This short story collection does what Yuknavitch does best—asks you to trade your life for a book that is just strange and beautiful enough for you to make the deal. I floated through these stories the same way I’ve floated through her other work, almost unaware of time passing. Her endangered characters make terrible and …
In 2008 I quit an all-consuming sales position in Missoula and tried to move with my husband to Lake Pend Oreille in the slim Idaho panhandle, where we hoped to rededicate ourselves to our writing. Mother nature had other plans for us, blanketing the Inland Northwest with record-breaking snowfall and rendering our little cabin in …
In November 2019, Publishers Weekly published an article titled Is Chuck Palahniuk Too Big to Fail? An excerpt from that article: “Palahniuk is best known for the second book he wrote, which was the first he published: Fight Club. Released in 1996, the novel earned him an advance of $7,000. Far from an instant bestseller, …
As deep and broad and beautiful and American as the Grand Canyon. Because this torrent spills from the mind of one ordinary woman (an Ohioan, a wife, a mom, a baker of pies), because she’s hilarious, because her doubts and deprecations, her fondnesses and fears, are so mundane and relatable, because she exists as one …
On Monday afternoon, a roomful of booksellers from around the Pacific Northwest gathered to hear a panel of their peers, members of the PNBA Book Awards Committee, present for the 2020 Book Awards Preview. Over 400 books have been nominated for the award. To be eligible, a book must have been published between October 1, …
An anti-capitalist zombie narrative / coming-of-age that highlights the immigrant experience and the bleakness of the “millennial condition.” You’ve never read a dystopian like this. It’s moving, horrific, and humorous. –Kathryn, Browsers Bookshop, Olympia, WA Bring home something unexpected from a visit to Browsers Bookshop and other independent bookstores.
A classic of European literature unavailable in English for decades, Three Summers is perfectly timeless and perfectly seasonal. Set in the countryside of prewar Greece, it traces the doings and developing identities of a trio of sisters growing into adulthood, each of whom finds a different way to balance her desires for love and freedom. …
In a desert town near Joshua Tree National Park, a man dies in a hit-and-run accident. Thus opens a story of the man and his family and the investigation of his death. Alternately narrated by several different characters, we learn of backstories and side stories and brief flashbacks to Morocco and Iraq and Mexico. And …
Karl Marlantes once again brings us an epic that can’t be put down, this time set in the forests and on the rivers of southwest Washington, all soon to be engulfed by logging and fishing. Deep River combines the story of immigrant siblings (from Finland) and a larger Scandinavian community, the desires of families escaping …
This is a small treasure of a novelette with a big message. Fox 8, the narrator of the tale, is curious about the world of “yumans,” even as their encroachment (in the form of a shopping mall) threatens the habitat of his pack. To say more would give away the impact of the story’s ending, …
