Laurie Frankel lives in Seattle with her husband, her three-year-old son, her border collie, and many, many books. She's an East coaster originally, a fact people often guess before she's even opened her mouth. Her second novel, Goodbye For Now, comes out August 7, 2012 in the U.S. The film has been optioned and translation rights have sold in 27 territories. Laurie was just named one of ten women to watch in 2012. She is a proud core member of the Seattle7Writers. Her first novel, The Atlas of Love, came out in August 2010, so August seems to be her month. Until last June, she was teaching writing, literature, and gender studies at the college level. Now she is thrilled, honored, grateful, and occasionally terrified to be writing full-time. It's quite something.
Leave Your Mess at Home (2026) Tolani Akinola "Leave Your Mess At Home has all the long-buried secrets, simmering rivalries, and siblings failing at adulthood you could want from a family drama. It has all the love, sex, and scandal you could ask from a page-turner. It's full of smart, generous, timely exploration of issues of immigration, race, class, violence, gender, sexuality, social media, generational dynamics...this book covers a lot of impressive ground. In short, whatever you love in a novel, you'll find it in this one. Tolani Akinola's debut has it all."
The Peculiar Gift of July (2025) Ashley Ream "Immersive, heartwarming, even a little bit magical, The Peculiar Gift of July juggles an enormous cast of characters in a perfectly-sketched small town on a chilly island in the Pacific Northwest so beautifully you feel like you're there. Ashley Ream offers peculiar -- and wonderful -- gifts indeed: the secrets harbored by close communities, the surprises in store even for people who already know everything about each other, the many forms families take, and the joys (and challenges) of neighbors who are there for one another, come what may."
Girls Girls Girls (2025) Shoshana von Blanckensee "Girls Girls Girls is girly indeed, in the best way, as well as queer and young and retro and joyous and fraught and heartbreaking and hopeful, also in the best way. Shoshana von Blanckensee's debut is a moving coming-of-age romp about friends, families, and forgiveness, the endless ways they overlap, and all of their many wonderful, difficult, beautiful complications."
A Beautiful Family (2025) Jennifer Trevelyan "Dappled in sand and shadow, A Beautiful Family is part coming of age story, part taut thriller, part travelogue, perfectly transporting the reader not only to summer holiday on the New Zealand coast but also to that magical age between childhood and adolescence when the world starts to reveal its dark secrets and everything is more complicated - and, yes, beautiful - than it has seemed. Jennifer Trevelyan's immersive debut is atmospheric and aching."
Bearer of Bad News (2025) Elisabeth Dini "At first funny and endearing, later affecting and poignant, Bearer of Bad News travels even farther than its wayward protagonist in search of home, answers, and loves lost and found. Elisabeth Dini's characters go beyond expectations, her families beyond blood, her history beyond its confines in a bright and moving novel that is more than meets the eye."
Woodworking (2025) Emily St James "Woodworking is a wonder of unexpected characters in complex relationships in a more-than-meets-the-eye small town in an unusual coming-of-age story-several actually-all of which would be great enough, but it also manages to celebrate trans lives without pandering or overgeneralizing, to offer hope without minimizing or sugar-coating, and to tell a story whose pages you can't stop turning. Emily St. James's debut is complicated in the best ways and straightforward in the best ways too, empowering, important, and even heartwarming in its insistence on that which is true for all of us, in spite as well as because of our differences."
We Could Be Rats (2025) Emily Austin "Emily Austin's latest is a masterclass in voice, unreliable narrators, and unknowable characters you get to know anyway because their small town and weird family and struggles with the world are so recognizable and so intimately detailed. We Could Be Rats is a one-sitting-read portrait of the complicated relationship between two sisters, unusual but familiar, moving but difficult, and, ultimately, the light in the darkness they each - and we too - so badly need."
Libby Lost and Found (2024) Stephanie Booth "Libby Lost and Found is a story upon a story upon a story, all delightful. One by one, Stephanie Booth's characters are funny, complicated, endearing, and relatable, but then they come together and make magic. This is a book for those of us lucky enough to have ever really, truly fallen in love with one."
Grown Women (2024) Sarai Johnson "GROWN WOMEN is beautifully written, compassionately told, and deeply explored, but the word I'll be using to recommend it to everyone is 'complicated.' These characters are messy, difficult, and capricious and also passionate, devoted, and smart as hell. Sarai Johnson's debut novel covers a lot of the rockiest of ground, all of it thoughtful and impressive and, in the end, the reason we read."
A Wild and Heavenly Place (2024) Robin Oliveira "A fascinating history too seldom told. Robin Oliveira's words have changed the way I see home, what came before, and what has been here all along."
Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame (2024) Olivia Ford "Olivia Ford has written a moving, uncommon coming-of-age story, and if the age Mrs. Quinn is coming of is a few decades older than usual, it's all the more uplifting and empowering for it. I loved the insider's look into a reality TV show and the delicious descriptions of all the bakes, but it's the love stories at the center of this novel that so beautifully rise."
We Must Not Think of Ourselves (2023) Lauren Grodstein "We Must Not Think of Ourselves is one of those rare books - beautifully written, seamlessly constructed, quietly devastating - that manages to tell an old story in a new way with no pyrotechnics beyond perfect storytelling, including an ending that will stay with me always. It is far and away my favorite novel of the year, of many years, and I know I will be recommending it to readers forevermore."
The Enemy at Home (2023) Kevin O'Brien "Kevin O'Brien's latest is a compulsively unputdownable, keep-you-guessing-to-the-end, pages-flying whodunit, and as if that weren't enough, The Enemy at Home is also packed with compelling, complicated characters in a fascinating and meticulously-researched time and place. World War II Seattle where women were newly considered workers, Japanese-American citizens were newly considered threats, and closeted gay communities were newly considering a place for themselves all combine to bring this timely novel vividly to life. A new Kevin O'Brien book is always cause for celebration, and this is his best yet."
Buzzy Jackson "Inspiring, empowering, and timely, compellingly detailed and impressively researched, but better still, it's an immersive story of a terrifying warren of history through which our guide is the sort of hero we all need right now: relatable and resolute and absolutely right."
I Will Leave You Never (2023) Ann Putnam "Ann Putnam's I Will Leave You Never is a heartbreaking, gracefully rendered story of the quiet moments between and around the devastating ones and of the beautiful inner workings of the heart and minds battling their way along life's toughest roads."
The Half of it (2023) Juliette Fay "The Half of It is a warm and unconventional love story that considers what comes after marriages in which neither happily nor ever are quite in evidence. Instead, Juliette Fay gives us a heartfelt novel where hard-earned wisdom and long-awaited grace provide their own romance, passion, heartbreak, and, ultimately, hope."
Women Are the Fiercest Creatures (2023) Andrea Dunlop "Andrea Dunlop has a knack for making deeply flawed characters recognizable and sympathetic and compelling as hell. Maybe you come for the beautiful rich people embroiled in juicy scandals of their own making, but you stay for those characters, their intricate relationships, and their complex motivations in every shade of gray. Great on motherhood, empowered women, and female support roles of all sorts, Women Are the Fiercest Creatures is Dunlop's best yet."
The Wilderwomen (2022) Ruth Emmie Lang "The world needs more stories about sisters on road trips, and The Wilderwomen is here to set us on the right path. Ruth Emmie Lang uses a touch of the fantastic to propel a family mystery and a missing person case, but mostly she gives us beautiful landscapes, two very different sisters coming of age, and a compelling cast of characters they meet along their wild way."
Billie Starr's Book of Sorries (2022) Deborah E Kennedy "Billie Starr's Book of Sorries is a book of righteous anger, a book of hard-earned hope, a book of laugh-out-loud humor, and, above all, a book of deep love-between mother and daughter, neighbor and friend, barback and grocer and a delightful cast of unlikely small-town bedfellows-but mostly between the reader and these wonderful pages."
The Measure (2022) Nikki Erlick "So often, high-concept novels are all conceit, no heart, but Nikki Erlick gives us both in spades, a fascinating and timely setup buttressed by a compelling cast of characters finding their hard way through unprecedented times. It makes The Measure a heartfelt parable for our own unprecedented times but also its opposite: a lesson in what doesn't change even when everything else does."
Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair (2022) June Gervais "As if a queer, feminist, 80s coming-of-age novel weren't enough, Jobs for Girls With Artistic Flair also introduces us to a host of interesting characters in all the shades of gray, a gathering storm of family drama, and a burgeoning tattoo scene I knew nothing about and was delighted to be (pun intended) drawn into."
Yerba Buena (2022) Nina LaCour "Yerba Buena tells two lovely, tangled, gorgeously-detailed coming-of-age stories. It is a novel full of heartbreak and hope, food and flowers, complication and compromise, love and loss and lessons learned the hard way. But especially love."
The Sign for Home (2022) Blair Fell "As if complex characters, a compelling voice, smart stylistic choices, and the fierce defense of diversity, accessibility, and equality were not enough, THE SIGN FOR HOME also immersed me in an engrossing and important conversation I knew too little about. I closed this book more enlightened, more engaged, and more hopeful than I was when I opened it, and I enjoyed every page along the way."
This Shining Life (2021) Harriet Kline "Poignant but never maudlin, sweet but never saccharine, This Shining Life gives us a heartbroken family, complicated and familiar in the best ways, going through the hardest of times but finding love and hope and, especially, one another."
