Anderson’s Bookshop

Signed Copies of Derrick Rose’s New Book Available at Anderson’s Bookshops

While supplies last, Anderson’s Bookshop locations have autographed copies of I’ll Show You, by former Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose. A unique gift for any Bulls fan!

I’ll Show You was written by Rose with award-winning sportswriter Sam Smith. From a kid raised in one of Chicago’s roughest neighbors, Derrick Rose showed himself to be capable of ruling the basketball universe! D-Rose’s inspiring story is candid, difficult at times and illuminating.

About the Book: In 2012, Derrick Rose was on top of the world.

After growing up in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, Rose achieved an improbable childhood dream: being selected first overall in the NBA draft by his hometown Chicago Bulls. The point guard known to his family as “Pooh” was a phenom, winning the Rookie of the Year award and electrifying fans around the world. In 2011, he became the youngest MVP in league history. He and the Bulls believed the city’s first berth in the NBA Finals since the Jordan era was on the horizon. Rarely had a bond between a player and fans been so strong, as the city wrapped its arms around the homegrown hero.

Six years and four knee surgeries later, he was waived by the Utah Jazz, a once surefire Hall of Fame career seemingly on the brink of collapse. Many speculated his days in the NBA were over.

But Derrick Rose never doubted himself, never believed his struggles on and off the court were anything other than temporary setbacks. Rather than telling the world he had more to give, he decided to show them.

I’ll Show You is an honest, intimate conversation with one of the world’s most popular athletes, a star whose on-court brilliance is matched only by his aversion to the spotlight. Written with New York Times bestselling author Sam Smith, Rose opens himself up to fans in a way they’ve never seen before, creating a document that is as unflinching—and at times as uncomfortable—as a personal diary.

Detailing his childhood spent in one of his city’s most dangerous neighborhoods; his relationships with both opponents and teammates; the pain and controversies surrounding his career-altering injuries; his complicated relationship to fame and fortune; and his rise, fall, and reemergence as the player LeBron James says is “still a superhero,” I’ll Show You is one of the most candid and surprising autobiographies of a modern-day superstar ever written.

About the Authors: Derrick Rose currently plays for the Detroit Pistons of the NBA. He played one year of college basketball for the Memphis Tigers before being drafted first overall by his hometown Chicago Bulls in the 2008 NBA draft. After being named the NBA Rookie of the Year, Rose, at age 22, became the youngest player to win the NBA Most Valuable Player Award in 2011.

Sam Smith has been covering the Chicago Bulls and the NBA for more than three decades, as reporter and columnist for the Chicago Tribune for 28 years, and currently for Bulls.com. Recipient of the prestigious Curt Gowdy Media Award from the NBA Hall of Fame, he also received the Professional Basketball Writers Association Lifetime Achievement award in 2011. He is the author of the classic bestselling book The Jordan Rules, for which he had unparalleled access to Michael Jordan and 1991-92 Chicago Bulls. He has written extensively for media outlets around the world, including ESPN.com, ESPN Magazine, NBC Sports, Basketball Digest, The Sporting News, and for major publications in Japan and China.

Anderson’s Bookshops are located at 123 W. Jefferson Ave., in the heart of Naperville (630) 355-2665; 5112 Main St., Downers Grove (630) 963-2665; or 26 S. La Grange Rd., La Grange (708) 582-6353. On visit online at www.andersonsbookshop.com.

W. Bruce Cameron: A Dog’s Promise

W. Bruce Cameron continues the story of Bailey, now an angel dog, in his latest book, A Dog’s Promise.

W. Bruce Cameron continues the story of Bailey, now an angel dog, in his latest book, A Dog’s Promise.

“Bailey has been sent to a boy in a wheelchair whose family is really struggling with many issues and is being torn apart,” says Cameron, who’s other two books featuring Bailey are the bestsellers A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey. “Bailey’s mission to fulfill a promise to help these people out.”

