Gala Book Signing at Hotchkiss Library

The sixth annual gala book signing event at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon on Friday, August 2 will find former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, mystery writer Donald Westlake, and children's author Marc Simont heading a list of 22 local authors. Their subjects range from cooking and raising children to biography and religion.

Kissinger returns to Sharon with Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, especially timely in the wake of the September 11 disasters. Westlake's latest, Put a Lid on It, a novel of crime and politics, finds him "at the top of his game," writes Booklist. Simon Winchester, author of the well-received The Professor and the Madman, will be on hand to sign The Map That Changed the World, a biography of the 19th century Englishman who helped found the modern science of geology.

Marc Simont, whose joyous Stray Dog tells of a family that rescues one from the dogcatcher, joins several other children's authors at the signing: Jessica Clerk, with The Wriggly, Wriggly Baby, an illustrated poem inspired by an infant at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden; Patricia Hubbell, with Pig Parade and Black Earth, Gold Sun; and Nancy Tafuri, with Mama's Little Bears.

For children ages 9-12, John Neufeld's latest is The Handle and the Key, about a boy shuttled from one foster home to another. And for parents, Beth Bruno, a school psychologist, has Wild Tulips, a collection of instructive school and family stories starring the author's 14-year-old daughter.

Woody Hochswender, a former New York Times reporter, will be on hand with The Buddha in Your Mirror: Practical Buddhism and Search for Self, a translation of the wisdom of Asian Buddhism into terms accessible to contemporary Americans. The Rev. Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest and noted preacher, has a collection of her sermons for Holy Week and Easter called The Undoing of Death. In a lighter vein, Toni Tucker, a portrait photographer of animals and people, will have Zen Dog, which pairs her photographs with appropriate quotations from Asian spiritual teachers.

Fiction writers at the signing will include Stewart O'Nan, whose Wish You Were Here tells a revelatory tale of three generations of a family who gather for the last time at a summer house on Chautauqua Lake. In Palladio, Jonathan Dee uses the advertising world to explore the authenticity of art, lost love, obsession, and the twisted dynamics of families.

For summer entertaining, The Book of Soups by the Culinary Institute of America's Mary Donovan offers lavishly illustrated recipes for everything from Thai hot and sour soup and seafood gumbo to cold cantaloupe soup with lime granité. If you're feeding a crowd, The Professional Chef's Art of Garde Manger by the CIA's Frederick Sonnenschmidt tells all about preparing a sumptuous buffet. And for just reading about food, Patricia Volk's memoir, Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family, tells of growing up in an eccentric household involved with food and much else.

Gardening is always a consuming summertime interest. Lee Reich's Weedless Gardening can help create a better garden with less effort. For travelers, William Leute's Warm Nuts—the title comes from a goodie American Airlines serves in business class—contains useful survival advice from an investment banker with two decades of international travel under his seat belt.

In As Always, Jack: A Wartime Love Story, Emma Sweeney publishes World War II letters to her mother from the father Sweeney never knew. Lions and Eagles and Bulls, edited by Susan Schoelwer, explores the Connecticut Historical Society's collection of colonial signs with essays by prominent scholars of American art and cultural history. Mixing history with fiction, Leslie Wheeler's Murder at Plimoth Plantation sets a mystery story among today's reenactors of early 17th century events in the Massachusetts colony.

The book signing is Friday, August 2 from 6-8 p.m. Admission is $20 and Visa and MasterCard are accepted for purchases. Food will be provided by the Hamilton Inn, the Interlaken Inn and Pappardelle, and served by the town's eighth-graders; there will be an open bar. Other benefactors of the event include Julia and Barney Hallingby, Salisbury Bank and Trust Co., Bosworth Real Estate, NewMil Bank, and Wagner McNeil Insurance. For more info call the library at 860-364-5041.