Hampton Sides discusses & signs his new book Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (Doubleday, $28.95). Sides' research on this subject forms much of the basis for PBS's documentary Road to Memphis, which originally aired on May 3. Sides illuminates not only the forces that culminated in King's assassination; he also reveals the largely forgotten story of how his death led to the largest manhunt in American history.

His research included hundreds of thousands of unpublished documents including crime scene photos, police reports, unexpurgated FBI files, and audio tapes - all from a retired Memphis cop who has compiled the most comprehensive digital archive about the assassination. Sides says, "Every non-fiction writer needs to find a guy named Vince."

Illustrator Juan Wijngaard joins us for a storytime featuring his newest book Cloud Tea Monkeys (Candlewick, $15.99), a Junior Library Guild Selection with sumptuous illustrations inspired by a centuries-old legend of tea picking monkeys. Wijngaard will also discuss the process of illustration, and answer any questions!.

Tashi lives in a tiny village at the foot of the mountains, below the tea plantations where her mother works. When her mother falls ill, Tashi goes alone to the plantation, hoping to earn money for the doctor, but she is far too small to harvest the tender shoots, and her clumsy efforts anger the cruel Overseer. She is desolate, until something extraordinary happens.

This is a richly told tale full of vivid characters: the heartless Overseer, the enigmatic Royal Tea Taster, and - far away - an empress with a penchant for tea.

With Cuba off limits to Americans and large fines served to some defiant travelers, many have given up on seeing the 'buena vista' of this controversial Caribbean isle. World bicycle traveler Lynette Chiang (The Galfromdownunder) presents a slideshow and talk based on her book, The Handsomest Man in Cuba (Globe Pequot, $14.95), an apolitical, no-bucket-baths spared tale of what it is like to eat, drink and be cautiously merry among ordinary Cubans.

Hailed by Australian critics as 'one of the best on-the-road travel books of this generation', the USA edition won a Silver Award for Travel Essays in Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year 2004. It features a foreword by acclaimed USA author and bicycle adventurer The Metal Cowboy. Lynette presented this book on Good Morning Australia and Forbes.com 'Rugged Individualists'.

Novelist Brady Udall, whose The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint Newsweek writes is"like nothing you've ever read," discusses and signs his new book The Lonely Polygamist (Norton, $26.95), the story of a plural Mormon family that rivals the work of John Irving - and is also like nothing you've ever read. Easily a contender for book awards this year, we're very excited to share this book, and it's store owner Nancy's favorite novel of 2010 so far!

Brady Udall's family includes former Arizona US Representative Stewart Udall and current New Mexico Senator Tom Udall.

"The Lonely Polygamist is the story of 45-year-old Golden Richards, a hapless soul, whose four wives, 28 children, and one paramour run his life. By turns laugh-out-loud funny and hauntingly sad, this novel is a big, fat, satisfying read that will make you reconsider what it means to be part of a family. Plus, it contains the naughtiest, goofiest 11 year old boy will ever break your heart."

Joseph Traugott is Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art and author of Gustave Baumann's Southwest and The Art of New Mexico. He presents a slideshow of his newest book Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art (Museum of New Mexico Press, $34.95), which takes a serious and ironic look at popular icons in western American culture - cowboy boots and masterpieces in western art - to explore American cultural values and pervasive themes in twentieth century art.

Join Carolyn Meyer for an 18th century tea to celebrate her newest addition to the Young Royals series for young adults. The Bad Queen: Rules and Instructions for Marie Antoinette (Houghton Mifflen Harcourt, $18.00) explores the dizzying rise and horrific downfall of the last Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. In celebration of Marie's name day (June 13th), the Feast of St. Anthony, we'll have a costume that illustrates women's royal attire of the time, and a contest for best hairstyle befitting Marie Antoinette - so wear your most lavish style! We'll also have live period music from cellist Christien Beeuwkes and violist Laura Kuechenmeister, and will learn how to do the minuet! This event will be a history lesson wrapped in elegance!

Reg Keeland (the pseudonym of Steven T. Murray) translates the popular trilogy of books by Steig Larsson, and Tiina Nunnally has translated Henning Mankell and other Scandinavian crime fiction, as well as a new edition of Pippi Longstocking.

In June, we're excited that both translators will be here for a conversation with Bookworks staff Laura about their crime fiction translation, as well as a Q&A with the audience.

Preorder your copy of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest today - we do ask that in order to go through the signing line, you purchase a book from Bookworks.

This event is a first for Bookworks - and we hope you'll join us!

