The end of Bay Area writer Maria Finn's marriage was also the starting point of new adventures in the world of Argentinean tango, a story told in her autobiographical book, Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home (Algonquin). After making friends at New York City tango milongas, or social dances, she studied the history and culture of tango, visiting Buenos Aires, and finding ... new love. "A lively debut memoir, brimming with tango history and lore." – Booklist. Tonight's program includes a tango demonstration by instructors from the Century Ballroom (soon to be our next-door neighbors on Capitol Hill). The Century Ballroom hosts a monthly Milonga—held this month on February 12—and an ongoing series of tango classes. For more information about both, please see www.centuryballroom.com. Maria Finn is also the author of the newly arriving A Little Piece of Earth: How to Grow Your Own Food in Small Spaces (Rizzoli).

He is a publisher—his own independent press, Future Tense Books. He is a bookseller—Small Press Champion (yes) at Powell's in Portland. And he is a fiction writer (Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets). Kennewick native son Kevin Sampsell is now author of a rollicking, coming-of-age memoir, A Common Pornography. "Memory and truth are jagged things, and Kevin Sampsell's memoir-in-vignettes expresses this forcefully. With grit and candor, he marches us through the heartbreak, horniness, and confusion of a west coast boy becoming a man." – Robin Romm. "Embarrassing and honest, heartbreaking and hilarious, A Common Pornography is a great memoir from one of the Northwest's best writers." – Willy Valutin.

Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum makes this welcome Elliott Bay return visit this evening. Once a working newspaper journalist, now teaching science journalism at the University of Wisconsin, she is here with The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Penguin Press). The intrigue hinted at in the title is borne out in this fascinating work of historic sleuthing. "Blum makes chemistry come alive in her enthralling account of two forensic pioneers in early 20th-century New York. Blum follows the often unglamorous but monumentally important careers of Dr. Charles Norris, Manhattan's first trained chief medical examiner, and Alexander Gettler, its first toxicologist ... Blum cleverly divides her narrative by poison, providing not only a puzzling case for each noxious substance but the ingenious methods devised by the medical examiner's office to detect them ... With the pacing and rich characterization of a first-rate suspense novelist, Blum makes science accessible and fascinating." – Publishers Weekly.

Each month, the Elliott Bay Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. Our March selection is The Journey of Little Gandhi by Elias Khoury. A many-layered story of Little Gandhi, or Abd al-Karim, a shoe shine in a city fractured by war. Shot down in the street, Gandhi's story is recounted by an aging and garrulous prostitute named Alice. Ingeniously embedding stories within stories, Little Gandhi becomes the story of a city, Beirut, in the grip of civil war. Laila Lalami in the Los Angeles Times says, "Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury."

Presented by the RECOVERY CAFÉ. Author/journalist David Sheff and his son Nic make this Seattle return to discuss Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction (Mariner), David Sheff's much-praised family memoir. "A brilliant, harrowing, heartbreaking, fascinating story, full of beautiful moments and hard-won wisdom. This book will save a lot of lives and heal a lot of hearts." - Anne Lamott. "When one of us tells the truth, he makes it easier for all of us to open our hearts to our own pain and that of others. That's ultimately what Beautiful Boy is about." - Mary Pipher. Advance tickets ($10/free students) are available through www.brownpapertickets.com or 1-800-838-3006. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca). For more information, please see www.recoverycafe.org.

Pioneer Square's Boren Block One, once home to the Seattle Hotel, is now best known as the plot of land on which the infamous "Sinking Ship" parking garage now sits. The hotel's razing in 1961 helped spark the historic preservation movement in the city, a movement that would, within a decade, help save both the Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square from a similar fate. Sidney S. Andrews, author of Boren's Block One: A Sinking Ship (Create Space), speaks tonight about the block's history, which includes stories from Seattle's earliest days—totem pole thefts, Japanese American hoteliers, the ill-fated (recent) monorail, and more. We can't think of a better time to reminisce about Pioneer Square's past and contemplate its future.

