New York is a city that really knows how to celebrate the arrival of new books. And almost every event on this month's list involves a party! But if there isn't a party, the surroundings speak seriously of books, from the New York Public Library to the legendary Strand Bookstore. So before you go shopping for your summer beach reads, spend the month of June mingling with the photographers, artists, authors and publishers of 19 exceptional offerings. Please check websites for details as schedules are subject to change.

Two from Inside: The Chelsea Hotel by Julia Calfee, published by powerHouse Books.

June 2, 7:00 pm: Slide show and book signing with Julia Calfee for Inside: The Chelsea Hotel. McNally Robinson, 52 Prince Street, New York, NY. 212.274.1160.

Published in conjunction with the 125th anniversary of the Chelsea Hotel, Inside: The Chelsea Hotel is a place where excess is welcome. Julia Calfee documents not only the archetypes and atmosphere there, but also conjures up the ghosts of its denizens, such as Mark Twain, Edith Piaf, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jasper Johns, Jack Kerouac, Wilhelm de Kooning, Jimi Hendrix, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

June 6, 6:00 - 7:30 pm: Book signing with Jessica Todd Harper for Interior Exposure. International Center of Photography Museum Store, featuring DJ sets and complimentary wine. Friday admission is by donation from 5:00 - 8:00 pm. International Center of Photography 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, New York City. 212.857.9725. Please check the ICP website for exhibitions and other events.

Jessica Todd Harper began in 2000 these large format color portraits of her family and friends following a project she started during high school when her grandmother became ill with Alzheimer's disease. Bathed in natural light, and exploiting long exposure times in carefully arranged domestic settings, Harper's images recall 16th and 17th century Dutch and Northern Renaissance painting and at the same time the contemporary photography of Sally Mann and Arnold Newman. The book includes a foreword by Larry Fink.

June 5, 6:00 - 8:00 pm: Book signing with Sage Sohier for Perfectible Worlds at the opening reception for an exhibition of the same title. Foley Gallery, 547 West 27th St. between 10th & 11th Aves. 212.244.9081.

Begun soon after 9/11, Perfectible Worlds is a collection of environmental portraits looks in on people who build extravagant miniature worlds; people who have extraordinary collections; and others who immerse themselves in unusual pursuits. Each photograph reveals a private world that few are privileged to see. This kind of absorption - what we do in an imperfect world to console ourselves - struck me as a subject worthy of exploration. Sage Sohier, 2006

June 7 and 8, 11:00 am - 6:00 pm: Book Signing with illustrator Paul Hoppe for Metal Man, written by Aaron Reynolds. MoCCA Arts Festival at the Puck Building, 293 Lafayette Street, New York, NY. 212.254.3511.

White Album, the new edition of Rabid Rabbit, of which Paul is co-founder and art director, will also be available. The rest of the RR staff, Co-founder C.M.Butzer, S.Y.Choi and Ben Trinh will be there to show off previous issues, including No's 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Special discount prices are being offered to MoCCA visitors. Rabid Rabbit Table B46 at the Puck Building. Tickets are $10 each day or $15 for a weekend pass.

June 9, 6:30 pm: Talk and book signing with Elena Dorfman for Fandomania - Characters & Cosplay. The New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan Branch, 455 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, New York, NY. 212.340.0849.

Photographer Elena Dorfman examines the pop culture phenomenon of "cosplay" (the merging of "costume" and "play"), in which participants dress up in costumes - and live part of their lives - and characters from video games, animated films, and Japanese graphic novels. Dorfman's portraits of "cosplayers" puts the spotlight on a subculture that is exploding internationally. Please check the Aperture website for exhibitions and other events.

June 10, 7:00 - 8:30 pm: Book signing with Peter Schjeldahl for Let's See: Writings on Art from The New Yorker. Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway at 12th Street, New York, NY. 212.473.1452.

Art critic at The New Yorker since 1998, Peter Schjeldahl has been described as America's most influential writer on art. Covering subjects drawn from a broad canvas of the history of art - from ancient Greece to the present - the writings collected here seek out the essence of the individual artist or work under discussion, but they never lose sight of the bigger picture: What is beauty? What does it mean to be an American artist? What can the art we produce and admire tell us about ourselves?

