Christopher Bayley and Jayne Ann Krentz at Third Place Books

Local celebrity and former prosecutor Christopher Bayley, and national mega-best seller Jayne Ann Krentz at Third Place Books author events this week.

Christopher T. Bayley

Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle 

(Sasquatch Books)

Monday, December 7 at 7pm

Despite its reputation as a progressive and high-tech place, Seattle had a 100-year history of vice and official corruption. Six months into his first term, Bayley indicted a city councilman. This is the story of how vice and payoffs became rules of the game in Seattle, and what it took to finally clean up the city.

David Shields
War Is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict (Random House)
Tuesday, December 8 at 7pm

David Shields analyzed over a decade’s worth of front-page war photographs from The New York Times and came to a shocking conclusion: the photo-editing process of the paper of record, by way of pretty, heroic, and lavishly aesthetic image selection, pulls the wool over the eyes of its readers; Shields forces us to face not only the media’s complicity in dubious and catastrophic military campaigns but our own as well.

Jayne Ann Krentz

Secret Sisters (Penguin)

Wednesday, December 9 at 7pm

No one does romantic suspense better than Jayne Ann Krentz. The bestselling author of Trust No One and River Road delivers a novel that twists and turns into a read that will leave you breathless. She has written futuristic and historical romance novels under the pseudonyms Jayne Castle and Amanda Quick, respectively.

Lauren Kessler

Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts, and My Midlife Quest to Dance the Nutcracker (Perseus)

Thursday, December 10 at 7pm

When Lauren Kessler was twelve, her ballet instructor crushed not just her dreams of being a ballerina but also her youthful self-assurance. Now, many decades and three children later, Kessler embarks on a journey to join a professional company to perform in The Nutcracker. Raising the Barre is more than just one woman’s story; it is a story about shaking things up, taking risks and ignoring good sense, and forgetting how old you are and how you’re “supposed” to act.

Kathleen Thompson

Snapshots in Time: Photographic Memories of Puget Sound

Friday, December 11 at 6:30pm

This is the story through pictures of one family’s early business venture in Seattle. Price Photo Service provided employment as well as a love of photography to several generations. Kathleen Thompson shares her photographic history of her city and her family.