Cameron’s last two books have been made into movies starring Dennis Quaid, the scripts of which he and his wife, author and comedian Cathryn Michon, co-authored with several other writers. There’s little doubt that A Dog’s Promise will be too. But these wonderful heartwarming stories about Bailey (who is joined by another special dog name Lacey in this book) might never have been written if Cameron’s first writing dream had come true.

“I started off thinking I’d write thrillers for adults,” he says. “I’d turn out one once a year just like Michael Connelly.”

Bailey as a cop, government agent or spy?

Luckily it didn’t happen that way. Instead, hoping to convince Michon, who was heartbroken over her loss of a beloved dog, to let them adopt another dog, Cameron spun a canine tale to tell her. She was so taken that she insisted he should turn his story into a book. That morphed into his A Dog’s Purpose series (there’s also a puppy’s purpose series as well). The two married and now have adopted what Cameron describes as a “mixed DNA” dog they named Tucker.

“He’s sitting here right now as we’re talking,” says Cameron who is currently working on a Christmas novella about a dog and a new series, Lily’s to The Rescue starting in 2020. “He may be expecting me to cook for him.”

Ah, a dog’s life.

If writing all these books, many of which are New York Times and USA Today best sellers, seems to indicate a well-organized mind, Cameron disagrees.

“My brain has always been a cluttered attic full of stories,” he says. “I was the kid who instead of paying attention in class, was writing stories.”

But just as Bailey has a purpose, so does Cameron. One of the take-aways he’d like readers to get from his books is this: if people would adopt canine values—respect, love, support and caring—the world would be a much better place.

“I think A Dog’s Promise is a story that can help us come together,” he says. “We build up all these barriers. But if you just follow the path of this dog or any dog, you can overcome what keeps us apart.”

Ifyougo:

What: W. Bruce Cameron presentation and book signing

When: Tuesday, October 15 at 7 p.m.

Where: Stevenson Hall in the Wentz Science Center on the campus of North Central College, 131 S. Loomis St., Napier, IL

Cost: A ticket for one person cost $32.00 ($34.59 w/service fee). Includes a copy of the new book with a personalized signing and photo. The ticket package for two is $42.00 ($45.09 w/service fee). Admits two people and includes one copy of the new book with a personalized signing and photo. To purchase tickets, brownpapertickets.com/event/4343095

FYI: (630) 355-2665; andersonsbookshop.com

Let’s Play Two: The Life and Times of Ernie Banks

A college baseball player whose batting average was lower than his grade point average, Columbus, Indiana ophthalmologist Doug Wilson turned his passion for the sport to writing about the iconic players he admired in his youth.

His latest, Let’s Play Two: The Life and Times of Ernie Banks (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2019; Amazon price $23.95), tells the story of the first African American to play for the Chicago Cubs. Recruited from the Kansas City Monarchs and raised in a segregated community in Texas, Banks was always positive and had a good word to say about everything. These characteristics often led to people underestimating the man who would become known as “Mr. Cub.”

“People couldn’t see beyond his optimistic outlook and took him to be naïve and have a simplistic outlook on life,” says Wilson. “But Banks was a very deep thinker, he’s someone who overcame a lot of obstacles but never said anything bad about people. If reporters asked him about someone who had said something negative about him, Banks would change things around so that he deflected the question without being rude.”

But in the end, it was Banks good natured spirits that won the day says Wilson, recounting the rocky relationship between Leo Durocher and Banks.

“You couldn’t have come up with two different kind of guys,” says Wilson. “Durocher, well…the title of his book Nice Guys Finish Last says it all and Banks was the ultimate nice guy. Durocher hated Banks’s guts and tried everything he could to run him out of town but there was no way PK Wrigley was going to let that happened. And all the time Durocher was trying to get rid of him, Banks just smiled. When Durocher would talk to reporters about how Banks was ruining the Cubs, they’d run to him and ask him about that, and Banks would just say “Leo Durocher is the best manager ever. He always took the high road.”

