Nothing says summer like a super-engaging book enjoyed somewhere outdoors. Choose your setting: on a picnic blanket by the lake, in the sun-drenched comfort of your backyard, or by the crackling soundtrack of a beachfront bonfire. Regardless of where you are, getting lost in a page-turning—story and feeling like you have extra time to do so—is one of life’s little luxuries. To prepare you for a bit of outdoor intellectualism, here are six recently published books by local authors that should find their way onto your seasonal reading list, ASAP. As a bonus, we asked the authors to share their favorite local writers and their top spots for enjoying an engaging read around the city.

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts

Set in the gloomy heart of a Pacific Northwest winter—with the ever-present rain as a primary character—Kim Fu’s The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts (Tin House) is a moving work of fiction that hits the emotional reality of contemporary isolation. Online therapist Eleanor Fan is grappling with the recent loss of her mother, Lele, who organized her entire life around the needs of her daughter. In one final act of support, Lele leaves Eleanor money for a down payment on a house. The only acceptable one she can afford is a model home in an unfinished development in a bucolic valley miles from town. As she settles into her new space, Eleanor experiences a string of strange occurrences that lead her down a path to face her past, let go of her grief, and choose to move forward in life on her own terms. It’s the kind of book that grips your waking hours—Fu’s poetic descriptions and mystery-laden plot ar enough to get under your skin and keep you up at night flipping pages rather than scrolling through a screen.

Give us three words to describe your book. Eerie, lonely, atmospheric.
Best location to enjoy your book this summer. Alone in a cabin in the woods.
Target audience. Horror-curious literary readers, anyone who has known complicated grief.
Favorite bookstore in town. Elliott Bay Book Company.
Recommend one or two Northwest books or authors you particularly love. Sonora Jha and Ted Chiang.
Where is your favorite place in town (or out) to escape with a book? The secret loft in Ballard’s Anchored Ship Coffee Bar.

Supersonic

Born-and-raised Seattleite Thomas Kohnstamm’s third novel, Supersonic (Counterpoint), weaves together multiple story lines through different eras in Seattle’s history: the 1800s, the 1970s, in Seattle’s history: the 1800s, the 1970s, and 2014. Set in the same hilltop neighborhood for all three, the novel follows a group of quirky characters, each looking to achieve a goal: a con man seeking his fortune during the Yukon Gold Rush, an overtaxed mother trying to save the local elementary school from closure, and a musically talented widow seeking a better life for her daughter. Kohnstamm excels in character development and description, creating vivid scenes from the point of view of someone who intimately knows the city in which the work is set. His characters aren’t always likeable—sometimes they’re hapless, self-serving, and naval-gazing—but that makes them all the more relatable, and, for the most part, they’re good people with genuine intentions. In lesser hands, the multi-pronged plot might feel rushed or chaotic, but Kohnstamm infuses it with a suspenseful energy that propels the reader forward and celebrates the triumph of spirit shared by those determined not to fail.

Give us three words to describe your book. A city’s born.
Best location to enjoy your book this summer. Any park in Seattle … and you can think about the layers and layers history buried beneath you. Don’t forget that Gas Works, the Arboretum, and Green Lake were all garbage dumps.
Target audience. I would be psyched for people who aren’t usually fiction readers to connect with the book because they live in Seattle or the PNW (or the West, in general) and want to expand their sense of the stories that make up this place.
Favorite bookstore in town. All indies are great, and we are lucky to have so many of them, but I am for now and always a Third Place Ravenna partisan.
Recommend one or two Northwest books or authors you particularly love. I walk in the shadow of my friend and mentor Jonathan Evison (read ALL his novels) and really like the new book The Radiant Dark by my friend Ali Oliva.
Where is your favorite place in town (or out) to escape with a book? Normally, I read in bed at night (boring, I know). But I have been starting to listen to audiobooks, too, and am learning to love walking my dog in and around Ravenna Park and looking at the trees while immersed in a story.

Outer Stars

A gorgeous collection of short stories, Outer Stars (University of North Texas Press), is a contemplation on the fragility of contemporary life and the importance of connection in a rapidly changing world. The fourth short story collection from Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, and the winner of the 2025 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, Outer Stars recognizes the evolution of human relationships: with each other, with the environment, and with ourselves. Stories include a mother-daughter journey to honor a family member passed away; a spoiled trip to Versailles by two aging lovers; and a speculative look at a future in which humans are forced to shelter fro an increasingly hostile natural environment. Throughout it all, emotion buoys the plot: moments of tenderness, joy, despair, and even anger are deeply relatable—written in a way that leaves a poignant veil that will haunt you for hours, if not days, after you finish the final page.

Give us three words to describe your book. Atmospheric, feminist, turbulent.
Best location to enjoy your book this summer. One of the great things about story collections is that they have range, so there are stories in here to read in a quiet café corner on one of our gray June-uary mornings (“Wind Phone,” “Clean Breaks”), and there are also stories to read at the beach on a too-hot July afternoon (“Revision,” “Open Water”). Maybe the best place to read any story in Outer Stars, though, would be on the ferry out to a San Juan Islands weekend.
Target audience. Outer Stars includes both realist and speculative stories. Like walking through a Cascades forest, reading it will carry you through shadows and spills of light. Its target audience likes lyric prose, moody settings, and fraught domestic conflict.
Favorite bookstore in town. My hometown local is the charming Edmonds Bookshop a little north of the city, but when I’m in Seattle, I love to stop into Madison Books or Third Place Ravenna.
Recommend one or two Northwest books or authors you particularly love. On my bedside table now are two new Pacific Northwest books that I am loving: Diana Xin’s debut story collection, Book of Exemplary Women, and Maya Jewell Zeller’s memoir, Raised by Ferns. But if I can squeeze one more onto this list, let me tell readers to preorder Kristen Millares Young’s Desire Lines, a knockout-gorgeous memoir-in-essays, which comes out in October.
Where is your favorite place in town (or out) to escape with a book? There’s nothing better than late-night reading by the light of a camp lantern in a tent at the beach, the sound of the waves close, and my family snoozing away in their sleeping bags beside me. Almost any beach campsite will do for this dreamy read, but my favorite is Bowman Bay at Deception Pass.

