In the summer of 1998 two of baseball leading sluggers, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, embarked on a race to break Babe Ruth’s single season home run record. The nation was transfixed as Sosa went on to hit 66 home runs, and McGwire 70. Three years later, San Francisco Giants All-Star Barry Bonds surpassed McGwire by 3 home runs in the midst of what was perhaps the greatest offensive display in baseball history. Over the next three seasons, as Bonds regularly launched mammoth shots into the San Francisco Bay, baseball players across the country were hitting home runs at unprecedented rates. For years there had been rumors that perhaps some of these players owed their success to steroids. But crowd pleasing homers were big business, and sportswriters, fans, and officials alike simply turned a blind eye. Then, in December of 2004, after more than a year of investigation, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story that in a federal investigation of a nutritional supplement company called BALCO, Yankees slugger Jason Giambi had admitted taking steroids. Barry Bonds was also implicated. Immediately the issue of steroids became front page news. The revelations led to Congressional hearings on baseball’s drug problems and continued to drive the effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats. Now Fainaru-Wada and Williams expose for the first time the secrets of the BALCO investigation that has turned the sports world upside down.

Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports,by award-winning investigative journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, is a riveting narrative about the biggest doping scandal in the history of sports, and how baseball’s home run king, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, came to use steroids. Drawing on more than two years of reporting, including interviews with hundreds of people, and exclusive access to secret grand jury testimony, confidential documents, audio recordings, and more, the authors provide, for the first time, a definitive account of the shocking steroids scandal that made headlines across the country. The book traces the career of Victor Conte, founder of the BALCO laboratory, an egomaniacal former rock musician and self-proclaimed nutritionist, who set out to corrupt sports by providing athletes with “designer” steroids that would be undetectable on “state-of-the-art” doping tests. Conte gave the undetectable drugs to 28 of the world’s greatest athletes—Olympians, NFL players and baseball stars, Bonds chief among them.

A separate narrative thread details the steroids use of Bonds, an immensely talented, moody player who turned to performance-enhancing drugs after Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals set a new home run record in 1998. Through his personal trainer, Bonds gained access to BALCO drugs. All of the great athletes who visited BALCO benefited tremendously—Bonds broke McGwire’s record—but many had their careers disrupted after federal investigators raided BALCO and indicted Conte. The authors trace the course of the probe, and the baffling decision of federal prosecutors to protect the elite athletes who were involved.

Rakestraw Books is hosting the first public event with Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada on Thursday, 6 April 2006 at 7:00 PM. Please bring your questions and join us for what is sure to be a provocative evening.

During the final week of April and the first week in May, we are delighted to be hosting a trio of wonderful events for young readers.

On Wednesday, 26 April at 10 AM, we will welcome novelist Sarah Dessen and her new book Just Listen. Sarah's work is much loved by teens and particularly by young women.

Then, on Thursday, 27 April at 10 AM, we are happy to say that illustrator Ashley Wolff will be joining us to present Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the Last Day of Kindergarten. It's been almost ten years in the making, but this one looks like a classic!

British phenom Anthony Horowitz returns to Rakestraw on Tuesday, 2 May at 10 AM to present his new novel, Ark Angel: An Alex Rider Adventure.   Event will be held off-site. If you are interested in attending, please call us at 925-837-7337 for information.

If you would like to bring your children or your class to one of these events, please call us to make reservations at (925) 837-7337.

All that is certain is this: On the afternoon of March 11, 1963, a middle-aged housewife named Bessie Goldberg was raped and strangled in her tidy suburban home. Her husband found her less than an hour later, sprawled on the living room floor, one of her stockings wound tightly around her neck. Children were playing kickball in the street outside. It was the only murder that, to this day, has ever taken place in the prosperous and serene town of Belmont, Massachusetts. On the day of the murder, a man named Roy Smith had cleaned the Goldberg home; the children playing kickball had seen him walk down the street. About a mile away, a carpenter named Albert DeSalvo was building an addition to the house where one-year-old Sebastian Junger lived with his parents.

