Set in the PNW

The Pacific Northwest is the ideal platform for a story and lot of people set their novels here.

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Updated May 24, 2025
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After dark
Margolin, Phillip.
Paper Book
Gone, But Not Forgotten rocketed Phillip Margolin into the select company of million-selling novelists. Here he displays again the same genius for best-selling suspense in another intricate, breathtaking thriller of multiple murder in the legal community of the Pacific Northwest. ...
All coyote's children : a novel
Husted, Bette Lynch
Paper Book
Jack and Annie Fallon had been living what seemed the ideal life with their son Riley, spending the school year in Portland, where Jack was a professor of Native American history, and summers at Jack's family ranch in northeastern Oregon, on land surrounded by the Umatilla Indian Reservation....
Arsenic with Austen
Hyde, Katherine Bolger
Paper Book
When Emily Cavanaugh inherits a fortune from her great aunt, she expects her life to change. She doesn't expect to embark on a murder investigation, confront the man who broke her heart 35 years before, and nearly lose her own life. Emily travels to the sleepy coastal village of...
Bear : a novel
Phillips, Julia
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * From the celebrated author of Disappearing Earth comes a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods--"a mesmerizing story about hope, sisterhood, and survival with a truly shocking twist at the end" (People, Book of the Week). ...
Betrayal
Margolin, Phillip
Paper Book
In Phillip Margolin's Betrayal, attorney Robin Lockwood finds herself defending her old nemesis in a multiple murder case with too many suspects, where success might cost her own life. Robin Lockwood is now a prominent defense attorney in Portland, Oregon but a decade...
The book of cold cases
St. James, Simone
Paper Book
In 1977, Claire Lake was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect, but she was acquitted. In 2017, Shea Collins runs a true crime website, a passion fuelled by the attempted...
The butterfly girl : a novel
Denfeld, Rene
Paper Book
"A heartbreaking, finger-gnawing, and yet ultimately hopeful novel by the amazing Rene Denfeld." --Margaret Atwood, via Twitter After captivating readers in The Child Finder, Naomi--the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children--returns, trading snow-covered...
Death bee comes her
Coco, Nancy
Paper Book
Nancy Coco, author of the popular Candy-Coated Mystery series, brings the Pacific Northwest's rainy coast to life with her new Oregon Honeycomb Mystery series starring Wren Johnson and her Havana Brown cat, Everett. Wren owns a specialty shop in the tourist town of Oceanview, where it's all...
Double shot death
Duncan, Emmeline
Paper Book
With its entrepreneurial, 20-something protagonist, focus on a hipster-run food truck pod in Portland, Oregon, and real-world issues involving homelessness and gentrification, this second Ground Rules Mystery is a modern, fresh-voiced, and witty cozy featuring a sleuth who can make a perfect...
Driftwood Bay
Hannon, Irene
Paper Book
After tragedy upends her world, Jeannette Mason retreats to the tiny Oregon seaside town of Hope Harbor to create a new life. Vowing to avoid emotional attachments, she focuses on running her lavender farm and tea-room--until a new neighbor with a destructive dog and a forlorn little girl invades...
East of the mountains
Guterson, David.
Paper Book
It is mid-October, 1997, harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington state, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, his endurance. He has terminal colon cancer. While...
Fever house : a novel
Rosson, Keith (Novelist)
Paper Book
"Exciting, suspenseful, horrifying, and written at a flurry-of-punches pace. Read Fever Housenow."-STEPHEN KING A small-time criminal. A has-been rock star. A shadowy government agency. And a severed hand whose dark powers threaten to destroy them all.
Heart-shaped box
Henry, April.
Paper Book
Claire Montrose wasn't part of her high school's in-crowd. Too smart, too tall, too skinny, and too young-looking, she didn't have a lot of fun back then. But that won't stop Claire from attending her twentieth class reunion. After all, those former disadvantages now work very well for her, plus she...
Honey in the horn
Davis, H. L.
Paper Book
