Bookworks February Highlights Features Sue Monk Kidd and More

Sue Monk Kidd's previous books, The Secret Lives of Bees and The Mermaid Chair were New York Times best-sellers, earning the author international acclaim and translations into thirty-six languages. The popular writer's new novel, The Invention of Wings, was released January 7 and is Oprah Winfrey's next book club selection. On February 14, Ms. Kidd visits Albuquerque for an evening presentation at the Albuquerque Academy.

Tickets for the event are $5 each and good for $5 off the new hardcover, available at Bookworks or online at www.bkwrks.com/sue-monk-kidd. The new novel features urban slave, Hetty "Handful" Grimke, and the daughter of her owners, Sarah Grimke, in early nineteenth- century Charleston. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, she is given ownership of Hetty, who becomes her handmaid. Kidd's story follows the two women's remarkable journeys over the next thirty -five years, as both strive for a life of their own, shape each other's fates, and form a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and unrequited love.

Also featuring in February is award-winning historian and journalist Nick Turse who visits Bookworks February 1 for his new history of Vietnam, Kill Anything that Moves. Turse, a fellow at the Nation Institute and national security reporter for national newspapers and magazines, turns a critical eye toward the Vietnam War and its historiography.

Turse draws on research into classified documents and Pentagon files and first hand-interviews with both US Veterans and Vietnamese survivors of the conflict to determine that violence against noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the Vietnam Era. Instead, Turse posits that the consequence of military orders was to "kill anything that moves." Turse is also the author of The Changing Face of Empire, The Complex and The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Speaking of politics, longtime New Mexico State Senator, Dede Feldman, presents an insider's look at state politics in her new bookInside the New Mexico Senate: Boots, Suits, and Citizens, February 4 at Bookworks. Fred Harris, former US Senator for New Mexico calls Feldman's account "Completely honest and highly informative ... with all [the senate's] diverse characters and influences and its many conflicts, compromises, and achievements."

In celebration of Valentine's Day, Bookworks sponsors its second annual "Love Letters" Love Poems Contest, with Albuquerque poet Jessica Helen Lopez and husband Glenn "Buddha" Benavidez of the band Reviva judging. Poets are encouraged to submit up to three poems of 500 words or less for consideration toevents@bkwrks.com by February 7. Poets should include their name and phone number, though contact information will be excluded from the judging. First, second, and third-place winners will be announced February 14 and will win Bookworks gift certificates.

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