The Center for Creative Retirement of the Continuing Education Division at Sandhills Community College will continue the Fall Book Club Friday, Oct. 16, with the discussion of "March" by Geraldine Brooks.

Registration is not required to participate in the Book Club, and there is no cost. Discussions are in the Teresa C. Wood Reading Room in the Katharine L. Boyd Library on the campus at 3395 Airport Road in Pinehurst.

The books that will be discussed later this semester are: "Down River," by John Hart (Nov. 20) and "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia," by Elizabeth Gilbert (Dec. 18).

If you have questions about the Book Club or the Center for Creative Retirement, call Teresa Reynolds at 695-3775 or e-mail reynoldst@sandhills.edu.

Ehle Reading Set

Internationally acclaimed author and Asheville native, John Ehle, will read and sign books Saturday, Oct. 10, at 2 p.m.

The event, sponsored by The Writers' Workshop, will be held at the West Asheville Public Library at 942 Haywood Road. It is free and open to the public. A reception follows, hosted by Friends of West Asheville Library. Books will be available for purchase at the book-signing.

Ehle is the author of 17 books, including "Winter People," "The Journey Of August King" and "Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation." He will read from his novel, "Last One Home," first published in 1984 and recently re-issued. It is the last in a seven-book series about the settling of the Appalachian Mountains in Western North Carolina.

Ehle is a member of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, and has received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the Thomas Wolfe Prize and the Lillian Smith Award for Southern Fiction. He is a five-time winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, and has won the Mayflower Award, the Governor's Award for Meritorious Service, and the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities. Ehle holds honorary doctorates from UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Asheville, the North Carolina School of the Arts and Berea College.

He also serves on the Advisory Board of The Writers' Workshop, a nonprofit organization founded in 1985. A luncheon for Ehle will be held at noon prior to the reading.

For more information about the reading or luncheon, e-mail writersw@gmail.com, or call 828-254-8111.

UNCG Hosts Kidder

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tracy Kidder visits the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Thursday, Oct. 1, to read from his latest nonfiction book, "Strength in What Remains."

The reading, made possible by a donation from Craig and Christina Nova, begins at 8 p.m. in the Faculty Center on College Avenue. Part of the UNCG MFA Writing Program's Fall 2009 Distinguished Visiting Writers Series, the reading is free and open to the public. A booksigning will follow.

In "Strength," Kidder tells the true story of Deo, who grew up in the mountains of Burundi, Africa, and survived a civil war and genocide before seeking a new life in America.

In New York City, Deo lived homeless in Central Park before finding his way to Columbia University. But Deo's story really begins with his decision to return to his native country to offer his help.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" was a nonfiction bestseller on its publication in 1981. In it, Kidder recounts the feverish efforts of a team of Data General researchers to create a new 32-bit superminicomputer.

Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, he has won the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award and many other literary prizes.

The author of "Mountains Beyond Mountains," "My Detachment," "Home Town," "Old Friends," "Among Schoolchildren" and "House," Kidder lives in Massachusetts and Maine.

For more information, contact Terry Kennedy at (336) 334-5459 or terry_kennedy@uncg.edu.

Children's Hour

The Given Memorial Library will hold a children's reading hour at 1:30 p.m. today (Wednesday, Sept. 30).

Miss Amy will be reading followed by a craft and small snack. This is free and open to the public.

Montgomery County

The Montgomery County Public Library Knitting Club will meet in the Conference Room of the Troy Library at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6. The club meets the first Tuesday of each month.

Jacquelin Thomas, award-winning inspirational fiction author, will be featured in a program and book signing at the Montgomery County Public Library Conference Room at 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17.

The event is free.

Literary Fest Success

An estimated 12,000 people attended the North Carolina Literary Festival Thursday, Sept. 10, through Sunday, Sept. 13, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Festival director Amy Baldwin also said that approximately 3,000 visitors populated the children's activity tent on Saturday and Sunday. Festival-wide, visitors collected approximately 14,000 programs; 67 presentations were given by 100 authors.