Don James presents a slideshow of One Nation, One Year (LPD Press, $24.99), a photographic journey documenting his year long trip across the Navajo Nation - a travel of over 10,000 miles on dirt roads, horseback, on foot and as a hitchhiker - to record the arts, traditions, sports, and people of the Navajo.  . The Navajo Nation and its people have been extensively photographed over the last century, but never from the eye of one of its own; because he's native, and knows the land and people, James embarks on a journey to show the world a different view of his culture, through his eyes and his Nikon lens, and his understanding of the Navajo gives us a glimpse at a people previously off-limits to outsiders. 

Rabbi Min Kantrowitz discusses and signs her new book Counting the Omer: A Kabbalistic Meditation Guide (Gaon Books, $18.00), a daily guide to the period of time in the spring (between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot) when there are specific psycho-spiritual themes for each of 49 days that will appeal to Jews and non-Jews who are interested in kabbalistic teaching. Assuming no knowledge of kabbalah, Hebrew or Jewish traditions, the book explains the history of the practice of paying special attention to spiritual development during the spring, introduces basic kabbalistic concepts and includes a glossary of Hebrew terms.

Architect Bart Prince and author Christopher Curtis Mead present a slideshow of The Architecture of Bart Prince: A Pragmatics of Place (Revised and Updated) (Norton, $39.95), the only book on the exuberant work of a uniquely original American architect - now updated to look at new buildings by Prince. Bart Prince, whose breathtaking buildings stand from Ohio to Hawaii. Prince is recognized internationally for embodying the American tradition of individualism personified by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Bruce Goff. This study of Prince and his architecture as an open-ended process of cultural discovery and experimentation focuses on what Prince believes to be architecture's proper subject: the experience of place produced when an architect responds to the practical and psychological realities of a specific client, program, and budget in the context of a particular site.

Please note this event is at 2pm instead of our usual Sunday time.

Dr. Jan-Marie Esch, New Mexico author and creativity coach, discusses and signs her new book Windows Within: Insight, Creativity, and Transformation (Booksurge, $43.99). This book presents an inspiring and unique model for men and women desiring to understand how spirit, experience, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are connected, and how these connections affect personal transformation through creative processes. Calling upon her own personal experiences of growth, awareness, tragedy, and survival, Dr. Esch reminds us of our teachability, our capacity to grow and expand in new and thrilling directions. Including steps to help us identify our core values, refine our awareness, and develop the skills to relax and concentrate, Windows Within guides us toward a deeper understanding of ourselves, our energy, and the path toward creative expression.

Dominique Browning, the first woman at any newsmagazine to be appointed an assistant managing editor, will discuss and sign her memoir Slow Love: How I Lost my Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness (Atlas, $23.00), a humorous and moving book about losing a job - and winning a life. This book is for every person on earth who sometimes wonders what the purpose of their life is: Dominique Browning was lucky enough to get fired, so she had time to find out who she was or might be.

Author and former NMSU president J. Michael Orenduff will discuss and sign his newest addition to the popular southwest mystery series set in Old Town, The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy ($14.95), which features the wry treasure hunter (and arguable thief) Hubert Schuze, who this time is stealing for a good cause: to recover sacred pots stolen from a mysterious New Mexico pueblo closed to outsiders. The trouble is, these pots aren't underground - they're 150 feet above it in the top-floor apartment of Rio Grande Lofts!

The Albuquerque Journal calls Orenduff's series "A thinking man's whodunit," and the Gallup Herald called his debut a "first step" towards filling the shoes of famed southwest mystery writer Tony Hillerman.

Additionally, Orenduff will appear on a New Mexico State Library bookmobile June 16.

First Partnership: Bookworks/NHCC/ABC Libraries - Bringing Books and People Together

Free Event at the National Hispanic Cultural Center

7pm Monday, June 28

Mary Davis presents a slideshow of historic photographs of Corrales, New Mexico and signs her new book in the Images of America series: Corrales (Arcadia, $21.99).

Nestled in the Rio Grande Valley, Corrales received its name from the corrals used by settlers on the 1710 Alameda land grant. After World War II, this bucolic village was discovered by Albuquerque's burgeoning population, and it quickly became a community full of artsts and professionals - a semirural suburban oasis.

Historian Mary Davis and members of the Corrales Historical Society have selected the best of the society's photograph archives and gathered more stories and images from community members themselves.

Mary is co-editor of Shining River Precious Land : An Oral History of Albuquerque's North Valley.

Craig Chapman of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and Jodi Hedderig from the city of Albuquerque's Open Spaces division present a slideshow and discuss their books: the 2010 Wild Guide (New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, $9.95) and 25 Outstanding Open Space Destinations (City of Albuquerque, $5.00).

Chapman and Hedderig will help you plan your summer and discuss trails, special events, volunteer/service projects and other upcoming activities included in the books.  Additionally, Senator Tom Udall's award-winning watermelon pine-nut gazpacho will be served (the recipe and story of the DC version of Top Chef are highlighted in the Wild Guide).

