Sharon book-signing with I Love You, Little One and Counting to Christmas.  Other books for children include Iza Trapani's Baa Baa Black Sheep and Itsy Bitsy Spider; and Sugar on Snow by Nan Parsons Rossiter, recounting the adventures of two young Vermont brothers who help their parents collect sap for maple syrup.

     Also for children are three familiar texts, handsomely illustrated: Katharine Lee Bates's America the Beautiful (Wendell Minor), Sleeping Beauty (Mahlon and Kinuko Craft), and Praise the Lord, My Soul:  Psalm 104 for Children (the Rev. Christopher Webber and Preston McDaniels).

     The book signing is Friday, August 1, from 6 to 8 p.m. Admission is $20 and Visa and MasterCard are accepted for purchases.  Hors d'oeuvres will be provided by the Hamilton Inn, Millerton, New York, and served by  eighth- graders from the Sharon school; there is an open bar.  Other benefactors of the event include Bosworth Real Estate, Julia and Barney Hallingby, Union Savings Bank, NewMilBank, and Sharon Hospital.
    

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