Elliott Bay Book Company is hosting two readings today. The first one is Christina Arokiasamy, who will be reading from The Spice Merchant's Daughter: Recipes and Simple Spice Blends for the American Kitchen. And then, a couple hours later, Jennifer Steil will read from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky: An American Journalist's Adventures in the Oldest City in the World. Here's the hook:

In a world fraught with suspicion between the Middle East and the West, it's hard to believe that one of the most influential newspapers in Yemen—the desperately poor, ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, which has made has made international headlines for being a terrorist breeding ground—would be handed over to an agnostic, Campari-drinking, single woman from Manhattan who had never set foot in the Middle East. Yet this is exactly what happened to journalist, Jennifer Steil.

Sounds like a real fish-out-of-water deal, like if Sex and the City went to the Middle East...oh. Wait a minute. Never mind.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.