Wilson whose previous books include Fred Hutchinson and the 1964 Cincinnati Reds, The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Mark Fidrych which was selected by the Library of Michigan as a Michigan Notable book for 2014, Brooks: The Biography of Brooks Robinson (2014) and Pudge: The Biography of Carlton Fisk, not only read every interview he could find with Banks dating back to 1950 as well as endless newspaper accounts and books, says he also was able to located several friends from Banks’s youth including those who knew him when was seven years old and another who played bay with him in high school.

“I also found three guys who played with Ernie in the Negro League when he was with the Kansas City Monarchs,” says Wilson. “They said he was shy around people. But his persona changed after he became comfortable in Chicago.”

By interviewing friends from his boyhood, Wilson says it helped him see how overwhelming it must have been to be confined to segregated schools and neighborhoods and the challenges that Banks faced in becoming a player at a time when African Americans were just beginning to be allowed to play in the major league. Amazingly, Banks would be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a place in the Hall of Fame and he would always remain optimistic.

“Years later, Leo Durocher had a change of heart, perhaps surgically induced, in 1983 a very contrite 78-year-old Leo, recovering from a recent open heart procedure, perhaps seeing his own mortality at last, spoke at a Cubs reunion and tearfully apologized to the team in general and Ernie Banks specifically for how he had behaved,” writes Wilson.

In other words, says Wilson, “Ernie won.”

Ifyougo:

What: Doug Wilson has several book events in the Chicagoland area.

When & Where: Saturday, February 16 at 2 pm at Anderson’s Bookshop, 5112 Main St, Downers Grove, IL. This event is free and open to the public. To join the signing line, please purchase the author’s latest book, Let’s Play Two, from Anderson’s Bookshop. Call Anderson’s Bookshop Downers Grove (630) 963-2665.

When & Where: Saturday, March 2 at 6 pm at the Book Cellar, 4736-38 N Lincoln Ave Chicago, IL. Free. (773) 293-2665.

For more information, visit dougwilsonbaseball.blogspot.com/

Leslie Odom Jr.’s Inspiring New Book: Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning

Leslie Odom, Jr. originated the role of Aaron Burr in the Broadway musical phenomenon Hamilton. Since then, he has performed for sold-out audiences, sung for the Obamas at the White House, and won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. But before he landed the role of a lifetime in one of the biggest musicals of all time, Odom put in years of hard work as a singer and an actor.

With personal stories from his life, Odom asks the questions that will help you unlock your true potential and achieve your goals even when they seem impossible. What work did you put in today that will help you improve tomorrow? How do you surround yourself with people who will care about your dreams as much as you do? How do you know when to play it safe and when to risk it all for something bigger and better?

These stories will inspire you, motivate you, and empower you for the greatness that lies ahead, whether you’re graduating from college, starting a new job, or just looking to live each day to the fullest.

Odom was most recently seen in the blockbuster Broadway musical Hamilton, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for the role of “Aaron Burr.” He is a Grammy Award winner as a principal soloist on Hamilton’s Original Broadway Cast Recording, which won the 2015 award for Best Musical Theater Album. Odom, Jr. originated the role of “Burr” in a sold-out run at The Public Theater in 2015, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical and a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Musical.

As a recording artist, his self-titled debut album was part-funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised $40,971. The album was released in 2014 by Borderlight Entertainment, Inc. Odom has appeared on “Smash,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Gotham,” “Person of Interest,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “House of Lies,” “Vanished” and “CSI: Miami.” He also starred in the feature film Murder on the Orient Express.

Leslie Odom, Jr.’s upcoming visit is part of Anderson’s Bookshops’ calendar of special author events. Anderson’s Bookshops specialize in book sales, author events, book signings, and building a sense of community, learning and fun. The store has been helping Naperville readers for six generations. Additional locations include Downers Grove, at 5112 Main Street (630)-963-2665 and La Grange, at 26 S. La Grange Rd. (708) 582-6353. A toy shop, Anderson’s Toyshop, at 111 W. Jefferson Ave., in Naperville, opened in 2016. Key to Anderson’s success has been special author events, like the March 31 program with Leslie Odom, Jr.

