Apocalypse not just idle talk of doom

After the dedication page, noted naturalist Craig Childs wants readers to understand the twin meanings of “apocalyse” as he uses them in his new adventure-science book, “Apocalyptic Planet, Field Guide to the Everending Earth.” To the ancient Greeks, Child writes, the word meant “the lifting of a veil or a revelation. The common definition as a destructive worldwide event is more recent. In this book, it is both.”

Childs gives a free talk about his book at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, in the theater at the N4th Arts Center, 4904 Fourth NW. His on-the-ground research takes him to such places as Tibet, where he navigates a river, to northern Patagonia in Chile, where he peers at receding glaciers, and to Alaska, where he observes the underwater remains of the Bering Land Bridge. In a chapter on his trek through Mexico’s Sonoran Desert, Childs quotes big-picture climate researchers as concluding that humans are underestimating the severity of future droughts. “Even in the absence of climate change, even without human contribution of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, mega-droughts happen in the normal course of events. So far, we’ve been lucky.” Humans, Childs quotes one researcher, are making a mega-drought more likely.

AT BOOKWORKS: Santa Fe author Jo-Ann Mapson chats about her new novel, “Finding Casey,” at 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13. In the story, Glory and Joe Vigil’s adopted daughter Juniper has tried to insulate herself from the grief brought about by the disappearance of her sister Casey eight years before. Still, Juniper holds out hope her sister is alive. When fieldwork for a college course takes Juniper to a pueblo north of her Santa Fe home, that hope may be well-founded.

Mapson said she developed the plot after reading about the true-crime case of Jaycee Dugard, who was discovered 18 years after being kidnapped and held in captivity.

The stand-alone novel has some of the characters who were in her award-winning novel “Solomon’s Oak.”

“Finding Casey,” says best-selling author Jodi Picoult, is “a redemptive tale that proves the threads binding a family are unbreakable, no matter how far apart we are flung by fate.”

Bookworks is at 4022 Rio Grande NW.

IN OLD TOWN: Author W. Michael Farmer signs his historical novel “Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright: The Betrayals of Pancho Villa” from 1-3 p.m. today at Treasure House Books & Gifts, 2012 South Plaza NW. Dreams of a fiery jaguar haunt Henry Grace when his old friend Pancho Villa asks for help in fighting a civil war.

AT BARNES & NOBLE: Josi Kilpack signs her book “Tres Leches Cupcakes” (Book 8 in the Culinary Mystery Series) at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, at the bookstore in Coronado Shopping Center.

IN SANTA FE: Collected Works, 202 Galisteo, hosts these author events. Veteran Taos writer John Nichols and freshwater fishing guide Taylor Streit talk about their new books at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9. Nichols’ latest novel is “On Top of Spoon Mountain,” a story of love, anarchy and the Rocky Mountains, and Streit’s book is “Instinctive Flyfishing,” a trout-fishing guidebook. … Frances Koenig discusses the large-format photography book by her late husband Karl Koenig at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11. The book is titled “Fragments: Architecture of the Holocaust — An Artist’s Journey Through the Camps.” … Jimmy Santiago Baca reads from and talks about “The Lucia Poems” at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12. It is the second book of his “Breaking Bread With the Darkness” fiction series. Baca also is a poet and memoirist who is a recipient of the American Book Award.

IN LAS VEGAS: Ray John de Aragon signs copies of his newest books, “Hidden History of Spanish New Mexico” and “Enchanted Legends and Lore of New Mexico: Witches, Ghosts and Spirits,” at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13, at the city of Las Vegas Museum, 727 Grand Ave., Las Vegas, N.M.