What's in the Works or Published
These books are available or will be released soon under the Chandler Lake Books imprint:
Kansas City: Our Collective Memories, by Bruce Mathews and Steve Noll
Renowned Kansas City photographer Bruce Mathews and Jackson County historian Steve Noll team up to provide a fascinating collection of Kansas City artifacts that detail - in rich, compelling color - the history of Kansas City. The book's lavish pages are a joy to read, showing the excitement, diverse culture and deep affection Kansas Citians had - and still have - for their city.
The book's foreword is by Kansas City banker and fervent celebrator of Kansas City's history, Jonathan Kemper.
The book is to be released in October 2016.
Blood on the Mitten, by Tom Carr
“In this hugely effective debut, Tom Carr sheds keen illumination upon a regional inventory of killers, kooks, cutthroats and the aggressively unhinged. The tales are horrific and humorous by turns — grisly, goofy, poignant dispatches expertly summated by a skilled veteran reporter who’s no stranger to the back stairs habituated by a true sleuth. Story telling at its fully imagined best.”
— Ben Hamper, bestselling author of Rivethead
Before Michigan became a state, there were witch trials, scalp collectors, dirty sports, and a massacre of epic proportions. The lumber era that followed made Michigan as much of a wild, wild west as Deadwood. And Prohibition allowed a group of Detroit thugs to run roughshod over even the likes of Al Capone.
There’s more:
• A father who shoots his daughter and friends for being hippies, just as an eerily similar tale hits the silver screen
• A widow whose love of dressing up leaves a trail of poisoned relatives across the Lower Peninsula
• A lawless Upper Peninsula town that not only hangs two criminals without trial, but forces women to lie with the corpses
• A murder that spread its victim’s body parts along I-75 from Detroit to Pellston
In Blood on the Mitten, crimes of passion, crimes of necessity and cold, calculated evil take on flesh, bones and blood. These 57 illustrated, read-out loud tales from across time also look at the historical context of murder, in Michigan and beyond.
To order, CLICK HERE.
Becoming Marlis Mann, as told to Tom Skinner
It was 1937 and the sinister red, white, and black banners of National Socialism had already begun to decorate the streets of German cities. Marlis Mann's father had lost his job when he refused membership in "the party" and had moved his family west to look for work. But, within three short years, Germany was at war and he would take them back home seeking safety. He spent 10 full years of his young life as a Russian prisoner; he held no sympathy for the new German nationalism. But he was a survivor.
They were hard-working young parents trying to give their two young girls a normal childhood, but other forces prevailed. As bombs fell and thousands of their fellow citizens lost their homes and their lives, the girls' teachers celebrated every German victory and promised "the war will be over by Christmas." But it would rage on for five more Christmases.
The older sister would be evacuated to safety and the younger would be pulled from her bombed-out school and later survive the strafing of an American warplane as she pedaled her bicycle home. And then everything changed. The Americans arrived to drive the German troops from their hometown and the girls, now almost teenagers, first heard the strains of American jazz and popular music from the American army encampment nearby.
First one, then the other of these adventurous young girls, now young women, were drawn to the new post-war German airlines and a life in the sky when only one in a thousand was chosen for such work. The lives of these two stewardesses soon culminated in the kind of romance and long-term happiness that is still the stuff of movies and storybooks. Here is Marlis Mann's story ....
Release scheduled for July 1, 2016.
Racism in Kansas City: A Short History, by G.S. Griffin
In a time of white denial and ideas of racial transcendence (the notion that racism is a thing of the past), recent events across the country show that racism festers in our culture and still rises painfully to the top in our headlines.
G.S. Griffin puts Kansas City's racial history into perspective in this timely look at what has transpired at home and its considerable impact nationally. Deeply researched, it chronicles race relations in Kansas City from 1800 to present, thoughtfully exploring, for example: the birth of racism, the Kansas-Missouri border war, the Civil War, the bombings of black homes, the segregation of residential areas and schools, the civil rights struggle, the race riot of 1968, the assassinations of the 1970s, the infamous Missouri v. Jenkins Supreme Court case, and the racial isolation and inequities that plague Kansas City today.
The foreword is by longtime and well-known Kansas City community leader Alvin Brooks,
a founder of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime.
