I am a big fan of J.A. Jance novels. This is one of
my favorites because in it the author brings together two of her best
characters, Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont and Arizona Sheriff Joanna
Brady.
Beaumont is a great character, flawed by a constant battle with
alcoholism and bad choices. Sheriff Brady is a female law enforcement officer
with family problems and a job generally dominated by men. Sheriff Brady is
none too happy when the powers that be decide to send Beaumont to help this
female sheriff investigate the murder of a talented artist who recently
arrived in Brisbee, Arizona, from the West Coast.
I have read all of Jance’s
Sheriff Brady and J.P. Beaumont novels. Individually these characters are very
entertaining, and Jance does a brilliant job of bringing them together to solve
this difficult case.
For the first time, critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling suspense master J.A. Jance brings together her two most beloved creations: Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady and Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont.
The dead woman on a cold slab in the Arizona morgue was a talented artist recently arrived from the West Coast. The Washington State Attorney General's office thinks this investigation is too big for a small-town female law officer to handle, so they're sending Sheriff Joanna Brady some unwanted help—a seasoned detective named Beaumont. Sheriff Brady resents his intrusion, and Bisbee, Arizona, with its ghosts and memories, is the last…
I am, first and foremost, a reader. I started writing because my debut novel, releasing September 7, wouldn’t leave me alone. Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction tends to have that impact on me as a reader, so I wanted to create that same impact in other readers. Lately, my TBR has been dominated by indie-authored books, given my own decision to pursue indie publishing. I love the dystopian classics—especially Alduous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Orwell- and I read the latest traditionally published dystopian books. But I find indie authors like the ones I’ve featured here tell compelling stories about important topics that perhaps many traditional publishers won’t publish.
Originally intended as a screenplay, this is rife with vivid imagery and fast-paced action. From the jump, I was hooked, staying up all night to finish the book. It is set in the aftermath of the apocalypse in Seattle, WA.
I loved the developing romance between Beth and Ryker and how Myhre threw us for a few loops along the way. It has heart-pounding action, vibrant interpersonal relationships, and a great atmosphere. If I were at the end of the world, I’d want Beth and Ryker on my team! Fans of other post-apocalyptic indie authors, Harley Tate, Kyla Stone, and Nate Johnson, will enjoy this fast-paced post-apocalyptic romantic thriller.
Was it love at first sight? Fate had other plans. At the dawn of the apocalypse, a naïve, but resourceful woman must fight her way through nature, humankind and herself to reunite with her family.
Beth has cocooned herself in routine after a devastating family tragedy upended her world years ago, but a chance encounter with a Marine named Ryker sends ripples through her carefully guarded world. He is smitten. She is unsure.
The city is thrown into chaos when a missile strikes near Spokane, testing Beth's newfound optimism. As strife escalates, Beth must lead her friends on a perilous…
I like books about big families, especially unusual ones, but I have only one sister and only one child, so when I set out to write about these families, I read about them first. We place so much importance on how kids are raised, what kind of childhood and home life and family they have growing up, what gifts and what challenges they’re bestowed by genetics, history, identity, society, circumstance. Siblings usually share all or at least most of these markers and yet turn into often wildly different adults. It’s also true that all those fine sibling balances – love/hate, adored/annoyed, admired/appalled, alike/different – are great fun to read and write.
The sisters in Girls Burn Brighter aren’t related by blood or family or tradition or history. They are sisters in ways much more profound and important and life-changing and path-determining than that. This beautiful novel traverses continents and cultures to prove blood ties and family ties have nothing on sister ties.
'A treat for Ferrante fans, exploring the bonds of friendship and how female ambition beats against the strictures of poverty and patriarchal societies' Huffington Post
An electrifying debut novel - the story of the unbreakable bond between two girls driven apart, and their journeys across continents to find each other again.
Poornima and Savitha, born in poverty, have known little kindness in their lives until they meet as teenagers. When an act of devastating cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend.