Albuquerque consultant and author of the bestselling The Small Business Start-Up Kit Peri Pakroo discusses & signs her new book The Women's Small Business Start-Up Kit (Nolo, $29.99), which retains its focus on women's business-related issues and includes interviews with successful women who have started businesses.  Approximately ten million US businesses are currently women-owned, and the number is growing at twice the national average for all businesses, and this book specifically emphasizes concerns for female entrepreneurs.

Peri Pakroo manages P-Brain media, consults for businesses and nonprofits, teaches adult education courses at the Women's Economic Self-Sufficiency Team (WESST), a nonprofit whose mission is to facilitate entrepreneurship among women and inorities in the state of New Mexico, and Peri is active in supporting local, independent businesses and is a co-founder of the Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird comes The Queen of Palmyra(Harper, $14.99), a debut novel from Minrose Gwin about a young girl in Civil Rights-era Mississippi and the horrosrs she witnesses one summer.  Gwin will discuss and sign her new novel, which has been called "The most powerful and also the most lyrical novel about race, racism, and denial in the American South since To Kill a Mockingbird" (Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill).

Like Kathryn Stockett's breakout novel The Help, The Queen of Palmyra is set in 1960s Mississippi and deals with a segregated society in which black women are paid poorly to raise white people's children - this book will appeal to fans of Stockett and book clubs alike.

Gwin teaches contemporary fiction at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and creative writing workshops at the University of New Mexico Taos Writers Conference.  Her previous memoir, Wishing for Snow, a memoir that traces her mother's unraveling from a young parent to an emotionally unstable, even dangerous, older woman.

"Divert your reader and then "clobber" them, advised Flannery O'Connor.  In this bold and brilliant book, Minrose Gwin diverts us with the affecting voice of a child and then clobbers us with the ugly truths of our collective past.  I can almost hear O'Connor cheering."
--Sharon Oard Warner, author of Deep in the Heart.

At a time when Arizona's new immigration law has created an intensified national controversy over the value and worth of the people of our border regions, Steven and Reefka Schneider's new collection of poetry and art Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives (Wings Press, $19.95) has the power to make us pause to reflect on the stories and conditions of their lives.  Steven and Reefka will sign and present drawings and poetry from the book, a series of 25 moving vignettes of border people and their lives expressed as a page of poetry in English and Spanish opposite its related portrait.

Steven P. Schneider is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas-Pan American, and is a founding member of the South Texas Literacy Coalition in the Rio Grande Valley.  he is the recipient of two Big Read grants from the NEA, and has used Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives traveling exhibit to promote the teaching of culturally relevant literature and creativity.  His poems and essays have been published in journals including Tikkun, Prairie Schooner, and Critical Quarterly, and his books include A.R. Ammons and the Poetics of Widening Scope and poetry collections Prairie Air Show and Unexpected Guests.

Ken Stewart discusses and signs The Smell of Blood ($12.95), a memoir in poetry of his experiences during the Vietnam War. He discusses in honest, visceral language the immediate experience of watching friends die, as well as his later reactions to the political and social ramifications. Stewart is donating all proceeds from the book to Veterans for Peace. 

Few places in the US boast as rich a diversity of landscape and public lands as northern New Mexico.  L.

Finalist for the John B Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, Arizona journalist Mitch Tobin presents a slideshow, discusses, and signs his new book Endangered: Biodiversity on the Brink (Fulcrum, $27.95), which uses wildlife of the Southwest to provide a snapshot of the issues facing species throughout the world.  

Since 1973, the Endangered Species Act has served as our nation's legislative ark for imperiled wildlife, but has only recovered a handful of the more than 1,300 species under its protection.  In Endangered, Tobin uses firsthand accounts to show why so many species are at risk of extinction.  For nearly seven years, Tobin criscrossed the Southwest - our hottest, driest, fastest-growing region - in search of wildlife driven to the brink of extinction and solutions to the crisis.  Tobin discovered that this region, with its urban sprawl, wasteful water use, and vulnerability to climate change, is one of the continent's hot spots for biodiversity - and contains compelling examples of collaboration.  With these examples in mind, he advocates for a set of innovative policies that can preserve the species and wild places that sustain us all.

Mitch Tobin worked as a journalist from 1999 to 2006, covering wildlife, wildfires, and other environmental issues for the Tucson Citizen, Arizona Daily Star, and High Country News.  Endangered grew out of Tobin's yearlong series on Arizona's endangered species.  Tobin's work was honored in the Best of the West competition and received first prizes from the Arizona Press Club and Arizona Associated Press Managing Editors.  Today, Tobin serves as a consultant to leading conservation groups and foundations.