This Week's Northwest Books

Updated January 14, 2010

New Books This Week - I'm back after taking awhile off. The 2 books I've just added are both interesting, but in very different ways. Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, is a sci-fi novel set not in the future, but in the past - Seattle a little more than a century ago. (Around $11, trade paper) Hellie Jondoe, by Randall Platt, is also set in the past, but not quite a century ago. It tells the story of a pickpocket, nicknamed "the best dang cannon of moveable property between Satan's Circus and Hell's Kitchen." (Around $13, trade paper)

Boneshaker
by Cherie Priest

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

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Hellie Jondoe
by Randall Platt

A heart of teel c an't be stolen - unless the thief is Hellie Jondoe. It's 1918. A war of nations is ending and a worldwide flu epidemic just heating up, but to thirteen-year-old Hellie, the only battle that counts is her own survival. An orphan by four, a beggar by six, Hellie - as apprentice pickpocket to her brother Harry - is now 'the best dang cannon of moveable property between Satan's Circus and Hell's Kitchen.'

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Mariposa
by Greg Bear

In an America driven to near bankruptcy with crushing foreign debt, the Talos Corporation stands out as a major success story—training soldiers and security forces from around the world and providing logistics and troops for nearly all branches of the United States government. But Talos has another plan in mind—the destruction of the federal system and constitutional law.

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The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest
by Jack Nisbet

The Collector tracks David Douglas' fascinating history, from his humble birth in Scotland in 1799 to his botanical training under the famed William Jackson Hooker to his adventures in North America discovering "exotic" new plants for the English and European market. The book takes readers along on Douglas' journeys into a literal "brave new world" of then-obscure realms from Puget Sound to the Sandwich Islands.

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Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye
by Tony Angell

For nearly fifty years Tony Angell has used Puget Sound's natural diversity as his artist's palette. In this book, he describes the living systems within the Sound and shares his observations and encounters with the species that make up the complex communities of the Sound's rivers, tidal flats, islands, and beaches: the fledging flight of a young peregrine, an otter playfully herding a small red rockfish, the grasp of a curious octopus. Read More