Local books: Alex Kuo's new poetry and fiction

New releases

"A Chinaman's Chance: New and Selected Poems 1960-2010" by Alex Kuo (Wordcraft of Oregon, $15) and "The Man Who Dammed the Yangtze" by Alex Kuo (Haven Books, $15). A new poetry collection and a novel by Kuo, writer-in-residence and English professor at Washington State University. "Chinaman's Chance" has poems grouped around the themes "Geography," "Secrets" and "War": "Yangtze" is about two mathematicians, a Chinese woman and a Chinese-American man, who struggle to balance their values against "the global corporate determinism of dam building." Kuo will read from his poetry collection at 7 p.m. May 12 at Seattle's University Book Store; free (206-634-3400 or www.ubookstore.com).

"Useful Gifts: Stories" by Carole Glickfeld (University of Georgia Press, $18.95). New in paperback: 11 interrelated stories about the mystery of childhood, from the perspective of a child of profoundly deaf parents living in Manhattan in the 1940s and 1950s. Glickfeld is a Seattle writer and teacher. These stories won the 1989 Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction.

"The Rule of Nine: A Paul Madriani Novel" by Steve Martini (Harper Paperbacks, $9.99). Mass-market paperback edition of the popular Bellingham thriller writer's book about an extremist bent on destroying the entire U.S. Supreme Court. San Diego defense attorney Madriani is drawn into the race to stop him.

"The Guardian" by Margaret Mallory (Grand Central/Forever, $7.99). A new medieval romance by an Olympia author; set in 16th-century Scotland, it's the story of Ian MacDonald, who comes home after years of fighting abroad to defend his clan and reunite with a bride he married and left long ago.