Into the Water: A New Thriller by Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawking, author of the international best-selling The Girl on the Train, which was translated into 40 languages and made into a movie, will be in Chicago next Friday, May 19 to talk about her newest book, Into the Water (Riverhead Books 2017; $A tense, psychological thriller told from the different viewpoints of all those involved in the life—and possibly the death-of Nel, an artist, who either fell, jumped or was pushed into what locals call “the drowning pool,” a placid body of water by an old mill with deadly undercurrents and weeds that easily ensnare. It was a place where in Medieval times, trials by water took place.

“After being tied up, they’d toss you into the water and if you rose to the surface you were guilty and if you sank, you were innocent,” says Hawkins, who, born in Zimbabwe, now lives in London. A journalist for 15 years, she also wrote romantic comedies.

“I found that even when I was writing romances, I kept adding darker undertones,” she says. So she gave into her urges for deeper and more mysterious stories starting with

Into the Water revolves around the memories of the characters as they come to grip with the mysteries behind Nel’s death and also her life. The idea of how we all remember things differently and how our memories become our own reality intrigues her.

“I thought about how we tell the stories of our lives and how you remember something that is absolutely fundamental to who you are, and what would happen if you had misremembered it or if you disagreed with someone who remembers it as completely different,” she says.

Hawkins, who set her story in Beckford, a fictional English village dissected by a flowing river, chose water as her theme for this novel, because it fascinates so many of us. The river is a character with its own personality, one with a long evil history of luring women in particular to their deaths. She recalls thinking, when walking alongside a pretty stream, what a pretty place for a swim. But then she rounded a bend and discovered a dead animal along the shallows of the shore.

In other words, says Hawkins, nothing is as it seems.

Ifyougo:

What: Paula Hawkins in conversation with Mary Kubica

When: Friday, May 19, 7:00 PM

Where: Community Christian Church, hosted by Anderson’s Bookshop, 1635 Emerson Lane

Naperville, IL

Cost: $39.29 for one copy of “Into the Water,” event admission and a service fee

FYI: paulahawkinsandersons.brownpapertickets.com or (630) 355-2665

Steve Hamilton in Chicago to discuss his latest mystery “The Second Life of Nick Mason”

“He’s made a deal with the devil,” says New York Times bestselling author Steve Hamilton about his latest book, “The Second Life of Nick Mason” (Putnam’ 2016; $26) . “Everywhere he goes he’s watched, everyone he touches is in danger and all he wants to do is reunite with his wife and daughter.”

To get out of prison after five very long years instead of serving 25-to-life, Mason agrees to a mysterious agreement with Darius Cole, who is serving a double-life term in the same prison but still rules his criminal empire from his cell. What it means is Mason gets to live in a luxurious Chicago Gold Coast mansion stocked with gourmet food and drink and drive the super-fast sports car that’s parked in the garage. The downside? He has to do Cole’s bidding and so, every time his cell phone rings, Mason finds Author Photo of Steve Hamilton (c) Franco Vogt himself embark on ever increasingly dangerous—and need we say—illegal assignments. To make matters worse, he’s being tracked by the same police detective who put him behind bars to begin with.

Hamilton, one of only two authors to win Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards for both best novel and best first novel, is meticulous about his research.

“When I was writing ‘The Lock Artist’ which is about a safe cracker, I found the best one in the world,” says Hamilton who is from Detroit but now lives in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. “I learned how to pick locks. In fact, I keep my lock picks on my desk and pick locks everyday just to keep my touch.”

He’s also been to maximum security prisons, like the one Mason is so desperate to leave that he’s willing to agree to anything.

“There’s so much of Nick I can relate to,” says Hamilton, whose books include The Alex McKnight series starting with ‘A Cold Day in Paradise.’ “You’d do anything to get out of those prisons just like Nick and I have a daughter like he does and it would just kill me not to see her.”

Ifyougo:

What: Steve Hamilton book signing

When: Monday, May 23 at 7pm

Where: Anderson’s Bookshop, Anderson’s Bookshop La Grange, 26 S. La Grange Rd., La Grange, IL

Cost: Free

FYI: (708) 582-6353

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