Alternating between the girls' perspectives as they face apparently insurmountable…
From New York Times bestselling author Jason June comes a moving and hilarious sex-positive teen rom-com about the complexities of first loves, first hookups, and first heartbreaks-and how to stay true to yourself while embracing what you never saw coming, that's perfect for fans of Sandhya Menon and Becky Albertalli.
There's one thing Jay Collier knows for sure-he's a statistical anomaly as the only out gay kid in his small rural Washington town. While all his friends can't stop talking about their heterosexual hookups and relationships, Jay can only dream of his own firsts, compiling a romance to-do list of…
I have always been both a nature lover and committed urbanite, and those twin passions have shaped my approach to history. My very first published writing (when I was ten years old) was an essay about a willow tree in an urban park I loved in Minneapolis, MN. Now, as a historian, I have written about guerrilla gardening in the shadow of the Berlin wall, forestry outside Detroit, and working-class foraging practices in the nineteenth century. My interest in urban nature remains not just academic, but personal. On weekends, you’ll find me mapping native and invasive species with my ten-year-old son along the River Rouge in Dearborn, MI.
From microscopic tardigrades in the moss on her roof to a cacophony of crows in an Ikea parking lot, Brenner finds teeming nonhuman life in the most overlooked urban spaces of her Seattle hometown. Her pocket-sized safaris combine personal discovery and well-researched investigations into history, science, and policy. Most importantly, by shifting our vision to see all the non-human life that is already here, Brenner gives her readers an accessible, everyday antidote to the supposed “nature deficit” of cities.
2021 PNBA Book Awards finalist 2021 Washington State Book Awards finalist With wonder and a sense of humor, Nature Obscura author Kelly Brenner aims to help us rediscover our connection to the natural world that is just outside our front door--we just need to know where to look.
Through explorations of a rich and varied urban landscape, Brenner reveals the complex micro-habitats and surprising nature found in the middle of a city. In her hometown of Seattle, which has plowed down hills, cut through the land to connect fresh- and saltwater, and paved over much of the rest, she exposes…
I am a painter and a writer from Myanmar. The former profession is what I chose when I was 15 and began at 21, featured in a group exhibition of modern art and the only woman among several men. Since then I have exhibited in several group shows and have had seven solos.
In the early 2000s by chance - and financial need - I became the Contributing Editor for the Myanmar Times weekly and a travel magazine until they closed down. Since then I have written around 20 books on food, culture, and travels and it kept me so busy that my art was put on hoId, but I hope to resume one day soon.
Always eloquent, insightful and at times, funny...such as how a mispronounced word in the tonal languages of the region might end in shared hilarity or bloodshed, Janet Brown describes her travels in Thailand and other SE Asian countries with warmth and joy. Her slow pace exudes sympathy, understanding, and enjoyment of the people and their lifestyles.
She said she learned from great travel writers that 'curiosity and observation can make a walk around the block become a journey', and I felt I was right by her side, enjoying the mood, the people, and especially, the food.
Everyone has their favorite way to travel, from cruise ship voyagers to vagabonds on the open road. It’s an all-consuming addiction--but what happens when age begins to slow a traveler down?
Traveling Below the Speed Limit describes different ways of travel and exploration: living in a foreign city, exploring familiar turf, venturing into the unknown territory of aging. A bus pass can serve as a passport; a city of residence can offer undiscovered experiences; a distant metropolis can become home for a month--or a year. And growing old, as that indomitable traveler Martha Gellhorn discovered, can be the last great…
Europe’s finest masterpieces drew me from Seattle, Washington to the Netherlands, where I earned a master’s degree in art history. During my study, the restitution of artwork that had been looted during WWII was a hot topic, and one that deeply fascinated me. Ultimately, my classes and work for several Dutch cultural institutions inspired me to write my series of art history mysteries.
No list about mysteries involving missing art can exclude Aaron Elkins! He is the author of several art history mystery novels revolving around a museum professional searching for artwork lost during World War II. Old Scores is no exception. This borderline cozy mystery novel is a clever art history mystery about forgeries, the worth and perception of art, and what some will do to 'make it' in the art world.
A notorious French art dealer is murdered in this "thoroughly entertaining" mystery by the Edgar Award-winning author of the Gideon Oliver series (Kirkus Reviews).
