Bookworks Albequerque Presents January Highlights

January brings events to Bookworks that explore transformations, education, social issues like war and charity, and great new literature.

The month's big feature is Douglas Preston January 27 at the KiMo Theater talking about his new book, The Lost City of the Monkey God, the first of several author event collaborations between Bookworks and the KiMo for the theater's 90th anniversary in 2017. The Lost City of the Monkey God is an archaeological adventure set in Honduras, where Preston acquires more than just new knowledge about a five-hundred-year-old legend and an ancient curse. The book is getting rave reviews nationally and the talk at the KiMo will include a short video.

On January 12, Hazel Thornton talks about Hung Jury, her updated account of her time as juror on the notorious Menendez trial more than twenty years ago. With updated material, the reprint is being done by Trinity University Press, and ABC's 20/20 is airing a special about the brothers, serving life terms in California, on January 5. Thornton was a telecommunications engineer in Pasadena at the time of the first trial but now leaves in Albuquerque.

The New Year always bring a focus on transformation, and January events at Bookworks allow for readers to take on new personal and business ventures in 2017. On January 8, Ron Licari talks about his book, The Power of Ten, looking at ten human attributes and spiritual opportunities for transformation. On January 22, Paul Rhetts and Henrietta Christmas talk about their Genealogy Bucket List book, then on January 26, human resources pro Max Dubroff talks about his book, The HR Maximizer, discussing workplace investigations.

Social transformations are the topic of events on January 17, when Manya Whitaker of Colorado College talks about her educational tome, Learning from the Inside Out. On January 21, Nandita Dinesh discusses Theater and War: Notes from the Field, and on January 31, when Ryan McCarty visits with his book, Building a Culture of Good.

Mysteries and thrillers are part of the mix as well in January. On January 15, Christina Squire talks about her new New Mexico-set mystery, Murder at the Art Museum, a follow up to Murder at the Observatory. On January 24, Roberta Parry talks about her Southwestern mystery, Killing Time. Then on January 29, popular award-winning Albuquerque author, Joseph Badal, talks bout his new book, Dark Angel.

Kids events this month include our weekly themed story times Thursday at 10:30 am, as well as book clubs for children on January 13 with the Book Testers club, January 18 for American Girl Book Club and Magic Treehouse Book Club January 25. Kids ages 5-12 are welcome for the book clubs, depending on their reading level and interest.

Book clubs for adults include the Bookworks Book Club January 11, discussing Driftless by David Rhodes, and the Austen Project Book Club on January 23 discussing Karen Joy Fowler's Jane Austen Book Club. On January 9, and the second Monday of every month, Bookworks hosts an adult coloring club. All book club purchases at Bookworks receive a 10% discount.

January 5, 10:30 am: Story Time! Bookworks hosts a free, award-winning weekly story time for children every Thursday at 10:30 am. Join Connie for stories, songs, snacks, and an occasional craft. Suitable for all ages, babies to bigger kids. More info: kids@bkwrks.com. This week's theme "Up and Down."

January 7, 10 am: Darynda Jones at Southwest Writers, New Life Presbyterian Church, 5540 Eubank NE. Free and open to the public.

January 7, 3 pm: Colin Cahoon, The Man in the Black Box. An international crisis threatens to plunge the world into war at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, but the British Foreign Office finds itself blinded by the bizarre deaths of crucial agents and informants as it struggles to stave off the coming conflagration. For help, they turn to an unconventional outsider, Inspector Jenkins of Scotland Yard, who soon finds himself on the trail of a mysterious man with a deadly black box and a host of devoted accomplices.

January 8, 3 pm: Wyatt Wegrzyn, The Future of the Book, at Congregation Albert, 3800 Louisiana Blvd NE, with David Steinberg, Linda Broidy, and Jonathan Miller. Free

January 8, 3 pm: Ron Licari, The Power of Ten. Join R. F. Licari as he guides you through ten diverse human attributes that when fully understood become ten unifying spiritual powers.

January 9, 6 pm: Coloring and Coffee Clatch. Join other adults for a meditative coloring club at Bookworks. The second Monday evening of every month, Connie hosts, and Bookworks has coloring books you can buy at a 10% discount. You bring the color and your coffee mug. More info: kids@bkwrks.com

January 10, 6 pm: Wingbeats Poetry Workshop. Dos Gatos Press publisher & editor Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen present a free monthly poetry writing workshop, featuring writing prompts from their series of anthologies, Wingbeats, which feature exercises from award winning authors. Bring writing accoutrement and browse some books while you're here!

January 11-13: Children's Law Institute, Hotel Albuquerque. The Children's Law Institute (CLI) is a statewide, multi-disciplinary conference addressing issues of importance in child welfare and juvenile justice. Bookworks sells books at the conference.

