Each year at the Washington Library Association conference, a panel of librarians from around the state gather to share some of their favorite titles by Washington State authors from the past year. Here is our most recent slate, as presented at WLA in Wenatchee on March 31, 2023. First, fiction, and then, non-fiction. (Created March, 2023).
Patricia Wants to Cuddle
When the final four women in competition for an aloof bachelor's heart arrive on a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest, they mentally prepare themselves for another week of extreme sleep deprivation, invasive interviews, and salacious drama. But they soon realize that if they're to have any hope of making it to the next Elimination Event, they'll first have to survive the night.
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View Patricia Wants to CuddleThe Grand Promise
An Eastern Washington town is uprooted and a family grapples with personal and financial dilemmas. A father resists inevitable change, and enters into a fierce conflict with his son. The historic construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, a massive project destined to bring prosperity to the Pacific Northwest, will also destroy the family's home and their town.
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View The Grand PromiseLegends & Lattes
Come take a load off at Viv's cafe, the first & only coffee shop in Thune. Grand opening! Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv, the orc barbarian, cashes out of the warrior's life with one final score. A rollicking novel of high fantasy and low stakes.
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View Legends & LattesThe Eightfold Path
Eight strangers looking for enlightenment from an ancient spiritual teacher are trapped in a cave high in the mountains on their way to his temple. One by one the travelers each share a story that, unbeknownst to them, is actually a morality tale representing one of the aspects of final enlightenment as taught in Buddhism.
Format: Graphic Novel
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View The Eightfold PathBuried in A Good Book
When the start of their summer vacation is marred by murder, best-selling thriller writer Tess Harrow is thrust into the subsequent investigation, involving a big foot sighting and a handsome local sheriff, which puts so much more than her teenage daughter's summer plans at stake.
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View Buried in A Good BookSmall World
In this epic historical novel set in multiple time periods, present-day travelers on a train and their ancestors more than a century before are brought together by the history they share against such iconic backdrops as the California gold rush and the development of the Continental Railroad.
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View Small WorldOne Two Three
The Mitchell sisters — teenage triplets — find everything changing in their town when a handsome new student enrolls at Bourne Memorial High who happens to be their family’s sworn enemy.
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View One Two ThreeThe Laughter
Becoming dangerously obsessed with his new colleague, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor who ignites his long-dormant passions, tenured English professor Dr. Oliver Harding tries to reconcile his discomfort with the world in which she comes from.
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View The LaughterFire Season
Barton Heydale, the unpopular manager of the only bank in 1889 Spokane Falls, is considering ending his own life when a fire threatening to flatten their frontier boomtown gives him an idea, a plan and a reason to live.
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View Fire SeasonTell Me I'm An Artist
During the course of a semester at an San Francisco art school, Joey, as she struggles over an assignment—and what it means to be an artist—in a well-heeled world that is hugely different from any she has known, is considered selfish by her family for pursuing her dreams.
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View Tell Me I'm An Artist