The Long Awaited (and terribly late) Festival of Books Highlights

Right,

Saturday, April 24th brought over 70,000 people together on the campus of UCLA to share a common love, the love of books. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is probably the premier event and almost impossible to take in all that is offered on this two day event. So I will focus on the mystery slant, or at least try to....

First off, I made a quick trip around to my my favorite bookstores and online sellers....Bookem' , Mysterious Galaxy , UglyTown and the place to hangout, FOB founder The Mystery Bookstore.

Throughout the day I was bouncing around trying to get into panels and stay out of the sun, but that is not what you want to read about. So here is who I ran into, in no specific order...

Rhyns Bowen

Stephen Cannell

Thomas Perry (left) and David Ellis

Donald E. Westlake

G.M. Ford

John Morgan Wilson

Jonathon King

John Shannon
Lee Goldberg, with his new titanium elbow
Peter Lovesey with my son Kasey
Leslie Silbert

The Brothers Sparks - Nicholas and Micah
Stuart Woods (left) and 2 time FOB winner George Pelecanos
Charlie Stella
. Charlie and his lovely wife Ann Marie joined me for a wonderful 2 hour lunch during the festival on Saturday. Charlie and my son Kasey had a long discussion about the 1961 Angels and Strat-o-matic baseball. (see Charlies Knucklines for more details)
Representing Southern California, the Gold Coast and the Bay Area are Jeff Parker, Rich Barre and Kent Harrington
Fiction master William F. Nolan
and finally the wonderful Nathan Walpow .

This man, Sheldon McArthur, who looks calm, cool and collected, runs the best booth in the whole fair. Not only was able to transplant his store from down in Westwood, but had the best selection of mystery writers together in one place.

3 Day in 100 F+ Valley

Man, has it been hot around here lately!

We are experiencing a miniature heat wave and a new wave of fires in the hills. It is to be seen if the California Electrical Grid will be able to respond and keep the air at full blast in So Cal.

Looking forward to a few cool signings this week:

Terrill Lee Lankford will launch is new book Earthquake Weather on Thursday and then will be signing with Michael Connelly through the weekend. Connelly's new book, The Narrows, is the sequel to The Poet and is quite the buzz due to no ARC being released ahead of time.