In A Death in Belmont, Junger’s first full-length book since The Perfect Storm, the best-selling author and award-winning journalist takes on the story that has long been a legend in his own family. In his inimitably spare and driving style, Junger explores every angle of the book’s central mystery: Who killed Bessie Goldberg? Her death fit the pattern of murders committed by the Boston Strangler, a suspected serial killer who had been preying upon the women of Greater Boston and leaving not a trace of evidence behind. The police promptly arrested the housecleaner, Smith, a down-and-out black man from Mississippi with a long criminal record. He was convicted by a jury of white men on the day after Kennedy was assassinated and sentenced to life in prison. The Boston Strangler, however, continued to strike. And then, DeSalvo, the Jungers’ former carpenter, a white Boston local with his own criminal past, confessed to being the Strangler…but not to having committed the Goldberg murder.

Sebastian’s mother had had her own disturbing encounter with DeSalvo a few months before the murder, when he had tried to lure her into her basement, looking at her “with a strange kind of burning in his eyes…. As if by sheer force of will he could draw me down into that basement.” After that day, though, he was so polite and deferential that she soon came to doubt herself about the incident. In the Junger family, the story of Roy Smith’s conviction for a murder committed while DeSalvo was in town “eventually acquired the tidy symbolism of a folk tale,” Junger writes. “Roy Smith was a stand-in for everything that was unjust in the world, and Bessie Goldberg was a stand-in for everything that was decent but utterly defenseless. Albert DeSalvo, of course, was a stand-in for pure, random evil.” However, as Junger probes the events surrounding the Goldberg murder, this tidy simplicity gives way to doubt, and things are not always as they seem.

While DeSalvo fit the profile of a sociopathic criminal—a lonely, abused child who grew up to abuse and rape—he also had ample motivation to lie in confessing to the Strangler’s crimes. And while Smith’s life was shaped from beginning to end by the brutal culture of American racism, he was hardly a model citizen, and had been in and out of trouble with the law since his early twenties. Much like The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont is a book with an unknowable mystery at its heart. Those who knew the truth took their stories to the grave. The book spirals outward from the death in Belmont through the crimes committed by America’s first notorious serial killer to capture the full scope of a tumultuous period in our shared history. Junger’s exploration cuts to the heart of American law, criminal justice, and civil society. Spanning issues as diverse as racism, class division, terror, crime, investigation, punishment, and pardon, the book spurs us to question our assumptions about what we can know and to rethink the very meaning of justice in our country. Junger’s account, for all its journalistic objectivity and detachment, is fraught with urgency. The truth of who killed Bessie Goldberg matters not only for her sake and for those whose lives were shattered forever by the crime. It also matters for all of us – innocent American families for whom disaster is conceivably, and unpredictably, right around the corner. In the end, Junger’s portrait of America is disturbing and utterly riveting. It is a society we both recognize with pride and shudder to call our own.

We are thrilled to be welcoming Sebastian Junger back to Rakestraw Books for a special reading and signing on Saturday, 29 April 2006 at 11:00 AM. As part of this special event, we will be serving brunch. Reservations are available now by calling us at (925) 837-7337.
 

Julie’s Morning Book Club is reading an unusual true story, The Lost German Slave Girl by John Bailey for their April meeting on Friday, 28 April 2006 at 10:30 AM. Please join the group for a lively discussion – new members are always welcome.

Julie says, "We try to read good books you might not pick out for yourself. And we talk about it, and talk about it, bringing our own lives and that of the author to bear on the subject at hand. Join us!"

Special Note: We are considering starting a couple new book groups – an evening group and a food & wine writing group. Please contact the shop at (925) 837-7337 if you are interested in either group. We look forward to talking with you.
 

English novelist Marti Leimbach joins us to share her new book Daniel Isn't Talking on Wednesday, 3 May 2006 at 7:00 PM. I've already read this one -- it's just terrific. I look forward to sharing it with you. 10% of the proceeds from this evening's event will benefit Autism Speaks, a national non-profit autism education and advocacy group.