The Music of Bees (2021) Eileen Garvin "The Music of Bees tells a hopeful, heartwarming, uplifting story about the power of chosen family and newfound home and beginning again. Its delightful cast of characters is the perfect balance between quirky and familiar, flawed and endearing. And oh the bees! Eileen Garvin’s beautiful descriptions throughout this lovely novel immerse the reader in the seasons, the weather, the trees and the flowers, the river and the land and the rhythms of small-town life, but it’s the bees, with all their wonder and intricacy and intrigue, that make this story sing."
Just Get Home (2021) Bridget Foley "I turned the pages of Just Get Home like I was reading a flat-out thriller, at that magical couldn't-put-it-down, must-find-out-what-happens pace, but that’s only the beginning of this wonder of a novel because it’s also smart and insightful on timely, important, difficult ideas. Its characters and their relationships are heartbreaking and complicated in the best way, at once entirely relatable, instantly recognizable, and unlike anything you’ve read before. This is addictive reading that changes you as you turn the pages and stays with you long after you’ve finished. It is a genre-bender in my favorite way: it has the best of everything."
The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman (2021) Julietta Henderson "The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman IS funny. It is charming, warm, and uplifting as well. But Julietta Henderson’s quirky, lovable characters also offer profound meditations on family, friendship, grief, disability, illness, and aging, all told with heart, humor, and wisdom. There is so much to love about this book."
Forget Me Not (2021) Alexandra Oliva "Forget Me Not is a beautifully written exploration of the gaps between realities. How real is your past if you can’t remember it? How real is your present if it’s mostly lived online? How real is your future if no one you know is trustworthy, including yourself?"
My Brilliant Life (2021) Ae-ran Kim "Poetic . . . the humor, wisdom, and grace of this family carry us through a touching story of the hardest of times."
Every Now and Then (2020) Lesley Kagen "Lesley Kagen’s Every Now and Then ticks all the best boxes. Bygone small-town life so well described you can taste it? Check! Three BFF girlfriends scraping knees and taking names and having the summer of their eleven-year-old lives? Check! Compelling escapades featuring the likes of mental institutions, escaped murderers, and witches? Check! This novel is delightful and the perfect summer read."
Someone Else's Secret (2020) Julia Spiro "Someone Else’s Secret is a sandy, sun-soaked, character-driven exploration of what happens when there are no good options, when the truth turns out not to be enough, when following your heart proves impossible. It is a novel about being young and very young and then not so young after all and about finding the strength to fight for all those former selves."
The Operator (2020) Gretchen Berg "Funny, sweet, secretive, and full of fascinating 1930s, 40s, and 50s period details... a poignant look at life in a small town with its nosy neighbors, thorny families, imperfect romances, scandalous pasts, and gratifyingly just deserts."
A Good Neighbourhood (2020) Therese Anne Fowler "A Good Neighborhood is my favorite kind of novel -- compelling, complicated, timely, and smart. With great humanity, Therese Anne Fowler imparts a full-hearted, unflinching indictment of a broken system and in so doing tells a story hard to put down and hard to forget."
Hollow Kingdom (2019) (Hollow Kingdom, book 1) Kira Jane Buxton "Everything you're hearing about Kira Jane Buxton's Hollow Kingdom--that it's wildly original and inventive, funny and profane--is wonderfully true. But even better, this book is timely, smart, movingly written, and beautifully concluded."
What's Left of Me Is Yours (2019) Stephanie Scott "Beautifully written, atmospheric, and immersive, Stephanie Scott’s What’s Left of Me Is Yours tells a propulsive story about heartbreak and loss and the greatest mystery of all, family."
In the Blink of an Eye (2019) Jesse Blackadder "In the Blink of an Eye is at once heartbreaking but heartening, tragic but life affirming, its characters complex but familiar, its ending miraculous but well earned. It is a book of contrasts then, so it’s little wonder that even as you can’t stop rushing through, you feel it will stay with you for a very long time."
The Last Romantics (2019) Tara Conklin "All of the luxuriously spun characters in The Last Romantics, entwined via that impossible web we call family, unfold over their many years with the perfect balance of familiarity and wonder that makes turning their pages such a pleasure."
Go Ask Fannie (2018) Elisabeth Hyde "[A] loving, raging, totally compelling family... I adored them all from the first page."
Flying At Night (2018) Rebecca L Brown "In Flying at Night, Rebecca L. Brown traces smart, important parallels across tribulations and generations. She manages the neat trick of making you root for every character, even when they aren’t rooting for one another."
We Own the Sky (2018) Luke Allnutt "Heartbreaking and devastating and complicated, We Own the Sky offers something remarkable: light in the darkest dark and redemption where there ought to be none."
The Promise Between Us (2018) Barbara Claypole White "With The Promise Between Us, Barbara Claypole White gives us compelling characters and wonderfully complex relationships to shed important light on too little known, too little discussed challenges of mental illness."
