Roy Hoffman presents THE PROMISE OF THE PELICAN, with Elaine Neil Orr at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCAt once a literary crime novel and an intergenerational family drama, The Promise of the Pelican is set in the multicultural South, where justice might depend on the color of your skin and your immigration status. Hank Weinberg is a modern-day Atticus Finch, recently retired as a defense attorney in Mobile, Alabama, and a Holocaust survivor, who fled the Nazis as a young child. With his daughter in rehab, he's now taking care of his special needs grandson. Mourning his dead wife, spending mornings fishing on the pier with other octogenarians, he passes the rest of his days watching over his sweet grandson with the help of Lupita, a young Honduran babysitter. When her brother Julio, an undocumented immigrant, is accused of murder, Hank must return to the courtroom to defend him while also trying to save his daughter and grandson's life from spinning out of control. The Promise of the Pelican takes its title from the legend that a pelican will pierce its own breast for blood to feed its starving chicks, a metaphor for one old man who risks all to save the vulnerable.
First Sunday, May 2022
Downtown Pittsboro 9 Hillsboro St, Pittsboro, NC, United StatesCome out and enjoy a bit of Pittsboro's downtown charm. This family-friendly event is free to attend. Artisans, non-profits, and local businesses will be out and about as we enjoy some sweet treats. Just a few of the downtown businesses that are usually open on First Sunday: Pittsboro Toys French Connections LiquidAmbar Gallery and Gifts Edwards Antiques Reclamation Would you like to be a vendor at First Sunday? Please fill out an application.
Local on Lorax
The Plant at Lorax Lane 220 Lorax Lane, Pittsboro, United StatesThe bright hues of Spring bring to mind two things: the promise of farmers’ fields found nearby abundant with fresh growth, and the renewed sense of creativity for local artists of all genres. In Pittsboro, small farms and a robust creative culture is a way of life. Help us celebrate this good life with a pop-up dinner that has a super-local twist. We've gathered area farmers, chefs, restaurants, craft beverages, and visual and performing artists for a good time. Join us for “Local on Lorax: A Farm & Art Dinner” on Sunday, May 1st, 5-8pm outdoors at The Plant, 192 Lorax Lane, Pittsboro NC. A limited number of vegetarian entrees are available. Email Greg@39westcatering.com to request your vegetarian entree.
Jim Grimsley presents THE DOVE IN THE BELLY at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCA story of the electric, dangerous, sometimes tender but always powerful attraction between two very different boys. But it's also about the full cycles of love and life and how they open in us the twinned capacities for grief and joy. At the University of North Carolina, Ronny's made some friends, kept his secrets, survived dorm life, and protected his heart. Until he can't. The Dove in the Belly is about the electric, dangerous, sometimes tender but always powerful attraction between two very different boys. But it's also about the full cycles of love and life and how they open in us the twinned capacities for grief and joy.
Spring Flowers Painting Class at The Creative Goat
The Creative Goat 984 Thompson Street Suite F, Pittsboro, NCCome out for a fun Friday night with your friends to paint this cute Spring Flowers in a vase. Pick your own flowers 🌺 colors. Date: May 6th Time 7-9pm $35 ticket includes: All supplies, pre-traced 11 x 14 canvas, step by step instruction, and light refreshments. Beginner painters are welcome and encouraged. Limited seats for this Pre-Pay event! (Registration closes May 4 or until Sold Out).
Derby Day at The Sycamore at Chatham Mills
The Sycamore at Chatham Mills 480 Hillsboro Street, Pittsboro, NC, United StatesKentucky Derby Day Sat May 7 The Lounge will open at 3pm. Watch the the most exciting two minutes in sports on widescreen, shoot a game of pool. Enjoy our Charcuterie Board with a Kentucky Mule or Mint Julep before, during, and after the horses run. New Lounge menu now being served every weekend. Warning: Lounge visits may be habit forming.
Joseph Bathanti presents LIGHT AT THE SEAM at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCLight at the Seam, a new collection from North Carolina poet Joseph Bathanti, is an exploration of mountaintop removal in southern Appalachian coal country. The volume illuminates and champions often invisible people residing, in a precarious moment in time, on the glorious, yet besieged, Appalachian earth. Their call to defend it, as well as their faith that the land will exact its own reckoning, constitutes a sacred as well as existential quest. Rooted in social and restorative justice, Light at the Seam contemplates the earth as fundamentally sacramental, a crucible of awe and mystery, able to regenerate itself and its people even as it succumbs to them. More than mere cautionary tale, this is a volume of hope and wonder.
