Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, Victoria, BC This stunning book kept me guessing at every turn. It begins on a sugar plantation in Barbados, when an 11-year old slave, Wash, is plucked from his unrelenting work by his master’s brother to be his own assistant. Titch is a scientist, and Wash’s life is about to …
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, a trade association of independent booksellers, publishers, authors, and librarians, announced the 2019 Northwest Book Awards Shortlist, selected by a committee of independent booksellers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. From more than 400 nominations, the committee chose the following 12 finalists, written or illustrated by creators from the …
Washington State Book Awards winners were announced on Saturday, October 13, 2018 at the Seattle Public Library. The Washington State Book Awards honor works of outstanding literary merit by Washington authors. An award is given based on the strength of the publication’s literary merit, lasting importance and overall quality to an author who was born in …
If you are looking for a good contemporary novel with a touch of Gothic horror, then this book is for you. As in her first novel, The Essex Serpent, Perry’s tale revolves around an old legend which seemingly comes to life. Helen’s life is forever changed at a coffee shop in Prague, when her friend …
This is a book about family secrets and a ghost. Not new ideas, certainly, but Stein’s story of a young boy returning to the family mansion with his dad during a trial separation from his mother is, at times, gut-wrenching in the discomfort that dredging up the past brings. And this family has a particularly …
I can’t recommend this book enough! An instant classic in psychological realism, cognitive dysphoria and queer feminist fiction. A must-read for fans of Shirley Jackson & Angela Carter. Machado is a a genre blender and master storyteller, weaving the surreal, fantastical and the horrific. Incredibly relevant. Gives voice to women’s rage, pain and oppression. Effortlessly …
About a year ago, I read The Dragontail Buttonhole, the first book in a trilogy by Peter Curtis, in which he details his family’s flight from Prague after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. That story read like the best spy fiction of that period of infamy. Peter has followed that story with Cafe Budapest. After an unbelievable trek …
Riveting and difficult to put down narrative from the point of view of a cult survivor. I’m not sure if this spoke to me so powerfully because I was a child in Texas when the Branch Davidian massacre took place, or if it’s just really great writing, but if you are looking for a page-turner …
For me there are two main kinds of books with queer characters: those where queerness plays an integral role in the story and those where no one in the book bats an eye at a character’s queerness. Both are tremendously important. The first so that we can tell stories about our culture, how we got …
I’m not giving anything away by saying that the mother in this story disappears without a trace (mostly) in 1967. It’s on the first page. But one thing I liked about this book is that I became so interested in the characters that I often completely forgot there was any sort of mystery/what happened element …
