Northwest Bestsellers - wk ending Sept. 20, 2009

Just 2 books from Northwest authors on this week's bestseller's list and they're both from Sherman Alexie. War Dances and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian are on this week's Northwest Bestseller lists. Week ending Sept. 20, 2009.

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
2. The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson
3. The Help, Kathryn Stockett
4. A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore
5. The Last Song, Nicholas Sparks
6. War Dances, Sherman Alexie
7. That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo
8. Homer & Langley, E.L. Doctorow
9. The Host, Stephenie Meyer

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. True Compass, Edward M. Kennedy
2. Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer
3. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, Julia Child, et al.
4. Nurtureshock, Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman
5. Born to Run, Christopher McDougall
6. Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder
7. The Healing of America, T.R. Reid
8. Half the Sky, Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn
9. Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford
10. Zeitoun, Dave Eggers

MASS MARKET

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
2. Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
3. Dead to the World, Charlaine Harris
4. Julie & Julia, Julie Powell
5. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
6. Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
7. Fearless Fourteen, Janet Evanovich
8. Anathem, Neal Stephenson
9. Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
10. From Dead to Worse, Charlaine Harris

CHILDREN'S INTEREST

1. The Magician's Elephant, Kate DiCamillo, Yoko Tanaka (Illus.)
2. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie, Ellen Forney (Illus.)
4. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Journey to Change the World... One Child at a Time, Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin
5. Impossible, Nancy Werlin
6. Inkheart, Cornelia Funke
7. Graceling, Kristin Cashore
8. The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick
9. Lock and Key, Sarah Dessen
10. The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean (Illus.)

The Pacific Northwest Indie Bestseller List, as brought to you by northwest-books.com, IndieBound and PNBA, is based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and IndieBound. Most of these books aren't books from the Pacific Northwest, but are books that are currently selling well in the Pacific Northwest.

War Dances by Sherman Alexie

Fresh off his National Book Award win, Alexie delivers a heartbreaking, hilarious collection of stories that explores the precarious balance between self-preservation and external responsibility in art, family, and the world at large. With unparalleled insight into the minds of artists, laborers, fathers, husbands, and sons, Alexie populates his stories with ordinary men on the brink of exceptional change. In a bicoastal journey through the consequences of both simple and monumental life choices, Alexie introduces us to personal worlds as they transform beyond return.

In the title story, a famous writer must decide how to care for his distant father who is slowly dying a ?natural Indian death? from alcohol and diabetes, just as he learns that he himself may have a brain tumor. Alexie dissects a vintage-clothing store owner?s failing marriage and his courtship of a married photographer in various airports across the country; what happens when a politician?s son commits a hate crime; and how a young boy discovers his self-worth while writing obituaries for his local newspaper. Brazen and wise, War Dances takes us to the heart of what it means to be human. This provocative new work is Alexie at the height of his powers.

About the Author

Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Wash., about 50 miles northwest of Spokane, Wash.

Buy now through northwest-books.com.

Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel

by Paul Guinan & Anina Bennett

Meet Boilerplate, the world?s first robot soldier?not in a present-day military lab or a science-fiction movie, but in the past, during one of the most fascinating periods of U.S. history. Designed by Professor Archibald Campion in 1893 as a prototype, for the self-proclaimed purpose of "preventing the deaths of men in the conflicts of nations," Boilerplate charged into combat alongside such notables as Teddy Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia. Campion and his robot also circled the planet with the U.S. Navy, trekked to the South Pole, made silent movies, and hobnobbed with the likes of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla.

You say you?ve never heard of Boilerplate before? That?s because this book is the fanciful creation of a husbandand-wife team who have richly imagined these characters and inserted them into accurate retellings of history. This full-color chronicle is profusely illustrated with graphics mimicking period style, including photos, paintings, posters, cartoons, maps, and even stereoscope cards. Part Jules Verne and part Zelig, it?s a great volume for a broad range of fans of science fiction, history, and robots.

About the Authors

Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett have been collaborating on comics and graphic novels since 1989, including the Eisner Award?nominated science-fiction comic series Heartbreakers. Paul is an artist and writer whose clients include the History Channel and the Cartoon Network. Anina is a writer and editor who has worked with Dark Horse Comics and international publisher Egmont. They live in Portland, Oregon.

Buy now through northwest-books.com.

New Northwest Books

Boilerplate is what you might call a graphic novel or a graphic comic. In other words, it's an unusual book. Part Jules Verne and part Zelig, Boilerplate is a great volume for a broad range of fans of science fiction, history, and robots. Hardcover. Around $18. And, Sherman Alexie is back with War Dances. His last book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, still shows up on bestseller lists. Hardcover. Around $16.

Speaking of Bestsellers, both of Alexie's books, War Dances and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian are on this week's Northwest Bestseller lists.

Find both at northwest-books.com.

Hannah's Dream by Diane Hammond

An elephant never forgets . . . but can she dream?

For forty-one years, Samson Brown has been caring for Hannah, the lone elephant at the down-at-the-heels Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Having vowed not to retire until an equally loving and devoted caretaker is found to replace him, Sam rejoices when smart, compassionate Neva Wilson is hired as the new elephant keeper. But Neva quickly discovers what Sam already knows: that despite their loving care, Hannah is isolated from other elephants and her feet are nearly ruined from standing on hard concrete all day. Using her contacts in the zookeeping world, Neva and Sam hatch a plan to send Hannah to an elephant sanctuary?just as the zoo's angry, unhappy director launches an aggressive revitalization campaign that spotlights Hannah as the star attraction, inextricably tying Hannah's future to the fate of the Max L. Biedelman Zoo.

A charming, poignant, and captivating novel certain to enthrall readers of Water for Elephants, Diane Hammond's Hannah's Dream is a beautifully told tale rich in heart, humor, and intelligence.

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Spooner by Pete Dexter

Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor's office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday of December, 1956. His father died shortly afterward, long before Spooner had even a memory of his face, and was replaced eventually by a once-brilliant young naval officer, Calmer Ottosson, recently court-martialed out of service. This is the story of the lifelong tie between the two men, poles apart, of Spooner's troubled childhood, troubled adolescence, violent and troubled adulthood and Calmer Ottosson's inexhaustible patience, undertaking a life-long struggle to salvage his step-son, a man he will never understand.

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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.