Griffin is a graduate of Missouri State University and Rockhurst University's graduate school of education. He currently teaches special education students.
Of Stones and Feathers - An Odyssey, by Roger Coleman. Illustrations by Neil Nakahodo.
It's a delightful story for young readers chronicling the adventures of Jason and his paper-clip friend, Swan, as they challenge the Curse of Dullness in search of the Lost Land of the Golden Pond of Great Happiness.
Coleman was the long-time minister at the beloved Pilgrim Chapel on Gillham Road in Kansas City, Mo.
The book has arrived, order it today!
See more at www.OfStonesAndFeathers.com.
Dogged Persistence: Harrington, Post-polio Scoliosis, and the Origin of Spine Instrumentation,
by Marc Asher, MD
In this compelling story of one man’s relentless effort to find a treatment for the
disabling deformity, scoliosis, Dogged Persistence recounts the life and work of Paul Randall Harrington.
This American surgeon, a product of Kansas City, Kansas, schools and the University of Kansas, invented the Harrington Rod, a pioneer means for straightening and immobilizing the spine. The rod was born
of the polio epidemic after World War II and Harrington’s research into
ways to repair the damage of scoliosis, an offshoot of polio.
The author, Marc Asher MD, is a Distinguished Professor
of Orthopedic Surgery Emeritus at the University of Kansas.
Contact us for more information.
Come Together, THINK AHEAD! Inspiring People, Organizations, and Communities to Thrive,
by Judith K. Sabbert, with Christel A.K. Gollnick
Heartland Foundation of St. Joseph, Mo., is one of the only, if not the only, foundations in America born from and tied to a regional healthcare system that does not focus its resources on the medical center, clinics, illness-centric causes, or traditional community health projects.
Instead it has joined and leads the Healthy Communities Movement, specifically championing education and empowering people – youth and adults – in America’s rural heartland. Using well-tested methods for possibility-thinking, collaboration, and innovation, Heartland Foundation and its emPowerU® programs have made a deep impact in their region.
Now the foundation’s leaders have created this book – a comprehensive, inspiring review of how the foundation came to be, where it’s going, and how others across the country can learn from their experiences on how to empower people, organizations, and communities to thrive.
The book has arrived, order today!
The Gateway Arch: An Unlikely Masterpiece, by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Arch, turning 50 in 2015, endures as the trademark of St. Louis, a striking
focal point along the river that still gives the region life.
The Gateway Arch: An Unlikely Masterpiece, to be published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
will follow the story of St. Louis and its Gateway Arch including the inspired selection
of the design by Eero Saarinen that is known worldwide.
Learn more about how the Arch towers over an old fur-trading village site
and how a fraudulent election provided the critical down payment.
To order, click here.
Dr. Felix Sabates - An Autobiography
Coming this fall ... the personal story of Dr. Felix Sabates, well-known Kansas City ophthalmologist and founder of the UMKC School of Medicine’s Department of Ophthalmology and the Sabates Eye Centers.
The story, as told to Kansas City writer and researcher Kevin Murphy, traces Sabates' early family life in Cuba, through the tumultuous rise of communism under Castro, to exile in the United States, with new challenges and new opportunities. His education at the University of New York, Harvard Medical School and the Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston, would eventually lead to Kansas City. There he helped to influence and expand the role and availability of ophthalmology services throughout the region.
Always the optimist, the energetic Sabates retraces his life, shares the wisdom he's gained through the years, and celebrates anew the opportunities provided him by this country.
Projected release: November 2015.
Photo at right courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal
Letters for Healing: Letters to Those Lost in Service, by Von Kopfman
This book is a sequel to Letters for Healing: The Therapeutic Power of Writing to a Lost Loved One, published in 2013 by Kansas City Star Books. It was nominated for a Kansas Notable Book award.
Letters for Healing: Letters to Those Lost in Service will be a collection of 45 letters written to those who gave their life in service to our country while serving in the armed forces. The book will include all branches and conflicts back to World War I. There will also be an audio CD with 15 of the letters turned into songs. For more information, go to www.thelettersprojectbook.org.
Von is still collecting letters for possible inclusion, which can be sent to forthesurvivors@hotmail.com.
Projected release: November 2015