Wednesday May 14top

John Straley

"Alaskan mystery writer" Straley used to work as a criminal defense investigator and currently he and his wife live on a boat named the Phalarope. Cool points already. Then he went and wrote his newest, award-winning The Big Both Ways, a fictional story that keeps its eyes on an unlikely trio as it sails from Seattle to Juneau, ducking detectives and thugs along the way. Join him this evening for a reading and autographs. Murder By The Book, 3210 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 232-9995. 6:30 pm. Free. Map

Matthew Sharpe

Sharpe's latest imaginative novel, Jamestown, centers on the actual Jamestown settlement of 1607—but with thick, 21st-century sarcasm and a sassy Pocahontas. In Sharpe's tale, she's doing her thing in southern Virginia when John Smith and his pal John Rolfe show up, having escaped a shattered Manhattan in search of oil. When John reveals to ’Hontas that his boy Rolfe has a crush on her, she tells him, "I prefer to exchange a few emails with a guy before I date him. You can tell a lot about a guy by how he emails." Get ’em, girl. Reading Frenzy, 921 SW Oak St., 274-1449. 7 pm. Free. Map

Thursday May 15top

Marisa Silver

Being an adolescent is a bitch. Thank goodness it’s a one-time-only roller-coaster ride. "Movie director-turned-writer" (she directed an episode of L.A. Law!) Marisa Silver's second novel, God of War, revolves around 12-year-old Ares, his younger, mentally handicapped brother, Malcolm, and their denial-ridden mother, Laurel. The family resides on the edge of the Salton Sea in the desolate California desert, where Ares struggles to find balance and meaning in his life as he cares for and protects Malcolm while simultaneously testing the dark-alley waters of teenhood. Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-0540. 7:30 pm. Free. Map

Friday May 16top

Garth Stein

We all do it. Well, I do all the time, anyway. I talk aloud to my Chichi and pretend she understands. She cocks her little dog head like she totally gets it, no problem. Garth Stein feels me. His The Art of Racing in the Rain is told from the first-"dog" point of view of Enzo, a deep-thinking Lab, about his human family, race car driver Denny Swift and Denny’s daughter Zoe. Enzo, named after the founder of Ferrari, sheds some deeply sweet, sincere light on two-legged life, his own canine existence and the brilliance of opposable thumbs. Go see Garth speak, sit and stay. Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton., 228-4651. 7 pm. Free. Map

Saturday May 17top

Jill Kelly, Ph.D.

Kelly has been alcohol-free since 1989 and wrote Sober Truths: The Making of an Honest Woman in order to share with others her painful decades under the influence. Today, she'll present a "workshop/reading" and sign books. Cocktails weren’t the only thing Jill had trouble with. In her autobiography she writes, "I decided that men were unreliable and that I had to put up with it." Honey, unreliable? Yes. Having to put up with it? Hell no. In Other Words, 8 NE Killingsworth St., 232-6003. 2 pm. Free. Map

Sharon Wood Wortman

Wortman's newish book, Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass, is a collection of odes to the lovely and tricky architectural structures that span our Willamette River. After some readings by a few of the 70 poets who contributed their work to the book, there's a group walk planned to the Sellwood Bridge, weather permitting. Sellwood-Moreland Library, 7860 SE 13th Ave., 988-5398. 1 pm. Free. Map

Sunday May 18top

Grant Hayter-Menzies

Poor Princess Der Ling. Raised on a lazy Susan of clashing Eastern-Western cultures, she survived a liberal upbringing, a classy French education and two years rubbing Empress Dowager Cixi's feet. Author Hayter-Menzies shares even more juicy details in his book, Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling. The former Portlander gets a kick out of writing biographies about "the lives of extraordinary women." True enough, Ling went through some stuff, but the girl also got to smoke copious amounts of premium opium and walk on the gold-bricked floors of the Forbidden City. Portland State University, 1825 SW Broadway., 725-3000. 3 pm. Free. Map

Tuesday May 20top

Greg Mandel

What a hoot ol' Gregory is. He pens The Oregonian's daily Edge column and is currently showing off his new novel, High Hat, in which, to briefly summarize, the pope (a.k.a. High Hat) runs the Holy See by day and is known as A. Pope, private-eye detective, by night. High Hat's mission: to track down the "neo-Canadian Amish Mafia," which has kidnapped a Vatican archaeologist's daughter. What I want to know is, does A. Pope still wear pope garb when he's tussling with drug addicts, transvestites and slumlords, or does he do a little phone booth quick-change action à la Clark Kent? Ask Greg this evening after he, his publisher and his publisher's wife make their theatrical debut acting out "key scenes" (involving a topless mermaid dancer) from the book. Fan-freaking-tastic. Murder By The Book, 3210 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 232-9995. 6:30 pm. Free. Map

Robert Freedman

Being a full-blooded Jewish girl, I've often asked myself the very same questions Buddy, Freedman's lead character in his latest work, Fancypants, does about being a Jew. Questions like, just how many ways are there to spell Hanukkah? Today, Jews and gentiles alike are invited to hear him read. When he's not busy helping to explain our religion, Freedman volunteers for Write Around Portland and plays all the roles in his one-man show, Forty Years in the Desert: A Bar Mitzvah Tale, which contains scenes from Fancypants. He won't be performing Forty Years tonight, but come ask Freedman your very own Jew-clarifying question. Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway St., 284-1726. 7 pm. Free. Map