Get ready for a new chapter in 209 events.

The inaugural Great Valley Bookfest offers good books, good food, and good times on Saturday, Oct. 27, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Bass Pro Shops/Promenade Shops at Orchard Valley at the 120 Bypass/Union Road in Manteca.

Thirty authors - including Manteca High graduate and New York Times bestseller William Kent Krueger - are signed up for the inaugural Great Valley BookFest debuting

The free event features five venues where attendees can listen to authors make their presentations and ask questions. There also will be a number of gourmet food trucks plus arts and crafts-style vendors as well as new and used books for sale.

Other activities include kids’ Halloween costume parade, writers’ workshop, self-publishing seminar, slam poetry performances, and cooking demonstrations.

A series of tents around the manmade lake in front of the movie theater will provide the venue for the presentations and other activities including the cooking demos. The gourmet food trucks will be parked in the drop-off zone for the theatre while the road running in front of the theater - from Bass Pro Shops to the roundabout with a fountain will be closed to accommodate arts and craft vendors. The meeting room inside Bass Pro Shops will also be used.

It didn’t take long for Tori Raymus’ idea of a book fest in Manteca with its central location to the Northern San Joaquin Valley to catch traction. Organizers expect to pull in attendees from throughout San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties as well as part of the East Bay including Livermore and Pleasanton.

The authors attending cover a wide array of disciplines from children’s books to poetry, fiction, fantasy, nature, history, politics, western, mystery, cookbooks, suspense, romance, adult romance, poetry, and self-help.

A third of the authors have valley ties. Besides Krueger who is a 1969 Manteca High graduate, there are Manteca residents Linda Kay and Kerry Harris, Ripon residents Don Moyer, Rob Kroese and Kerry Harris, Oakdale residents Kim Van Meter and Valerie Murphy, retired Manteca High counselor Steve Sonntag, as well as Cherish A. Doll of Salida and Linda Abbott Trapp of Valley Springs.

Other authors are Jennie Chadwick, Sue DePolo and Gary DeiRossi, Linda Knoll, Claudia Newcorn, Scott Lankford,  Rick Deutsch, Jay Feldman, Major Mitchell, Amy Smith, Allison Brennan, Peggy Howard, Ken Albala, Rima Barkett and Claudia Pruett, Loretta Ichord, Maureen Minnehan Jones, and  Jacque Graham,