January 11, 6:30 pm: Bookworks Book Club discusses Driftless by David Rhodes. Free and open to the public.

January 12, 10:30 am: Story Time! Bookworks hosts a free, award-winning weekly story time for children every Thursday at 10:30 am. Join Connie for stories, songs, snacks, and an occasional craft. Suitable for all ages, babies to bigger kids. More info: kids@bkwrks.com. "Wonderful, Goofy, Lovable Pets" is our theme this week.

January 12, 6 pm: Hazel Thornton, Hung Jury. On June 28, 1993, Hazel Thornton showed up for the first day of jury selection. She didn't know she would spend the next seven months as a juror on one of the year's most high-profile murder trials: The People v. Erik Menendez. Erik and his brother Lyle were on trial for shot-gunning their parents to death in their Beverly Hills home. Thornton began keeping her journal as a way of processing the trial. A behind the scenes witness, Thornton describes with lucidity, charm, and humor the day-to-day experiences of a juror: the riveting emotional testimonies, the deluge of minutiae, and the unpleasant graphic evidence. Going far beyond the reportage of the print or electronic media, her diary gets inside the thoughts, discussions, and actions of the jury, and the trial process itself. She writes about the jury's deliberations, and eventual dead-lock, with revelatory insight into what really happens on a 'hung jury.'

January 13, 4:30 pm: Book Testers Book Club, for ages 7-12. More info: kids@bkwrks.com.

January 14, 3 pm: Anna La Forge, Pelion Preserved. Author Anna LaForge continues the exploration of Pelion in her new fantasy novel.

January 15, 3 pm: Christina Squire, Murder at the Art Museum. Caroline Steele decides to leave her calm, respectable life as a wife and mother to get another job at the University of New Mexico. She is hired as the art museum shop manager. When the body of a former Art Department professor is found in the lower gallery handicapped lift, she is thrown once again in contact with the charismatic Inspector James Hutchinson. Sparks fly between them as they work together to solve the mystery.

January 17, 6 pm: Manya Whitaker, Learning from the Inside Out. Learning from the Inside-Out: Child Development and School Choice is the first book of its kind to marry child development, educational psychology, neuroscience, and pedagogy. This book goes beyond the now banal conversation of differentiating students based upon gender, race, and class. This book is about the cognitive and social needs of students throughout the developmental span and how to identify schools that meet those needs. In essence, this book rejects the one-size-fits-all discourse of education reform in favor of a focus on individualized educational decision-making.

January 18, 4:30 pm: American Girl Book Club. Free monthly book club for American Girl fans, ages 6-12. We will be talking about the book, Lea and Camila. More info: kids@bkwrks.com

January 19, 10:30 am: Story Time! Bookworks hosts a free, award-winning weekly story time for children every Thursday at 10:30 am. Join Connie for stories, songs, snacks, and an occasional craft. Suitable for all ages, babies to bigger kids. More info: kids@bkwrks.com. This week's theme is snowflakes.

January 19, 6 pm: Jason DeBoer, Annihilation Songs. With Anniliation Songs: Three Shakespeare Reintegrations, writer and award-winning filmmaker Jason DeBoer presents radical anagrammatic takes on The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Hamlet. Using only the words contained within each original drama, DeBoer's experimental fictions were created by disintegrating and then reintegrating Shakespeare's language into new narratives of warfare and desire. The result is an ultra-vivid hypertext, a warped yet faithful concordance of astounding poetic power, with theoretical roots in the earth of Bataille, Nietzsche, and Sade.

January 21, 2 pm: Michael McGarrity at the Los Lunas Transportation Center

January 21, 3 pm: Nandita Dinesh, Theater and War. In pursuit of answers, Theatre and War adopts the methods of auto-ethnography, positioning the theatrical practitioner at the heart of conflict zones in northern Uganda, Guatemala, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Rwanda, Kenya, Nagaland, and Kashmir. No longer a detached observer, the researcher and practitioner has to be able to meld theory with practice; to speak to "doing," without undervaluing the importance of "thinking about doing."

January 22, 3 pm: Henrietta Christmas, Genealogy Bucket List. Designed to help genealogists of all types and at all stages in their search, this book has several hundred tips, tactics, and online web links provided to help the beginner find the right path to get started or the experienced researcher to jump ahead to the next level. Seeking one's family history is exciting to people of all types.

January 23, 6 pm: Austen Project Book Club. We will be discussing, The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler. Bring a cup for tea and join us for a casual discussion.

