Author Event: Saturday, June 26th from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, June 26, 2021 from 11am to 2pm for author Monica Hardie, who will be signing copies of her book The Thorn.
Author Event: Saturday, June 19, 2021 from 1pm to 3pm
Please join us on Saturday, June 19, 2021 from 1pm to 3pm for Barbara Braendlein and her book Olive.
Olive is good at seeing things. At five years old, her world is cozy and small, full of her Mommy and Daddy, her grandma, and a lot of doctors. Her body does not ever do what she wants it to. Her legs don’t walk, her hands shake, and when she talks, no one understands her words.
Until one person does.
The more Olive learns all the ways that she is different from other people, the more she realizes how much she needs that one person who always understands her, who is maybe even just like her. So what happens when that one person is suddenly gone?
Olive is a thoughtful, enchanting look into the mind of a non-verbal, medically fragile girl. Through her eyes, we see the struggle of growing up without words and with a body that has to work hard for every triumph, and yet triumph she does. In “Olive”, we are reminded that sometimes all it takes is one person for you to never be alone again.
About the author
Barbara Braendlein is an author, an urban farm wife, and the homeschooling mother of her four special needs kids. Her writing seeks to shine light on the deep joys that are found in seemingly ordinary lives, the extraordinary that lurks in every corner of the mundane. Her new book, “Olive”, released by Atmosphere Press, tells the story of the world through the eyes of a non-verbal, medically fragile five year old girl and is fiction drawn from her very real life adventures raising kids with mitochondrial disease.
Author Event: Friday, June 18, 2021 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us for Susan Matley and Beyond Big-G City, Friday, June 18, 2021 from 11am to 2pm.
The year is 2025, and Hermes is on the Olympus, Inc., hot seat. He has two short years to halt climate change before the irretrievable tipping point is reached, an existential treat to mortals and immortals alike!
The year is 2025, and Hermes is on the Olympus, Inc., hot seat. He has two short years to halt climate change before the irretrievable tipping point is reached, an existential treat to mortals and immortals alike!
The Greek immortals are at it again in Beyond Big-G City, the third book in Walla Walla author S. D. Matley’s contemporary fantasy/mythology series. In addition to the troubles faced by Hermes:
Will David Bernstein discover the identity of his unnamed mortal father?
Has evil force The Power escaped containment and co-fathered an Olympian baby?
Will the seawall protecting a major transit tunnel breach, sending thousands of mortals to a watery grave, in spite of the best efforts of top-notch computer and architectural genius Clifford Essex?
From the City of Mount Olympus to Petra, Jordan to Seattle, Washington, much is afoot Beyond Big-G City!
About the author
Susan D. Matley writes contemporary fantasy/mythology. Beyond Big-G City(by S. D. Matley), the third book in her series featuring the Greek Pantheon, is her latest release from WolfSinger Publications. Susan’s short stories have appeared in THEMA Literary Journal, GlassFire Magazine,Dark Pages (Blade Red Press) and many other print and online anthologies. She lives in southeastern Washington State- -the land of wheat, wine and windmills- -with her 4-legged kids.
Author Event: Saturday, Dec. 14, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, Dec. 14, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for Madame Dorion by Leorna Good
Madame Dorion: Her Journey to the Oregon Country is a story of the first woman to come across the country overland, stay, and help settle the land. Whereas Sacagawea was the first woman to come overland she did not stay. Marie Dorion stayed, and raised her children here. Written as a journal, Madame Dorion: Her Journey to the Oregon Country is suitable for readers of any age. Ms. Good's research included many books (listed in the back of the book) including journals of Wilson Price Hunt and other men on the trip. The dates and facts correlate to those journals, but show the trip through the eyes of an amazing woman, mother, and wife. The Author: Lenora Rain-Lee Good was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Her grandfather, a history buff, instilled in her at an early age a love of history, of Native Americans (she is part Catawba), and the opening of the Oregon Country.