It is a headline-making story: the discovery of a previously unknown Rembrandt. Rene Vachey, the iconoclastic art dealer who claims to have uncovered it, wants to make a gift of it to the Seattle Art Museum, but curator Chris Norgren is wary. Vachey is notorious in art circles for perpetrating scandalous shams; not for profit but for the sheer fun of embarrassing the elite and snobbish "experts" of the art establishment. And thanks to the web…
As an author of historical fiction, I have a number of time periods that I go back to again and again. Both the 1960s (specifically, the late 1960s) and the 1990s are two of those eras that I just can’t get enough of. The parallels between these two time periods are very compelling: both were times of political upheaval and amazing music, with young people leading the charge, hoping to create a better world than the one they were disenchanted with.
This non-fiction work is the definitive grunge memoir, told in stark – sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking – detail.
Lanegan is candid and honest about his own struggles as well as those of his music colleagues and friends like Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain, and others, always keeping their humanity at the forefront.
A must-read for anyone interested in the grunge scene of the Seattle ‘90s.
"Mark Lanegan-primitive, brutal, and apocalyptic. What's not to love?" Nick Cave
"A stoned cold classic" Ian Rankin
"Powerfully written and brutally, frighteningly honest" Lucinda Williams
From the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, onstage, backstage, and everywhere in between, Sing Backwards and Weep reveals the abrasive reality beneath one of the most romanticized decades in rock history-from a survivor who lived to tell the tale.
When Mark Lanegan first arrived in Seattle in the mid-1980s, he was just "an arrogant, self-loathing redneck waster seeking…
I'm a queer author and illustrator who has always had a passion for unique and boundary-pushing comics and graphic novels. It's a genre that has spoken to me throughout my life and this list converges my love for the format as well as the subject matter that's impacted the most vulnerable and pivotal times of my own life. So much of my experience being alive has been about figuring out who I am, and that's what my own graphic novel deals with. It seems fitting that I'd recommend a list of books that details others doing the same as I have, but in their own way.
A truly singular book that details a semi-fictionalized account of a transgender sex worker surviving in Seattle. Depicted as a cute anthropomorphic dog-like creature, the story follows her as she meets with various clients and navigates her own identity struggles and in-progress transition (not to mention her own safety in her dangerous line of work). A deeply emotional and raw story that still manages to retain its own dark sense of humor throughout.
(Deals with themes of drugs, sex, and violence. 18+ only.)
A
surprisingly honest and touching account of a trans girl surviving through sex
work in Seattle. With excerpts published in Eisner nominated anthology ISLAND,
the full colour volume, drawn and painted by Remy Boydell is an unflinching
debut graphic novel. Written by Michelle Perez
On the wall in my office, I have an old newspaper article containing a recipe for Boris Karloff's guacamole. (If you're interested, the title of the article is "Boris Karloff Mad About Mexican Food.") I keep it there because it reminds me of what I love about this genre, in that monsters can contain multitudes. They're not just evil... they can also love guacamole. A good monster novel will have you both cowering in fear and feeling a pang of empathy for the creature, making it a ton of fun to read.
This was a Covid-read for me. We spent some of Covid in Vermont, next to the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT. If you’ve never been, it’s worth going just for this bookstore. Truly incredible.
Anyway, I saw this book in their sci-fi section and read the back copy and was hooked — a foul-mouthed talking crow, a post-apocalyptic wasteland, shambling human zombies. It’s told from the point of view of animals which have survived. There’s also a nice environmental message. It’s weird, odd, funny, insane, and delightful.
A humorous, big-hearted romp through the apocalypse, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero. Perfect for fans of Dawn of the Dead and Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies.
'A thoroughly enjoyable account of the end of the world as we know it. The Secret Life of Pets meets The Walking Dead.' Karen Joy Fowler
'It's transformative, poignant, and funny as hell. S.T. the irrepressible, cursing crow is my new favourite apocalyptic hero.' Helen Macdonald, New York Times bestselling author of H Is for Hawk
S.T. is a domesticated crow. He is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with…
