Plan to have a load of spooky fun this month at Bookmans Flagstaff. Want to try your hand at scary crafts? This past Monday night we made mason jar hanging pumpkin lanterns. We'll make bat headbands at 7 p.m. next Monday, October 10 and we’ll make Dia De Los Muertos shrines at 7 p.m. on Monday, October 17. Supplies are provided and the events are free and open to the public for folks over eighteen.

Put on your classic rocker attire and head bang on over to Bookmans Speedway this Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. We're rooking and rolling for National Chess Day. We are hosting this party along with 9 Queens, an organization committed to empowerment through chess. You don't have to be Bobby Fischer to participate because this event is for all ages and skill levels. Grand Masters need not apply for this family-friendly event but for the uber competitive there will be a 20 person simultaneous chess match with a chess professional. Listen up n00bs, 9 Queens will provide free lessons for anyone who is interested and prizes will be awarded throughout the event. We special ordered chess cupcakes from Red Velvet (while supplies last and one per person) for those who complete a certain amount of stations.

Elisa McKnight is a teacher running to instill a love of learning the Montessori way. Elisa McKnight founded and is the executive director and primary teacher at Haven Montessori School in Flagstaff. She is also a member of Bookmans Project: Educate.

We had an opportunity to ask Elisa a few questions about her experience as a teacher and her ideas about education. Read on to learn more about this passionate educator.

Most crafts require a combination of skill, speed and patience, but they can also be learned on a more basic level by virtually anyone. Each month Bookmans Mesa offers free craft workshops for adults. Our lovely hostesses, Sarah, Megan and Nancy, offer a variety of artistic recycled crafting with found objects. Join Megan in the café for Dia de los Muertos Cigar Box Shrines at 10 a.m. this Saturday, Oct. 15. We’ll provide the supplies; you bring your enthusiasm and creativity!

The weather is finally cooling off and we can step outdoors without that melting flesh feeling. All the more reason to hop on your bike, board, car, moped or motorcycle to try something new and fun by participating in the October '11 Phoenix Edition of the Bookmans Treasure Hunt: The Search for Local Business Booty. In September local business Pink House Boutique hid the treasure in their adorable fashion powerhouse in historic downtown Glendale.

This Ticket Tuesday is brought to you by Arizona Theatre Company's God of Carnage, a 2009 Tony-Award winning best play. God of Carnage opens Saturday, Oct. 15 and runs through Nov.12 at the Temple of Music and Art in Downtown Tucson.

"I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you," is a common saying among children but isn't the level you should stoop to as an adult. We know kids play rough but their parents can play even rougher. God of Carnage peers in to the conversations of characters as maturity levels devolve in the face of marital and parental trials and what starts off as an civilized evening for adults quickly turns into a petty recreation of their children's behavior.

Are you in the Nancy Drew Clues Crew? If not it's time to start sleuthing! This month's Flagstaff edition of the Twitter Treasure Hunt starts today so you’ll need to follow @bookmansflag from your Twitter account to get those three magical clues that will lead you to free local business loot. What's that? Twitter Treasure? If you're not already in the know, Bookmans partners with another local businesses each month to feature our friends and give away great free stuff. Previous local businesses have included Babies-to-Kids, Fizz Bath Shop, Babbitt’s Backcountry Outfitters and Local Color to name a few.

Are you ready for some spooktacular fun? The weather is nice but we don't want to scare away our Bookmans Mesa neighbors with the Monster Block Party so we're bringing it inside starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 22.

The controversial follow up to the 2010 release of The Human Centipede: First Sequence was originally banned in the United Kingdom for its "revolting" content. The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence shows at The Royale in Downtown Mesa until Thursday, Oct. 27 and we want you to check it out in all its revolting glory.

Listen up all you teens who say there's nothing to do. When we were your age we had to walk two miles in the snow, barefoot, uphill, both ways to get to the coolest local bookstore.

Yeah, we didn't buy that crap when our parents tried to pull it on us either. Even so, in honor of life being better than during the stone ages, we are hosting our first ever Teen Night starting at 7 p.m. this Friday at Bookmans Ina in Tucson. Only the coolest people ages 13-17 are encouraged to join us on this night for awesomely free fun. (That would be you because we're an inclusive sorta place where everyone is cool.) Grab your friends and hang out Bookmans style.

We are lucky to have our wonderful, intelligent, hard-working and soft-hearted book supervisor at Bookmans Flagstaff. Matt Christiansen has held the Book Supervisor position for longest of anyone at Bookmans and he claims he's still learning. He met his wife Angi here and they've been married for fifteen years. Angi is our Flagstaff book keeper and has been with Bookmans for twenty-one years! Matt and Angi have two daughters, fifteen-year-old Cassidy and eleven-year-old Natalie, who practically grew up in the store.

Matt is so exceptionally good at what he does for Bookmans that The Arizona Daily Sun published a feature on Matt this past August that was picked up by influential book trade industry e-newsletter Shelf Awareness. We asked Matt to expand upon how he got started at Bookmans, the good and bad times he's spent here, and how it is that he's stayed with Bookmans for 19 years.

Bookmans will be in attendance at Ignite Phoenix #11. We can't get enough of these evenings dedicated to fostering, inspiring and sharing information with Phoenix's creative community. Ignite Phoenix takes place at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 28 at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. As sponsors, Ignite invites us to create a 30 second video expressing our passions. One of our most popular sponsorship videos has been Bookmans Does Book Dominoes. We even earned a Silver Addy for it!

We are having a blast getting to know the people who participate in Project: Educate, 1317 and Kids Club. Recently we met Logan (age 2) and Kyra (age 4) McDowell, two smarties from Kids Club. With the help from their mother Kathryn McDowell, we squeezed some primo information from them.