Blood on the Ground
On the 29th of November, 1847, within the Whitman Mission in the southeastern corner of Washington state, a clash of cultures, misunderstandings, and outright lies all came together to a disastrous end for all concerned. Written as 22 poems, "Blood on the Ground: Elegies for Waiilatpu" tells the story of those who lost their lives as well as those who instigated and carried out the uprising that fateful day.
Plus, joining for this event, Lynn Knapp with her book Giving Ground.
Giving Ground pulses with traffic and teems with life, leading us through tangled streets, intertwined lives. We find a place of overgrown gardens, alleys in bloom, pheasants in flight, rabbits, stray cats, and Spanish love songs, a place where the ordinary appears in an extraordinary light. With deft narrative strokes, Giving Ground reveals a place and its people, lives balanced on the shifting ground of language and culture. Like the place, Lynn Knapp’s poems are wry, real, and poignant.
Author Event: Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for The Fight of My Life by Barbara Webb.
From the book...
They say that Ted Bundy started his killing spree in 1974, in the state of Washington. When he tried to get me in the car, it was in 1965, nine years earlier!
He was approximately eighteen and I was twenty-one. I saw the horror in his face at this time! I'm sure that I wasn't his first intended victim.
Author Event: Nov. 8, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Nov. 8, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for Entrepreneurship 101 by Stuart Scott.
WHY SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK? Do you want to start your own business,
sell a product or provide a valuable service? DO YOU HAVE A NEW
BUSINESS, especially a small business? Do you like the idea of LEARNING
FROM THE INSIGHTS OR MISTAKES OF OTHERS? Are you curious how I started
with an $18,000 budget and a basement location in 1983, and ultimately
sold the same business for $250,000 in 2011? If the answer is YES to any
of these questions, then this book is for you--and it's a bargain. I
learned long ago that I didn't have to be nearly as smart or creative
when my mouth was shut. So, I keep my mouth shut, my ears open, and I
stole the good ideas of others. This is your chance to the same.
Book Event: November 10, 2019 from 3pm to 6pm
Join us for Baker Boyer's 150th anniversary at the Walla Walla Fairgrounds on November 10 from 3pm to 6:00pm.
This book is a celebration of Baker and the 150th anniversary of his community bank—the oldest bank in the Pacific Northwest. More significantly, it is a celebration of the rural region Baker and six generations of his descendants, along with the community at large, helped establish and thrive in southeast Washington. It’s about something locals call “the Walla Walla Way,” a legacy of mutual collaboration and innovation that has created a vibrant, nurturing climate for businesses, education, agriculture, philanthropy, the arts, and world-class wines. This book provides a glimpse, across the generations, of how Walla Walla has gained national recognition as one of the best small towns in America.
Author Event: Saturday, November 2nd from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, November 2nd from 11am to 2pm for "6 Weeks in Italy" by Joe Just
In the future the “Time Travel Industry” is in complete control of the government. Using promising students to travel in the time of their choice, they are sent to different time periods where they can absorb information firsthand what was going on politically etc.
All goes well until one student is sent to a much different time period, something that is impossible. What is discovered is a problem that can bring the government to a desperate situation. Can this problem be solved? Only time will tell!
Author Event: Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for Chasing Justice by Myron Bishop.
This book is about homeless veterans from Spokane, WA homesteading a deserted Forest Service camp at Molson, WA. The intrigue evolves around a conspiracy of an illegal mining operation that takes the reader from Spokane to Molson then to D.C., South America and the Caribbean.
About the author:
Myron was born in Dayton, WA, was raised in the old town Wallula until it was flooded for McNary dam. Later in life moved to Alaska and worked for the federal Alaska Railroad until it was sold to the state of Alaska. He was sent an assignment to Italy as a security specialist and retired from US Government service in 1993. He has traveled to a lot of places in the world and enjoys meeting people.
