THURSDAY 6/22

MILAN RAI
Rai reads from and talks about 7/7: The London Bombings, Islam, and the Iraq War, which details the lives of the London bombers and offers strategies for preventing future unexpected explosions on subways and buses. Keystone Church, 5019 Keystone Place N, 632-6021 or www.concernforiraq.org, 7 pm, free.

RONLYN DOMINGUE
The Mercy of Thin Air is a novel "filled with vivid descriptions of scents, sounds, and marvelous human sensations," according to Library Journal. Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.

recommended MARK BOWDEN
The author of Black Hawk Down reads from his latest book, Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam, which begins in 1979 in the U.S. embassy in Iran with the taking of 66 hostages. UW Campus, Kane Hall 220, 634-3400, 7:30 pm, free.

FRIDAY 6/23

DAO STROM
The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys is a collection of stories by an author who has "the ability to capture feelings and thoughts you don't think can be described," says novel-writing, Believer-editing Vendela Vida. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.

CRAIG ENGLISH, JAMES RAPSON
Their book is Anxious to Please: Seven Revolutionary Practices for the Chronically Nice. Ravenna Third Place Books, 6504 20th Ave NE, 525-2347, 7:30 pm, free.

SATURDAY 6/24

JOAN OPYR
Idaho Code is a novel about a lesbian named Wilhelmina "Bil" Hardy whose brother is accused of killing a man. Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St, 587-5737, noon, free.

VALERIE TRUEBLOOD
"She is here tonight," according to press materials, "for this mingling and refreshments book-signing (no reading) gathering to celebrate the publication of her lovely first novel, Seven Loves." (Wait, what?) Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 5 pm, free.

RANDY SUE COBURN
Owl Island is a novel with descriptions of "windswept beaches and cedar-scented air," according to Booklist. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.

SUNDAY 6/25

JACK STRAW WRITERS PROGRAM 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Trisha Ready, John Olson, Bharti Kirchner, Anna Balint, John Burgess, Donna Miscolta, Nu Quang, Laura Gamache, Barbara Thomas, and Kevin Miller read. Central Library, Microsoft Auditorium, 1000 Fourth Ave, 634-0919, 2 pm, free.

MONDAY 6/26

recommended JOHN McPHEE
In the most recent New York Times Book Review, Adam Hochschild called McPhee's nonfiction—29 books to date—"more lasting" than the journalism of Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, constituting "a grand pointillist mural of our time and place as expressed in the lives of an encyclopedic range of people." The people in McPhee's latest, Uncommon Carriers, are sea captains, truckers, and coal-train drivers, and they love what they do. Central Library, Microsoft Auditorium, www.spl.org, 7 pm, free.

AARON ELKINS
Unnatural Selection is a murder mystery involving a professor of forensic pathology and a suspicious tibia. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400, 7 pm, free.

recommended CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, now out in paperback, is about death and rock and roll. According to the page right after the copyright stuff, "This is a story about love, death, driving, narcissism, America, the ill-advised glamorization of recreational drug use, not having sex, eating breadsticks at Olive Garden, talking to strangers, feeling nostalgic for the extremely recent past, movies you've never seen, KISS, Radiohead, Rod Stewart, and—to a lesser extent—prehistoric elephants of the Midwestern plains. If these are not things that interest you, do not read this book." Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.

TUESDAY 6/27

AMBASSADOR JOHN BRUTON
He gives a breakfast talk entitled "Collaboration and Conflict: The U.S.-E.U. Partnership." World Trade Center Seattle, Holland America Line Dining Room, fourth floor, 2200 Alaskan Way, 441-5910 or www.world-affairs.org to register, 8 am, $28–$35.

recommended ANDREA LEE
Lost Hearts in Italy is a novel about a young American woman, Rome, and the passing of time. Here is an excerpt, chosen at random: "What interests him now is the pulse he can see beating at the base of her throat like the heart of a small animal. The unbelievable tenderness and youth of the flesh over beating blood that suggests the secret of her entire body, hidden like the smooth wood of a sapling under the awful clothes. Zenin has often sat contemplating a number of pretty young girls and always glances down deliberately to notice how coarse his own hands seem by contrast. Peasant paws, huge and blunt, strangely restless, irreparably marked by middle age and tropical suns. When he was younger, before he got rich, he was ashamed of them. His wife and other girlfriends criticized them. But now he takes pleasure in the sight of these ugly hands that have the power to touch the most exquisite skin in the world." Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 6 pm, free.

