The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with Recipes) by Kate Lebo Mixing culinary history, personal reflections and tantalizing trivia, poet and pie aficionado Kate Lebo delves deep into 26 lyrical essays featuring “difficult” fruit — one for each letter of the alphabet — in her first work of nonfiction, “The … Read more
Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers In the gentle, hopeful future world of the ‘Monk and Robot’ series by Becky Chambers, Sibling Dex, a tea monk on the planet Panga, and a scatterbrained and lovable robot named Splendid Speckled Mosscap (robots in Panga are named for the first thing their awareness touches on, in this … Read more
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but many of us Northwesterners claim Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl as one of our own, even if his life-changing stint as the drummer for Nirvana only lasted four years, and to hear him tell it, he wasn’t a … Read more
52 Ways to Nature: Washington: Your Seasonal Guide to a Wilder Year by Lauren Braden Now that the Fourth of July has come and gone, signaling summer has finally arrived to Whatcom County, it’s time to make adventure plans to make the most of each precious weekend. Seattle-based travel writer Lauren Braden’s “52 Ways to Nature: … Read more
The Family Chao by Lan Samatha Chang Lan Samantha Chang’s latest novel, “The Family Chao,” centers around a murder, but it’s less of a whodunit than a psychological study of complicated family relationships. The plot is similar to “The Brothers Karamazov,” but you need not be a scholar of 19th-century Russian literature to appreciate this rendition. … Read more
Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories, and A Journey Through the Rocky Mountains by Steph Jagger Bainbridge Island author Steph Jagger follows up her memoir “Unbound” with “Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories, and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains,” a heart-wrenching yet hopeful recounting of a mother-daughter road trip taken 11 … Read more
Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso If Edith Wharton wrote Ethan Frome in 1986, it might look like Very Cold People. Also set in a fictional Massachusetts town, Sarah Manguso’s first novel is a pithy coming-of-age story with a bleak outlook. Ruthie doesn’t know why her non-WASP family lives in Waitsfield– they can’t afford it and they don’t fit in. … Read more
Northwest Know-how: Beaches by Rena Priest Nature lovers and poetry enthusiasts have a couple of chances to meet a local treasure, Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest. Priest will be speaking about her latest book, “Northwest Know-How: Beaches” from 7-8:30 p.m. Friday, June 10 at Village Books in Bellingham as part of the spring “Nature of Writing” series. Humanities … Read more
Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin. Our lives are shaped by our memories. They influence our understanding of the world, and through them we develop our sense of self. But what if you could excise a piece of your past? At Nepenthe, memory erasure is big business, allowing clients to eliminate snippets of recall that … Read more
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. FRUIT, RUM, SUGAR, spices — their mother Eleanor’s black cake is a family tradition that runs throughout Benny and Byron’s childhoods, tying them to their Caribbean heritage and to one another. When Eleanor passes away, she leaves her children one final black cake to share, along with a mysterious recorded message. … Read more