This is a fascinating true crime story that revolves around three people: a reverend who was accused of multiple murders, the lawyer that defended him, and the author that wanted to tell their story. The author was Harper Lee, and the story of Reverend Willie Maxwell was to be the subject of her second, long-awaited …
This is fascinating historical true crime, in which Weinman shares the real story behind controversial fictional novel Lolita. Weinman tells of Sally Horner’s kidnapping and 21 months of mistreatment at the the hands of a Frank La Salle. Through extensive archival research, Weinman is able to make a persuasive claim that Vladmir Nabakov’s Lolita was inspired …
There’s a scene in A False Report I think of often. Stacy Galbraith, a police detective in Golden, Colorado, goes home after work. She tells her husband about a case she’s working—a rape investigation with all kinds of chilling twists. Her husband works at another police department, nearby. He listens, then tells her: We’ve got …
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 …
Seattle7Writers, the nonprofit collective of Pacific Northwest authors, partners with independent bookstores this summer to introduce readers to favorite authors and raise money for literacy nonprofits. In July, Island Books hosted the Seattle7Writers cookout to benefit Team Read, a nonprofit organization that pairs struggling young readers with trained teen reading coaches for one-on-one tutoring after school and …
This one has obsessive fly-tiers who are willing to steal feathers from the British Museum of Natural History, a spin through naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace’s predilection for charting and collecting feathers, and a long-form discussion about the nature of beauty. Wallace, as you may know, was one of the first to propose the idea of …
I have less than zero interest in serial killers, but Bill James, the cranky Kansan baseball analyst, was the J.K. Rowling of my sports-nerd youth, and if that’s what he turns his mind to, I’ll follow. And I’m glad I did. Taking the shards of small-town reporting available to them, he and his intrepid daughter, …
Montana author Michael Finkel delves into the story of Christopher Knight, a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for three decades, in his new book, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. The interview below is from his publisher, Penguin Random House. You can read the …
The fall of the Soviet Union left a power vacuum in which organized crime and former KGB agents coalesced in the newly capitalist state. The 2006 London assassination by poison of dissident Alexander Litivinenko served as a lethal threat to Russians who would defy the kleptocratic state and also displayed the willingness of some Western …
Edmund de Waal’s upcoming nonfiction title, The White Road: Journey Into an Obsession, is causing a flurry of excitement at my bookstore. Another blend of memoir and history with magnificent art at its center, it has customers placing pre-orders in anticipation of its November 10 on-sale date. While you wait, might we suggest some other …
