Portland Notables

A self-defined misfit makes a powerful case for not fitting in—for recognizing the beauty, and difficulty, in forging an original path.

A misfit is a person who missed fitting in, a person who fits in badly, or this: a person who is poorly adapted to new situations and environments. It’s a shameful word, a word no one typically tries to own.... Read More »

Nominated for the National Book Award, Geek Love is mesmerizing, daring, and unconventional. Award-winning novelist Katherine Dunn fascinates and amazes much the same way tornados, earthquakes, and volcanos do. No one wants to be a victim, but most find the event too hypnotic to ignore. In order to save their traveling carnival from bankruptcy,... Read More »

With Heartsick, Chelsea Cain took the crime world by storm, introducing two of the most compelling characters in decades: serial killer Gretchen Lowell and her obsessed pursuer Portland Detective Archie Sheridan. The book spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and garnered rave reviews around the world. But the riveting story of... Read More »

Avis Muir is a brilliant pastry chef, Brian Muir a corporate real estate attorney. Their son, Stanley, is the proprietor of a trendy food market. Their beautiful daughter, Felice, is missing. A runaway at 13, Felice has spent five years modeling tattoos, skateboarding, clubbing, and sleeping in a squat house or on the beach. She’s about to turn... Read More »

Why would we need music if our lives were exactly as we wanted them to be?Karl Bender is a quiet guy who lives in three places: his bar, his apartment, and the cheap Mediterranean place on the corner that keeps him well-fed with his daily portion of hummus and chicken shwarma. But that’s all about to change. When he stumbles upon a... Read More »

Dave is fourteen years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood (or as he prefers to call it, like the Multnomah tribal peoples once did, Wy'east). Dave will soon enter high school, with adulthood and a future not far off—a future away from his mother, father, his precocious younger sister, and the wilderness where he's... Read More »

Since Newton witnessed a bubble rising from his bathtub, mankind has sought the stars. When William III of England commissioned Capt. William Kidd to command the first expedition to Mars in the late 1600s, he proved that space travel was both possible and profitable.

Now, one century later, a plantation in a flourishing British colony on Mars is... Read More »

In the vein of The Liar's Club and The Glass Castle, Jenny Forrester's memoir perfectly captures both place and a community situated on the Colorado Plateau between slot canyons and rattlesnakes, where she grew up with her mother and brother in a single-wide trailer proudly displaying an American flag. Forrester's powerfully eloquent story... Read More »

From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, and with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler, a collection of thoughts-always adroit, often acerbic-on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation. Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she's in the last great frontier of life, old age, and... Read More »

A timely and moving bicultural coming-of-age tale, based on a true story and told by an author who has struggled with the same issues as her protagonist.

The daughter of a Danish immigrant and a black G.I., Rachel survives a family tragedy only to face new challenges. Sent to live with her strict African-American grandmother in a racially divided... Read More »

For fans of The Chronicles of Narnia comes the first book in the Wildwood Chronicles, the New York Times bestselling fantasy adventure series by Colin Meloy, lead singer of the Decemberists.

In Wildwood, Prue and her friend Curtis uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval—a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and... Read More »