Thinking of planning a "Demolition Derby" style wedding? Bride-to-be hipsters, nonconformists, and others tying the knot without joining the nation of pink and white will find comfort and advice in Ariel Meadows Stallings' book, The Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides (now in a second edition from Seal Press). "Finally, a wedding guide that won't make you puke. Whatever your idea of nontraditional may be, The Offbeat Bride is here to tell you that it's all gonna be okay." - Wendy McClure, Bust Magazine.

William L. Marcy, assistant professor of history at St. Martin's University, makes the case that the U.S. has, starting with the joining of the Reagan administration's anti-Communist initiatives with the "War on Drugs," played a large role in actually establishing the drug trade as a central economic base in Central and South America. He talks tonight about this and more, as chronicled in his book, The Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America (Lawrence Hill Books). "Marcy investigates why South American drug trafficking has remained so hardy and lucrative even as the U.S. has spent billions—usually on wrongheaded measures, as he sees it—to combat both production and export. Costly raids and drug seizures have had minimal impact on production and no impact on U.S. consumption, argues Marcy ... Marcy's connections and conclusions richly reveal how intricately the legitimate and illegal economies are entangled across two continents." - Publishers Weekly.

Three years after circumstances in Istanbul, in largest part, dictated cancellation of a planned Seattle visit for her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak makes this long-awaited first visit here, this for her newest novel, The Forty Rules of Love (Viking). The author of ten novels in her homeland, and now five in English, Elif Shafak (or Safak) in The Forty Rules of Love weaves together two narratives, set hundreds of years apart, linking an unhappy, contemporary U.S. housewife and the great Sufi mystic and poet Jelaluddin Rumi, and his dervish mentor, Shams of Tabriz. "In The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak has woven a wonderful tale of spiritual longing, brilliantly exploring the universal desire for intimacy—with another human being, as well as with the divine. It is provocative in the best sense of that term, a rare novel that succeeds in illuminating the mystical aspects of daily existence, a novel of intelligence as well as heart, with wisdom that infuses every page." - Roland Merullo. With thanks to our friends and neighbors at CAFÉ PALOMA (93 Yesler Way, www.cafepaloma.com) for their assistance. A special post-reading gathering for Café Paloma is in the works.

Co-presented with the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE. A National Security Council member during the Clinton administration who is now a professor of international relations at Georgetown, Charles Kupchan visits Town Hall with his new book, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (Princeton University Press)."This is a work of admirable breadth and unusual interest. Combining an engaging theoretical framework with an extraordinarily diverse set of case studies, Kupchan has produced a lucid work that should be valued by both the academic and policymaking worlds in sorting out the relationships among classic diplomacy, democracy, and peace." - Anthony Lake. Charles Kupchan is also the author of The End of the American Era. $5 tickets are available at the door starting at 6:30 p.m. or in advance via www.brownpapertickets.com (or 1-800-838-3006). Preferred seating for Town Hall members. Town Hall Seattle is at 1119 Eighth Avenue (entry on Seneca). For more information, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, Town Hall at (206) 652-4255, or see www.townhallseattle.org.

Breakfast with Champions presented by the KING COUNTY BAR FOUNDATION. The Tenth Annual Breakfast with Champions, a fundraising occasion sponsored by the King County Bar Association that benefits several good causes, brings former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle to Seattle as the keynote speaker. He is expected to speak on the current health-care proposals and where they stand. His most recent book is Critical: What to Do About the Health-Care Crisis (Thomas Dunne Books). Timely, yes. Tickets are $50 ($500 for a table of ten), and available through www.kcbf.org. For more information, please call (206) 267-7007. The Seattle Sheraton is at 1400 Sixth Avenue.

Few debuts have arrived on the scene with the lightness and gravity, and that harken to the original, in its fullest sense, as Zachary Mason's luminous novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Yes, that Odyssey. This is one of the rare cases where one of the enduring works is taken on, with the result that the new work itself becomes adorned with the essence of timelessness."Spellbinding. In his versions of these ancient myths, Mason twists and jinks, renegotiating the journey to Ithaca with all the guile and trickery of Odysseus himself. Rarely is it so reassuring to be in the hands of such an unreliable narrator." - Simon Armitage. "A subtle, inventive, and moving meditation on what Louis MacNeice calls 'the drunkenness of things being various.'" - John Banville.