Alex Prud'homme joins us for lunch on Friday, 5 May 2006 to share the memoir that he and Julia Child wrote together, My Life in France. Without question, this one's going to have some wonderful food . . . stay tuned for further details.

San Francisco writer Caroline Paul visits as we celebrate the publication of her first novel, East Wind, Rain on Thursday, 11 May 2006 at 7:00 PM.

Winner of the 2003 Booker Prize D. B. C. Pierre to discuss his new novel, Ludmila's Broken English over lunch on Wednesday, 17 May 2006 at noon.

Award-winning essayist and journalist Michael Pollan, the author of The Botany of Desire visits on Thursday, 1 June 2006 at 7:00 PM to introduce his latest book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

Calvin Trillin, journalist and living legend, joins us on Sunday, 4 June 2006 at noon to present his new book, Heckuva Job, a collection of humorous verse. I am thinking lunch . . . . any thouhts? We look forward to welcoming him and you for this very special occasion.

National Book Award-winning novelist Julia Glass visits us on Thursday, 7 July 2006 at 7:00 PM as we celebrate the publication of her new novel, The Whole World Over.

Please note that these events are subject to change but that as of this writing all details are correct. We encourage you to call us at (925) 837-7337 to confirm. In addition, you should remember that more events will be added to this calendar so be sure to check each newsletter for additions.

To celebrate our thirty-third anniversary in business, Rakestraw Books is holding a special two day sale this weekend, April 8th and 9th. Thirty-three different items ranging from cookbooks to children’s puzzles will be 33% off. Sale prices are limited to items on hand, so shop early for the best selection. One of the sale books is Rick Bayless’s most recent cookbook, Mexican Everyday, from which this recipe for “Frijoles Charros Rapidos” is drawn:

Quick Cowboy Beans - Frijoles Charros Rapidos
Serves 4 to 6

4 thick slices bacon, cut into small pieces
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
Half of a 15-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice (preferably fire-roasted)
3˝ cups home-cooked pinto beans OR two 15-ounce cans pinto beans
1 or 2 canned pickled jalapenos – or more if you like spicy beans
Salt
˝ cup chopped cilantro

In a large (4-quart) saucepan, cook the bacon over medium heat, stirring regularly, until crisp, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and stir for a minute, then add the tomatoes with their juice. Cook, stirring regularly, for 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors. Add the beans, with their liquid, and simmer over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes.

While the beans are simmering, stem the chiles, cut in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Chop into small pieces and add to the beans.

Taste and season with salt if necessary – if the beans you used were seasoned, you probably will not need more salt. Ladle into small bowls, sprinkle with the cilantro and serve. So quick and so easy and now, on sale!
 

We are currently displaying a collection of paintings by local artist Mary Claire Stotler. Educated at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mary Claire has been studying color and design since she fell in love with the work of such masters as Monet and Cezanne. A multi-media artist, her interest spans pottery, photography, and the watercolor media. At this point, she is entering exhibitions in photography and painting, and now she is an award-winning artist and has several one-woman shows.

Pictured at left is “Sugar Factory” by Mary Claire Stotler. It sells for $450. I hope you will enjoy these vivid and lovely paintings.
 

We are delighted to announce that Rakestraw Books will once again be selling books at the Contra Costa Times Book Club Gala on April 25th. This season’s gala reading, conversation, and signing will take place as always at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts. Tickets are $22 and are available by calling the Center at (925) 943-SHOW.

The line-up for this wonderful event hosted by the Times and Lynn Carey is particularly good this time around. Rakestraw favorite M. Allen Cunningham, Dave King, Eleanor Lipman, and Nick Arvin will each read from their books and then discuss them with each other and the audience.

As a special treat, we are going to give away two pairs of tickets to this special event. To be eligible for this drawing, you must attend either our event with Lance Williams and Mark Fairnaru-Wada or next Tuesday’s event with Tony Faber or shop the anniversary sale this weekend.