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Tag: Fiction

Beautiful Ruins: A Novel. By Jess Walter.

Beautiful Ruins: A Novel. By Jess Walter.

Beautiful Ruins: A Novel. By Jess Walter. (New York: Harper, 2012. 337 pp.) Recommendation submitted by: Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA. In 1962, a young American movie actress shows up at the remote, obscure, Italian “Hotel Adequate View” thinking that she is dying of cancer. Pasquale, the hotelier, naturally falls in love with her. 50 years later, Pasquale travels to Hollywood, in hopes of finding her again. That’s the story in a nutshell, but there’s so much more!…

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Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, by Sunil Yapa.

Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, by Sunil Yapa.

Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. By Sunil Yapa. (New York, NY: Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company/Hachette Book Group, 2016. 312 pp.) Recommendation submitted by: Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA. This is not a nice book. This is not a pleasant book. But it may be an important one. Parts of it are quite horrific, just plain awful. The descriptions of police brutality will curdle your blood, at least they did mine. This…

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Portlandtown by Robb De Borde

Portlandtown by Robb De Borde

Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes. By Robb De Borde. (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012. 375 pp.) Recommendation by Carolyn Petersen, Assistant Program Manager, Library Development What does a reader get when a writer combines gunfights, zombies, circus freaks, and a Portland pioneer family named the Wyldes?  The reader is rewarded with a crackling good read—if the reader’s brain is able to blend westerns, steampunk, sci-fi and historical fiction.  This story begins in 19th century Astoria when Joseph Wylde goes…

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My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni

My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni

My Sister’s Grave. By Robert Dugoni. (Seattle: Thomas & Mercer, 2014. 410 pp.) Recommendation by Carolyn Petersen, Assistant Program Manager, Library Development Tracey Crosswhite became a detective with the Seattle Police Department as a result of her younger sister’s murder. Tracey never was convinced that the man convicted and serving time for her sister’s murder was the true perpetrator. When Sarah’s remains are at last discovered, Tracey thought justice would be served at last.  Instead the repercussions for the small town…

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The Impersonator, by Mary Miley

The Impersonator, by Mary Miley

The Impersonator: A Mystery. By Mary Miley. (New York: Minotaur Books, 2014. 320 pp.) (A Roaring Twenties Mystery, Book 1) Recommendation by: Carolyn Petersen, Assistant Program Manager, Library Development, Tumwater, WA. Mary Miley’s Impersonator deserved to win the Minotaur Books/Mystery writers’ of America First Crime Novel competition.  The murder mystery begins with the heroine of the book, vaudevillian Leah Randall approached by a man who greets her as his long lost niece, heiress to a timber fortune. Beckett invites her to impersonate his niece…

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Songs of Willow Frost. By Jaime Ford

Songs of Willow Frost. By Jaime Ford

Songs of Willow Frost. By Jamie Ford. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2013.) Recommendation submitted by:Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA. Our protagonist is William Eng, a 12-year-old living at the Sacred Heart Orphanage in 1930’s Seattle. He’s been there since he was seven; no one is interested in adopting a Chinese boy. Only, he remembers his beloved mother, a singer and a dancer, and he remembers finding her slumped in the bathtub, and how she was carried off…

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Truth Like the Sun By Jim Lynch

Truth Like the Sun By Jim Lynch

Truth Like the Sun. By Jim Lynch. (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.) Recommendation submitted by:Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA. Jim Lynch’s third novel, Truth Like the Sun, set in Seattle, bounces back and forth between 1962 and 2001, telling us a story that revolves around the Seattle World’s Fair and its fictional chief mover and shaker, one Robert Morgan, a.k.a. Mr. Seattle, a high-flying, entrepreneurial city booster, who maybe loves wine, women and gambling a…

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New Arrivals in the NW Collections

New Arrivals in the NW Collections

From the desk of Sean Lanksbury, PNW & Special Collections Librarian A listing of some recent additions to the Pacific Northwest Circulating Collection at Washington State Library’s Central Library.   Last Chapter and Worse: A Far Side Collection. By Gary Larson. (London: Warner Books, 1996. 107 pp. Illustrations.) NW 741.5973 LARSON 1996 http://stlow.iii.com/search~S2?/o43221795 Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Story Of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival. By Peter Stark. (New York: Ecco, 2014. 366 pp. Illustrations, map, bibliographical…

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Celebrate Teen Literature Day!

Celebrate Teen Literature Day!

From the desk of Kathryn Devine Every year, the Thursday of National Library Week, April 17th  this year, is set aside as Teen Literature Day. Check out these teen books at the Washington State Library.     Meet Hannah West—smart, resilient, slightly sarcastic, and sometimes too nosy for her own good. She’s a young Seattleite whose favorite pastimes include watching the Crime Network, Law & Order, Monk, Columbo, or any mystery show really. All of which provide a solid education when she…

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