January 24, 6 pm: Roberta Parry, Killing Time. Killing Time is about a thirty-five-year-old female preppy turned fifteen, a desert football star turned FBI agent, a mob-connected chorine turned informant, a gang of shit kickers, a set of country clubbers, the Hopi Indians, and a twenty-year effort to make East meet West. It is also about love, loss, reconciliation, and hope.

January 25, 4:30 pm: Magic Treehouse Book Club.Free monthly meeting of our Magic Treehouse Book Club for kids ages 6-10. More info: kids@bkwrks.com. We will be talking about the book, Dingoes at Dinner Time.

January 26, 10:30 am: Story Time! Bookworks hosts a free, award-winning weekly story time for children every Thursday at 10:30 am. Join Connie for stories, songs, snacks, and an occasional craft. Suitable for all ages, babies to bigger kids. More info: kids@bkwrks.com. This week's theme is boots, shoes, and feet.

January 26, 6 pm: Max Dubroff, HR Maximizer. The discussion of the book and how it was written will provide useful insights and approaches for anyone who works with people. Max will also share his lessons on writing a business book-something that is useful to future authors.

January 27, 7 pm: Douglas Preston, The Lost City of the Monkey God, at the KiMo. A five-hundred-year-old legend. An ancient curse. A stunning medical mystery. And a pioneering journey into the unknown heart of the world's densest jungle.

Since the days of conquistador Hernan Cortes, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.

Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.

January 28, 3 pm: Irene Blea, Beneath the Super Moon. By the mid 1960's, at the thrust of the Chicano Movement, Suzanna Montoya had settled in the city, gained a critical consciousness, and began to address urban concerns about race, class, and gender. Like many of her nameless Southwest contemporaries, Suzanna did her part where she lived on the west side of town, part of, but disenfranchised from the mainstream. Once again, Irene Blea, via Suzanna's analytical gift renders a colorful voice as she takes action to address the manifestation of racism, sexism and class discrimination where it happens: in her life. All this is done while she seeks to reunite with the sons she left behind when she ran from her abusive husband.

January 29, 3 pm: Joseph Badal, Dark Angel. In Dark Angel, the second in the Lassiter/Martinez Case Files series, Detectives Barbara Lassiter and Susan Martinez pick up where they left off in Borderline. Assigned to a murder case, they discover that their suspect is much more than a one-off killer. In fact, the murderer appears to be a vigilante hell-bent on taking revenge against career criminals who the criminal justice system has failed to punish.

January 31, 6 pm: Ryan McCarty, Building a Culture of Good. Scott Moorehead, the CEO of TCC Verizon, hirEd Ryan McCarty to help create a Culture of Good for the largest Verizon Authorized Retailer's 3,000 employees at 800 stores across the U.S. What the duo began as a powerful movement-in which employees have done everything from dressing up as superheroes for a children's hospital to distributing hundreds of thousands of backpacks for kids-has grown into a business teaching other companies that inspired employees ignite positive change in the world and impact your bottom line-positively. In their debut book, Moorehead, the CEO of a thriving telecommunications business, and McCarty, a pastor, speaker, and nonprofit founder, share how, despite their different backgrounds, they came together in pursuit of a common goal-to help their company find the "sweet spot" that connects employees, customers, and a cause.

SPRING PREVIEW

February 3, 7 pm: Daymond John, SharkTank, ABQ Academy Benefit, Hotel ABQ, TICKETS here: http://www.aa.edu/page/giving/events/an-evening-with-daymond-john

February 9, 6 pm: Mark Sundeen, The Unsettlers.

February 23, 6 pm: Mark Doty, Feb 23, at UNM Continuing Ed

March 4, 6 pm: Jordan Flaherty, No More Heroes.

March 6, 6 pm: Len Vlahos, Life in a Fishbowl. New young adult novel.

March 7, 6 pm: Laura Pritchett, The Blue Hour.

March 10, 6 pm: Brook Williams, Open Midnight.

March 11, 3 pm: Sue Boggio and Mare Pearl, Long Night Moon.

March 15, 6 pm: Ben Saenz, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, new young adult fiction.

March 24,7 pm: CJ Box, Vicious Circle, at the KIMO (free)

April 6, 6 pm: Augusten Burroughs, Lust and Wonder, venue to be announced

April 6, 5:30: Peter Marra, Cat Wars, April 6, at NM Audubon?

April 11, 6 pm: Steve Berry, Lost Order.

April 13, 7 pm: Anne Hillerman, Song of the Lion, at the KIMO (free)

April 22, 3 pm: Claire Vaye Watkins, Gold Fame Citrus & Joseph Scapalatto, Big Lonesome.

May 4, 6 pm: Jen Sincero, How to Be a Badass at Making Money

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