If you enjoy mystery-thrillers make sure you read local author Robert Dugoni's superb series featuring Tracy Crosswhite, a Seattle based homicide detective. The first one is My Sister's Grave and the 8th one was just published; In Her Tracks. They are well written and focus on the characters who evolve, mature, and grow over the course of the books. I have many signed copies in the store.
Currently I also have signed copies of another excellent brand new book. It's The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. The celebrated Y.A. author does something a little different and creates mini-reviews of all types of things from pineapple on pizza to geese! A witty fun late spring early summer read.
The just published, Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown is another nuanced gem from the writer of Boys in the Boat. It's an exciting page-turning true story focusing on the lives of four Japanese-American families and their sons who signed up for military service in World War 2 and served their country displaying uncommon heroism and incredible tenacity.
I'm looking forward to reading several new books about to be released that have already been receiving some great reviews. The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris has been compared to The Devil Wears Prada...and has been called a dazzling, darkly humorous story about the publishing industry. It's about the challenges faced by Nella Rogers the only Black employee of a New York Trade publisher. Nella is employed as an editorial assitant and has navigated through white privilege and various prejudices and then another black girl is hired Hazel-May McCall and Nella has even more to deal with. (June 1rst).
I continue to strongly encourage everyone to read Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Elizabeth Wilkerson sooner than later (great for bookclubs!). It's a passionately written, well researched book that goes beyond some of the best anti-racism books to include economic and other biases that are built into most communities. Wilkerson won a Pulitzer for her previous book, the superb The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.
We are expecting another thrilling cerebral page turner from Silent Patient author Alex Michaelides available on June 15th - The Maidens; and looking forward to Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul by Jamie Ducharme available on June 8th. The next Louise Penny Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery, The Madness of Crowds is due out August 24th (and it is true, Penny has co-written a thriller with Hillary Rodham Clinton called State of Terror due out October 12th). Some of you already know that after 7 years, the ninth book in the Outlander series Go Tell the Bees Than I Am Gone by Diana Gabaldon will be available November 23, 2021.
A recommended picture book for the younger ones is Jump at the Sun written by Alicia D. Williams and illustrated by Jackqueline Alcantara which is available now. It's a clever story about the extraordinary writer Zora Neale Hurston,. One of the best picture book bios you'll ever read.
Targeting 7 to 12 year old readers is the recently published Stamped (for Kids)- Racism, Antiracism, and You adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul with art by Rachelle Baker from the YA book Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.
For poetry, you can't do better than the recently published anthology Footbridge Above the Falls. You'll find recently written poems from forty-eight Northwest Poets collected in one volume by editor David D. Horowitz and published by Rose Alley Press.
Article by Chris Jarmick
Originally published in Kirkland Lifestyle
