Events
Kristin Hannah
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Kristin Hannah
limited edition of her novel,
The Nightingale
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JAMS Performing Arts Center
1630 Pearl Street
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$55 General Admission + signed book (The Nightingale*)
$80 Two General Admission tickets + one signed book (The Nightingale*)
$90 General Admission + TWO signed books
(The Nightingale and The Women)
*Tickets include a signed limited 10th Anniversary Edition with foil and embossing, gorgeous designed edges, a ribbon bookmark, exclusive four color endpapers, and a decorative, gold foil stamp on the front case. This special edition hardcover jacket will be revealed in October.
VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Sunday, February 23, 2025, 3pm PT/6pm ET
TICKETS:
$50 Virtual Admission + signed anniversary edition of The Nightingale (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on February 23, 2025, at 3pm PT/6pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days. Books ship a week after the virtual event.
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With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale was New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, and is soon to be a major motion picture.
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Kristin Hannah, former lawyer turned writer, is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including The Women, The Nightingale, The Great Alone, and The Four Winds.
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The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France―a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
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Kristin Hanna’s most recent novel is The Women — the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on the story of all women who put themselves in harm’s way to help others — women whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has all too often been forgotten. The Women is a profoundly emotional, richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose extraordinary idealism and courage under fire define a generation.
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In The Women, like in The Nightingale and The Four Winds, Hannah exposes an important but largely unknown historical story: there were women serving in Vietnam. This novel shows us the Vietnam war up close and personal, through a woman’s eyes; what it was like to serve in a combat hospital and how it was to come home to an angry, bitter and divided America. What it was like to have your story forgotten.
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It is about the unremembered women in an unpopular war. About women finding their voices and being sustained by friendships made on the battlefield. About the birth of a new culture and the music, ideas, fashion, and freedom that came with it, a story told about the price of patriotism and war through the hearts, minds, sacrifices and courage of the women who were there.
Eric Idle
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Eric Idle
discussing his book,
The Spamalot Diaries
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JAMS Performing Arts Center
1630 Pearl Street
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$50 General Admission + signed book
>> Book available for pick up at the event on Jan 28, 2025
$57 General Admission + signed book
>> Includes shipping of book. Ships week of Oct 28
$75 Two General Admission tickets + one signed book
>> Book available for pick up at the event on Jan 28, 2025
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Sunday, February 2, 2025, 3pm PT/6pm ET
TICKETS:
$46 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on February 2, 2025 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days after it airs. Books ship a week after the virtual event.
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From comedy legend Eric Idle, the fascinating inside story of bringing Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Broadway as the unlikely theatrical hit Spamalot.
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Eric Idle is a comedian, actor, author, and singer-songwriter who found immediate fame on television with the sketch-comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Following its success, the group began making films that include Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Eric wrote, directed, and created The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, the world’s first-ever mockumentary, as well as the Tony Award–winning musical Spamalot. His memoir, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life was a New York Times bestseller.
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Watch videos of Eric Idle’s three previous appearances at Live Talks Los Angeles — interviewing John Cleese and Alan Zweibel; and interviewed by Bob Saget.
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“Idle provides a rollicking account of the making of his Broadway musical Spamalot. . . . [and] an irresistible and unfiltered ode to the art of live theater. Fans will love this tantalizing glimpse behind the curtain.”—Publishers Weekly
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Long before Spamalot was the toast of Broadway and the winner of three Tony awards, it was an idea threatening to fizzle out before it could find its way into existence. In The Spamalot Diaries, Eric Idle shares original journal entries and raw email exchanges that reveal the sometimes bumpy, always entertaining path to the show’s unforgettable run.
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Financial anxieties, collaborative disputes that tested decades-long friendships, endless rewriting and a broken ankle were just some of the challenges. Idle chronicles every minor mishap and triumph along the way, as well as the creative tension that drove the show to new heights. An unforgettable look behind the curtain of a beloved musical and inside the wickedly entertaining mind of one of our most treasured comic performers.
Peggy Noonan
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Peggy Noonan
discussing her book,
A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings
. Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
at New Roads School
3131 Olympic Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90404
(Free Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$50 General Admission + signed book
$75 Two General Admission tickets + one signed book
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Tuesday, December 10, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$46 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on December 10 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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From Pulitzer-prize winning Wall Street Journal columnist and New York Times bestselling author Peggy Noonan, a masterclass in how to see and love America.
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Peggy Noonan is a Pulitzer-Prize winning opinion columnist at the Wall Street Journal where her column, Declarations, has run since 2000. She is the author of ten books on American history and culture, including the political classic What I Saw at the Revolution. She was a special assistant and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan.
