A Peek at Peak Picks – April 2025

We’re adding eleven new Peak Picks in April!

In fiction, Katie Kitamura returns with an exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love in Audition; Jon Hickey debuts with a gripping literary debut about tribal power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past in Big Chief; inspired by true events, the latest from Dolen Perkins-Valdez features a woman who learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom of formerly enslaved men and women who were ruled by royalty in the mountains of the Carolinas in Happy Land; RomCom star Abby Jimenez delivers a playful yet deeply emotional romance where one date is all it takes for two people to know they’re perfect for each other . . . until one of them moves 2,000 miles away the next day in Say You’ll Remember Me; and Emilia Hart’s sophomore novel, The Sirens, is a spellbinding novel about sisters separated by centuries, but bound together by the sea.

In nonfiction, Suleika Jaouad (Between Two Kingdoms) presents a guide to the art of journaling–and a meditation on the central questions of life– with contributions from 100 authors, journalists and artists in The Book of Alchemy; Gena Hamshaw offers one simple, classic formula to make countless, flavorful, plant-based meals any night of the week with over 80 delicious recipes in A Grain, A Bean, A Green; Mary Annette Pember debuts with a sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture in Medicine River; Joan Didion’s detailed and intimate chronicle of sessions with a psychiatrist written for her husband John Gregory Dunne are featured in her unmistakable voice in Notes to John; and David B. Williams’ latest, Wild in Seattle, is an entertaining and history-packed exploration of Seattle’s familiar yet often overlooked natural, urban, and geological wonders. Finally, the paperback edition of the 2025 Seattle Reads title, You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, rounds out the month’s selections.

~posted by Frank. All descriptions provided by publishers.