Book Notes: Top local authors serve up new offerings
Two new books are being released by local award winners:
• “Selective Abandonment” by Ann Clizer (WingSpan Press, $16.95) – Hayden, Idaho, author Clizer placed second in the Pacific Northwest Inlander’s Annual Fiction Contest in 2001. Now she has expanded that story into a novel set in the Cabinet Mountains of North Idaho.
It’s about Haley Hanover, a former Navy nurse who is diagnosed with breast cancer, her longtime mate Grizz Collins and a suddenly adrift friend named Liv Nuttley. The story follows their journeys and adventures – of the emotional as well as geographical kinds.
Clizer is a freelance writer and writing instructor. Her first full-length book, “Angel on My Shoulder,” was published in 2010.
She will read from “Selective Abandonment” on Wednesday, 7 p.m. at Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave.
• “Love Songs for the Quarantined,” by K.L. Cook (Willow Springs Editions) – Cook won the 2010 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, awarded annually by Willow Springs, the literary journal connected with the creative writing program at Eastern Washington University.
Now, as part of that award, Willow Springs has published this collection of short stories in a handsome trade paperback. Look for it on bookshelves soon.
The theme is about being entrapped by love, but the stories range over considerable stylistic territory. The first story includes a character named Clyde Barrow – yes, the Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde fame.
Cook, a professor at Prescott College in Arizona and Spalding University in Kentucky, is the winner of other prestigious literary awards, including the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.
‘Pie Town’
Lynne Hinton’s new novel, “Pie Town” (HarperCollins), hit the shelves this summer, and unlike her previous novels – “Friendship Cake,” Wedding Cake” and “Christmas Cake” – it is not about cake.
As you my have noted from the title, it’s about a different kind of baking. It’s set in Pie Town, New Mexico, and the recipes are about a rounder and crustier kind of dessert.
Yet just like her previous Hope Springs series of cake novels, it deals with small-town life and relationships.
Hinton was formerly the interim pastor of the Chewelah (Wash.) United Church of Christ. She now lives in Albuquerque, N.M.