June 11, 5:30 - 8:00 pm: Reception and Book Signing at Rizzoli for powerHouse Books authors. Rizzoli Bookstore, 31 West 57^th Street, New York, NY. 212.759.2424.

Rizzoli hosts a special book signing for the edgy Lost Boys and outrageous NYC Go-Go by Slava Mogutin; the glamorous Jeremiah: A Romantic Vision by Jeremiah Goodman; the incomparable Callas Kissed Me...Lenny Too! By John Gruen; the evocative Room Service by Adam Raphael; and the iconic Casa Susanna by Michel Husrst and Robert Swope. Please check the powerHouse website for exhibitions and other events.

June 12, 7:00 - 10:00 pm: Reception and book signing with The Snorri Bros. for Barflies. The powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn. 212.604.9074 x123.

In its first year, 1993, the electric atmosphere at Kaffibarinn Frikki & Dýrið, a bar in Reykjavík, Iceland, became the source of legends, and Kaffibarinn (as it was commonly known) became the epicenter of Iceland's Gen-X. The people portrayed in Barflies are the Kaffibarinn regulars, the people who made the scene. The pictures in the book originally appeared in an exhibition in Reykjavík in 1994, and have scarcely seen the light of day since then - until now.

June 12, 6:00 - 8:00 pm: Book signing with James Mollison for The Disciples and James and Other Apes. Opening reception for an exhibition of his work, Hasted Hunt Gallery, 529 West 20th St. 3rd Floor, betw 10th & 11th Aves. 212.627.0006

June 20, 6:00 - 7:00 pm: Book signing with Sienna Craig for Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage Through the Himalayas, followed by a reading and discussion at 7:15 pm. Rubin Museum of Art, 7^th Avenue and 17^th Street, New York, New York, NY. 212.620.5000 x344.

At age 19, Sienna Craig made her first visit to Mustang, an ethnically Tibetan area of Nepal. As a horsewoman and a student of anthropology, she sought not only to understand what it was like to rely on horses to navigate through the windswept valleys and plains of the Himalayas, but also to grasp how horses lent meaning - through myth, ritual, and metaphor - to the lives of Mustang's people. Craig subsequently completed her PhD in anthropology. She currently teaches medical anthropology at Dartmouth College and with her husband, founded Drokpa, a non-profit that funds grass-roots development and social enterprise in the Himalayas.

June 24, 7:00 pm: Book signing with Bill Owens for the recently re-released Suburbia. Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway at 12^th Street. 212.473.1452.

Around 1968 Bill Owens became a staff photographer at the Livermore Independent, where he worked for 10 years, entrenching himself in the suburban landscape of California. Fascinated by his neighbors and their surroundings, he found them to be willing co-conspirators in his idea for a photographic survey of suburbia. The resulting book projects, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, were instant national hits that eventually rose to cult status. The new edition of Suburbia includes previously unpublished images.

Left to right: Tokyo and My Daughter #120FCN; Boy 4, Sagamiono, 1996; My Dog, Royce 1, 2005, copyright Takashi Homma, from Takashi Homma: Tokyo (Aperture, May 2008).

July 2, 6:00 pm: Book signing with Takashi Homma for Takashi Homma: Tokyo. Books Kinokuniya, 1073 Avenue of the Americas (between 40th & 41 St), New York, NY. 212.869.1700.

Since the advent of photography, certain cities have become inextricably intertwined with the images taken by great photographers - from Eugene Atget in turn-of-the-century Paris to Ed Ruscha in a late-sixties Los Angeles. While Daido Moriyama documented the disaffection and dissipation of postwar Tokyo, Takashi Homma deftly picks up the baton with a contemporary portrait of the modern-day metropolis that is both cinematic and complex. His vision of Tokyo navigates a finely nuanced line that carves out a sleek, contemporary vision of a postmodern megalopolis populated by a new generation of video game aficionados and enervated fashionistas.