Author Event: Friday, Oct. 4, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Friday, Oct. 4, 2019 11am - 2pm for Seven Essential Daily Prayers by Loren L. Fenton.
Seven Essential Daily Prayers teaches how to build a "firewall" every morning for spiritual survival. God gives abundant grace to build the wall so we can face every day with confidence, faith, and hope. These *Seven Essential Daily Prayers* are powerful building blocks for a victorious life in Christ.
- Purity in My Mind
- Righteousness in My Heart
- Integrity in My Life
- Joy in My Spirit
- Strength for My Body
- Wisdom for My Counsel
- To be a Godly Influence in the World
Local author Loren L Fenton is a retired pastor, evangelist, missionary, husband, father, grandfather, and teller of great stories. His true-to-life, character-building tales have entertained and inspired readers—young and old—for over four decades! Loren and his wife Ruth currently enjoy retirement here in the Walla Walla Valley.
Author Event: Saturday, Sept. 28, 209 from 11am to 3pm
Please join us on Saturday, Sept. 28, 209 from 11am to 3pm for Don’t Be A Poople by Teresa Fausti.
"Don't Be A Poople" offers hope, inspiration, and tools to those who encounter negativity and bullying. We believe these items will encourage communication and offer humor and love as a healer for all People and Pooples, of all ages.
"Don't Be A Poople" is perfect for schools, libraries, the workplace, or home - and anywhere we need to be reminded to put compassion and love first.
Read more at dontbeapoople.com
Author Event: Saturday, Sept. 21, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, September 21, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for Walls of Secrecy by Kelley Messinger.
Twenty-three-year old Kelley D. Messinger was convicted in Washington in the early 1970s of killing his teen-aged wife. This is his memoir of a decade in prison at the maximum-security unit of Washington State Penitentiary. Chronicling a ludicrous prison governance system, this book captures the life of prisoners including social hierarchy, survival rules, violence, rape, murder, and defense tactics. The book’s characters, his fellow prisoners as well as prison administration and staff, are in many cases, stranger than could be invented by a fiction writer. However, Mr. Messinger’s undefeated will to survive in this environment colors the tone of the book with his humorous, witty and grounding perspective.
Ultimately Mr. Messinger’s case was brought to the attention of Washington Governor Dixy Lee Ray, who happened to be touring a Washington State Trooper’s Academy. Her interest in Mr. Messinger’s conviction was piqued when she heard the investigation used to convict him was used as a case study for how NOT to investigate crimes. When she inquired as to the outcome of the criminal trial, she learned Mr. Messinger was then serving a life sentence in maximum security. Before Governor Ray left office, she exonerated Mr. Messinger.
Mr. Messinger was born and raised in Washington. He owns his own after-market motorcycle parts business in Rosalia, Washington. Lieutenant Dodd (featured in the book) is retired from state service and divides his time between Arizona and Washington.
Author Event: Saturday, September 14 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, September 14, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for Field Guide to Grasses of Oregon and Washington, with Cindy Roché and Bob Korfhage. This is an essential reference to grasses of our region, which combines attributes of a flora and a field guide. Like a flora, it includes all 376 taxa of grasses in Oregon and Washington (not including ornamentals found only in gardens). But in addition to identification keys, full descriptions, and distribution maps, the book is fully illustrated with color photos of habit, habitat, inflorescences and details of spikelets, florets, and ligules. Whether you are a botanist, soil scientist, master gardener, rancher or farmer, or are working to restore native plant habitats, control weedy grasses, manage wetlands, or just curious about the natural world around us, this book is for you.
Books will be available for purchase and you can get your copy signed by the authors, both of whom have roots in Walla Walla. Bob graduated from Wa-Hi in 1964 and members of his mother’s side of the family have lived in Walla Walla since the 1850s. Cindy’s Talbott ancestors came to Walla Walla in the late 1870s.
