On Wednesdays, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Bestseller List is published. Every week, we love to see what books have been most popular in independent bookstores around our region. As we peruse the list, we look for something special to showcase. Then we present this weekly feature: Thursday Themes. This week features many stories that highlight the strength …
An excerpt from Forest Avenue Press publisher and author Laura Stanfill’s August 30, 2026 substack: […] The Sea-Glass Shore by Julie Salmon Kelleher[,] Forest Avenue’s Sept. 1 release[,] is a selkie story that is not about entrapment and escape like the original seal-person myth. It’s a novel about what it takes to stay—in a marriage, in …
My aching aging-millennial heart feels seen after reading this novel by Grant Grinder. Equal parts funny, beautiful and tragic, [this is a book] I couldn’t put […] down. Grinder builds relentless momentum through skillful point-of-view shifts and a plot structured around five parties spanning twenty years of friendship. The protagonists—a group of college friends—support each …
[In] Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Truths, the follow-up to her bestselling Big Little Lies, it’s ten years later, and the kids are all in high school now. The core group from the first book—Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata, and Bonnie—are all dealing with midlife complications. Everything from the past is good and buried, except . . . …
The Wild Beneath is an epic love story as well as a love letter to the ocean: its danger, mystery, and beauty. In the aftermath of a Pacific Northwest tsunami, Annie—who has lived on a sailboat nearly her whole life—is reeling on the shore, where she’s stayed behind with her best friend, Evan. Her parents and …
Another solid cast of characters from Rainbow Rowell! How does she consistently write characters I want to be friends with?? Returning to some of the themes Rowell introduced in Eleanor & Park, Cherry is learning how to love herself in a world that tells her she shouldn’t. Plus, she runs into an old crush at …
The gardens of Lilymoor House are enchanting, whimsical, and full of mystery. When grieving gardener Sophie escapes from the big city to spend the summer revitalizing Lilymoor in time for the bicentennial celebration, she doesn’t quite realize just how much work she is in for. A secret garden behind a blue door makes its appearance …
Two things I love in a book: Kristina Forest’s writing, and the fake-dating trope. Noelle is normally a bridesmaid-for-hire, but when immediate sparks fly between her and Jeremiah upon meeting, he asks if she’d be willing to play along as his girlfriend for an awkward family reunion. Did I mention their family runs a well-renowned …
The Works of Vermin is at once a vibrant fantastical world and an eerie commentary on class inequality and social structures. Environmental toxins affecting both lower and upper classes are also the rare resources coveted by elites; characters’ lives are shaped by contracts of employment and marriage. Ennes’s prose is an extension of their world: …
On Wednesdays, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Bestseller List is published. Every week, we love to see what books have been most popular in independent bookstores around our region. As we peruse the list, we look for something special to showcase. Then we present this weekly feature: Thursday Themes. This week, author Sarah Beth Durst is a bestseller …
