Our Beautiful Leelanau County Shoreline, Captured!

The latest book from Leelanau Press is in Northport now, and it’s a beauty. Lake Trek: One Shoreline, Two Visions features the work of photographer Ken Scott and painter Kaye Krapohl, and to call it stunning would be to understate the case. Walking the shore, through the seasons, from Traverse City north and around and down south to the Benzie County line, Ken and Kaye captured a breathtaking variety of beautiful moments with their respective arts. Kaye’s sketches and studies for later finished paintings and the comments of these two talented people about their extended adventure add depth to what would already be a magnificent volume with finished work alone. You will love this book!

Ken and Kaye will be at Dog Ears Books on Thursday evening, August 11, at 7 p.m., to tell you about their long hike and the art that came out of it. They will sign books for customers after Q&A.

Lake Trek: One Shoreline, Two Visions

Ken Scott & Kaye Krapohl

Hardcover, 136pp, $39.95

More Prize-Winning Fiction

We’ve had many award-winning authors at Dog Ears Books over the years, but July will bring Kelly Fordon to our Northport bookstore for the first time. Fordon’s book of stories, Garden for the Blind, named a Michigan Notable Book for 2016, was also a finalist in 2015 awards from ForeWord Reviews Indiefab, Midwest Book Awards, and the Eric Hoffer Award, winning Honorable Mention in 2016 at the New York Book Festival and bronze medal from Independent Publisher Book Awards for 2016. Here's a review to whet your appetite for her stories.

Kelly Fordon will be reading from and signing her book for customers on Thursday, July 14, from 1 to 3 p.m. Please join us.

Garden for the Blind

by Kelly Fordon

Wayne State University Press

Paper, 233pp, $18.99

Books for Fruit Country People

Another very bookish day in Northport wound up with a delightful visit from author Barbara Bull, who hails from down near Shelby, Michigan. Barbara is a fruit farmer, farmstand operator, a writer, and I now have three of her titles in stock, looking forward to a fourth by fall.

Benjamin’s Gift is a children’s story, a Christmas story, and a story tailor-made for those of us on Lake Michigan’s fruit-growing shore. 

Hardcover, oversize

$19.95

Cloud Cottage is a gentle, “cozy” mystery involving the Civil War, a shipwreck, hidden treasure, and the continuity of families who return year after year to Lake Michigan summer cottages. A sequel will be out later this year.

Paper, 284pp

$15.95

A Point of View: Blackberry Ridge, 1871-1884 tells of pioneer life and fruit farming in the 1880s in West Michigan. This book is an edited collection of actual newspaper articles of the time period, some of the pieces written by a journalist and fruit grower who lived on the same intersection where Barbara Bull now has her farm market.

Paper, 297pp, illustrated

$19.95

New from Lynne Rae Perkins

The day a new book by Lynne Rae Perkins arrives is always an exciting day. I was champing at the bit (horse talk) this rainy Wednesday, keeping watch for the UPS truck. At last!

Frank and Lucky Get Schooled is a big, beautiful picture book, and the story stars a boy and his dog. Lucky is lucky to have Frank, Frank is lucky to have Lucky, and we are all lucky to have this fun new story. The mind is Lynne Rae Perkins is a wondrous thing. You never know which direction she's going to go from one page to the next in her stories, but you follow her characters eagerly on their adventures, and this new book is no exception. It is utterly delightful! You'll have a hard time deciding which adventures and pictures and pages are your favorites.

Frank and Lucky Get Schooled
by Lynne Rae Perkins
Hardcover, $17.99

Also, please note that Lynne Rae will be reading and signing books at Dog Ears Books on Saturday, July 23, from 3 to 5 p.m.

Leelanau Geology

When you look out over Lake Michigan or climb the dunes at Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, what do you see? How much sense can you make of the forces behind the formation of our lands and waters? 

Because there is more to geology than stones on the beach, Thomas Hooker has put together a short, very readable text, illustrated mostly with his own photographs, recounting the story of Leelanau's geologic past. 

And he also writes poems!

The Last Ice Age and the Leelanau Peninsula:
Pleistocene and Lake Michigan
by Thomas H. Hooker
Paper, 63pp, $14.95

Silent Woods: Beyond the Blue Door
by Thomas H. Hooker
Paper, 155pp., $14.95

New from Kathleen Stocking

A new box of books is always exciting, especially when the book has been eagerly anticipated for a long time. Now at last we have it -- a third book of memoir essays from Leelanau's own Kathleen Stocking, author of Letters from the Leelanau (1990) and Lake Country (1994). Kathleen has done a lot of traveling since the 1990s, but always she comes back home to Leelanau County.


The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale
by Kathleen Stocking
Paper, 384pp, $23

Kathleen Stocking will be at Dog Ears Books on Sunday, July 3, to sign copies of her new book, but the book is here now and destined to be another Michigan classic, so come get your copy right away! 

P.S. 6/11/2016 - Look here for my review of the book. 

P.P.S. 7/18/2016 - Kathleen will be giving a presentation, "Mind-Mapping This Brave, New, Borderless World," at Dog Ears Books on Thursday, August 4, at 7 p.m. and will sign books again that evening for those who missed her earlier.

Colorful, Captivating Leelanau County

Our foremost county photographer and a very talented local painter are featured artists in a new book coming from Leelanau Press, which should be available at Dog Ears Books before the 4^th of July. I’m taking prepaid orders now for --

Leelanau Trek: One Shoreline, Two Visions,

by Ken Scott and Kaye Krapohl

Hardcover, $39.95

On the subject of Ken Scott, I am down to my last “Back Pages” calendar for 2016, and since it’s the sixth month of the year, the price for that last calendar is my wholesale cost, $10. (In the photo below, there are two calendars, but one sold right after I took the picture.)

My new policy for bookstore windows and bulletin board is to restrict postings to books I’m selling, bookstore events, and items of my personal choosing (mostly related to books). One exception to the general policy is the poster in the window now for the upcoming Leelanau Children’s Choir concert on June 10. Why this exception? Because I want to do all I can to support this group.