Port Book & News — September 2026

August was a busy month. It usually is. The number of summer visitors may be starting to ebb and the cash register may be a little quieter, but there are other sounds perking up: School bells and the sounds of a #2 Ticonderoga being sharpened. Earlybird bigleaf maple leaves blowing across Hurricane Ridge Road. The pitter patter of an occasional rain (please let there be more). Boxes of 2027 calendars being delivered to Port Book and News. The worm has turned, and Autumn is knocking on the door.

An Evening with Robert Moor, September 17

In Trees

One day, on a whim, Robert Moor set out to climb a tree near his home. A decade later he had scaled a giant sequoia with Sir David Attenborough, slept one very uncomfortable night in a chimpanzee nest in Tanzania, and fallen in with climate activists fighting to save an old-growth forest from a pipeline. In Trees is the book he came back with — a witty, relentlessly curious excursion in pursuit of what Moor calls “tree-thinking.” Robert Macfarlane calls it “brilliant.”

Thu, Sept 17, 5:30 — Moor in conversation with Lynda Mapes (Witness Tree, The Trees Are Speaking), Dungeness River Nature Center. Free.

Say the word and we will donate 20% off the cover price to the North Olympic Land Trust. If you're already reading In Trees, The Lands & Letters book club meets Thursday, September 10 at 5:30 at the Land Trust office.

Staff Picks

The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell

It's time to meet my new favorite dragon, one with three heads (used to be four heads) and none of them can agree on anything. After a battle goes awry, this dragon sneaks into a dragon rider academy, pretends to be a tame dragon to get the free room and board while he heals, and instead finds new family. Hijinks ensue.

The Dragon Has Some Complaints is the third book by John Wiswell, author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In. Wiswell has a wonderful way of building a world filled with horror, heart, and humor. He always manages to give it a cozy feeling and leaves you with two very important questions: First, what exactly is a monster? Second, who is the real monster in this book? Please read along to find out.

— Helena

Port Book and News Goes to the Movies

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Nine years after a flu pandemic emptied the country, Hig lives in an abandoned airport hangar outside Denver with his dog Jasper, a 1956 Cessna, and a heavily armed neighbor he doesn't much like. He flies the perimeter, fishes a creek where the trout are thinning out as the water warms, and one afternoon picks up a radio transmission from somewhere past his fuel range. Junot Díaz called it “one of those books that makes you happy for literature.”

The Dog Stars. But sometimes you feel a little protective of a work, and you watch the trailer of its adaptation and it's just... not the vibe of the thing you liked. Heller's book is not perfect, but it was a strong debut and such an enjoyable read, the very definition of “cozy post-apocalyptic.” Maybe "touch paper" (reading the book instead of watching the screen) can be the new "touch grass" ?

—Steven

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea by Emily Wilson

Wilson spent the summer in the headlines for her takedown of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey script — a film whose director had cited her translation as an influence. This is the better use of her attention: an orientation for anyone who finishes the Epic and wonders where to go next, a case for returning to the ancient texts, a manifesto on translation. Some scholarly density carries over from the criticism it draws on. But the enthusiast keeps breaking through.

There's something here for anyone curious about the classics: why Helen of Troy changes shape depending on who's telling her story; what Aristophanes actually said before generations of translators sanded him down (by way of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion); why Stoicism is suddenly everywhere.

—Steven

Save the Date — October

Oct 7, 6:00 — Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Among the Birds. River Center, with Olympic Peninsula Audubon. Out now.

Oct 9–11 — Dungeness Crab & Seafood Festival. City Pier. Free.

Oct 17–18 — Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival. on the Waterfront.

New in September

Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel (Sep 15)

Her first novel since Sea of Tranquility: Los Angeles, a slow vanishing, timelines that don't quite agree with each other.

Under Story by Chloe Benjamin (Sep 1)

A biologist retreats to an Antarctic research station and is offered the chance to relive her life. Fair warning: there are mushrooms involved.

Hollywood, Ending by John Green (Sep 22)

His first novel in nearly ten years, and his first for adults: two actors fall in love on the set of a Warhol biopic.

American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee (Sep 29)

The first novel since Pachinko, nine years in the making — a Korean diaspora saga built around the cram-school world. End of the month; preorder now.

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw (Sep 29)

From the author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies: a debut novel of church, family, and the secrets kept in both. Sharp, funny, and long anticipated.

The Birthing Tree by Amanda Peters (Sep 1)

From the author of The Berry Pickers: Indigenous midwifery, inheritance, and the tree at the center of a community.

Dodge City by Patrick deWitt (Sep 29)

The Portland author of The Sisters Brothers sends a 1960s road trip sideways.

The Witches of Cambridge by Alice Hoffman (Sep 8)

A secret society of witches at a 1950s women's college. Hoffman in September is how you know fall is real.

Stitched by Eli McCann (Sep 8)

A comic novel about competitive quilting, from the Utah press that usually sends us canyon country. Paperback original.

Mystery September

Clear your Tuesdays. Sept 15 — Richard Osman, We Chase Shadows (We Solve Murders #2). Sept 22 — Lucy Foley, Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel: the first new Miss Marple authorized by the Christie estate, snowbound in the Alps. Sept 29 — John Grisham turns spy novelist with The French Illusion. One a week, all month. Order now and they'll be waiting on pub day.

The Genre Shelf

Survivor by Octavia E. Butler (Sep 1)

The 1978 novel Butler pulled from print herself, unavailable for nearly fifty years, is now back with context essays and a bonus story. Whatever you think you know about why she buried it, the book itself gets to speak now.

Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros (Sep 29)

Thirteen stories from inside the Fourth Wing universe, set around Threshing Day at Basgiath and bridging to book four. Ask us to hold one.

Also arriving: Leigh Bardugo's Dead Beat (Sept 15), the Alex Stern finale; Brandon Sanderson & Janci Patterson's Blightfall, opening a new Skyward-universe trilogy; China Miéville's The Rouse (Sept 15) — his first novel in a decade, 1,260 pages, we'll happily order you one; Victoria Aveyard's Tempest (Sept 8); and Rachel Gillig's The Knave and the Moon.

New and Notable — Nature

Among the Birds — Lyanda Lynn Haupt (Skipstone). Cascadia's birds in field notes and Justin Gibbens watercolors — and she's at the River Center October 7. Winter Twigs of the Pacific Northwest — Natalie Hammerquist (Skipstone, $17.95). Fifty trees and shrubs, identified after the leaves are gone. More useful every month from now to March.

Famous Last Words

Slowly the canoe drifted away from the moonlit landing, till, at the end of her rope, she lay an empty thing, floating among the shadows of an inverted forest.

— Emily Carr, Klee Wyck (1941; Douglas & McIntyre restored edition)

Carr wrote her endings the way she painted — no explaining.