The Country Bookshop on Broad Street in downtown Southern Pines announces its “Meet the Author” events for January. All events will be held at the bookshop.

Reservations are required for the Bouser and Pearce/Hunt events and may be made by calling the bookstore at (910) 692-3211.

Steve Bouser

“If the Elva Statler Davidson case hadn’t come along, someone would have had to invent it,” Steve Bouser, journalist and editor of The Pilot, wrote in his new book, “Death of a Pinehurst Princess: The 1935 Elva Statler Davidson Mystery.”

It had all the makings of what the media considered a “good, juicy scandal — one with love, sex, betrayal, money, death, and mystery.” Elva Statler, the adopted daughter and heiress to the Statler Hotel fortune, was a “strange, moody girl” whose “life was marked by much heartbreak and bad luck.”

She was 22 years old when she married Henry Bradley Davidson — 20 years her senior — a “lazy, charming, enigmatic man who combined some of the least admirable characteristics of the con man and the gigolo.” Within two months of her wedding and just weeks after changing her will making her new husband the beneficiary, Elva was found dead in their garage in Pinehurst — “circumstances unknown.”

Was it an accident, suicide, or murder most foul?

On Tuesday, Jan. 4, at 7 p.m., Bouser will return to The Country Bookshop for an encore presentation of the story that “bumped the ultra-sensational Charles Lindbergh case off the nation’s front pages.”

“Steve’s book sold almost 300 copies in a matter of days,” says Bonnie Johnson, manager of the 57-year-old independent bookstore. “We couldn’t accommodate all the people who wanted to hear him at the book launch in December, so we scheduled a second event. We’re still taking reservations, but space is limited.”

Gary Pearce and Jim Hunt

“Jim Hunt was one of those remarkable governors who constructively led the South and the nation into the 21st century,” William Friday, president emeritus of UNC, wrote of North Carolina’s longest-serving governor. On Tuesday, Jan. 11, at 5 p.m., Gary Pearce, former News & Observer reporter and editor, and Gov. Hunt’s press secretary, speechwriter, political/policy adviser, campaign co-director and chief campaign consultant, will present his new book, “Jim Hunt: A Biography.”

Gov. Jim Hunt will join Pearce for a discussion of his four gubernatorial administrations and five statewide campaigns, including his unsuccessful race in 1984 for the U.S. Senate against Jesse Helms.

In his book, Pearce traces Hunt’s journey as a progressive politician during a time of unprecedented economic, social and racial change in North Carolina. Hunt, who became widely known for his initiatives in education, including Smart Start, Hunt’s signature early childhood program, is still considered by many as “the one person in the state who can rally everybody around a cause.”

“No one else worked with him as closely or as long as I did,” Pearce says, “and no one had the access to him I had. I tell what it was like to be in some of the most hard-fought and bitter political battles in the country.”

Jane McClaren

Southern Pines artist, equestrian and animal advocate Jane McClaren went from being a depressed overeater to embarking on a 35-year study of food and health. In her book, “Honest Eating: How to Love Food, Love Yourself & Love Life,” she explains how to be healthy and still maintain a positive, “even lusty” relationship with food.

On Tuesday, Jan. 18, at 4 p.m., McClaren will discuss why people respond to anxiety, stress or feelings of emptiness with food. “We have the power to take control of our health and our lives,” she says. “If you have a New Year’s resolution that has anything to do with your relationship to food, let me help you to live a happier, healthier life.”

Poetry Reading

Acclaimed North Carolina poets Anthony “Tony” Abbott, John Balaban and Stephen Smith will read from their latest works on Sunday, Jan. 23, at 2 p.m.

“A poet who sustains his voice through years of love, loss, reading, teaching, and reaching out to the world as any fully alive human being must do, should be considered heroic in this age of text-messaging and Facebook,” former N.C. Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer wrote of Tony Abbott.

Abbott, author of four volumes of poetry, including the Pulitzer-nominated “The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat,” and two novels, including the Novello Prize-winning “Leaving Maggie Hope,” will read from his latest book, “New & Selected Poems 1989-2009.” He is the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of English at Davidson College and president of the N.C. Poetry Society.

John Balaban, poet-in-resident and professor of English in the creative writing program at N.C. State, will read from his latest work, “Path, Crooked Path.”

He is the author of 12 books of poetry and prose. He has won The Academy of American Poets’ Lamont prize and has twice been nominated for the National Book Award.

Harvard Review says Balaban’s “emotional range is impressively wide and deeply human — by turns compassionate and angry, somber and humorous, earnest and ironic. His voice is strong; his poems are important.”

Stephen Smith, award-winning columnist for The Pilot and PineStraw magazine, and author of seven books of poetry and prose, will read from his new book, “A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths: Selected New and Old Poems.” Poet Edward Field says he was moved by Smith’s poems about childhood in the boondocks, especially “his anguish for a world of the heart that has disappeared so frighteningly in this soulless, high-powered, selfish era.”

Juliette Fay

Boston novelist Juliette Fay, author of “Shelter Me,” named to the Indie Next List and a Good Housekeeping Book Pick, will present her new novel, “Deep Down True,” the story of a newly divorced woman running low on funds who has her hands full as the shock waves from her husband’s affair reverberate through her family.

Her 7-year-old happy-go-lucky son develops anger management problems; her 12-year-old daughter struggles with an eating disorder as she tries to keep her head above the shark-infested waters of middle school; and her Goth teenage niece comes crashing into their lives, bringing with her a deep and mysterious sorrow.

Fay will be at The Country Bookshop Friday, Jan. 28, at 3:30 p.m.

For information about the January “Meet the Author” events, call The Country Bookshop at (910) 692-3211.