Enormous Wings

Talking about tough subjects is always easier when there’s humor involved, and Laurie Frankel’s latest book, and Laurie Frankel’s latest book, Enormous Wings (Henry Holt and Co.)—which deals with subjects like sex, aging, mortality, and female bodily autonomy—is howling-out-loud funny. The story follows Pepper Mills, a 77-year-old grandmother who lands in a retirement facility after a fender bender with a priest convinces her children she’s no longer fit to live alone. Determined to make the best of her situation, Pepper starts making friends and seeing a man, settling into a new routine that’s suddenly upended when she discovers that she’s pregnant. And thus begins a zany search for answers, in which everyone Pepper meets has an opinion—and wants something from her. Enormous Wings is a touching meditation on family ties, personal choice, and the fact that we are never too old to dream, fall in love, and pivot our beliefs.

Give us three words to describe your book. Pregnant old woman.
Best location to enjoy your book this summer. A park, a backyard, a coffee shop with a porch—outside in summer in Seattle is the best place to enjoy really anything.
Target audience. Anyone who’s not as young as they used to be and not as old as they plan to be (which is to say: everyone).
Favorite bookstore in town. Queen Anne Book Company.
Recommend one or two Northwest books or authors you particularly love. Stephanie Reents’s We Loved to Run and Alexandra Oliva’s The Radiant Dark.
Where is your favorite place in town (or out) to escape with a book? A beach chair on Alki.

Storybook Ending

When tech worker and literature lover April slips a handwritten note into the pages of a volume at her local bookstore, widowed mother Laura finds the note, and the two start a secret correspondence, with each woman thinking she is writing to—and receiving letters from—shy bookseller Westley. For weeks, the oblivious young man is too busy working as an extra in a movie being filmed in the bookstore to notice anything amiss, but the situation comes to a head when the two women end up at the same restaurant, both thinking they are going on a date with him. Storybook Ending (Penguin Random House) is a charming, Seattle-set romcom written by local arts journalist Moira Macdonald. It captures the magic of independent bookstores, the importance of friendship, and how much life can change for the better when you decide to open up and take a risk. Give us three words to describe your book. Literary romantic comedy.

Best location to enjoy your book this summer. A comfy chair in your favorite bookstore. (I’ve never understood the point of beach reading. So much glare!)
Target audience. Book lovers, Nora Ephron movie lovers, and anyone who’s ever thought about leaving a note for a handsome stranger.
Favorite bookstore in town. Third Place Books in Ravenna, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the bookstore in Storybook Ending.
Recommend one or two Northwest books or authors you particularly love. I have to shout out my friend and neighbor Thomas Kohnstamm, whose rich, sweeping novel Supersonic will make you see Seattle in a different way. And I never, ever miss an installment in the Thomas Lynley mystery series, written by local author extraordinaire Elizabeth George.
Where is your favorite place in town (or out) to escape with a book? Honestly, the old armchair in my living room, with my cat on my lap and a cold Diet Coke parked nearby. Heaven.

A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake

When writer and academic Tamiko Nimura learns that she won’t receive tenure at the university where she teaches, her entire world shifts. She’s understandably devastated, but finds that she finally has time to revisit the unpublished manuscript her father wrote about his family’s time imprisoned at the Tule Lake Segregation imprisoned at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Written with an inventive structure, A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake (University of Washington Press), is a powerful meditation on pain and loss: the intergenerational scars of racism, the anger at what happened in the past, and the deep sadness of losing a parent while still a child. Through the weaving of her story with her father’s—and reflecting on a visit to the place where he was once forcefully held—Nimura fi nally allows herself to grieve, forgive, and connect to his life and legacy with a fresh perspective and an open heart.

Give us three words to describe your book. Heartfelt, lyrical, nonlinear.
Best location to enjoy your book this summer. The central branch of the Seattle Public Library, which gets a shout-out on page one of my book! I’d say somewhere cozy, so I might suggest the Living Room. For an immersive experience, you might try the Red Floor—it was my dad’s favorite color.
Target audience. I think of my audience like an onion: At the core is, of course, the community of Japanese American survivors and descendants of incarceration. More broadly, I wrote for readers who want to learn about this chapter of American history, as well as Asian American and BIPOC readers who are reckoning with difficult family history. At the outermost layers, I hope to reach people who are exploring forms of grief and healing in community.
Favorite bookstore in town. It’s a tie between Mam’s Books and Elliott Bay Book Company. [Elliott Bay] was the first bookstore I visited in Seattle—in Pioneer Square then—when I came to the area in 1998.
Recommend one or two Northwest books or authors you particularly love. Kiku Hughes and Tara Austen Weaver. Hughes’ graphic novel, Displacement, is a moving tribute to Octavia Butler’s Kindred—a queer young-adult time-travel novel that forces its fictional protagonist to grapple with her family legacy of Japanese American wartime incarceration. Austen Weaver’s memoir Orchard House interweaves her stories of family and gardening beautifully.
Where is your favorite place in town (or out) to escape with a book? Point Defiance Park in my hometown Tacoma has so many places to read with a view, including the Rose Garden, the Japanese Pagoda, and Owen Beach.