The top-attended non-keynote event was the reading and interactive storytelling by children's author R.L. Stine, with approximately 450 kids and parents present. Among those close behind was children's author Judy Schachner, who signed books for approximately three hours after her session, drawing her character Skippyjon Jones every time. Also heavily attended were sessions by authors Elizabeth Edwards and Elizabeth Spencer with Allan Gurganus.

Visitors donated approximately 600 children's books, which were given to the pediatric oncology clinic at UNC Hospitals.

Campus bookstore the Bull's Head Bookshop sold more than 2,200 books, Baldwin said. The festival would not have been possible without the work of 250 volunteers, managed by Liza Terll of the UNC Libraries, Baldwin said.

The free public festival, funded by gifts and grants, is organized and sponsored every other year by the libraries of UNC and Duke and North Carolina State universities, with additional support from North Carolina Central University.

For more information, visit www.NCLiteraryFestival.org.

Book Club Conference

The CCPLandIC and the Fayetteville Oprah Book Club are co-sponsoring the Fayetteville-Cumberland County Book Club Conference, Saturday, Oct. 3, beginning at 9:30 a.m., in the Pate Room at the headquarters library, 300 Maiden Lane, Fayetteville.

Suzetta Perkins, author of "Behind The Veil" and Lisa H. Garber, author of "Crosswind" will be the featured speakers. Pre-register by e-mailing the names of book club members and their contact information to thefayettevilleoprahbookclub@yahoo.com.

For more information, contact Angela L. Vann at (910) 483-0977.

Shelton Book

Kay Yow. David Gergen. Dr. Leroy Walker. Charlie Rose. These are just a few of the well-known North Carolina leaders featured in "Secrets of Success: North Carolina Values-Based Leadership" by Gen. H. Hugh Shelton, U.S. Army (Ret.), 14th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The coffee-table book offers unique insight from some of the state's most recognizable leaders.

Proceeds from the sale of "Secrets of Success" will support leadership and scholarship programs for the General H. Hugh Shelton Leadership Center, based at North Carolina State University. The Center offers values-based leadership development initiatives for young people statewide, including 4-H Shelton scholarships and summer "Shelton Challenge" programs.

In the book's forward, UNC System President Emeritus William C. Friday describes a "major crisis in our country today -- the hunger for creative, courageous leaders possessing the integrity that inspires public trust." He says that through the book's biographical essays, "General Shelton is showing us that there is a better way and that it is our task, yours and mine, to rediscover and recommit ourselves to the ancient virtues of truth, integrity, compassion, trust, decency, civility and service to others."

The first-person anecdotes in "Secrets of Success" are as diverse as the collection of people who spoke them.

Hugh McColl examines how the values he learned as an officer in the United States Marine Corps enabled him to create one of the largest and most profitable banks in the U.S. Civil rights attorney Julius Chambers recalls the leadership that led to the desegregation of North Carolina schools.

Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, head of the JBC Center for Inclusion and Engagement, remembers how her great-grandfather, Abraham Lincoln Lewis, a man only one generation from slavery, became the first black millionaire in Jacksonville, Fla.

Arnold Palmer shares revolutionary thoughts on the game of golf and the changes that must be made to keep it vibrant.

All of the stories are accompanied by black-and-white portraits taken by North Carolina photographer Simon Griffiths.

Development and publication of "Secrets of Success" was made possible by support from Chris Collins; John McNeill; Cline Cellars/Southern Vines LLC; the North Carolina Agricultural Foundation Inc.; and Cooke Realtors of Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.

"Secrets of Success" will be available through major book retailers, Amazon.com, by calling the publisher at 1-800-948-2786, or through the publisher's online bookstore at www.ivyhousebooks.com.

For more information on the General H. Hugh Shelton Leadership Center, visit the Web site www.ncsu.edu/extension/sheltonleadership/.