Author Event: Saturday, August 24 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, August 24 from 11am to 2pm for a book signing with author Karen Robbins.
I THINK I CAN is a unique beginning reader. Perfect for the emerging reader, child with special needs, or international students. It only has kindergarten or first grade words, short sentences, and lots of repetition. You read it together with a buddy or family member. One reads the Aardvark and the other reads the Mouse. Very easy and fun, for beginning readers to gain reading confidence.
THINK FARM ANIMALS and THINK ZOO ANIMALS are a first introduction to ten farm and zoo animals. Perfect for babies, toddlers, 2-3 year olds. It's a lift the flap, die cut board book...to play a guessing game and to teach analytical thinking skills.
THINK CIRCLES (book of the year by Creative Child magazine, for preschoolers/analytical thinking skills),
THINK TRIANGLES, THINK SQUARES are for preschoolers and kindergartners. These books will introduce children to shapes, counting, colors, size, and beginning reading. It's a fun lift the flap guessing game to play and read.
Plus...
FLAGS ACROSS AMERICA is a beautiful, patriotic book for Americans of all ages. I co-authored it with Dale Baskin of Seattle. It has over 300 gorgeous American flag photos as never before seen, and inspiring flag stories. It's packed with American history and will make a perfect gift or coffee table book.
Author Event: Saturday, August 17, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on Saturday, August 17, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for Ration by Cody Luff.
In a world where even paper must be reused until it falls apart, the most valuable commodity becomes flesh.All the girls who live in the Apartments are forced to weigh their own hunger against the lives of their neighbors. When Cynthia is wrongly accused of ordering an “A” ration, a high-calorie meal made from the body of one of her friends, she is punished with brutality at the hands of the other girls and exile from the only home she’s ever known. It’s a death sentence—one that Elisabet Tuttle, headmistress of Cynthia’s Apartments, hopes will encourage the other girls to keep in line. But as Elisabet loses her grip on the Apartments and her own comfort as an agent in the girls’ murders, she grapples with an overseeing council that grows more and more impatient with her mistakes.Inside the Apartments, madness reigns: the needs of the society dominate the needs of the individual, and Elisabet must sacrifice everything to find autonomy. Outside, Cynthia finds a world ravaged by scarcity and an unlikely ally in one of the Women who tormented her for years. Motivated not by self-preservation but by revenge, Cynthia will stop at nothing to grant justice to the girls in the Apartments. Set in the far future, Ration is an unflinching take on the ways society can harm the very people it seeks to protect.
Author Event: Sat. July 13, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Join us on Saturday, July 13, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for The Reign of Delusion (Book 3 of SWORD AND SCION) by JACKSON E. GRAHAM.
Castle Asdale has risen to glory from its former ashes. Under the leadership of Eyoés Kingson, Taekohar enjoys a stable peace and prosperity. With the threat of illness spreading across Alithell, Eyoés and Gwyndel travel to secure relief for Taekohar’s people. Instead, they are trapped in a land where the hearts of men are frozen. Violence rules the snowy wastelands of Norgalok with an iron fist, and fear sows turmoil and mistrust. With the aid of a noble few, Eyoés and Gwyndel fight back a sinister evil that threatens to exploit the people’s terror.
War lies on the horizon—and in Norgalok, fear is no discerner of persons.
50% Off Sale June 14 & 15, 2019
Our Annual 50% Off Sidewalk Sale
Friday, June 14 from 9 am to 6 pm
Saturday, June 15 from 9 am to 10 pm
Author Event: June 15, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on June 15, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for Bury Me with My Fly Rod by Dennis Dauble.
Travel a “spoke of the wheel” tour of northeastern Oregon trout streams where Dauble battles the “Mike Tyson” of Couse Creek, hikes into Spirit Mountain, and soaks flies near his cabin in the Umatilla River canyon. Regale in tales about grasshoppers on a string, beaver scat, dogs that herd trout, and how not to teach your honey to cast. Swing a fly for steelhead on the Deschutes and Columbia rivers and chase “Brownies” on the Isle of Skye. Learn what makes a perfect rod and the secret of huckleberry cream pie. Contains award-winning photos and 25 original illustrations by Ronald Reed.
