This is a true story about a girl who was sent to live in Japan with her grandmother for six months. Waka is very funny, and it was very interesting reading about what Japan was like for Japanese Americans in the ’80s. Definitely made we want to visit Japan someday! –Hailey, Liberty Bay Books, Poulsbo, …
As a kid growing up in late 1950s and 1960s Seattle, imagined visits to foreign lands were a focus of my inner life, what with 707s (and later 747s) soaring over the city, and twice- or thrice-yearly sightings of ocean liners that actually traveled all the way around the world. As it turns out, I wasn’t …
I have been reading books since the early 1950s and reviewing/posting the reviews for the past decade. I do not know how I missed Blake Pierce for all of those years. I have just read book one in the European Voyage Cozy Mystery series entitled Murder (and Baklava). It has two components that I am …
Portland author Ellen Notbohm interviewed author Linda Stewart Henley of Anacortes, WA. She Reads recognized Estelle as “One of Summer’s Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Titles” for 2020. The novel is available now through independent bookstores. EN: Tell us about Estelle. LSH: Estelle is an historical novel about the painter Edgar Degas’s five-month stay with his …
I love Donna Leon’s Brunetti mysteries! To me, her latest, Trace Elements, is one of her more “Italian” stories. There is a lot about the canals of Venice and Venetian politics, as well as a mystery that starts with the deathbed whisper, “They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no.” –Wendy B., …
I love to learn things from the books I read, and this book taught me so much— not only about the South Korean island Jeju, its matrifocal society of haenyeo (women divers), and its culture and traditions, but also about friendship, the horrors of war, loyalty, and grief. The Island of Sea Women is vividly imagined and …
Sujata Massey introduced us to Perveen Mistry in The Widows of Malabar Hill and has now released a sequel, The Satapur Moonstone. The mysteries are a delightful blend of thoughtful lawyering and high-stakes drawing room drama. Inspired by real-life lawyer Cornelia Sorabji (who also makes an appearance in the first book in the series), Perveen …
This heart-breaking novel is storytelling at its best! It follows Rachel, a young Hawaiian girl whose dreams are shattered the day she is taken from her family and sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined settlement for lepers on the island of Moloka’i. Rich in history and characters, this special story will stay with you forever. And now after …
This book may be more for ex-kids like me, for whom the mysterious M. Sasek created a fascinating world of cities and landmarks in the ’50s and ’60s in his This Is… picture books. This Is Paris, This Is San Francisco, This Is Hong Kong, This Is Cape Canaveral: all told, he made eighteen locations his own, …
What a subtitle: “An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders!” This is beautiful, bizarre, intriguing, absurd– arm-chair travel at its most curious and delightful. I’m recommending this as the gift to get for the person who has everything and/or the most interesting person on your list. Life will never be boring with a book like …
