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Birds used to teach lessons in local book southern arizona authors : Husband-wife team produces readable guides Author mixes mystery with O'odham culture A lot of area history . . . and a little bit of the law Love of golf spurs short stories Southern arizona authors : Successful tale of losses and the bomb Southern Arizona authors : Fun reads will entertain young and old 'Chopin Manuscript' wins top Audie southern arizona authors : 'Cool in Tucson' points Gunn toward Tucson Southern arizona authors : Singing Wind store to honor two writers

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In Shirley Condit Starkey's choice of parables to set the tone for her absorbing Iranian memoir, "The Scorpion Stings" (Seco Mundo Press, $18), you get a strong hint of an unsentimental story on the way.

In 1962, Capt. Jim Starkey was assigned for two years in Iran. It came near the middle of the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Official operations were fairly tranquil, but the daily skirmishes fought in the kitchens, parlors and marketplaces where the wives and children dwelt could be intense. And Tucson-born, one- time flight attendant Shirley Starkey proved to be as skillful and determined as the cadres of servants, tradesmen and merchants with whom she dealt.

The scorpion of the parable, incidentally, having bargained valiantly for its life, destroys itself, for which the laconic explanation is "It is the Middle East."

Despite the discrimination and the hard and often dangerous work, Onofre Tafoya loved every minute of being a hardrock miner. In "Mother Magma" (Hispanic Institute of Social Issues, $24.95), Tafoya ("Taffy") writes of signing on at 26, in 1955, to "a magical place," distinguished by the camaraderie of its work force and where for the first time he could feed himself, his wife and his six children "and pay cash for my groceries and gasoline." He worked for 38 years, retiring at 64. With an incredible memory for people and events, this is his story.

Benson resident Baxter Black, according to one of his fans, "is the most recognizable man in agriculture today." A large-animal veterinarian turned humorous banquet speaker, poet, essayist and novelist, he has penned a new collection, "Blazin' Bloats and Cows on Fire!" (Coyote Cowboy Company, $19.95).

But Black is not our only cowboy poet. Ken Whitecotton, who grew up cowboying on a ranch in Colorado and retired from the Pima County Sheriff's Department, has been performing his own work for several years and has collected it in "Cowboy Poetry: Tall Tails From the Lazy O" (Cowboy Minor Productions, $13.95).

Whitecotton praises simple things, such as a pair of pliers, a monthly trip to town, or, humorously, battling a jackrabbitt for his jacket.

● "The Saga of Zeke Cooper: The Beginning" (AuthorHouse, $19.99) by Ray Adkins is a prequel/sequel to the post-Civil War story of the Coopers, father and son. In Volume One, they traveled from their plantation in Virginia to a new start in the West. In Volume Two, beset by thieving relatives but heartened by a few lucky breaks, Zeke succeeds in righting numerous wrongs (including his father's murder) and, mounted on his blue roan, Blaze, with his faithful wolf-dog, Spirit, trotting by his side, heads for Tucson.

● "Dirty Genes" (Publish America, $19.95) by Marci Martin is the fifth in the quiet Hannah Pryce mystery series. Pryce, a newspaper columnist, is asked by a prostitute dying of AIDS to take in her son who, she says, is also the son of Pryce's late law enforcement husband.

● "Horatio: The Loyal Friend of Prince Hamlet"(Author House, $14.49 paper; $25.49 cloth) is another in University of Arizona emeritus psychology professor Richard W. Coan's journeys into the mind-set of famous historical characters, in this case a fictional one, fulfilling Horatio's final promise, at the conclusion of Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet," to tell "how these things came about."

● "Ironwood Forest Mystery" (Living the Dream, $18.95) by Joseph A. Mootz runs into a thicket of social issues, ranging from the hazards of urban development to undocumented immigrants and clandestine military activities. With their attendant eccentric characters, they almost overwhelm the likable Picacho Peak family of Johnny, Marcie and Tommy Blue.

You will never run across a more exotic account of protecting wild animal herds — in this case, pronghorn antelopes — than Richard M. Kerr's in "Secret Mesa" (Ringtail Press, $18). It involves Nefertiti and a hardy band of Phoenicians who got to New Mexico a long, long time before Coronado.

● "I'm Back . . . and the Truth Hurts" (iUnivers, $20.95) is a science fiction novel written by Roy C. Patterson as half the pseudonym Joseph Edwards. A mysterious traveler from outer space confides his concerns about the earth to a Washington, D.C., investigative journalist.

● "How to Slay the Worry Monster: The Arsenal You Need to Defeat Generalized Anxiety Disorder" (Double M Press, $18.95) comes from Tucson psychiatrist Dr. Martin E. Sodomsky and science writer Karen Wood. A combination workbook and self-help manual, this easy-to-follow guide puts all the old wisdom together in a convincing, readable format.