Author Event: Friday, May 10 from 11am to 3pm
Please join us on Friday, May 10 from 11am to 3pm for a book signing with Stuart Scott, author of GRITTY, GRISLY AND GREEDY and PRISONERS OF WAR.
Two dual plot lines converge with unexpected and devastating result. The story of the infamous Mark 14 naval torpedo, who’s failures to perform hampered our submarines between 1942 and 1944, is told through the eyes of a key production worker. The public’s fear and now forgotten actual attacks on our West Coast, are recounted as they affect the love between master machinist Pat and his Japanese-American sweetheart. When her family is interned and her father killed, as a suspected spy, Pat must decide where his loyalties lie: with his love or with his country.
Prisoners of War is a 64,000-word standalone novel about love, loss and redemption in wartime America. Spanning a 50-year period, the action plays out on the West coast, in a torpedo factory and our only ‘Segregation’ camp for American citizens.
Stories inspired by true crooks and crimes from my 28 years as a fed.
This is a short story collection of quirky stories with black humor and original hooks. It is not about me, but about the crooks and crimes.
Featured among the stories is the fictionalized answer to the greatest mystery in Whitman County. “Who shot George McIntyre, the Pullman sniper?” On Easter Sunday, 1949, George McIntyre, a Walla Walla native, shot 40% of all the law enforcement in Whitman County before being killed.”
In my twenty-year career in law enforcement, I worked with cops and criminals, and encountered con artists, crooked lawyers and innocent citizens caught up in dodgy dealings. These real characters and their adventures, together with my own imagination, have inspired stories about the bank robber who flashes her female assets to dazzle cashiers, the getaway driver who forgets what he's supposed to do, the almost-genuine Native American radio evangelist who knows how to persuade, and the dealer in gold teeth who extracts merchandise from living people.
Each story concludes with an “Author’s Notes” paragraph that tells something about the actual cases or crooks referenced.
Author Event: March 28, 2019 from 11am to 2pm
Please join us on March 28, 2019 from 11am to 2pm for a book signing with John McCoy author of Concrete Mama.
Journalists John McCoy and Ethan Hoffman spent four months inside the walls of the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla in 1978-'79, just as Washington, once a leader in prison reform, abandoned its focus on reform and rehabilitation and returned to cell time and punishment. It was a brutal transition.
McCoy and Hoffman roamed the maximum-security compound almost at will, observing and befriending prisoners and guards. The result is a striking depiction of a community in which there was little to do, much to fear, and a culture that both mimicked and scorned the outside world. McCoy’s unadorned prose and Hoffman’s stunning black-and-white photographs offer as authentic a portrayal of life in the Big House as “outsiders” are ever likely to experience.
Originally published in 1981, the 128 photos in Concrete Mama revealed a previously unseen stark and complex world of life on the inside, for which it won the Washington State Book Award. Long unavailable yet still relevant, it is revitalized in a second edition with an introduction by scholar Dan Berger that provides historical context for the book’s ongoing resonance, along with several previously unpublished photographs.
JOHN A. MCCOY is the author of A Still and Quiet Conscience, a biography of Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen. He was a reporter and editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Walla Walla Union-Bulletin and has taught writing courses at the University of Washington Tacoma and Seattle University.
ETHAN HOFFMAN (1949–1990) was a photographer for the London Sunday Times and Paris Match, and his photo essays appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Esquire, and Life. His photography has been exhibited in several museums, including the Smithsonian.
DAN BERGER is associate professor at the University of Washington Bothell, and an interdisciplinary historian focusing on critical prison studies. He is the author of several books, including Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, and coauthor most recently of Rethinking the American Prison Movement.