Books

What was the Mona Lisa really smiling at? If you look closely, what can you spot lurking in and out of the patterns of an M.C. Escher design or the leaves of a Monet painting?

Half Moon Bay resident Michael Denning - collage artist, Project Knew Groove founder, head of the Coastside Collaborative, consultant for El Centro de Libertad - continues to find new avenues of artistic expression and uses them to show his peers how to follow their own paths.

The New York Times has called author Elizabeth George a "master of English mystery," and her protagonist, British Inspector Thomas Lynley, "one of the great character portraits in contemporary crime fiction."

If you don't think that war, politics and poetry mix, then Pescadero resident Bob Neumann differs with you.

Haiku is poetry with Japanese roots, typically thought of as three-line stanzas of five, seven and five syllables. But besides concise verse, haiku traditionally revolves around nature or natural phenomena, and its poets seek to capture a moment, emotion or revelation.

• Special Section

Here's a sneak peek at what we've been working on for our revamped Half Moon Bay magazine. Larger size, nicer paper and a new artistic vision of a different part of our Coastside on the cover every month. Plus, more varied content and some design changes to round it out. Look for it in the paper this week. Enjoy!

Years ago while working at the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, Linda Henderson saw something that impacted her life.

It actually started very simply - with a few words of greeting from a church porch.

It's only elementary that Bay Book Company would someday host a book-signing by an author who has brought Sherlock Holmes in new settings to new readers.

In 2007, La Honda author Bob Dougherty immortalized his town in an "Images of America: La Honda" through Arcadia Publishing. Now, teaming up with Woodside resident Thalia Lubin and the Woodside History Committee, he helped do the same for that community.

The Friends of the Half Moon Bay Library are still accepting donations of books for their third annual book sale, set for Oct. 1.

Over Labor Day weekend, parked cars lined the road passing by the Coastside Lutheran Church. The church's large parking lot was filled with stacks of books and browsers of all ages filing among them.

Secrets and untruths surrounding the founding of the United States are penetrated in "The Devil Colony, a Sigma Force Novel" (William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, 480 pages, $27.99.)

It pays to have friends in high places or at least in the annals of fantasy literature fame.

Nothing can be so delicious as a mystery, but think how many layers of scrumptiousness can be added when it has to do with a food as tasty as pie.

The Half Moon Bay Library is ready to oblige with good ideas for a lazy August on the coast.

College-age and adult travelers who are planning their first foray abroad, or looking to sail, fly or drive away this summer, may want to stop in for "World Travel 101" this weekend at the Half Moon Bay Library.

In late 2009, Jason Wood learned that the company he'd hired to find his birth parents had done just that.

Coastside resident and novelist Wendy Tokunaga will be the next instructor in a series of writing workshops offered by Harbor Books in Harbor Village.

Florida resident Jeff Shaara is one happy novelist.

A student and his spiritual teacher faced a new age in 1960s San Francisco.

"The Fundamentals of Storytelling," a writers' workshop, will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 21 at Harbor Books.

On this side of The Pond, this week's planned nuptials for Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton seem to be causing little stir.

El Dia de Los Ninos/El Dia de Los Libros (Children's Day/Book Day) is a celebration of children, families and reading that culminates each year in April, and this year, Puente is broadening that into a community celebration with books for kids at the core.