PNBA book show

I'm just back from the annual fall show by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and have found some fascinating books, which I will tell you about in the coming weeks. Meantime...a tease...

I had a long conversation with Bend, Ore., author Diane Hammond, whose latest work is Hannah's Dream, in which an aging caretaker of an aging elephant in a decrepit zoo ponders retirement. Then, there's Hands at Work by Lopez Island, Wash., author Iris Graville and photographer Summer Moon Scriver. It's a collection of dramatic black & white portraits, along with companion profiles which capture the drama and tells the stories of people who work with their hands.

Pete Dexter's new book is Spooner, out Sept. 24, which tells the story of a lifelong tie between 2 men, poles apart. Adam Eisenberg, the Commissioner of Seattle Municipal Court, has written about women in police work in his new book A Different Shade of Blue. Boilerplate is an hilarious, fictional account history's mechanical marvel, Boilerplate. You gotta see it to believe it. It's out Oct. 1.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Timothy Egan tells the story of the largest forest fire in US history in The Big Burn, about a fire in 1910 that burned 3 million acres. Out Oct. 19. Egan's last work, The Worst Hard Time, was about the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl.