Carroll Community College

Lenore Look

Presentation and Book Signings
10:30 a.m.; L284 

Everyone’s favorite neurotic second grader is back, in the most touching Alvin Ho book to date. In Alvin Ho: Allergic to Dead Bodies, Funerals, and Other Fatal Circumstances, Alvin comes into his own—after his usual chaotic missteps and wild antics! In this fourth book in the Alvin Ho series, Alvin is facing something truly scary: the idea that someone he loves might die. When Alvin’s GungGung loses his best friend, Charlie, Alvin volunteers to go with him to the funeral. Alvin soon starts to fear that not even his trusty PDK (Personal Disaster Kit) will be able to get him through this disaster. Add to that his brother’s conviction that Charlie’s death does not bode well for their GungGung, and Alvin feels he is in over his head. By infusing humor into such a fearful topic, Look demonstrates her endless finesse by providing an outlet for readers struggling to cope with the harsher realities of life while still keeping the tone light. New York Times bestselling illustrator LeUyen Pham’s spot-on illustrations capture both the humor and sensitivity of Alvin’s courage.

Lenore Look is the author of the Ruby Lu chapter book series—Ruby Lu, Brave and True and Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything. She is also the author of several acclaimed picture books including Polka Dot Penguin Pottery, Henry’s First-Moon Birthday and Uncle Peter’s Amazing Chinese Wedding.

Keith Donohue

Presentation and Book Signings
10:45 a.m.; M157

From bestselling author Keith Donohue, whose previous works were called “utterly absorbing” by the Washington Post and “captivating … poignant and beautifully told” by USA Today, comes a novel so bold in design and brilliant in its execution that it stands as his most intelligent and ambitious work yet.

Centuries of June is that very rare novel that combines the fiction of history with historical fiction; a dreamlike reality with a reality that could, after all, be a dream; and a storyline so complex, yet so frustratingly simple that one cannot help but be totally absorbed by it and, in the end, deeply moved as well.

Keith Donohue is the author of the acclaimed novels The Stolen Child and Angels of Destruction. He has a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in modern Irish literature and wrote the introduction to the Complete Novels of Flann O’Brien. For several years, he was a speechwriter at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., and he now works at another federal agency. He lives with his family in Wheaton, MD.

Tess Gerritsen

Presentation and Book Signings
11:30 a.m.; M157

Last summer, this former M.D., turned-internationally-bestselling author, took her profile to a whole new level when TNT launched their television series Rizzoli & Isles, starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, based on Tess Gerritsen’s bestselling novels featuring the fan-favorite characters of medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles and Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli. The premiere became a record-breaker for cable television and pulled in nearly eight million viewers. Now, Gerritsen returns and brings back Jane and Maura for their most harrowing case yet in The Silent Girl.

Tess Gerritsen is without a doubt one of today’s biggest suspense superstars. Her books have been the Top-5 bestsellers in the United States and abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels. Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen.”

As a novelist and M.D., Gerritsen is able to infuse her suspense thrillers with an authenticity that few can match-and The Silent Girl is no exception. Now retired from medicine, Gerritsen writes full time.

Elizabeth Letts

Presentation and Book Signings
10 a.m.; M157
 

The Eighty-Dollar Champion Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation

After WWII, with a new wife and $160 in his pocket, Harry de Leyer left his war-ravaged Dutch village for a better life in the United States.

It was on a wintry day in 1956 when Harry first saw Snowman—a thin, dirty horse with scars across his chest from pulling a plow—on the back of a truck headed for the slaughterhouse. He bought him for $80. And, a champion was born.

Against extraordinary odds, Harry and Snowman rose to the very top of the sport of show jumping. Poor country mice competing on the world stage of Madison Square Garden against the most expensive thoroughbreds on the planet, they captured the heart of a Cold War world desperate for a symbol of second chances, big dreams and unstoppable hope.

“The perfect book at the perfect time, Snowman will lift you up and over.”
–Rita Mae Brown

Elizabeth Letts is the award-winning author of two novels, Quality of Care and Family Planning, and one children’s book, The Butter Man. Quality of Care was a Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Books-A-Million Book Club selection. An equestrian from childhood, Letts represented California as a junior equestrian, and was runner-up in the California Horse and Rider of the Year competition. She currently lives with her husband and four children in Baltimore, MD.