PBA Member Meeting May 2022
Forest Hall 480 Hillsboro Street, Pittsboro, NCSpeaker TBD
Advanced Cricut Class at The Creative Goat
The Creative Goat 984 Thompson Street Suite F, Pittsboro, NCAfter you've had some experience creating with your machine, join us for some advanced techniques & topics. PRIOR EXPERIENCE with Cricut Design space is Required. Bring your computer/laptop with latest version of Design Space and your Cricut machine. Project to be completed in class and available for you to take home.
Sam Peterson presents SUGAR, A MEMOIR OF CRAVING at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCPrequel to Sam’s best-selling Trunky: Transgender Junky, Sugar is a darkly comedic account of his earlier years in which transition from female to male was unthinkable before the 1990s. Yet, it is an obsession that Sam cannot chase or admit and informs every choice she makes in her journey of increasingly dangerous addictions that begins with sugar in the 1960s and reaches a perilous crescendo in heroin and homelessness. Told with the stunning candor and authenticity typical of Sam’s literary style, Sugar is the deeply moving story of anyone, who, seemingly trapped in the dark ambers of mental illness and addiction, learn the courage to change the things that they can, accept the those that they cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Bling and Sip Class at The Creative Goat
The Creative Goat 984 Thompson Street Suite F, Pittsboro, NCIn this beginner class, we explore the basics needed to complete your first blinged project - tumblers! All materials will be provided and you will take home the knowledge and tools needed to add sparkle to just about anything!
Chatham County Geology
Historic Chatham County Courthouse 9 Hillsboro St., Pittsboro, NC, United StatesHow was the land that is now Chatham County formed? Did you know that Chatham has experienced earthquakes and that there are ancient volcanic rocks in the county? Or that unique fossils have been found here? What do you know about Chatham County coal, iron, or the history of mining in the county? What common Chatham rocks can you identify and how have some of them been used over the course of Chatham’s history? What do you know about groundwater hydrogeology and water wells in Chatham County? Join us for some answers to these and other questions! Professional geologist Christopher Palmer will be our guest speaker.
Richard Butner presents THE ADVENTURIST at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCRemember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she’s become the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There’s the historic house, where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel under your old high school, and couldn’t resist going to see where it led. Sometimes a door will open into a new world, sometimes into the past. Putting on a costume might be the restart you are half hoping for. There are things buried here. You might want to save them. You might want to get out of the way. Butner’s allusive and elusive stories reach into the uncanny corners of life—where there are no job losses, just HCAPs (Head Count Allocation Procedures), where a tree might talk to just one person, where Death’s Fool is not to be ignored.
South Writ Large at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCSouth Writ Large: Stories from the Global South is an anthology of personal essays, articles, poetry, and artwork that explores the culture of the U.S. South and its extensive connections to other regions of the world. The collection is composed of articles published over the past ten years in the online magazine South Writ Large, which examines the changing South in its symbolic and psychological complexity to stimulate conversation about the culture of the South at home and abroad.
Kathryn Miles presents TRAILED: ONE WOMAN’S QUEST TO SOLVE THE SHENANDOAH MURDERS at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCThey must have been followed. That’s the thought I return to after all these years . . . In May 1996, two skilled backcountry leaders, Lollie Winans and Julie Williams, entered Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a week-long backcountry camping trip. The free-spirited and remarkable young couple had met and fallen in love the previous summer while working at a world-renowned outdoor program for women. During their final days in the park, they descended the narrow remnants of a trail and pitched their tent in a hidden spot. After the pair didn’t return home as planned, park rangers found a scene of horror at their campsite, their tent slashed open, their beloved dog missing, and both women dead in their sleeping bags. The unsolved murders of Winans and Williams continue to haunt all who had encountered them or knew their story. When award-winning journalist and outdoors expert Kathryn Miles begins looking into the case, she discovers conflicting evidence, mismatched timelines, and details that just don’t add up. With unprecedented access to crucial crime-scene forensics and key witnesses—and with a growing sense of both mission and obsession—she begins to uncover the truth. An innocent man, Miles is convinced, has been under suspicion for decades, while the true culprit is a known serial killer, if only authorities would take a closer look. Intimate, page-turning, and brilliantly reported, Trailed is a love story and a call to justice—and a searching and urgent plea to make wilderness a safe space for women—destined to become a true crime classic.
