Watermark Books & Cafe

What We're Reading: Current Picks from the Watermark Staff

Favorite Staff Picks:

Our Best Reads of 2007

This week's special: 30% off

Welcome to Watermark Books & Cafe!

Now Hiring: Full Time Cafe Staff. Watermark Books & Cafe is seeking a friendly, hardworking individual to join our cafe staff. Position includes daytime, evening, and weekend hours. Duties in the cafe include food prep, clean-up, & customer assistance. Please apply in person at Watermark Books & Café, 4701 E. Douglas, Wichita, KS.

The Book of the Week is Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler (Putnam, ISBN 9780399154751, $24.95.) Set in contemporary Santa Cruz, "Wit's End" opens as Rima Lanisell arrives at her godmother's old Victorian mansion, weary from her recent losses--an inventive if at times irritating father, a beloved brother. (Indeed, Rima seems to lose people and things habitually--sunglasses and keys, lovers and family members.) At loose ends, she has come to coastal California to regroup and to meet that legendary godmother. She soon finds herself enmeshed in a household of eccentrics: a formerly alcoholic cook and her irksome son, two quirky dog-walkers, a mysterious stalker, and of course, godmother Addison Early, a secretive and feisty bestselling mystery writer who once knew Rima's father well. Perhaps too well. Rima is on a mission to discover just what their relationship was all about.

This won't be easy. Over the years, Addison has fought fiercely to protect her work and her privacy, even as her passionate fans have become ever more intrusive. In this age of the Internet, with its blogs, chat rooms, and websites, its Wikipedia, false personas, and hidden identities, those fans have begun to take over her plotlines and the life of her famous fictional detective. For many of those fans, Maxwell Lane is more real than Addison herself. So, "Wit's End" is also a highly original take on the way dedicated readers appropriate their favorite books, perhaps the one act of theft applauded the world over--except by authors. Word has it that Addison is so beleaguered, so distracted by her fans' Web postings, that she has writer's block.

Traveling back into the past, firmly rooted in the present, "Wit's End" is storytelling at its best. It is also Karen Joy Fowler at her most subversive and witty, creating characters both oddball and endearing in a voice that is utterly and memorably her own. And this week it's 30% off.

The Footnote of the Week: Magic. Astounding magic tricks that you can do in a flash! Save 30% this week.

First line...

"We think we know the ones we love."

... from The Story of a Marriage: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, ISBN 9780374108663, $22.00)

Cafe specials

Our featured cookbooks for April & May are Martha Stewart's Cookies by Martha Stewart and Bake Until Bubbly by Clifford Wright: One boasts delectable desserts, the other tempting casseroles for every occasion.

Look in the pastry case this month for Coconut Macaroons, Cranberry Apple Walnut Crisp, Turtle Brownies, Chunky Peanut, Chocolate & Cinnamon Cookies, Iced Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies, Double Chocolate Brownies, Key Lime Bars, New Orleans Baked French Toast, Pear Crisp, Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies, Banana Nut Chocolate Chunk Cookies, White Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Truffle Brownies, Pecan Bars, Stuffed French Toast Casserole, Rocky Ledge Bars, Chocolate Thumbprints, Fresh Peach Drop Cookies, Chocolate Cookie Cutouts, Chocolate Crackles, Peach Crumble, and Double Chocolate Coconut Cookies.

Order online by 10:30 a.m., and we'll have your lunch waiting for you.

You're in MySpace. Many great authors come to Watermark. Too often we concentrate on spreading the word to you about who's coming, and we forget to tell you how the events went. No longer. We recently launched Watermark's MySpace page, complete with event photos and whatnot. We've even accumulated a great number of literati who have subscribed to be our MySpace friends, including Paulo Coehlo, Matt Haig, Elizabeth Gilbert, and David Levithan. We hope you do, too. Check out our MySpace page.