Amador Book: DUKE CITY TALES

Cover drawing by Claiborne O'Connor
Trade paper -- 200 pp.
3rd Printing 2026
ISBN-13: 978-0-938513-00-1
$21.95

Balloon/Luminarias

Duke City is Albuquerque -- the commercial, educational, medical, military metropolis that contains half the population of New Mexico and home for more than forty years of activist, mythologist and story-teller Harry Willson.

DUKE CITY TALES
STORIES FROM ALBUQUERQUE
by Harry Willson

Luminarias, balloons, atomic bombs, bats, false arrest, hunting, finding, moonwatching, DWI, cops, schools, litter, mufflers, stray dogs, and a fumbling old alchemist, who attempts to use his occult powers to bring about his goal of peace and quiet, with results that are comical and less than satisfactory, giving pause to those of us who feel called upon to change the world.

40th Anniversary Reprint to be released in September 2026

Read an excerpt!

from the back cover...
Welcome to Harry Willson's head, circa 1986. He had a lot on his mind. Philosopher, teacher, ex-clergyman, anti-nuke activist, burgeoning geek, grandpa, gardener, worm farmer, beekeeper, and freelance writer. He described his outlook as, "Planetary, unitary, peacemaking, anti-racist and anti-sexist, sensing the importance of the inner, curious, sensual, mythic."
In 1986, Harry founded Amador Publishers with his wife Adela Amador in Albuquerque's South Valley, and published Duke City Tales as their opening salvo. East Coast reviewers thought he'd made it all up. Those familiar with the Land of Enchantment knew better.

Willson's keen insight into human nature is intermingled cleverly within the stories' events, revealing both the stupid and the serious, the touching and the absurd, leaving the reader feeling that he has just been exposed to a truth that he has sensed before, but which for the first time is verbalized.

-- THE SMALL PRESS REVIEW

...a striking shift away from contemporary fiction's usual assumption that violence, oppression and injustice are somehow 'natural.' ...Willson keeps reminding us that it's O.K. to believe in peace.

-- PLOWSHARES PRISONER

...a series of vignettes about modern life in the Sun Belt with a quiet sort of intimacy. This book will be of great interest to anyone curious about contemporary Southwest fiction.

-- THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW

...simple and direct.		...highly satisfactory.
-- BOOKTALK		-- NEW MEXICO MAGAZINE

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