Spring Vendorapalooza at Chatham Marketplace
Chatham Mills 480 Hillsboro St, Pittsboro, NC, United StatesEnjoy shopping for handmade crafts and local products during the beautiful month of May! The market will be hosting visiting farmers and craftspeople, along with our own amazing vendors! Great Mother's Day shopping! We are having the event over the course of three Saturdays in May. Check out the list of craft vendors for each week at https://www.chathammillsfarmersmarket.com/vendorpalooza/.
VIRTUAL: Maggie Shipstead presents YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN 10A via Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCFrom the Booker Prize nominee and New York Times best-selling author of Great Circle, a piercing, irresistible first collection of short stories exquisite in their craft and audacious in their range. A love triangle plays out over decades on a Montana dude ranch. A hurdler and a gymnast spend a single night together in the Olympic village. Mistakes and mysteries weave an intangible web around an old man’s deathbed in Paris, connecting disparate destinies. On the slopes of an unfinished ski resort, a young woman searches for her vanished lover. A couple’s Romanian honeymoon goes ominously awry, and, in the mesmerizing title story, a former child actress breaks with her life in a Hollywood cult. In these and other stories, knockout after knockout, Maggie Shipstead delivers another “extraordinary” (New York Times) work of fiction and seals her reputation as a writer of “breathtaking range and skill” (Kirkus Reviews). Rich in imagination and dazzling in its shapeshifting style, You Have a Friend in 10A excavates the complexities of love, sex, and life in ways unsparing and hilarious, sharp-eyed and tender.
John Allore presents WISH YOU WERE HERE, with Eric Muller at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCIn the fall of 1978, teenager Theresa Allore went missing near Sherbrooke, Quebec. She wasn’t seen again until the spring thaw revealed her body in a creek only a few kilometers away. Shrugging off her death as a result of 1970s drug culture, police didn’t investigate. Patricia Pearson started dating Theresa’s brother John during the aftermath of Theresa’s death. Though the two teens would go their separate ways, the family’s grief, obsession with justice, and desire for the truth never left Patricia. Little did she know, the shockwaves of Theresa’s death would return to her life repeatedly over the next forty years. In 2001, John had just moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife and young children, when the cops came to the door. They had determined that a young girl had been murdered and buried in the basement. John wondered: If these cops could look for this young girl, why had nobody even tried to find out what happened to Theresa? Unable to rest without closure, he reached out to Patricia, by now an accomplished crime journalist and author, and together they found answers far bigger and more alarming than they could have imagined—and a legacy of violence that refused to end.
Doris Betts Book Club at Pittsboro Presbyterian Church
Pittsboro Presbyterian Church 95 East Street, Pittsboro, NCLast Tuesday of every month at 11 am Fellowship Hall Join us for the Doris Betts Book Club meeting for a lively discussion of this month’s book. How does it work? Group members select books, both fiction and nonfiction, with themes and challenges that draw us to consider the role of faith and spirituality in our lives. Didn’t finish the book? (or even read it?!) Come anyway and enjoy the fellowship, conversation and intellectual stimulation. Have a book you’ve read that you’d love to discuss? Come and propose it to the group! We look forward to seeing you there. The May book choice will be announced later. Please check the church website calendar.
K.D. Edwards presents THE HOURGLASS THRONE at Flyleaf Books
Flyleaf Books 752 MLK Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NCAs Rune Saint John grapples with the challenges of assuming the Sun Throne, a powerful barrier appears around New Atlantis’s famed rejuvenation center. But who could have created such formidable magic . . . what do they want from the immortality clinic . . . and what remains of the dozens trapped inside? Though Rune and his lifelong bodyguard Brand are tasked with investigating the mysterious barrier, Rune is also busy settling into his new life at court. Claiming his father’s throne has irrevocably thrown him into the precarious world of political deception, and he must secure relationships with newfound allies in time to keep his growing found family safe. His relationship with his lover, Addam Saint Nicholas, raises additional political complications they must navigate. But he and Brand soon discover that the power behind the barrier holds a much more insidious, far-reaching threat to his family, to his people, and to the world. Now, the rulers of New Atlantis must confront an enemy both new and ancient as the flow of time itself is drawn into the conflict. And as Rune finds himself inexorably drawn back to the fall of his father’s court and his own torture at the hands of masked conspirators, the secrets that he has long guarded will be dragged into the light—changing the Sun Throne, and New Atlantis, forever. The climax of the first trilogy in the nine-book Tarot Sequence, The Hourglass Throne delivers epic urban fantasy that blends humor, fast-paced action, and political intrigue.