Set in Oregon in the early years of the twentieth century, H. L. Davis's Honey in the Horn chronicles the struggles faced by homesteaders as they attempted to settle down and eke out subsistence from a still-wild land. With sly humor and keenly observed detail, Davis pays homage to the...
The jump-off creek
Gloss, Molly.
Paper Book
In the Oregon mountains setting of the 1890s, a woman gives her side of pioneering the West. Lydia Sanderson is determined that she will not become lonely as she forges a place of her own. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
The last equation of Isaac Severy : a novel in clues
Jacobs, Nova
Paper Book
*Wall Street Journal's "Mysteries: Best of 2018" *Book of the Month Club Selection "Hugely entertaining...The Last Equation of Isaac Severy is full of delight. Though Ms. Jacobs's writing has echoes of Thomas Pynchon, Nathanael West and J.D. Salinger...
The librarianist : a novel
deWitt, Patrick
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes the story of Bob Comet, a man who has lived his life through and for literature, unaware that his own experience is a poignant and affecting narrative in itself.  Bob Comet is a retired librarian...
Madwoman
Bieker, Chelsea
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "This book made me laugh and cry. It reads like a thriller and a love song. It's about being crushed and rising strong." - Cheryl Strayed  "The rare kind of book that lives in your bones" (Ashley Audrain), this novel...
Mink river : a novel
Doyle, Brian
Paper Book
The story of the small Oregon coast town of Neawanaka and its people.
My heart is a chainsaw
Jones, Stephen Graham
Paper Book
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan...
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kesey, Ken.
Paper Book
Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Boisterous,...
The Paragon Hotel
Faye, Lyndsay
Paper Book
The year is 1921, and 'Nobody' Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get as far away as possible from New York City and those who want her dead, she has her sights set on...
River song
Lesley, Craig.
Paper Book
River Song rejoins Danny Kachiah, the Oregonian Nez Perce drifter and failed rodeo rider first introduced in Craig Lesley's award-winning novel, Winterkill. Danny is determined to get closer to his son, Jack, to teach him traditional ways to steer him away from rodeoing. Danny and Jack...
Skin & Bones
Watson, Renee
Paper Book
Best Book of May 2024 by New York Post. Finalist for the 2024 Westport Prize for Literature. From the acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a soulful and lyrical novel exploring sisterhood, motherhood, faith, love, and...
So far gone : a novel
Walter, Jess
Paper Book
"A warm, funny, loving novel. . . . It's an American original."--Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake "So Far Gone is a marvel."--Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers From the #1 New York Times...
The Tigers of Lents
Pomeroy, Mark
Paper Book
This is the story of the Garrison family, who live in Lents, an outer neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. At the heart of it all, there are the three Garrison sisters: Sara, the eldest, a fiery soccer star on the precipice of pulling herself out of the life of poverty she's always known; Elaine, shy...
Tilt : a novel
Pattee, Emma
Paper Book
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A USA TODAY Bestseller Set over the course of a single day, an electrifying debut novel from "a powerful new literary voice" (Vogue) following one woman's journey across a transformed city, carrying...
The trail of lost hearts
Garvis Graves, Tracey
Paper Book
New York Times bestselling author Tracey Garvis Graves's novel The Trail of Lost Hearts takes readers on a life affirming journey, where two lost souls find the unexpected courage to love again. Thirty-four-year-old Wren Waters believes that if you pay attention,...
Wildest dreams
Carr, Robyn
Paper Book
With Thunder Point, #1 New York Times bestselling author Robyn Carr has created a town where hard work and determination are all it takes to make dreams come true  Blake Smiley searched the country for just the right place to call home. The professional triathlete has...
Without mercy
Jackson, Lisa.
Paper Book
"A Juicy Creep-A-Thon. . .Builds To A Suprising Cliffhanger Ending." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) At first, it sounds like the answer to a parent's prayers: an elite boarding school in the Oregon mountains where wayward kids turn their lives around. But behind the idyllic...

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