Wednesday February 6 @ 7 pm

Long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox was in 55-degree water, swimming her last half-mile when she found a baby gray whale swimming beside her. She needed to get out of the water to rest, but if she did, the young calf would follow her onto shore and die. And if she didn’t find the mother whale, the baby would starve. How could Lynne possibly reunite them? Grayson is the story (part mystery, part magical tale) of what happened.

Find out more about Lynne Cox.

Thursday February 7 @ 7 pm

Bringing a healthy dose of springtime inspiration, The Bicycle Book: Wit, Wisdom & Wanderings, pays tribute to the bicycle, one of the most useful machines ever invented. It’s packed with original stories, narratives and cartoons from a talented corps of writers and cartoonists. Award-winning local contributors Bill Joyce and Ella Lawrence, share their personal stories of life en route.

Find out more about The Bicycle Book.

Tuesday February 12 @ 7 pm

Janna Levin bridges fiction and nonfiction to tell a strange story of mathematical truth and lies. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a story of greatness and weakness, of genius and hallucination, based on the parallel lives of logician Kurt Gödel and code-breaker Alan Turing. Their work proved that truth is elusive, that knowledge has limits, that machines can think. Yet Gödel believed in transmigration of the soul and Turing concluded that we were soulless biological machines. Though both devoted to truth of the highest abstract nature, they were unable to grasp the mundane truths of their own lives.

Find out more about Janna Levin.

Monday February 25 @ 7 pm

Founder of molecular gastronomy Hervé This is known for his ground-breaking research into the chemistry and physics behind everyday cooking and has changed the way food is approached and prepared all over the world. In Kitchen Mysteries, he offers a second helping of insight into the science of cooking, answering such fundamental questions as what causes vegetables to change color when cooked and how to keep a soufflé from falling. Promising
to answer your most compelling kitchen questions, he continues
to make the complex science of food digestible to the cook.

Read more about Hervé This.

Wednesday February 27 @ 7 pm

The Water Cure is the chilling confession of a victim turned villain. Ishmael Kidder’s daughter has been brutally murdered, and he must take revenge. The punishment is carried out without guilt, and with the usual equipment — duct tape, rope and super glue. But how will the successful romance novelist turned vigilante explain the noises in the basement to his agent? How does he know he has the right man? Percival Everett combines his gifts for storytelling and satire, bringing together Western philosophy, language theory and military intelligence in this gripping tale.

Read more about Percival Everett.

Wednesday March 5 @ 7 pm

For more than 30 years, Wendy Johnson has been meditating and gardening at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, which provides choice produce to SF’s Greens restaurant. Now she has distilled her lifetime of experience into Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, a celebration of inner and outer growth that shows how the garden cultivates the gardener. With practical knowledge, garden lore, and an appreciation for the earth both cultivated and wild, Johnson is sure to earn a place in the great tradition of American nature writing.

Tuesday March 11 @ 7 pm

Environmental journalist Claire Hope Cummings exposes seeds: from the rise of industrial agriculture and plant biotechnology,
the fall of public interest in science to the folly of patenting seeds, all with the knowledge that whoever controls the future of seeds controls the future of life on Earth. Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds is a powerful reminder that what’s at stake right now is nothing less than the nature of the future.

Read more about Claire Hope Cummings

Wednesday March 12 @ 7 pm

Poet Sandra Gilbert explores our relationship to death through literature, history, poetry and societal practices in her latest book, Death’s Door. Joined by poet Margo Berdeshevsky — who reads topical poems from her new collection, But a Passage in Wilderness — Gilbert examines both the changelessness of grief and the changing customs that mark contemporary mourning.

Read more from Margo Berdeshevsky
Read more from Sandra Gilbert

Wednesday April 6 @ 7 pm

Akashic all-stars join us to celebrate the release of their latest fiction: Elizabeth Crane is the author of You Must Be This Happy to Enter, a story collection in which denial, God, dystopia, academia and reality TV collide. Nina Revoyr is the author of The Age of Dreaming, a novel rich in the nuances of the silent film era. Abraham Rodriguez is the author of South by South Bronx, a noir take on a neigbhorhood filled with beauty, danger and magic.

Read more about Elizabeth Crane, Nina Revoyr, and Abraham Rodriguez.

Check out these new staff picks for the holidays!