Book Launch Event: The Body on the Bed by Leonard Krishtalka
Barnes & Noble Topeka 6130 SW 17th St, Topeka, United StatesReporter Mary Fanning finds the body on the bed, poisoned.
Mary finds the body on the bed in the house next door. Smart, tough and inquisitive, she covers the murder trial as the first woman reporter for the Kansas Daily Tribune. Amid the upheaval of post-Civil War Lawrence, she unravels the diabolical plots and desperate lives that led to three dead bodies and a shocking last act.
Did a doctor's brazen affair with his patient's wife incite him to murder? On the morning of April 28, 1871, the body of Isaac Miles Ruthman is found poisoned in his bed in Lawrence, Kansas. His doctor, John J. Medlicott, a fervent churchgoer, is arrested and charged with first degree murder. He's carrying a picture of Ruthman's wife, Anne Catherine, and two of her love poems in his wallet. He'd visited Ruthman the previous evening to give him a medicinal powder--a poison cocktail of deadly nightshade and morphine, according to the autopsy.
Is it a coincidence that the doctor's wife, Sarah, died suddenly and mysteriously just four months earlier? Did Medlicott first kill her, then Ruthman? Or did Ruthman commit suicide, depressed over his finances and ill health--authorities had to break into his bedroom when they found the door locked from the inside.
Mary Fanning, sharp, strong-willed, and the first woman correspondent for the Kansas Daily Tribune, is assigned to report on the trial and investigate Ruthman's poisoning. Her independence leads her to fight for suffrage for women and Blacks in post-Civil War Kansas. Her ardor leads her into an illicit love affair with a woman. Her incisive mind leads her to uncover lives torn by lust, obsession, and deceit, a trail of dead victims, and the fiendish scheme behind the body on the bed.
"A thrilling tale of murder and betrayal ... a defiant suffragist ... a lurid web of deceit ... impeccably researched."
~Kirkus Reviews
Book Launch: Posts of a Mid-Century Kid by Ann Vigola Anderson
Jayhawk Tennis Center 233 Rock Chalk Lane, Lawrence, KSAnderson takes us on a journey to 1950s and 60s Kansas and treats the reader to hometown cooking in her tasty memoir Posts of a Mid-Century Kid.
With humor and richly crafted details, she chronicles her mid-century childhood, offering a sampling of another era. This delightful and mischievous memoir advocates coloring vividly outside of the lines!
A fun exploration of vintage toys, traditional festivities and personal growth into adulthood when life was “easy.” Ann vividly describes the beauty of the prairie state and the restorative impact of nature in her life. Summers spent at her grandparents’ farm, growing up with cousins, and family reunions offer a connection to the halcyon days of the mid-century.
Ann is grounded in her sense of place and the reader will experience the tall grass prairie and the never-ending horizon that Ann shares so beautifully. Through her words, we are transported to the big red barn on her grandparents’ farm, to the garden where her grandmother picked sweet red raspberries, and to the beauty of small moments
Posts of a Mid-Century Kid takes the reader on a comforting journey to the farm pond with a cane pole and a can of worms, summer vacations in Colorado, waiting for the seed catalogue with grandmother, and the joy of eating ‘rainy day’ popcorn balls with mom during a Kansas thunderstorm.
Ann offers generous helpings of comfort-food-reading as she shares family stories and recipes of prize desserts prepared for generations, and gives second servings of hope and strength in the form of experiences shared, and the memories she stirs into her words.
A life this rich also includes heartache. Ann speaks frankly of the loss of her mom and brother at a young age and the challenge of growing up with a father who never became involved in her life. She generously shares how she’s created a family from friends, a joyful marriage, and a bond with cats throughout her life.
Book Launch: The Bug Diary by Amber Fraley
Cider Gallery 810 Pennsylvania St, Lawrence, KSWhen Freshman Kymer Charvat indulges in recreational drugs with her new friends, an on-campus ghost hands her a mystery to solve.
While experimenting with substances in the university library, Kymer is confronted by a ghost from KU’s past: Carrie Watson, the librarian who is the library’s namesake. Carrie gives Kymer the insect field journal of Flora Ellen Richardson, the first woman to graduate from KU. When Kymer reviews the bug diary, she realizes there’s a bee in Flora’s journal that’s never before been identified by science. A wild ride ensues changing the world of entomology, and her personal world, forever.
Kymer becomes fast friends with her new dorm roommate, Siren, a bold and bosomed young woman with a complicated background, and her classmate, Mattie, an exuberant, gay Black man whose family owns a local restaurant and embraces Kymer and Siren like their own. Together, the trio experience college life at its fullest, which includes some harmless drinking and drug experimentation.
When another on-campus ghost, naturalist and professor Lewis Lynsey Dyche, gives Kymer a second clue to aid in her quest to identify the mystery bee in Flora’s bug diary, classifying the mystery bee becomes Kymer’s main drive.
Watkins Museum Book Launch: “The Jayhawker Cleveland: Phantom Horseman of the Prairie” by David Hann
Watkins Museum 1047 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KSA legend in his own time, Marshall Cleveland rode into Leavenworth alone in June, 1861 to view his own “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster. No one in that town of 12,000 inhabitants, nor any soldiers from Fort Leavenworth, attempted to collect the reward, and Cleveland rode slowly out of town.
The Free State of Kansas and the slave state of Missouri are the backdrop of this tale of heroic deeds and fatal mistakes. David Hann takes the reader on a trail ride through a gritty time in the American West when people were pitted against each other and some had to choose sides in a life-and-death battle of ideas.
Not all of the settlers in Kansas and Missouri had an opinion on the slavery question, but having no opinion was not an option. Residents were caught in the middle of two conflicting ideas, and a wrong answer given to strangers could result in loss of property and sometimes loss of life.
The Jayhawker Cleveland is a story of a man and his times. Culled from 1860s newspaper articles and published reports of a tumultuous and violent era in American history, Hann describes how this liberator of slaves and horses found brief but deadly fame during the Kansas Missouri Border War.
Intended for the Young Adult audience, older folks will surely enjoy the bravado and adventure portrayed so adeptly in Hann’s The Jayhawker Cleveland.
