Love the look of mid-century, modern, retro designs, but don't feel like dropping two weeks pay on an Eames chair? Todd Oldham shares his passion for mid-century modern homes with over 72 build-it-yourself projects in HANDMADE MODERN. This is the perfect book for the lover of the style, the do-it-your-selfer, or anyone looking to add a bit of the personal to their home or workplace. This is a signing only event. Please call 312.781.3033 for further details.

Chicago writer and National Book Award winner Larry (Paco's Story) Heinemann's return to Vietnam is chronicled in BLACK VIRGIN MOUNTAIN. During this trip he discovered such things as how Vietnamese soldiers were prepared to fight alongside Americans - reading Twain and Whitman, for instance - and realizes profound qualities that no soldier can see in combat. This is a reflection, and Heinemann's scathing account of the mistakes of war.

BONE: Out From Boneville, Jeff Smith's classic comic is Now In Color! In this epic, the three Bone cousins—Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone—are separated and lost in an uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. Eventually, they are reunited at a farmstead run by tough Gran'ma Ben and her spirited granddaughter Thorn. But little do the Bones know, there are dark forces conspiring against them, and their adventure is only just beginning!

Acclaimed Oak Park poet and writer John Jacob visits Barbara's for Poetry month, reading from his most recent work, NIGHT OF THE DOLPHIN. Jacob's narration here is based on solitude, and on the desire to see the bright beauty beneath the detritus of life. Loneliness, isolation and distance may be part of these poems, but the terse style creates an aura of reserve around the work, which is unsentimental and aims at a higher truth than can be found with emotional grandstanding.

Lima, Peru is to Daniel Alarcón what Yoknapatawhapa was to William Faulkner - not a geographic reality, so much as a fictive one, a place in which his flawed and fragile characters can live and breathe. WAR BY CANDLELIGHT collects some of Alarcón's already award-winning short stories, and along with never before published works by this writer who was described by Chris Offutt as "powerful, poetic, and bold."

What began as a job for reporter Cheryl Reed became a four year journey traveling the country and living with various orders of nuns - a journey that changed her life. Her new book UNVEILED: The Hidden Lives of Nuns, is the result of many hours spent accessing the inner lives of women with whom few of us have intimate contact. Interviewing more than 300 different nuns, with diverse beliefs and lifestyles, from over 50 different orders, Reed has learned that there are as many ways to be a nun as there are to be a woman.

There is only one young man anywhere near as famous as Harry Potter (although he would probably cringe at the comparison) and his name is Artemis Fowl, the young, criminal mastermind. His chronicler, Eoin Colfer, will be at Barbara's UIC to sign copies of THE OPAL DECEPTION, the fourth in his series on Artemis's nefarious deeds. This will be a signing only event, please call us at 312.413.2665 (BOOK) for further details.