September 13th: Shelter from the Fire

Hey, put down that extinguisher and come on over to the Mandrake on Sunday, September 13th.  We can promise with almost one hundred percent certainty that the bar will not be on fire.  Oh, but the night will be!  Dennis Fulgoni will start things off with new work and Richard Lange will follow that up with a reading from his new novel, This Wicked World, a Los Angeles literary thriller about some bad dogs, some even worse people, some good people, too and love and forgiveness.  This book can’t stop collecting praise.  Here is just a small sampling:

From the LA Times review of This Wicked World, “Lange is incapable of creating a character that isn’t memorable. Even the most minor are indelibly sketched. The hard-luck denizens of a high desert gas station linger long after the story has left them behind.”  And from the New York Times, “Where did they go, those lost souls that Richard Lange captured with such pitiful clarity in his 2007 story collection, Dead Boys? The cross-wired Los Angeles drifters and grifters from that book would fit right in at the Tick Tock restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, where Jimmy Boone is tending bar in Lange’s terrific first novel . . .”

In honor of the dog days of Santa Ana season, we’ll have Greyhounds on special, DJ Orb will be kicking out the jams and Small World Books will be on hand with copies of This Wicked World. And did I mention cookies?  Yes.  There will be cookies.  And on top of everything else, we’ll have two incredible writers reading some amazing work.  So you’d be crazy not to be there, too, dear reader.

So, to review:

WHAT:  Book Party Fall Debut with Dennis Fulgoni and Richard Lange

WHEN:  Sunday, September 13th at 7:00 pm

WHERE:  The Mandrake, 2692 South La Cienega Blvd, between Venice and Washington (there is no sign- the building is on the east side of the street, white with blue trim)

WHY:  Because we’re crazy about good writing.  And because who doesn’t need a chance to think about something other than Los Angeles burning?  Besides, we all know what The Great Fire was really about.  So come and do as Shirley would do.   Use the fire as metaphor.

Extra special thanks to sculptor Jamey Morrill for lending the incredible image from his performance piece at the top of the page, Bitch and Ball, to Book Party.  We are ever so grateful.