At the most basic level Jim Lynch’s new novel Before the Wind is the story of the Johannssens—a sailing family in Seattle, Washington. Or as Josh Johannssen’s younger sister Ruby liked to claim “And there’s a reason we’re so good with boats: we have a higher salt content in our blood!” A fact which his long suffering older brother Bernard would point out was based on ... Read More...
Woman with a Gun
Stacy Adams wants to write a novel but is finding it difficult while stuck in a dead-end job as a receptionist at a NYC law firm. When she comes across a provocative photo of a woman wearing a wedding dress clutching an antique gun behind her back at the edge of the ocean she is instantly inspired and decides that this photo will be the basis for her novel. She learns it was ... Read More...
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest
Claire and Dora Williamson are wealthy British women using their inheritance to travel the world in the early 1900s. Like many people of the time they are convinced that they could be in better health and like many women, with so little understanding of their own bodies, they believed that the slightest discomfort was indicative of a greater disorder. To that end they abandoned ... Read More...
This is Between Us
This is Between Us is an intimate look at the minutia that comprises a relationship. And not in that lovey-dovey, fictional way but in the real, confusing, tedious, painful way. Author Kevin Sampsell navigates the terrain of affairs, blended families, teenagers, and jealousy in quirky little vignettes. The story covers five years that begin as an affair on both sides, move ... Read More...
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Oftentimes when a book is filled with such outrageous, politically incorrect, hilarious humor it can become one note. Thankfully, when handled by a gifted author with the ability to create multi-faceted characters and situations this is not the case with Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Maria Semple is one of those people whose work you read and think, “I’d really like to go out ... Read More...
The Orchardist
It’s already been said but bears repeating: Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist is a stunning debut; the story of a plot of land and the people who shape it while it shapes them. When William Talmadge is nine he and his sister, Elsbeth settle into a remote, rural area of north-central Washington state with their mother. She has no explanation in choosing this location but, even at ... Read More...