M. JOHN LUBETKIN
Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, the Sioux, and the Panic of 1873 is about the man who financed the railroad's construction and everything (including the creation of Yellowstone National Park) that the railroad, in a manner of speaking, led to. University Book Store, 634-3400, 7 pm, free.

MAUREEN McHUGH
The sci-fi writer reads. Science Fiction Museum, JBL Theater, 325 Fifth Ave N, www.clarionwest.org for ticket info, 7:30 pm.

recommended MONICA ALI
Her first novel, Brick Lane, really should have won the Booker Prize. (Jonathan Raban was so sure that it would win the Booker Prize that he swore in The Stranger that if it did not win he would eat a square of carpet. It did not win, and Raban did not eat a square of carpet. [Hey Jonathan, did you think we'd forget? No such luck!]) Anyway, Ali's second novel, set in a Portuguese village, is called Alentejo Blue. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 8 pm, free.

WEDNESDAY 6/28

JEAN HASTINGS ARDELL, DAVID BLOCK, MERRIE A. FIDLER
They are the authors of Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime, Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, and Origins and History of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, respectively. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 5 pm, free.

KEVIN BOILEAU
A Reason and a Season is a novel that, according to Epilogue Books' press materials, "offers a penetrating and trenchant exploration into the dangers of intense romantic love. Exposing the sadomasochistic psychological dynamics in which lovers all too often engage, the novel is richly philosophical, drawing from the ideas of the Marquis de Sade, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Jean Paul Sartre. What is at stake is the gaze of the lover, and here we are challenged to test our own narcissism and cultural bias regarding the nature of romantic love." Epilogue Books, I love your press materials. Epilogue Books, 2005 NW Market St, 6:30 pm, free.

LAYNE MAHEU, JOHN MARZLUFF
Maheu's novel Song of the Crow is "a lyrical meditation on the relationship between humankind and the heavens, from the point of view of a crow," according to press materials. In the Company of Crows and Ravens is a nonfiction book about crows and ravens. Seattle Public Library, Ballard Branch, 5614 22nd Ave NW, 684-4089, 6:30 pm, free.

KIM HARRISON
A Fistful of Charms is a novel about a witch. University Book Store, 634-3400, 7 pm, free.

POETRY/OPEN MICS

ELLIOTT BAY OPEN MIKE NIGHT—Signup at 7, reading at 7:30 pm. Last Wednesday of the month. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, free.HOMELAND—Words. So many words. Tuesdays at 7 pm. Caffe Vita, 1005 E Pike St, 709-4440, free.POETSWEST—Featured readers and an open mic. Saturdays at 6 pm. Epilogue Books, 2005 NW Market St, 682-1268, free.RED SKY POETRY THEATER—Featured readers and an open mic. Sundays at 7 pm. Globe Cafe, 1531 14th Ave, 547-4585, free.SCRATCHING POST—Poetry open mic, all ages. Thursdays at 8 pm, signup at 7:30 pm. Mr. Spots Chai House, 5463 Leary Ave NW, 297-2424, free.SEATTLE POETRY SLAM—Every Tuesday at 8 pm. Mirabeau Room, 529 Queen Anne Ave N, 650-2869, $4.STAGE FRIGHT—Youth open mic. Fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030, free.TAKE A POEM INTO YOUR HEART—Featured readers. Fourth Friday of every month at 7 pm, sign up at 6:45 pm. Bookworm Exchange, 4860 Rainier Ave, 722-6633, free.SEATTLE SPIT—Featured readers and an open mic. First Thursday of every month at 8:30 pm. The Wild Rose, 1021 E Pike St, free.TUESDAYS AT THE CABARET—An evening of poetry, comedy, and prose on the second Tuesday of every month. Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, $5.