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“The only predictable thing about Noonan’s column is its unpredictability.”―Tim Russert
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For a quarter century, Peggy Noonan has been thinking aloud about America in her Wall Street Journal column, and this new collection of her essential recent work demonstrates the erudition, wisdom and wit that have made her one of America’s most admired writers.
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She calls balls and strikes on current politicians and honors great figures such as Bob Dylan, Billy Graham, Tom Wolfe, and the heroes of 9/11. She writes with clear-eyed urgency about the internal and external dangers facing our republic. She sometimes writes with indignation, but above all she writes with love—and an enduring faith that America can be its best self, that its ideals are worth protecting. .
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Since her time as Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, and her subsequent first book, What I Saw at the Revolution, her column has cemented her position as a moral compass for Americans who value character, love of country, and civility. The book is a celebration of what America has been, is, and can be.
Josh Brolin
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Josh Brolin
discussing his memoir,
From Under the Truck
JAMS Performing Arts Center
1630 Pearl Street
(Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$55 General Admission + signed book
$80 Two General Admission tickets + one signed book
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Tuesday, November 26, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$50 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on November 26 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days after it airs. Books ship a week after the virtual event.
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A funny, uncanny, unforgettable and un-celebrity memoir from Josh Brolin
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Josh Brolin was born in 1968 and raised on a ranch in Paso Robles, California. He is a producer, director, writer, and Academy Award-nominated actor. The proud father of four children, he lives with his wife and two youngest in California.
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“Josh Brolin’s out to catch his breath between the slant-eyed suggestions and irrefutable evidence of his past. He hears voices, and he listens, reminding us with brutal honesty that our surroundings were never there to be carried, rather woven into the fabric of the freedom to be who we are.” — Matthew McConaughey
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Weaving a latticework of different strands, moving back and forth through time, Josh Brolin captures a life marked by curiosity, pain, devotion, kindness, humor. He recounts an unconventional childhood far from Hollywood. Raised on a ranch in Paso Robles, California, he was surrounded as a child by the wolves, cougars, and other wild animals gathered by his fearless and explosive mother, Jane Agee Brolin. Her tragic, early death haunts this book, and the force of her unforgettable personality is felt throughout. Brolin also brings to life his career in the film industry—from his breakout role in The Goonies to the set of No Country for Old Men—and the professional and personal ups and downs in between and since. With unflinching honesty but also great humor, he shares insights into relationships, addiction, love, and fatherhood, while letting the white space in between words speak for itself. Grappling with the mysteries of life and death in a way that will catch readers by surprise, From Under the Truck is an audacious and riveting memoir from a born writer.
Bethany Joy Lenz
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Bethany Joy Lenz
discussing her memoir,
Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)
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Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center
at Vista Del Mar
3200 Motor Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(Free Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$50 General Admission + signed book
$75 Two General Admission Tickets + one signed book
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Saturday, November 2, 2024, 3pm PT/6pm ET
TICKETS:
$45 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on November 2 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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A deliciously witty and inspiring memoir by One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz about her decade in a cult and her quest to break free.
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Bethany Joy Lenz starred in the hit TV series One Tree Hill. Her other acting credits include Guiding Light, Grey’s Anatomy, Charmed, Felicity, Suits, Dexter, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She is also a recording artist who has released several albums. Lenz currently cohosts the podcast Drama Queens and is the founder/editor-in-chief of the broadsheet newspaper Modern Vintage News.
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In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show’s millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult.
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An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she’d been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister—a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family’s Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family “minders” assigned to her on set, “Maoist struggle session”–inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with “Leadership” were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal.
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Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith.
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Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Ta-Nehisi Coates
discussing his book,
The Message
Robert Frost Auditorium
4401 Elenda St,
Culver City, CA 90230
(Free Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$50 General Admission + book
$75 Two General Admission tickets + book
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Friday, November 1, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$46 Virtual Admission + book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on November 1 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me, for which he won the National Book Award in 2015. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, he is currently the Sterling Brown endowed chair in English at Howard University.
Just as Between the World and Me took the form of a letter to his son, The Message is crafted as a letter to his writing students. He bears an urgent message for them: their “task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world.”
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“[Coates] is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker
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Just as Between the World and Me took the form of a letter to his son, The Message is crafted as a letter to his writing students. He bears an urgent message for them: their “task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world.”
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Coates’s call to action is in fact a diagnosis of the political and social polarization currently sweeping the globe: the world is riven by stories. He comes to this realization not as a geopolitical wonk or a statesman, but as a journalist who has seen firsthand how stories are more powerful tools of persuasion than the assemblage of interconnected facts.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.
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Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, The Message is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
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In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Next, he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning. In the book’s longest section, he travels to Palestine, where he sees the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.